It’s the funny skins and convoluted menu. I don’t want to play Fortnite with my Call of Duty and I don’t know how to get to the campaign or multiplayer options.
Also, why do I need a 1-billion GB app to launch the game I’m playing?
This just shows that Valve/Steam is way too powerful in games distribution. Another example of over-centralization in our modern world. My initial thought of course was “just move to itch.io or something”, but they claim no one will give them investment funds to develop games unless they can be on Steam, which is just insane.
it is insane out there for indies. The Steam issue is only part of the picture. Your big indie names like Supergiant and Landfall will keep trucking along because they have enough momentum and cache to ink deals with investors. But the smaller studios that are just getting off the ground? Investors have become very averse to signing with those teams, because they only see things in terms of ROI. It’s such a risky bet, and even if everything works out, the tiny payday is not worth it to these types. It is more lucrative to just invest that money in index funds.
Everyone says “it’s okay if AAA gaming collapses, we’ll still have indies to save us”, but we won’t have indies to save us for much longer if there is no funding out there for new studios.
I understand that you must feel good hating on valve, but what you say makes no sense whatsoever. centralization? steam is popular but by far not the only option:
notably, the final version of Horses has been reviewed and approved for distribution across numerous other PC storefronts, including the Epic Games Store, GOG, the Humble Store, and Itch.io
if you want yo buy this game, you have many options for that
I’m tired of this headline. An indie studio that hardly anyone has ever heard of tried to push their questionable game. Valve said no…and did so with a solid enough reason from what I’ve learned about it. This is just stupid.
“It’s for sure less guided but I would say that simulation is too far,” Tomaszkiewicz clarifies. “We’re taking from our previous experience [The Witcher 3], the things we feel that makes the quest cool - how to build the storytelling in a way that you are engaged and you are immersed, but giving you more freedom.”
I would actually like it if the devs leaned more into the simulation aspect, if they are going to lean into more of a sandbox experience. With 155 people onboard to make the game there should be plenty of knowhow and resources to make it happen.
“Our game is more similar in this area to the old Fallout, the first and second [games], where you have a clear goal and everything is optional - you decide. You travel the world, you decide what you want to do. There is no main quest.”
As someone who likes the first two Fallout games over everything else published into the series, I’m fine with this. Also, as a TTRPG sandbox nerd this makes me more interested in the game.
The more effect you have, the more the gauge will fill; and the more the gauge fills, the more actions the antagonist will take against you, such as passing edicts to close shops and sending assassins against you. “We wanted to create a world which reacts to what you are doing,” Tomaszkiewicz says.
Going to express skepticism about how well the system is going to be able respond to player agency, but also hope to see something special. Maybe there will be some kind of AI director to keep things interesting based on what you do in the game. Kind of like how things work in Rimworld? I would be cool with that but skeptical about how things might work outside of a colony builder.
Anyhow, I’ll keep an eye out for what might happen sometime next year.
Im not familiar with their work but they sound like a slop developer who tried to publish a game with messed up content and is now whining about not being able to sell it
(Edit: I looked into them, they are absolutely not an award winning indie studio and def not one of the best, they’re a slop factory and they make asset flip low quality horror games)
And who on earth is giving these awards? Some shitty slop “gaming journalist”? Because its certainly not any reapected reviewers. Personally when I think of award winning indie studios I think Team Cherry, Devolver Digital, Studio MDHR, Galactic Cafe, or Motion Twin.
Well, neither of us have played it, so neither of us is really in a position to say whether the game is great or not. But that trailer seemed pretty damn spooky and unsettling to me, seems like the dev knows what they are doing. But again, I’m just going off that trailer in the article. Totally fine if this brand of horror is not your cup of tea, though.
I can judge a style and the art without playing the game. I just said how it looks to me. My earlier point was, if you make a game like that, you shouldn’t be surprised getting banned. And the creator does the best out of it and makes a scene of it. I would probably too, because it generates a lot of buzz and is free marketing. People who never had this in radar will either purchase or talk and make more marketing. So, I am not blaming him doing what he does right now.
I mean at one point in the trailer you see two real horses fucking (f*cked up literally). From what I see it’s not just horror, its about shocking. And I believe not every game should be on Steam. Where the line is, I don’t know.
Wait, I was able to see your point all the way through, but what is wrong with two horses fucking? You can see that on 100 farms within 20 minutes of me. That’s probably the least weird thing I’ve heard about this game.
You can also open up random porn websites and see stuff that shouldn’t be on Steam. Also having it randomly in nature is one thing, appearing in a shocker / horror videogame with the context of children want to ride naked horses (which are human with mask) riding is another. It’s all about context.
Horses fuck. Horses in this game are naked humans with horse masks. Naked human horses fuck in this game. Throw a minor into the mix - EVEN IF THAT SCENE WAS NOT SEXUAL, still gives weird pedo vibes.
All this noise is about a child scene in the game that got allegedly deleted. We’ll find out that after release.
I don’t know about the game more than I’m reading here, but the quote I was responding to is “two real horses fuck.” If that’s not what they mean then, fair.
“We had multiple publishers actively coming to us,” explains Pietro, “and be like, ‘Hey, we want to make this game.’” And many of those big publishers were initially unperturbed by Steam’s ban. “The main reaction,” he recalls, “was, ‘Leave that to me… I know everyone at Valve, let me figure it out’, and so they’d take the game, and a month later they’d come back and be like, ‘No, you’re fucked. Bye.’” And seemingly nothing will get Valve to budge. “We’ve tried everything,” Pietro continues. “I was already in touch with a real human being [at Valve] since our first onboarding on Steam… but they were like, ‘I’m sorry this happened… I don’t have insights on the reasons for the ban. I’ve brought your plea to the review team and they’ve declined to re-review and their decision is final.’”
Wtf? It sounds like someone powerful at Valve made a mistake and would rather let this studio close than admit it.
Edit : Caught this on a re-read. Definitely sounds more sussy now.
In the early build reviewed by Valve, day six featured a scene in which a man and his young daughter visit the farm. The daughter wants to ride one of the horses, resulting in an interactive dialogue sequence where the girl rides on the shoulders of a naked “horse” while it’s led by the player.
Yeah, I’m on the side of if it’s legal it should be allowed, but having read about the scene and watched the trailer I think it’s kind of disingenuous for the developer to pretend this was a surprise. Getting that on to steam would be a coin flip even without the recent controversies.
Given that it’s being allowed on multiple different platforms now that the “child riding a naked person in a horse mask” sequence has been removed, it definitely stinks of spin from the dev trying to get more publicity.
Feels like they’re just trying to use the controversy as publicity.
If it looks like a dog, barks like a dog, it is a dog. They are definitely pulling out a publicity stunt. Their site proudly promotes the fact that they got banned off steam. You bet that is intentional.
disingenuous for the developer to pretend this was a surprise
Given that the game is going to release on Epic Games Store, GOG, and Humble Store, I actually do find it surprising.
Steam / Valve seems to be the outlier here.
The description of the scene that got the game banned is not even remotely sexual, just a bit weird / uncomfortable which is the entire point they’re trying to make. And that scene is not even in the game anymore.
But while The Blood of Dawnwalker won’t have a main quest in the sense of a main storyline that pulls you through the world like an invisible rope, it will have a very clear and overarching goal: for you, Coen, to save your family before 30 days and 30 nights go by. And every significant thing you do in the game world will have a time cost.
Santa Ragione received an automated message from Valve stating Horses would not be approved for distribution on Steam and could not be resubmitted. The ‘why’ came as a shock to the studio. “While we strive to ship most titles submitted to us,” Steam’s automated response read, “we found that this title features themes, imagery, or descriptions that we won’t distribute. Regardless of a developer’s intentions with their product,
we will not distribute content that appears, in our judgment, to depict sexual conduct involving a minor.
While every product submitted is unique, if your product features this representation—even in a subtle way that could be defined as a ‘grey area’—it will be rejected by Steam.”
I don’t think is an unfair line to draw by any measure, and while I sympathize with the studio I’m also not going to begrudge Valve taking a hard line on this, because there are absolutely games being submitted that will try to toe that line. I don’t think this studio is doing that, but I also think it’s fair for Valve to weigh art and impact vs peoples’ comfort, if they’re the ones being asked to host something.
Sure, “it doesn’t have a main quest” is a splashy way of saying “we’re doing a BOTW-style game structure”. But I’m totally down for a dark and gritty BOTW, that sounds like a fresh take to me.
What he describe really sounds like BOTW but with TTRPG writing, you have a goal, you have faction quest to do, and all these quest affect your path to the goal, and you can probably just walk straight to that goal if know where it is and you’re speedrunner enough.
Okay he did mention FO1 and 2, which is basically that.
But anyway, fresh IP from good rpg dev, can’t say i’m not excited for it.
I think it is because it launched without that many games and honestly sure there was improvement, but not as much as the jump from PS2 to PS3, or PS3 to PS4.
eurogamer.net
Aktywne