Did they sell it though? Everyone who bought it got the game they paid for (and now sort of don’t have anymore, lol) but wasn’t the promise of PvE an add-on to the now free game?
they probably got a lot of people to buy the first couple battlepasses. a success for that quarter, maybe, but probably not the long tail they were hoping to get from transforming it into the GaaS model. they probably made more money from OW1 lootboxes, overall
they probably made more money from OW1 lootboxes, overall
I really doubt it considering how many boxes you got thrown after you, with coins for dups with which you can just buy skins. Was a great system for the player, but probably terrible monitarily.
They added DRM to a more than ten Year old game I had bought. I'll never purchase another ubisoft product without then heading to the high sea to get a uncrippled copy. Odds are, I'll just not bother.
Departments ranging from art to production were impacted, but the majority of those laid off worked in quality assurance testing. The sources said at least 25 developers were part of the downsizing. Full-time staff do not appear to have been part of the cuts.
Sources tell Kotaku that no severance is being offered for those currently laid off, and that impacted developers as well as remaining employees are being pressured to keep the news quiet. Their contracts won’t be officially terminated until the end of October and they’ll be expected to work through the rest of the month.
If I’m understanding right it sounds like only part-time contractors are getting cut. Do part-time employees usually get offered severance packages or is this (kinda ghoulish) business as usual? I wonder how much work those people will get done for the rest of the month
Part time usually doesn’t receive any benefits. Contractors never receive benefits unless stated in the contract, severance is usually not included in said package but an early buyout might be.
Do part-time employees usually get offered severance packages or is this (kinda ghoulish) business as usual?
by design part-time employment usually does not confer the benefits of full employment, no. that’s part of why so many unions seek to either upgrade part-time workers to full time workers or limit the number of part-time/subcontracted workers that a company is employing–otherwise you basically have an underclass of people who can get totally fucked at any time.
That’s what I thought, but I wasn’t sure if the game industry had different standards to other fields for that kinda stuff. Sacking a bunch of QA agents does not sound promising for the games they’re working on…
Godot is an open source game engine that is incredibly trending among the “hipster” developers community and fanatics of FOSS.
It’s absolutely not even close to the features offered by Unreal Engine or Unity but people that are barely informed are all excited because now an open source project with some serious bugs and limitations “will show them”.
Unless there is a serious rewrite, Godot will never be a valid alternative to the two main commercial engines. And with the fact that it had been recently heavily rewritten to be updated to v4, it is really improbable that it will happen soon.
Unless there is a serious rewrite, Godot will never be a valid alternative to the two main commercial engines
How so? I’ve seen complaints about the C# API and some similar challenges, but nothing show-stopping. Obviously you won’t be making a AAA game in it, but for indies it looks like a decent option.
The dirty secret of software is that any given user-facing OSS application is about 15 years behind the closed-source competitors, but the fact is that most software was good-enough 15 years ago and the industry has spent the last 15 years on cloudifying and A-B testing and GUI revamping and other stuff that isn’t basic functionality.
The thing is, even Indies can look and feel like AAA games (well, the good ones) with something unreal engine for example.
I’m not a fan of Epic by any means but all I’m saying is that they asinine aren’t in the same league while with Unity they could at least be close.
Unity have done a real shitty moves but all this “We’ll do even better without it” attitude that I’m seeing around is either coming from people that just think “shitty move” or really really really naive developers.
I guess that since Epic owns Unreal Engine that bad news for Epic means good news for Godot?
I don’t think that Epic is going to want to divest from Unreal considering how much money it makes.
I also don’t think that it’s a zero-sum game. As a developer I want Unreal (and Unity) to be great so it creates more competition. Unreal has led the way in a lot of cool gaming tech that Godot is picking up.
Maybe it was reverse psychology. Epic is trying to destroy the competition by giving them money. Then, paranoid gamers will refuse to use or support Godot, because there’s a connection to Epic.
Epic also gave money to Lutris, while Epic’s CEO was smearing Linux users on twitter, so I wouldn’t count on Epic’s stance on things and where some of Epic’s money going aligning any time soon. Those megagrants feel very disingenuous to me (doesn’t mean that those money do not help those “underdog” projects, though).
I‘m legit happy as long as it can do 720p60fps for stuff like TotK in portable without any upsampling and whatnot.
I‘m not playing Nintendo cause of cutting edge graphics but because of cutting edge gameplay and entertainment. Doesn‘t matter how realistic a game looks when Mario Odyssey runs laps around it in terms of the fun it provides.
Just… provide backwards compatability, please. And as a bonus I‘d love a way for „old“ games to get better resolution and fps ideally without patches (cause we know the majority of games would never get patched).
I can get behind the whole: “i’m playing games to escape from the world, stop dragging the real world politics into games” sentiment, but!
I made a trans character in cyberpunk because haha look a penis and boobies, Apparently Diego is now in a gay relationship with Sam…something about Sam and Cora (i find them adoreable, i’m just sad i can’t give her all the books i steal) made me prefer them and…well i’m gay it seems lol.
Gender identity is only political because conservatives made it political. Choice of pronouns shouldn’t be political. What gender you are shouldn’t be political. These people make it political and then it has to be removed from apolitical discussions. Just like how climate change has been made political, it’s not, we’re all going to fucking die, that’s not political.
I, for one, am very upset at seeing politics in muh game that includes mercenaries, piracy, loan sharking, corporate espionage, religious extremism, terrorism, war crimes, gang warfare, drug addiction, poverty, shoplifting, mass shootings, genetic engineering, environmentalism, atheism, corruption, philanthropy, smuggling, …
I can get behind the whole: “i’m playing games to escape from the world, stop dragging the real world politics into games” sentiment, but!
If you’re playing games for escapism, play a simple puzzle game, or a racing game, or maybe Minecraft. Flight Simulator. Tetris. Rocket League.
Any game that attempts to build a believable world is going to get political occasionally, because a believable world has class politics, war, struggles between technology and the natural world, etc. etc. etc. Even a game like Ratchet & Clank doesn’t shy away from the politics inherent in its world-building. Truly incredible how “Gamers” have gone from an edgy subculture that reveled in right-wing panic to a seething mass of bloated man-babies who can’t even handle being confronted with ideas.
These people would prefer if you use random made up politics in line with the world it is set in.
Instead of real world politics dragged into a fantasy setting. That’s why i can understand their point just because i understand where they come from doesn’t mean i agree with it or support them.
Heck i made a transgender in cyberpunk because i can, a lot can be said about that too. I don’t give a damn about what people want, just do it but accept that not everyone is going to like it nor agree with it and if you can’t deal with that then do not do it…you are not strong enough to cope with the downsides.
I’m guessing your first language isn’t English, in fact judging by your comment history, I’d say you’re Dutch. Anyway, those words are adjectives in English, and using them as nouns is often perceived as impolite. You’d want to say “I made a transgender character” instead.
I’ve seen analysis that said Catwoman may have been more about royalties in the streaming era rather than solely tax write-offs, but this article does point out “this year” specifically. The lower bound for how much Concord lost is in line with the highest recorded box office loss of John Carter, according to the article. Previous Kotaku reporting confirms from multiple sources that Concord lost at least $200M, but did not fully corroborate the $400M figure that Colin Moriarty reported.
He streamed inside a public bathroom at E3. Then there’s also the thing where he cheated on his wife. I don’t know why people are so drawn to online personalities who prove over and over again they’re bad people with no intention to change.
Idk, Kotaku isn’t exactly a good source for ethics in this industry. They list something that every single large game company does: buy studios, move talent around, close the old studios. They also talk about how he claims to champion preservation and emulation, something we all agree with.
Yeah their head editors just left saying that they were being forced to write lower quality stories and things with agendas. I wouldn’t trust Kotaku much anymore.
Just as a heads up, when you post an article, unless otherwise stated, you are telling people that the source can be trusted. So, yes in a way you are asking us to trust them
They list something that every single large game company does: buy studios, move talent around, close the old studios.
Not every large game company acts this way. This is also not what he did at all - he didn’t restructure the studios after buying them, he closed them and laid off their employees.
They also talk about how he claims to champion preservation and emulation, something we all agree with.
He’s a known liar (just a year ago he claimed Arkane will continue to polish Redfall, now Arkane Austin has closed before giving people DLC they already paid for)
Phil Spencer has been the head of Xbox for a decade, a decade where Xbox consistently got worse. The only smart decision they made this entire time is Game Pass IMO.
I’d like you to name a large game company that hasn’t done this, I’m not aware of a single one.
This is also not what he did at all - he didn’t restructure the studios after buying them, he closed them and laid off their employees.
Incorrect, employees are being moved to different studios. I’m unaware how many, if any, are being laid off. For example, Roundhouse is being assigned to Zenimax who run Elder Scrolls Online which is admittedly actually a pretty cool game.
He’s a known liar (just a year ago he claimed Arkane will continue to polish Redfall, now Arkane Austin has closed before giving people DLC they already paid for)
A corporate hack who is in touch with what gamers want is still better than some other out of touch corporate shill, as the state of gaming exemplifies every single day. On the subject of Redfall, it’s no surprise that studio got shut down after the incredible failures at launch, they clearly were never qualified to work on the title anyways, and that’s hardly Phil Spencer’s fault.
Why are we quoting each other? I remember the comment before yours. I made it. Idiot.
It’s Phil Spencer’s fault that they released Redfall at 70$. It is his fault that he promised the game will be polished. It is his fault people who paid for the DLC will never get it.
He also closed Tango, which made a critically acclaimed game.
Valve has also published 8 games in 10 years. They did acquire Campo Santo studios between 2016 and 2018 which lead to the delayment of Valley of the Gods because Valve put the studio’s members on other projects including Steam, Dota Underlords, and Half Life: Alyx.
They didn’t close Campo Sango though, and haven’t closed other studios they bought historically (like Turtle Rock, which eventually became independent of Valve again and released Back 4 Blood).
Why are we quoting each other? I remember the comment before yours. I made it. Idiot.
Because quoting in a response provides structure to the response that improves readability.
Also, you are posting on a publicly accessible forum, not having a one-on-one conversation. In that context, that fact that you may remember what you said doesn’t mean that it’s not beneficial to repeat it for others.
The “idiot” comment was unnecessarily rude where someone was engaging in what appeared to be a good faith response, and only brings down the tone of your entire post.
It feels like people do it so commonly while making such weak arguments that it might be a bot trying to parse the prior comment. Feels like it doesn’t have use in any other circuimstance.
Multiple teams are being cut, at least at Arkane Austin. I don’t know the total heads rolling. Many of my friends are now out of a job. The severance isn’t terrible, at least for some of the engineers. That’s not better than a job, though.
Game Pass is a profoundly stupid decision. It doesn’t make it’s money back and now Xbox users are used to not paying for games. And from a consumer perspective, enshittification always eventually happens with subscriptions.
The article didn’t say he needs to go, they said people need to stop treating him as though he is actually on the side of consumers and employees, rather than investors.
The literal last line of the article is
I hope moving forward Xbox fans and the media hold Spencer more accountable for future mistakes, cuts, and failures.
The game said this on launch and made it clear on the steam page. Even if they weren’t enforcing it, I think its silly to be upset that they’ve started. I’d also rather sign into a PSN account and have functioning crossplay than deal with the current state of it.
Edit: oops I thought i had read it was to help crossplay, which hasn’t been working well recently. since its for nothing this is fucking stupid
If it was a real requirement they should have geo restricted the sale to countries that are allowed to make PSN accounts. Instead they bait and switched players who have been playing past the normal refund window, and now will have an unplayable game. Also the PSN account has nothing to do with fixing crossplay. Other games have functional crossplay without it. And Sony themselves say on their own website that PSN is not required to play Sony games on PC.
Do we ACTUALLY know it wasn’t geo restricted, though? Was it ever for sale in Egypt, or did players there use a VPN to buy it and ignore that the purchase page says a PSN account is required for online play?
I seriously don’t know. I keep hearing people making the statement you’re making, and I agree that is shouldn’t have been for sale in non PSN countries, but I haven’t actually seen someone from one of those countries say they bought it in a non psn region without spoofing their location.
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