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FrankTheHealer, do games w Slay the Spire devs followed through on abandoning Unity

Another jewel in Godot’s crown. Love to see it

frog, (edited ) do gaming w The Death of Unity - Opinion

I heard from a friend that, allegedly, Riccitiello sold a load of his shares in Unity last week, almost like he knew those shares would be worth less this week… No idea if there’s any truth to it. You know how rumours can be.

I’m starting a game design degree on Monday, and I know Unity is on the syllabus (though not until later in the year). Guess it’ll be interesting to start the term with a conversation about how useful knowledge of Unity will be long term. Since the majority of graduates from this university go into or start indie studios (due to geography), how Unity treat smaller developers is definitely going to be relevant.

Benign,

I don't quite get how the changes are so bad for indies. You must have both $200k revenue and 200k installs before the fee starts ticking on the excess installs. Do indies really sell that kind of numbers?

I can see how the flood of ad-based mobile F2P games are hit, but I don't feel sorry for those that run that kind of model.

Wirrvogel,
@Wirrvogel@feddit.de avatar

Do indies really sell that kind of numbers?

Some do and can you risk to be one of them if Unity takes that much after the first week?

Terraria, a game that got fresh content for years, meaning people were each update reinstalling the game, installing it on multiple platforms etc.

During its first week of release, the game sold over 200,000 copies. That number increased to 12 million by June 2015. As of the end of 2020, the game has sold over 35 million copies worldwide. Read more: tuko.co.ke/421556-top-20-selling-indie-games-time…

interolivary,
!deleted5791 avatar

Knowing the sort of person JR is, I absolutely wouldn’t be surprised. He’s a shit human

Piers,

The reality is that it’s a lot of fuss for a game development company to switch engines but for an experienced individual developer it’s not a huge deal to switch engines. If you learn game development and design today using Unity then 100% of the game design knowledge is exactly transferable and 80-99% of the game development knowledge (depending on exactly what you’re doing) will transfer to Unreal or Godot or whatever else you might need to use later.

It’s like a musician switching from one audio production suite to another. The musical theory stays the same and while the exact details of how to make each bit of software do stuff is different, the actual stuff you’re making it do is broadly the same.

332, do games w Report: Embracer has made layoffs at Gearbox Publishing
@332@feddit.nu avatar

Yeah, not surprised. Industry consolidation sucks in general, but Embracer specifically always felt like it was way overextending. Their bizarre acquisition spree was always going to end badly.

ConstableJelly, do gaming w Dragon Age: The Veilguard sees BioWare refocus on companions

With all the news coming out the past couple days about The Veilguard, I’m starting to piece together a suspicion that Bioware is picking things back up where they last had decent ideas: early to mid 2010s.

I think Veilguard will feel like a stuck-in-time successor to Inquisition, stale by that period’s standards and grossly outdated by today’s, especially in the wake of Larian’s enormous success reinvigorating the kind of game Bioware has forgotten how to make.

lilja,
@lilja@lemmy.ml avatar

I’ve been a fan of Dragon Age since Origins and this game looks like another step towards the kind of simplified gameplay that every game has made. It’s disappointing that the series has gone from an RPG to a generic 3rd person action adventure game, but given the gradual evolution of the other games it’s not really surprising.

kind of game Bioware has forgotten how to make.

Such a nice way to sum it up. You would think that the success of Baldur’s Gate 3 would show publishers that there is a (large) market for actual RPGs, but that’s maybe too much to hope for.

Kaldo,
@Kaldo@beehaw.org avatar

That is what their marketing wants you to think, the reality is going to be its just another soulless shallow designed-by-committee AAA rpg. Nothing ive seen so much has led me to believe otherwise and they have quite a streak of bad games to break.

Potatos_are_not_friends, do games w Palia studio Singularity 6 confirms 36 workers have been laid off

Shame. The game looked great. But the beta state and bugs kept me from committing.

Not certain how the company plans to fix all of that with a smaller staff.

Gork, do games w Embracer sells Borderlands maker Gearbox to Take-Two Interactive for $460 million

At this rate Embracer won’t have any companies left to sell.

ICastFist,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

One can dream

Ghostalmedia, do gaming w EA will spend over $125 million laying off 5 percent of its workforce
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

“These charges consist of approximately $50 million to $65 million associated with office space reductions, approximately $40 million to $55 million related to employee severance and employee-related costs, and $35 million to $45 million in costs associated with licensor commitments,” reads the filing.

The severance I get, but why is closing offices costing them so much. And what are “ licensor commitments?”

FlorianSimon,

Maybe because they’re selling property at a loss? I don’t actually know, just guessing

Ghostalmedia,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, that could be. No one wants office buildings because so many people are remote now. Office buildings are the cheapest they’ve been in decades.

TheMonkeyLord,
@TheMonkeyLord@sopuli.xyz avatar

Good, use them for something worthwhile.

It is dystopian really the nature of shuffling hundreds or thousands of people to a building, into a cubicle, in front of a computer for 8 hours a day.

peter,
@peter@feddit.uk avatar

Maybe getting out of fixed leases?

Ghostalmedia,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, that would make sense. Commercial leases can be up to a decade long.

PenguinTD,

cause commercial rental is a commitment, if you can’t find another company to take over your lease, chances are you have to pay the majority of left over amount + penalty + restoration. Licensor commitments are similar but probably on tech/software licensing, ie. server rentals, Maya/Speedtree licensing agreement for the site, whatever cloud service they use for backup and share stuff, etc. Those at bigger scale aren’t paid year to year like your regular indie studio just subscribe to Adobe/Autodesk for app uses per seat.

altima_neo,
@altima_neo@lemmy.zip avatar

Probably all the hardware and shit they have at those offices, too. Likely all leased.

stevecrox,

Every big UK company I have worked for doesn't own its building. They will typically agree to rent a building for 5-20 years at a fixed rate (longer times if its being purpose built for them) .

So I would expect this is paying out the rest of the rental agreements for a building to escape the building lease.

It is to do with financial reporting and the way asset and operational costs are reported.

nodimetotie, do games w Report: Embracer cancels Eidos' unannounced Deus Ex project, lays off staff

We never asked for this

Viking_Hippie, do games w Report: Embracer cancels Eidos' unannounced Deus Ex project, lays off staff

First time I ever heard about Embracer and I hate them already 🤬

altima_neo,
@altima_neo@lemmy.zip avatar

You’ve heard of them before. They used to be called THQ Nordic.

Skelectus,
@Skelectus@suppo.fi avatar

Well, they’ve been doing this a lot. They have bought a massive amount of game studios over the years just to run out of money and close them.

Geek_King, do games w Turning Bugs Into Features

My favorite example of this is Tribes 1, players found if you tap jump fast while going down a hill, they could “ski” down and gain a lot of momentum. The dev’s hadn’t intended this to be the case, but players loved it, and the dev’s thought it was cool so they left it in. Now skiing is just considered a primary trait of Tribes games.

bungle_in_the_jungle,

I think No Man’s Sky had a similar thing with punch boosting.

Cybersteel, do games w Sega of America accused of trying to axe 40 percent of unionized staff
@Cybersteel@lemmy.ml avatar

Sega does what nintendont

EmperorHenry,
@EmperorHenry@discuss.tchncs.de avatar

the CEO of nintendo cut his own pay in half twice so that he wouldn’t have to fire anyone. I think multiple CEOs of nintendo have done that actually…not so sure about the american ones.

Also the nintendo switch is the only console at the moment where you actually own the games you buy.

Cybersteel,
@Cybersteel@lemmy.ml avatar

It’s a different culture. Incompatible with progressive western way of thinking and way of life. There’s a reason we nuked them… twice.

vivadanang,

console at the moment where you actually own the games you buy

but but blast processing

Burn_The_Right,

I’m not sure you’re spelling “butt” correctly.

vivadanang,

I am. you have to pay way more for butt blast processing and even then you can only find reliable ‘vendors’ in the city.

21Cabbage, do games w Report: Fall Guys dev Mediatonic "decimated" by Epic layoffs

‘Epic layoffs’ is a pretty funny term in a vacuum.

Agent_Karyo, do games w Embracer studio Eidos-Montreal has laid off 75 employees
@Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world avatar

Some background on Embracer.

Their piece of shit CEO, Lars Wingefors, was in discussion with a gulf national fund on a huge $2 billion investment.

He never got anything legally binding, but before securing the investment he went on a massive spending spree.

The national fund got cold feet and Wingefors had to cut up all of Embracer to account for his mistake.

You would think such a childish error would result in immediate dismissal and essentially a permanent blacklisting from executive positions (not only in the gaming industry).

Nothing like that happened, I believe the Embracer board is full of his friends and family. He just went with it.

This is the kind of stuff that shows that polemics around hard works and meritocracy are at least partially propaganda to keep the plebs in line.

Quetzalcutlass,

Embracer is also splitting into three separate companies to shed the tainted Embracer name, all still owned and run by Wingefors of course.

Asmodee Group (for board games) and Coffee Stain Publishing (for indie games) are the only two with official names last I heard. The unnamed third is the big one and Embracer’s direct successor, but I guess they’re delaying naming it to minimize bad press associated with the new name.

LostWanderer, do games w Embracer rolls out new AI policy to 'massively enhance game development' | Game Developer

They’ve gotten drunk on the hype of AI (LLM in disguise); I can’t wait for them to make a costly mistake that wakes them the fuck up. Or dissolve into a formless mass of corporate sludge.

IHeartBadCode,

In the tech industry (likely every industry but I wouldn't know) we could make a 200 level course in college that covers tech that's been over hyped. A few choice hits like:

  • Crypto
  • Blockchain
  • Quantum
  • Cloud
  • WS-I
  • LAMP
  • XML
  • P2P
  • WORA
  • OOP

Now some of those went on to become useful concepts, but all hardly lived up to the hype of transforming the industry forever. There's just no shortage of people who lack any kind of set of morals that will, without any knowledge in the domain, jump on some train and hype it to get some quick cash before the thing derails in a fit of coming to terms with reality.

I mean, at least it's been this way since I've been in the industry.

LostWanderer,

Yeah, there is always new Kool-Aid for executives to consume. I just wish more research, discourse, and testing were done before these concepts became either a scam or a true innovation. Of all the things that you’ve mentioned, there are only a few things of which I have no knowledge of; as a lay person, my familiarity with some of these tech developments is due to the major media coverage some got. I’ll have to look into the unfamiliar tech innovations.

Hallogallo96,
@Hallogallo96@lemmy.world avatar

Quantum

Seriously? We’ve barely passed the stage of them working at room temperatures yet

Katana314, do gaming w Families of Uvalde victims sue Activision, say Call of Duty is 'the most prolific and effective marketer of assault weapons in the United States'

The most agonizing debate is one you agree with, but not nearly to the extreme degree of the position you’re responding to.

There are some nuts out there that literally only buy a certain gun because “it’s in Call of Duty and it’s cool.” Worse, this demographic are not likely to be responsible gun owners - they are not buying for any perceived need. They don’t lock their guns correctly, or keep ammo separate. Those guns are the type most likely to be stolen for use in a mass shooting (or used by their owners). Arguably, those guns are designed to appeal to this exact crowd, not serve as a functional tool or hobby item.

That said, there are much better targets for gun legislation than “scary looking black guns” or Call of Duty’s choice of theme.

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