gamedeveloper.com

Agent_Karyo, do games w Report: Unity continues mass layoffs with 'abrupt' communications and 5am emails
@Agent_Karyo@lemmy.world avatar

They should have stuck to the engine business and not gotten involved in spam/adware schemes.

Quazatron, do games w Epic Games is officially cool with the Internet Archive preserving early Unreal games
@Quazatron@lemmy.world avatar

Excellent that they don’t engage in Nintendo level community hostility and at least let people who care about old games preserve them.

Stream goes one step further and actively maintains their legacy games playable. That is commitment.

FinalRemix,

Gog goes another step and provides a guarantee on stuff they’ve modified to ensure it works, and provide an offline installer that’s entirely self-contained for archviing purposes.

Quazatron,
@Quazatron@lemmy.world avatar

I prefer to buy GOG when possible, Steam second. I even have some duplicated titles across vendors.

Nuke_the_whales,

Every dev and game company is out for your money. They all suck not just Nintendo.

DacoTaco,
@DacoTaco@lemmy.world avatar

Eh, i wouldnt say they are better. They explicitly pulled all unreal games off all stores ( steam, epic store, gog, … ), killed all servers and when asked acted like unreal never existed. They are pieces of shit for doing it and they had no real reason in doing so imo…

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

Embracer is a sickness, a malignant fucking growth on gaming.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

I’ve got so many companies higher up on my shit list.

technomad,

Name and shame them

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

The worst:

  • Nintendo: Actively standing against game preservation and ownership in an attempt to rent you their back catalog forever; their outdated hardware exclusivity model also stands in the way of future-proofing preservation. They hate their fans, and don’t forget it. They’ll sue you for playing Super Smash Bros.
  • Riot: They normalized rootkit anti-cheats, and for something that extreme, it had better render cheating impossible, but it doesn’t. Purveyors of live service games, which also stand in the way of preservation and ownership by putting an expiration date on the game. For the sake of brevity, I won’t expand on the live service concept again in later bullet points.
  • EA: Making billions of dollars off of legalized gambling for children. Always-online DRM on games that otherwise never even need to touch the internet.
  • From here, you can put most companies that have reduced their library down to live service games for similar reasons as the above.

These companies piss me off, but…:

  • Sony: Clinging slightly less to the outdated hardware exclusivity model and pivoted largely to live service games, but the writing is on the wall, so they may abandon one or both of those things in the not-too-distant future. Their new shenanigans with requiring PSN accounts on PC shakes my faith in that though.
  • Microsoft: Layoffs to rival Embracer, and not even a successful, acclaimed game will save the developer. Purveyors of live service games, not just from classic Microsoft studios but also from Activision, Blizzard, Bethesda, etc. Still, they eventually bent to the whims of the market rejecting their Windows storefront for anything outside of Game Pass, and they did a ton to make PC gaming as good as it is today, including standardizing a good controller for it.
  • Epic: Exclusivity that’s actively hostile to what customers really want, purveyors of live service games, removing their classic games from sale from other stores and their own for basically no reason. But Tim Sweeney, in pursuing his own self interest to become king of the world, sometimes cries loudly enough to score a win for consumers, and Epic is going to be instrumental in any kind of change, in any country, for destroying walled gardens in tech.
  • Valve: Making untold amounts of money off of legalized gambling for children, purveyors of live service games, but they’re also basically the only ones creating open ecosystems and allowing them to flourish.

Embracer’s pretty low on the “piss me off, but…” list. They made a horrible gambler’s bet and were surprised to have to pay the bill later, and they do have a few live service games in the bunch too, but outside of that, what they were going for is something I really wanted to see succeed. The big publishers stopped making a lot of types of games that they used to make as they honed in on a select few money makers, and Embracer was picking up old, discarded, forgotten properties or subgenres and trying to show that there can still be a market for those. The fact that the bet has failed could be up to their execution, since as Keighley reminded us at SGF, customers do in fact respond when the right games show up outside of those AAA publishers, and Embracer had a vision. They pursued that vision irresponsibly.

rtxn,

Riot was/is also a cesspit of sexual harrassment and discrimination, but nobody seems to remember.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Good point. I don’t know how ongoing that is or if steps have been taken to improve things.

technomad,

That was a really excellent write up, thank you for elaborating. It’s helpful to know the truth of how these companies are acting, and important for consumers to try not to forget. They will continue to take advantage, if we allow it.

Marketsupreme,

What a sober fucking write-up. Bravo and thanks for the information.

CosmoNova,

And yet Tencent and whoever made Roblox are arguably even worse than those.

Nobody, do games w Xbox president: Studio closures will ensure 'business is healthy for the long term'

You see, our stock price goes up when we buy other companies and it goes up when we fire people. We’re doing both at the same time, so our stock price will go up double. This is a sustainable business model and not at all a very dead canary in a very deadly coal mine.

Tick_Dracy, do games w Steam dropping support for macOS Mojave and by extension 32-bit games
@Tick_Dracy@lemmy.world avatar

This means that they will finally release a Steam app compiled for Apple M series architecture, right? Right?

theangriestbird, do gaming w Epic Games is officially cool with the Internet Archive preserving early Unreal games

I hate that we have to live in this world where something as vital as archiving the internet is a volunteer-based operation that requires permission from copyright holders. In a better world, the Internet Archive would be an international enterprise funded by mandatory contributions from UN members, and IA would have open license to archive everything. Maybe they wouldn’t allow regular users to access archived items that have active copyright, unless the items become inaccessible.

realcaseyrollins,
@realcaseyrollins@thelemmy.club avatar

Good grief that sounds horrible. I don’t want the government to be in charge of what gets preserved and what doesn’t.

theangriestbird,

I go back and forth on this. Clearly there are downsides to a service being provided by a government agency. But someone has to be in charge of it, and every option has downsides. Obviously a for-profit private venture is the WORST option. The current system of volunteer/nonprofit is great, but lacking in stability, funds, and power to push back against copyright. You could argue that the benefits outweigh the drawbacks, I just think it would be nice if my tax dollars supported vital services like Internet Archive or Wikipedia.

muhyb,

It would be terrible if done by some government though.

bblkargonaut, 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'

Star wars has been effectively marketing me lightsabers for years, and I can’t even carve a turkey with mine.

SkyNTP,

If you could buy one, would you?

bblkargonaut,

Most definitely and probably be missing some limb by now.

Sarmyth,

💯

numberfour002,

Yeah, of course. I buy one towards the end of every November. It’s a Thanksgiving tradition.

Contingencyfork, do games w Xbox president: Studio closures will ensure 'business is healthy for the long term'

“You know, we’re a platform where you can play Grand Theft Auto but you can also play Palworld. Where you can play Call of Duty and can also play Pentiment. That doesn’t change,” she said.’ - yeah but now I can’t play HiFi Rush 2 :(

Thcdenton,
@Thcdenton@lemmy.world avatar

You will when Micropenis puts out the sequel full of AI gen slop.

Carighan, do games w Sega sells off Relic Entertainment, will axe 240 jobs
@Carighan@lemmy.world avatar

jobs will be cut at Creative Assembly

Ha! Can’t cut down on the QA and testing stuff if there is none! Smart thinking, CA!

Damn this sucks though. Happy for Relic that they escaped it, but Sega has been dropping the ball so hard lately, it sucks they take it out on their workers.

caut_R,

I feel like I haven‘t heard or read anything positive about CA since they did Shogun 2

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Did you miss Alien: Isolation, Three Kingdoms, and Warhammer?

ICastFist,
@ICastFist@programming.dev avatar

You mean the near Paradox levels of DLC for Three Kingdoms and Warhammer? And selling blood as a fucking DLC for every Total War game since Shogun 2? Yeah, I’ve heard about it.

The games are good, but Sega’s forced monetization is atrocious.

ampersandrew,
@ampersandrew@lemmy.world avatar

Of those three, the one I bought was Three Kingdoms, and I was certainly not forced to buy more than the base game. Paradox’s DLC strategy is a-okay by me. Neither company puts a gun to my head to buy their DLC. Pretty sure blood is a DLC to get away with a lower age rating.

UndercoverUlrikHD,
@UndercoverUlrikHD@programming.dev avatar

Eh, CA pretty much aced their DLC strategy for warhammer 2. It’s with Warhammer 3 that they fell of a cliff. And three kingdoms barely got any DLC before getting cancelled.

Gork,

One thing I didn’t like about Shogun 2 and all subsequent sequels was enforcing a limited number of armies by forcing a general to be present. The maximum number of armies you could field is naturally bottlenecked by your economy, so you should have the flexibility to use some non-generaled armies to bolster garrisons in key strategic locations. Instead, you need to use one of your scarce generals to defend it, which prevents them from being used offensively so they just sit around.

pozbo, do games w Report: Bungie CEO blames layoffs on waning interest in Destiny 2
@pozbo@lemmy.world avatar

Sure the ceo is skilled enough to blame waning interest, but is the ceo skilled enough to ask why interest has waned?

GoodEye8, (edited )

To be fair I couldn’t tell you either. Destiny has been rehashing the same shit for years now but for some reason this year people finally got fed up. I can’t believe it’s just because they released a completely filler expansion but most of the other issues have been around from previous years.

flux, do games w Microsoft's next-generation Xbox pitched as a "cloud hybrid" console
@flux@lemmy.world avatar

Good luck with that one. Highspeed reliable Internet does not exist everywhere. I’d rather pay for a gpu then deal with garbage gameplay.

Hanabie, do games w Baldur's Gate 3's success is not about setting a new "standard"
@Hanabie@sh.itjust.works avatar

What devs see is “all those other devs are too lazy to make a good game”.

What players mean is “all those other games are full of micro transactions and sell missing content and features as dlc”, which is not the same thing.

What players want to be addressed is the bad influence investors have on the products. Publishers aren’t interested in publishing good games, they only care about money.

Devs don’t go about making a game only for the money. Most of them would rather do it the same way Larian does it, focus on quality and provide a good gaming experience, but their hands are tied.

So the message gamers try to get out goes to the wrong recipients, and it’s obviously being taken the wrong way.

Pretty obvious and epic communication fail.

sugar_in_your_tea,

And that’s why I generally prefer indie games. Many indie games are made with passion, with money being down the list of priorities. AAA games are made with money first, though there is certainly passion as well, it’s just not the top on the list. As studios and budgets get bigger, so will their expectation of profits.

So if you want better games, buy from smaller studios. Show them that you value passion over high budget.

pory, (edited )
@pory@lemmy.world avatar

But when a game like BG3 comes out, with all the stuff no indie studio can afford to do and it has this level of passion without sticking its hand in your pocket, it absolutely reminds us that AAA doesn’t have to be like it is.

As good as indie RPGs are, Disco Elysium was only able to afford voice acting after being a giant commercial success. No small budget team is going to be able to have mocap work on the level of BG3. These things cost a lot of money and involve paying a lot of workers. BG3’s Kickstarter got to be carried by the name recognition of Baldur’s Gate and Dungeons & Dragons in general, following a huge popularity surge for the latter thanks to the rise of real-play podcasts and such.

Do games need hundreds of voice actors and incredible mocap to be good? No. But it’s something that only AAA studios have the ability to add, and it’s a shame that it’s all going into the next fifa/COD/whatever other money pit GAAS the industry is shitting out.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Agreed. But I’d much rather sacrifice AAA features like mocap, voice acting, and RTX if it means a higher chance of playing a game with a lot of passion put in. Those are nice to have, but not the reason I pick a game.

pory,
@pory@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah. BG3’s exceptional because it doesn’t need to sacrifice that stuff.

sugar_in_your_tea,

Yup. And I wish more AAA titles took more risks in gameplay and storytelling, but those seem to be few and far between.

Starfield is a fantastic example. If you asked me to describe a Bethesda game set in space, it would look a lot like Starfield (but I probably would’ve missed the procedural generation). Usually AAA games are pretty much as expected, with one or two surprises on the side, and that’s it.

BG3 basically delivers on Cyberpunk’s promises (branching storylines, mocap, great visuals, etc), and it did so on launch, which is really rare.

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

Fun game! Swap “AI” with “blockchain” and put it into a search engine. You win if you can find the same headline from an article a few years ago!

Square Enix says Embracer sales will help it invest in blockchain (2022)

zaphod,

Initially I had some hope when Embracer bought a bunch of studios from Square Enix, because Square Enix sucks and it could only get better, but once their funding dried up it turned out Emberacer sucks just as much as them.

Nacktmull, 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'
@Nacktmull@lemmy.world avatar

Video games are not the problem, the violence and gun fetishism of american society is.

Railing5132,

I get what you’re saying, but in the case of the games in question, it’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg situation, don’t you agree? Get them while they’re young and impressionable?

Nacktmull, (edited )
@Nacktmull@lemmy.world avatar

Kids all over they world play fps so imo pixel guns are not the problem, the real guns kids in the US have access to are what makes the difference.

Railing5132,

Oh, I completely agree. There is no single thing that is the “magic cure”. There are a bunch of factors that add up to a fetishization of guns and gun culture / violence in the US. And the incredible availability of guns makes gun violence inevitable.

lucullus,

Other countries also have Call of Duty, but not such a big problem with mass shootings. So I don’t think its that easy. I think it is more interesting, what the NRA is doing. Such a big and powerful lobby organization should have way more influence, than a video game series.

Railing5132,

As I mentioned to the other replier, other countries don’t have the mass promotion of gun violence coupled with the ready access to an incredible variety of firearms.

PowerCrazy,

statista.com/…/lobbying-expenditures-of-the-natio…

You mean the organization that is basically bankrupt and at it’s peak spent 5million dollars over a year lobbying? You think they have more influence then a “video game series” that is owned by a company that has around 25billion in assets?

…activision.com/…/d7b4f08d-213b-4bd5-a41b-7497baa…

TheDarksteel94,

That, and probably a lot of untreated and undiagnosed mental health issues. Honestly, I think guns are pretty cool (from a mechanical standpoint) but I would never even want to own one irl or kill anything with one. 'Cause, you know, I’m somewhat sane.

DarkGamer, do games w Sega of America accused of trying to axe 40 percent of unionized staff
@DarkGamer@kbin.social avatar

If they do this, I will be avoiding buying any SEGA games for the foreseeable future.

moody,

They’re already doing it. The question is whether or not they get away with it.

JDPoZ,
@JDPoZ@lemmy.world avatar

deleted_by_author

  • Loading...
  • SlikPikker,

    You have to think of a way to actively cost them a large amount of money nonviolently. There’ll be a way.

  • Wszystkie
  • Subskrybowane
  • Moderowane
  • Ulubione
  • rowery
  • Technologia
  • krakow
  • test1
  • muzyka
  • shophiajons
  • NomadOffgrid
  • esport
  • informasi
  • FromSilesiaToPolesia
  • fediversum
  • retro
  • ERP
  • Travel
  • Spoleczenstwo
  • gurgaonproperty
  • Psychologia
  • Gaming
  • slask
  • nauka
  • sport
  • niusy
  • antywykop
  • Blogi
  • lieratura
  • motoryzacja
  • giereczkowo
  • warnersteve
  • Wszystkie magazyny