Well, for one, they probably used bots to garner the “Most Wishlisted Game on Steam” accolade, they also used shill accounts to counter negative reviews and press.
This was a scam from the start. They fucked themselves because their trailer was popular and they promised the world. Their goal was to create a shit early access game with pre-made assets, get lots of buy in when it was released, endure some bad reviews, promise to fix things but then slowly dump support for the game. I’ve watched this exact thing happen probably ten times now.
What killed them was the hype and popularity. They were called out immediately for what they were doing and got stuck having to now make an actual game or face legal repercussions.
At the very least these cash grabs are getting spotted early and they’re not getting to sneak by without facing consequences.
Scam is still scam, they could have been realising true gameplay trailers instead of wasting time on rendered false gameplay that does not reflect a game at all
This just feels more like incompetence rather than malice.
Yeah although I would argue one does not preclude the other. As in, of course with Hanlon’s Razor, this is because of incompetence not malice. But it’s also a scam, just one born out of not being any smarter/better.
I’d agree with you but then you hear about all the sketch shit with the discord and the volunteers. I think they intended to make a game but planned for it to just be a quick cash grab and then they could just slowly dump it. It’s honestly a great strategy, just look at every game the atlas devs have made. They’ve basically mastered the strategy.
Technically yes it’s still a scam. It’s just one that didn’t pan out for them. In this one particular instance anyways. It will continue to work for others.
I don't think consumers were the target of the scam; if they were, I don't see a reason why they wouldn't have accepted pre-orders for the game. In fact, I think they know that accepting pre-orders would have left them open to false advertising lawsuits which is why they didn't go for them, and I think they were well aware that people could just refund the game so trying to scam consumers (in this instance) was probably not worth attempting.
Instead, I think the investors were the target. The brothers who own(ed?) the studio have been living off investor money for the last few years, and which how suspicious their finances are (their ludicrously high travel expenses, in particular) I'm sure they've hidden away a bunch more money.
The game that exists is a shameless, cheaply-made asset flip that I suspect only exists at all because it makes it much harder for investors to sue for fraud when there's an actual product. If they'd just tried to take the money and run without releasing anything it'd be obvious fraud, but now they can claim they tried their best, expectations were too high, etc, and it's difficult for the investors to prove otherwise.
This makes the most sense by far. Owners of a company always pay themselves a salary, and for a tech company with investors I'm sure these people were able to give themselves an extremely high salary. That salary money is legally their money forever no matter how crappy or failed the company's output winds up being. Unless you can prove that an actual crime was committed to acquire that money, then it will remain legally theirs.
I get the impression there is a lot of this bait and switch in the mobile gaming circuit with great game play shown on IG ads but the actual gameplay is nothing like advertised?
Due to the way Steam refunds work I feel this wasn’t their end goal unless they really didn’t think it through at all.
The theory i subscribe to is that they intended to release a “decent” game but had no experience or intent to make it themselves. The marketing hype machine was to build community hype, which would drive investor funding so they could pay for new talent or to just outsource most of the work. I’m guessing that either didn’t materialize or they mismanaged that plan.
Nope, no Kickstarter or obvious public funding before the early access “release”.
There’s a chance some people weren’t able to get refunded but due to Steam’s refund policy I suspect most got their money back.
If it was always intended to be a total scam and never release they’d likely have used their own launcher to bypass the Steam revenue share and refund policy.
It really sucks for everyone. Not only videos and important company data, reportedly the entire story of Wolverine was leaked and some people are posting spoilers for it. Now they’ll feel compelled to change it.
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?
I only played the NDS version of this game which definitely included Yoshi, Luigi, and Wario as playable characters. And a multiplayer mode where each character was Yoshi and could put on hats to play as Mario, Luigi, or Wario. Was any of that in the N64 version of the game?
No. DS only. N64 Mario 64 is only Mario, no multiplayer. But having grown up on the ds version as well, i would just like to say all that stuff is rad.
Larian Studios made a beautiful game without microtransactions, battle passes, and other BS! I think not being on GamePass is quite alright as they deserve the full asking price for this wonderful game! I am going to buy Baldur's Gate 3 for my Xbox because I love the game so much (I also want to create a Charismatic Terror character...This gives me the excuse to do just that).
Game pass might be a good deal, and I don’t fault anyone for wanting to maximize gaming on a budget, but the transition to subscription based gaming is going to be very bad for studios in the long term.
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