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Eggyhead, do games w Bungie confirms it stole art once again, will undertake a 'thorough review' of Marathon assets

NGL, it seems really practical that it was intended to be placeholder concept art that someone forgot to go in and replace.

That said, this artist they took so much inspiration from definitely deserves a place in the game’s credits at this point. Whether they actually use his art in game or not.

brsrklf,

Placeholder doesn’t need to be anything more than basic featureless textures on cubes, and you should own them completely. If you made your placeholder to look like it fits, you’re asking for it to be forgotten and left in place. Which might not be too bad if it’s finally not too out of place and it’s yours.

Especially in a professional studio, they should know better than using stuff they just “found” as placeholder. To me it’s either terrible incompetence… or worse, they thought nobody would care anyway.

Eggyhead,

Didn’t they get caught doing this with destiny as well? It makes me wonder if it’s a studio culture thing. You’re 200% right in what they should be doing, but I still am inclined to think this is more likely an incompetence thing than malice.

BossDj,

The fact they keep doing it leads me to believe we’re missing several instances where they’ve gotten away with it

Eggyhead,

Absolutely. Now that people are paying attention, it’ll be easier to spot.

BreakerSwitch,

I will say, placeholder SHOULD be more than basic featureless textures on cubes so it can’t make it to a playtest without knowing about it. You know, like this. Placeholder kittens are always distinct, in my book. Plus if something subtly gets through, players will think it’s a hilarious easter egg

echodot,

Placeholder art should go in the place folder art folder. Then just before release you delete the placeholder folder.

BreakerSwitch,

Not JUST before release, that’s how you get entirely missing textures, but you’re not wrong.

odelik,

This is incompetence.

I’ve been in and out of games for my entire career. Every place I’ve been has had strict policies on outside art assets. I’ve even seen every new art asset to require a monthly license review to prevent any chance of outside art having slipped in somehow, including any usage of Blender’s example model Suzanne.

brsrklf, (edited )

This certainly sounds the right way to do this.

But I really wonder about the stuff at bungie being “just” incompetence, because their defence is “weren’t aware of this, just used assets left by a former Bungie employee that’s not here anymore”… And yet the art director had been following the plagiarized artist on twitter this whole time.

And they have an history of “just taking” when they think they can get away with it, as they’ve done with fanart. So, shitty studio culture sounds a definite possibility at that point.

RangerJosey, do games w Even Starfield's community patch modders are growing 'disenchanted' with the sci-fi RPG, as volunteers depart in droves: 'If nobody comes forward, we may have to retire the project'

The base game is fine. Once. Its just fine. Once.

When you beat the game and go thru The Unity to a whole ass different dimension and not one single detail is different in any way. That’s what kills the drive to go onward. Because the game was fine. Once.

The whole story is predicated on a multiverse that effectively doesn’t exist. Except on 1 sidequest for Barrett.

dbtng,
@dbtng@eviltoast.org avatar

Reading your comment, I’ve just learned more about the story that nearly 250 hrs of gameplay got me. So the end is hokey, huh? Big surprise. I hate Sarah.

RangerJosey,

You want a fan fucking tastic game that you can put 250 hours in and never regret a minute of it?

The Yakuza franchise. Start wirh Yakuza 0. Play them all. You will laugh. You will cry. You will get so irrationally angry at pixels you’ll want to actually murder them. You’ll fall in love. And cry some more. Your heart will break many times. And nothing will ever be the same.

Ever had a game or movie or book leave you in stunned silence? You spend the next week thinking about it? That’s the Yakuza franchise. It’s silly and stupid and hilarious and it’ll tear your damn heart out when you least expect it.

dbtng, (edited )
@dbtng@eviltoast.org avatar

My friend, your heartfelt recommendation is appreciated and will be ignored because I’m not into Asian mystique.

For my part, I I recommend that you revisit the DOOM series. Of course you want a modern zdoom egine to play the early ones. Do not overlook Sigil and the other John Romero wads, which are legit extensions to the story. Proceed to DOOM 3 and discover BFG Edition, which includes an entirely new campaign called The Lost Patrol. After that play DOOM 2016. Stop there. There has never been a better video game made since. You can give up gaming now.

RangerJosey,
samus12345,

I picked up Yakuza 0 on a whim in 2020 and absolutely loved it. I subsequently played every main game in the series back to back (including Judgment!) and have eagerly gotten the games at launch even though I very rarely buy games at full price. They’re just that good. Even the goofy Pirate Yakuza in Hawaii connected to the main story in surprising ways. <spoiler>spoiler!<spoiler>

LorIps, do games w Just months after reportedly cancelling two live service games in development, Sony announces a new PlayStation studio with a live service game in development
@LorIps@lemmy.world avatar
TriflingToad, do games w The specter of a GTA 6 delay haunts the games industry: 'Some companies are going to tank' if they guess wrong, says analyst

controversial take, but I hope they do delay it. Better a good game late than a bad game early. As big as this release is, it HAS to be good.

mic_check_one_two,

Yeah, the Witcher 3 release should have taught the game publishers this. CDPR delayed the launch by several months because the game wasn’t ready to ship yet. And the game was phenomenal, and received rave reviews pretty much across the board. Gamers were disappointed about the launch, but basically went “this game will be worth the wait.”

SuperSaiyanSwag,

Funny how CDPR themselves then had a major fuck up with Cyberpunk

Peffse,

…and they followed it with Cyberpunk 2077’s disastrous launch but ultimate success. So I wouldn’t hold CDPR as a high standard.

mic_check_one_two,

I’d argue that is just another example of why delaying games isn’t a bad thing. 2077 clearly wasn’t ready at launch, and would have benefitted from a delayed launch.

CheeseNoodle,

I feel like that one was also due to awful development practices, they had the whole scrapping the entire first 2 years of work thing due to a control freak lead dev who was ultimately releaved of his position (though not until after release iirc)

ayyy,

I wouldn’t call it a success yet. I just started playing it for the first time yesterday and I have already fallen through the floor twice and the camera was broken causing seizure inducing visuals in one of the cutscenes.

Peffse,

It’s right there in the link. It sold more than Witcher 3, even though it did the wrong thing by releasing early and buggy.

mostNONheinous,

You realize that rockstar basically invented this strategy right? Almost every release since vice city or San Andreas has been delayed by 6 months to a year to be the best game possible.

explodicle,
@explodicle@sh.itjust.works avatar

I just assumed game companies had been doing that since the 1800’s.

mostNONheinous, (edited )

Sure you can argue standard practice has been and should be to deliver a finished game first and foremost. But in the context of modern gaming and setting release dates, Rockstar has historically been unafraid to change a release date to make a better game. But yes before the internet and the ability to patch a game it was standard to make sure your game didn’t suck before letting it loose.

And my comment was more to point out that using CDPR as a shining beacon of consistently solid game releases is laughable, especially when comparing them to Rockstar.

Tolstoy, do games w This city builder has the best brick-by-brick building system around—here's our review
@Tolstoy@lemmy.world avatar

Cataclismo - 92% Overall on Steam

quack, do games w PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us now

Turns out that people like playing games that respect their time and aren’t a glorified second job. Who knew.

golli,

Tell that to everyone playing games like path of exile (which i admittedly have also played too much of in the past).

itslilith,

PoE, Factorio, etc

I seem to like games that require spreadsheets

Nalivai,

The games I play do respect my time but boy are they a second job. From Rimworld to Satisfactory, from Space Engineers to modded Minecraft… My job is a second job.

Mic_Check_One_Two, (edited )

that respect their time

I know you’re not talking about old school RPGs. The older games tended to pad playtime by having insane difficulty levels or by requiring grinds. Hell, my favorite JRPG (edit: Legend of Legaia) is specifically more grindy in America, because the devs decided to slash the experience and gold drop rates by like 50% for the American release, and make all of the enemies hit much harder. (Interestingly, the original enemy stats are still present in the game code, and then the game runs some “x1.25” math when the battle starts, to bump all of their stats up to the values that actually get used in combat.) So you need to be a higher level to be able to survive, and you need to grind twice as long to reach those higher levels and to be able to buy better gear. I like it despite the grind, not because of it; In most of my play throughs, I end up using cheats to avoid the grind.

and aren’t a glorified second job

I mean, games like Ultima Online, RuneScape, Diablo, and EverQuest have existed since the 90’s. Hell, RuneScape used to be extremely approachable for young players because it didn’t require a good computer or any installs; It just ran directly in your internet browser.

The bigger reason many adults feel this way is not because games have gotten longer or harder. Adults simply have less time to play. They don’t want to spend a bunch of time researching optimal builds or grinding rank in multiplayer matches. Instead, they want to fall back to the games that they already know how to play. They’re willing to ignore the fact that their favorite single player game requires 10-20 hours of grinding, because it doesn’t feel like work to them. Or if it does, they can just use cheats to get around it. They don’t need to research how to get a specific item, or how to approach a specific boss fight, because they have already done it a dozen times.

PraiseTheSoup,

Why would you write this and then not say what your favorite jrpg that is specifically more grindy in America is? Do you write clickbait headlines for a living?

Mic_Check_One_Two,

Hah, just edited the comment for you.

buzz86us, do games w PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us now

Because crypto miners ruined gaming top end GPUs used to be $300 Max, now were looking in the thousands to have the best GPU for like 6 months, and you can’t buy a used one because it could be a clapped out card used in a crypto miner

pdqcp, (edited )

Bitcoin switched to industrial ASICs a long time ago, and Ethereum has completely moved away from proof-of-work mining in 2022, see: ethereum.org/en/roadmap/merge/

The Merge was executed on September 15, 2022. This completed Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake consensus, officially deprecating proof-of-work and reducing energy consumption by ~99.95%.

GPU mining is pretty much completely dead because after Ethereum switched the yields on everything else tanked, no one mines with GPUs anymore, at least not for any major blockchain. GPUs are mainly being used with AI now

buddascrayon,

That doesn’t mean that their effect on the GPU market will up and vanish overnight. Market correction doesn’t usually go down as fast as it goes up.

Edit: add to that the tariff situation and the standoff with China and Taiwan (where all the processors for gpus are made), and you have a situation where things are just going to get more expensive no matter what.

frezik,

It’s AI at this point. Nvidia considers the gamer division to be vestigial. They were a $700B market cap company that was primarily known for gaming GPUs. They are now quadruple that with AI, and that’s even with some recent hits to their stock price.

partial_accumen,

The Merge was executed on September 15, 2022. This completed Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake consensus, officially deprecating proof-of-work and reducing energy consumption by ~99.95%.

I don’t follow crypto trends so I hadn’t heard about this either.

I had to look up proof-of-stake, and for Ethereum apparently is required to stake 32 coins to operate a node. Another google search shows me a single Ethereum coin is just north of $2k USD. So someone mining Etherium today needs to have more than $64k if Etherium to even run a node now?!

Bristingr,

It was 4k per coin. Source: me as I cry with my 2 ETH. 😭

Croquette,

Pay to play baby! Let’s reinvent the banking system by doing the same exact shit.

pdqcp,

Not really to be honest, the power is in the decentralization, permissionless and opensource nature of the system. You can’t get that out of the traditional system

Of course not all networks are the same and there are always shit ones out there that compromise on those tenets, but if you do your due dilligence, you will see there is value in some of them

pdqcp,

No, not really, you can start staking with as many as you want, see pooled staking: ethereum.org/en/staking/pools/

Staking pools are a collaborative approach to allow many with smaller amounts of ETH to obtain the 32 ETH required to activate a set of validator keys

You earn rewards proportional to the amount you stake

You only need 32 ETH to stake if you want to solo stake / home stake and you don’t pool resources with anyone else, see ethereum.org/en/staking/solo/

GoodEye8,

I don’t think it’s even necessarily that the GPU pricing has ballooned. I think the main reason is that that every new game has to compete with pretty much every other game ever made. For example I enjoyed Death Stranding and I am interested in Death Stranding 2, but I’m probably not getting in on launch because there’s a big chance I’ll probably start playing Stardew Valley for the n’th time, because I feel like that’s what I want to play. I’ll probably play DS2 when I get the Kojima itch.

Croquette,

IMO, GPU prices have an impact. Modern gaming has a bad habit of not optimizing games relying on people getting newer GPUs for performance.

Mix that with the pre-order/early access monetization, and we are to a point where games have made their money before release, and beans counters don’t want to put money in QA because there is no quantifiable ROI (there is a ROI, but it is hard to quantify), which is a no-no in their world.

Indie games have a tendancy to be less GPU demanding, and thus, usually have a better performance experience

ipkpjersi,

Yep, that’s the thing. Games have to be bigger, better, more fun than ever before, and yet the publishers and management want it to be done quicker and quicker than ever before, so it’s a pretty difficult thing. That, combined with bad working conditions and the public shitting on you because “game devs are shitty/greedy/etc” with developers being used coloquially to absorb all the blame that should be reserved for management, and things are in a pretty tough spot.

Though, at the same time, it’s a better time now than ever before to actually be a gamer, because not only can you play any half-decent new games, but you can also play the entire library of older games, retro games, etc.

Rakonat, do games w PC gamers spend 92% of their time on older games, oh and there are apparently 908 million of us now

Why should I dump 60usd plus into a multiplayer focused game I’ll maybe get to play 4 hours a week during prime times that is going to shrivel up and die in 2 years time when the next big thing comes out?

Or I can play all these games enjoy, have passionate modding communities adding to the game for free on top of me picking the entire thing up for maybe 20usd on sale if not less.

Pyr_Pressure, do games w Valve is fixin' to start some arguments over the holidays because 'All adult members in a Steam Family' can see your Steam Replay page
@Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca avatar

This is why I don’t share my steam tag with anyone.

I hate people being able to analyze my habits.

Blackmist, do games w The Witcher 4 got a surprise reveal at The Game Awards, and this one is all about Ciri | PC Gamer

Feels like W4 being about Ciri is the worst kept secret in gaming.

learningduck,

There was some speculations that the next game is gonna let the player create their own character. So, having Ciri as the main character is a surprise for some.

Adm_Drummer,

To be honest, I was expecting an AC style game set during the Golden Age of Witchers. The schools of each nation are thriving, magic is abundant, Witchers are respected envoys to rulers, monster population is waning but one thing remains the same: Humans slaughter eachother in droves, rape pillage and plunder. Thus proving once more that Humans are the true monsters.

aluminium, do games w The Witcher 4 got a surprise reveal at The Game Awards, and this one is all about Ciri | PC Gamer

Looks great… but it uses Unreal Engine 5

Aermis,

What’s wrong with unreal engine 5…

Lennny,
AngryMob,

Performance mostly. But also even when made by various AAA studios, the resulting games often have this uncanny similar-ness to them. Personally i prefer in-house engines even if its just to maintain variety in the industry.

Also obligatory shout out to id tech for continuing to show off their engines with indiana jones.

dragonlobster,

Yeah I don’t understand why they don’t just use SDL3 to make their own engine.

frayedpickles,

Half life effect

secret300,
DNU,

ue4 was already bad in that regard. Really sad that cdpr dropped their own engine as licensed engines are wrecking the engine market (mostly epic tbh). Just so not worth it to delevop ones own.

captain_aggravated,
@captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works avatar

Given my experience with it in Satisfactory it’s rather heavy.

Aermis,

Really? Satisfactory ran so smooth for me I was like what engine is this

MITM0,
@MITM0@lemmy.world avatar

It’s very heavy on your computer

Strawberry,

Hey maybe then we can get player character shadows that aren’t nightmare demons

Fades,

GOOD

sirico,
@sirico@feddit.uk avatar

At least the benefit is the team can develop without it so we hopefully won’t see the issues it’s crutches create.

eupraxia,

like most engines, UE5 is whatever you hack it into being. I hate developing with Unreal but I do have to admit it’s solid in a lot of ways. and has pretty mature content/LOD streaming, one of the biggest issues I saw with Cyberpunk at launch.

Darkard, do games w Morrigan isn't just my favourite Dragon Age character, she's the greatest fantasy RPG companion of all time

Imagine talking about great RPG companions and not mentioning Knights of the Old Republic

casmael,

Down you go!

all-knight-party,
@all-knight-party@fedia.io avatar

No problem!

Zahille7,

Carth is great, but there’s something about my boy Atton that I can’t get enough of.

theRealBassist,

I love Atton until about halfway through the game. It feels like he was half-finished and there’s just a huge section of the game where he has no more fun conversation.

Zahille7,

Morrigan is not the greatest video game companion, then.

Hotzilla,

HK-47 agrees with the meatbag

A_Random_Idiot, do games w Steam's new disclaimer reminds everyone that you don't actually own your games, GOG moves in for the killshot: Its offline installers 'cannot be taken away from you'

Okay steam, if its just a digital license and not ownership… Then surely you’ll be significantly lowering prices, Since you charge full ownership prices for games, not license prices… Right?

Capricorn_Geriatric,

I don’t think it’s Steam setting the prices.

Kecessa,

They indirectly are inflating it with their 30% cut

SpacetimeMachine,

They are also deflating it by providing services that developers would otherwise have to spend time and money on to develop themselves.

Kecessa,

Their 30% cuts allowed Gabe to start collecting yachts, they could charge a lot less while still offering the same services and only Gabe would see his finances take the hit, no one else in the world would be poorer if they charged 20% instead.

emax_gomax,

So games sold on storefronts owned by the same publishers as the game should be 30% cheaper right? Right?

Kecessa, (edited )

Should be cheaper, emphasis on should, but at the same time if they sell directly and take the same cut, that’s one less intermediary in the chain so more money going to the devs.

None of the managerial class are good people, wake up, all billionaires are taking advantage of us.

Telodzrum,

G*mers really don’t want the industry to evaluate the $60 price point and apply inflationary adjustments going back to when it became the standard.

Dontfearthereaper123,

Fr tho people seem to forget abt inflation a lot when talking abt the old days

https://lemm.ee/pictrs/image/a82631d5-72e1-4a04-b520-d270675215e1.png

Corgana,
@Corgana@startrek.website avatar

This is a really interesting chart. A lot of N64 games were $70 and even $80 at launch which is upwards of $150 today. Just crazy.

A_Random_Idiot,

People keep saying SNES/N64/etc games were super expensive…and i just wanna ask where they were buying them?

Cause everytime I went into the stores to get one they were 49.99.

Corgana,
@Corgana@startrek.website avatar
A_Random_Idiot,

People seem to forget that just moderately decent games sell magnitudes more today than they did 20 years ago, too, thus continuing to bring in insane cash (as long as you arent sony or other companies that are obscenely wasteful…) despite inflation, this stable pricing making them a good entertainment investment for people whose minimum wage hasnt changed in like 15 years

InverseParallax,

The $60 was based on 55%+ going to distribution channels, +physical media costs, so it could be down from there.

A_Random_Idiot,

regular reminder that digital distribution was sold to us under the false promise that games would be cheaper, because they wouldnt have to pay for printing boxes, CDs, manuals, greebles, Wouldnt have to pay for shipping or storage, or any other burden addition of physical media.

That we’d be able to buy games for 30 dollars, and that that the developers and everyone involved would make more money than they would have paying 50 for a physical game.

InverseParallax,

Yeah, this is the original sin, they just banked the cost the whole time until they could cry that they need to charge more because of inflation.

A_Random_Idiot,

and now, they are wanting to sell games for 70-80 bucks for AAA titles.

Its not cause the games are 50 dollars that they arent making enough hundreds of millions. The only reason these AAA games arent making bank is because they’re shit

Can anyone honestly remember the last AAA title that wasnt an absolute dog pile?

Kolanaki, do gaming w The Doom mod that turns Margaret Thatcher into an undead cyberdemon has been removed by Bethesda yet again, this time for 'disobeying a ZeniMax employee'
!deleted6508 avatar

Can you only use the in-game mod browser or something? Put the mod up somewhere else that Bethesda doesn’t control. It’s not like it’s hard to modify DOOM manually by dropping the files in the folder.

Additionally, extend the mod to include the CEO of ZeniMax as a Baron of Hell or Revenant.

Elkenders,

It is, it’s the end of the article.

princessnorah,

I believe the place it was banned, was on consoles.

MyOpinion, do games w 'Melts our frozen-solid hearts': Frostpunk 2 devs celebrate 350,000 copies sold—covering the production and marketing costs

All profit now baby!

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