Fuck you, Ubi. Apart from all your shitty practices, it’s a 15-hour game that’s 40€ with a 50€ complete edition and cosmetics bullshit. That shit won’t fly anymore. I might get it in two years when it’s 10€, but only if your kill your launcher as a requirement.
edit: also, it came out a month ago. Learn to suck on the long tail of sales before you sacrifice your employees to Chtulhu, they’ll just make their own vaguely middle eastern platformers in Unity or UE and make more money than your shitty company.
You own the figure in the game, but don’t delude yourself into thinking you actually own this game. We reserve the right to remove your access to your property at our own discretion
Yo, remember when Disney gave EA exclusivity to Star Wars licensing, and for the duration of that exclusivity contract they rebooted one classic online multi-player shooter and then made a sequel that was one of the worst received games of the year and set the record for the highest dislike ratio on YouTube prompting Google to remove the dislike counter?
Apparently the Disney board doesn’t. Maybe someone should remind them.
Not even any tie-in games for the sequel movies, just a DLC map.
But EA clearly know how to rake in money with the yearly version of SportsGame 2021 2022 2023 2024. They are expected to make just as much cash by releasing the exact same movie every year. Who knows, maybe they’ll add microtransactions.
I’ve read somewhere else a couple of days ago that the official explanation is that without the public servers being live, reviewers would not get the full experience.
Not defending WB (I’m not interested in that game at all), just giving context.
Unless they’re having trouble getting them working, which isn’t encouraging for launch.
They at least have some working, they flew a bunch of streamers to LA for an event and had them stream the game a few weeks back.
Looked like a crackdown-ish game with DC character running around. Think like the Spider-Man games of the last few years but without the beloved characters
Reviewers getting copies a week before launch are generally netting like 40-50 hours of game time in a short timeframe. Combine that with the fact that it’d be more like hundreds of reviewers and you might actually have a decently active community.
I have seen it happen before when review outlets don’t get copies, but the game still turns out awesome. I think it happened for Doom Eternal.
It feels pointless to play devil’s advocate here though, since one way or another, I’m basically sure it’s going to be terrible. I just don’t like consigning internet opinion based on anything other than gameplay and actual reviews.
You are referring to Doom 2016 actually. While that turn out decent, one of their key arguments was due to it being online focused. We all know Doom 2016 had rather generic multiplayer.
With that said, it feels silly not to have issues when publishers refuse to send out review keys. Its a huge red flag for a game, this doesn't mean it will be bad but its a trend we shouldn't be happy about. Its only done to help preserve preorder numbers.
Obviously, this is the only sane solution for a one-man team, but all game developers need to put their foot down and say “it’s ready when it’s ready.”
No marketing deadlines, no “crunch time,” make the game until the game is made, release it, maintain it, do it again if you think you have a good idea.
That would be nice in a perfect world but bills need to be paid. I’m not defending crunch time, but not every project can afford to be “ready when it’s ready”. I don’t think many companies would survive like that.
The above comments were talking about how this policy should apply to every game development project. Which is a nice thought, but not realistic for every situation.
Oh yes, I’m sure all those billion dollar companies would have all shut down by now if they had to wait a few weeks to put out a game. Putting out buggy unplayable shit was an absolute necessity.
all game developers need to put their foot down and say “it’s ready when it’s ready.”
No marketing deadlines, no “crunch time,” make the game until the game is made
It isn’t saying publishers should be more flexible about deadline delays, it is saying there simply shouldn’t be deadlines at all.
Shoveling infinite money at a developer who tells you it will be ready when it’s ready is the Chris Roberts model of game development. While it certainly produces interesting results, it is unrealistic and undesirable to expect it as the standard.
Games that are developing well but need a little more time to fix issues should be given flexibility by publishers, but at the end of the day there are stretch ideas and content that has to be cut. Doing that cutting and keeping the project focused is what a lead on the dev team should be doing throughout the entire development. If a game has a realistic deadline given the expected scope and the dev team comes back and says they actually need another year of production, then it is worth looking into if that extra time is going to make the game a year’s worth of investment better or not.
In a publisher fronting money to developer situation, without a fixed time limit (or money limit, which functionally translates to a time limit) is the publisher just infinitely on the hook to pay for dev time “until it’s done”?
I’m not trying to be cute. If a publishing company gives money to a developer who is a separate entity to make a game, they’ve got to have some kind of contract. If there is no timeline or total budget written into the initial contract, how could a publisher pull out of that agreement?
If the answer is going to be “publishers can just pull out when they feel like it” then that’s neither adhering to the “let devs develop ‘until it is done’.” philosophy that is the entire point of this hypothetical restructure, and it for practical terms it does impose a deadline based on the publisher’s patience, except now that deadline is not expressly clear and simply defined.
If publishers can’t simply pull out on a whim, then without some kind of limiting factor that denotes a failure to perform where by a specific time a publisher can point to that failure, it can’t really be functional contract. Saying “the game must have x, y, z features” but never putting a time or budget limit in place means the developers can never have failed at implementing the features because they just haven’t gotten around to it yet.
No, no. You’re right. It is absolutely necessary to put out incomplete, buggy, unplayable “games” and force us to pay $80 to wait for them to actually finish it…
How would you, in general terms, construct an arrangement between a publisher that is funding development, and a developer? How would the agreement hold a developer to certain standards without any kind of time or budget limitations?
Well yeah, but not every dev and company is ConcernedApe. I reckon the same can be said of Balatro dev, and Team Cherry, and a few others. It’s awesome for them who can afford to do this, but that’s definitely not the norm. Most companies can’t afford to sit on a project for 8 years without releasing a product.
While I generally agree, I think there is some value in imposing some kind of deadline or limit to a project. Nothing is ever going to be perfect. There will always be more work that could be done on something. If you let yourself just keep going until you think it’s done it might never come out.
But it’s a balance and when publishers push those kinds of deadlines they’re not really considering that.
Publishers are considering return on investment. In a model where they are providing the game budget to the studio, every delay means more money out of their pocket. Case by case it might be worth it, but just allowing developers to infinitely say it’s “almost ready, just one more delay” isn’t reasonable.
I know from the hard core gamer audience that discusses this stuff online there is often this vibe that nothing should be cut from games. People look at various interesting cut content and lament it for not getting enough time, but there is always going to be cut content.
If there isn’t a lead on the development team putting their foot down to control the scope and focus the team, and a similar push for focus by a publisher you get a meandering unfocused project that goes over budget.
In the solo/small amateur team dev, self-publishing model that ROI pressure isn’t coming externally from a separate publisher. It is means solo devs are making their first games usually on a budget of nothing, as a side project to their day jobs. In some cases like with Concerned Ape it turns out great. In many cases development comes out tediously slowly, like with Death Trash. In innumerable cases the games just die.
In cases like Wasteland 2 it was a full professional team working full time using crowdfunding. An alternate model, but still limited by budget pressure. There was no publisher to pay back, but when the crowd funding money was gone, it was gone. That game did come out and it was enjoyable, but clearly it wasn’t “done when it’s done” levels of polish by the team since they used the profits from the game to release a “Director’s Cut” which was a whole polishing pass on the game they simply couldn’t afford the first time.
When it reaches the “good/mostly done but not perfect/could still be better” stage, it’s time to pre-release it for alpha/beta testing while you work out the kinks and add features.
I remember playing Minecraft in alpha version before it even switched to beta. It was fine.
Even full releases can have updates and expansions to add new features, it’s totally fine. But the core development of the game shouldn’t be rushed just to get it published.
I recently launched a business as a solo dev / founder. It was agonizing trying to get all the last details done and be happy enough to finally say, this is what I’m going to release.
I could have gone on forever if I’d let myself. Oh they need this, oh they need that! This other thing can be better!
Now that it’s out, that pressure is gone, and I can just do smaller updates now which are focused more heavily on the feedback I’m getting from customers.
I probably could have released 3-4 months earlier had I been better about it.
A few people seem to think I meant a game like Stardew or Chocolateir should take several years because that’s how long they take with one person. Obviously if you have a studio of people, even a small studio like early Mojang, you can get more work done much more quickly.
Obviously, I think, I mean the publisher should defer to the developers regarding how long work would take to complete, not the other way around. And no one should listen to the demands of shareholders or anyone else that is completely departed from the production process.
It’s the painting and detailing that can be quite expensive and time consuming. You obviously don’t have to paint your minis, but that’s the entire point for a lot of people.
Lots of stuff to bitch about with GW but prices aren’t one of them. Exhibit A is the article you’re responding to, they are responsible with their profits and put them where they should. Exhibit B is they could minimize costs and outsource the entire plastic operation but they still make all models in England. Exhibit C is paying for Art is always morally the correct thing to do, even when mass produced. Finally Exhibit D, fuck GW for promoting incredibly short lifecycles for their games and pushing an almost weekly FOMO event on products that leads a lot more to these profits than just model sales.
It’s playable and you can complete most of the content. There are bugs and you have to downgrade pre-NG, but it’s stable and the work they did is incredible.
This will come out about three days before skyblivion officially releases, in order to REALLY mess up Skyblivion, the same as they did for Fallout London.
ProtonDB reports say that it runs great under Linux, including multiplayer, so I’m not sure if kernel level anti-cheat can really be in use. Maybe it’s just under Windows?
I’m gonna give it a shot, and if it doesn’t work I’ll refund I guess.
Kernel Level Anti-Cheat For Windows Only. Embark specifically publishes a build for Proton Users validated by Codeweavers. We don’t have to worry about it :)
Yep. Honestly if someone still uses Windows but complains about kernel level anti-cheat they’re hypocrites and only have themselves to blame. If you want sovereignty as a PC user you have to put in the minimum effort and not just sit on your ass and wait until big corp is spoon feeding it to you. That day won‘t come.
I believe for Proton users the kernel level anticheat is substituted for a user level anticheat or is deactivated. Only for windows is the kernel level anticheat utilized.
Not all kernel level anti-cheat are the same. Riot’s Vanguard and whatever Battlefield 6 uses requires TPM and SecureBoot and they quite invasive. I believe Vanguard just runs in the background even when you’re not running the game which is awful. Arc Raiders devs made some pragmatic concessions to allows the game to run on Proton and Steam Deck which is pretty good.
And worth pointing out that the Linux version of EAC (which is what Embark games use) runs in user space. It’s literally not kernel level anticheat on Linux.
I can confirm, both this and The Finals (same developers) works great on Linux. No Kernel level AC for us. I even load into games faster than Windows people I’m playing with, and I just realized this is possibly why.
My team’s return to office was so successful that we all had the opportunity to share covid with each other and nearby teams. Management’s complete lack of understanding of the work they are tasked to oversee makes arm waving butts in chairs policies seem like a viable way to not seem incompetent.
My old place of employment told everyone that they had to go back to office earlier this year. 1 month later, about 10 people out of a 15-ish department found remote jobs. They just shuttered the local office after a couple more months. My new place is much better :).
Most of us are experienced software developers or software adjacent. There is a lot of companies looking.
This is going to be the pattern at all these places doing RTO: The ones who are capable of getting WFH jobs will get them, and they'll be left with their least capable folks.
Yep! I was lucky in a way, I had a friend of mine who recently got a job that needed help/was hiring. There were a couple people when they let go of everyone that is still looking for work.
Its real estate. They have huge, expensive offices they /know/ are barely necessary, and they absokutely cannot afford the loss they would incur if they had to sell (because all that is debt financed and based on bullshit) AND uf one large tech or office firm did that, soon there would be pressure on all of them to do that.
That could crash the commercial real estate market and lead to the real estate market in general going down.
While this would benefit the vast majority of workers, it would financially harm those with lots of vested stocks and other investments.
Oh and of course working from home makes middle management /obviously/ more or less useless. And basically all managers (there are some exceptions) and all VPs (near 0 exceptions) and above are sociopaths who crave feeling important and superior to others, and they will do anything to continue that lifestyle.
Why do you think the largest union actions in the US in maybe 50 years are either not covered by the media, or demonized in the few instances they are?
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