Winning move from Epic. Showing what should be done for abandoned games. Give it back to the people so it can continued to be enjoyed by the community that will continue to care for it.
There’s literally no reason not to do that. The game has long since made money and keeping it out of public ownership is now not doing anyone any favors.
The three patents—all filed in Japan between May and July 2024—draw similarities between Palworld and 2022’s 2022’s Pokémon Legends: Arceus specifically. Their descriptions concern game mechanics like “riding an object” or throwing a ball to capture and possess a character in virtual spaces.
They should have sued the coward police department. The rest of the world plays the same games people play in the US. I grew up playing GTA, didn’t steal or shoot anything.
It was such a unique twist on the tactic rpg genre, nothing quite like it. Plus it had great music (including a musical cameo at the bar), good progression, and a decent story.
Ah, it’s good someone is looking out for the poor poor shareholders. Just earlier I saw a long line of them at the unemployment office, begging for food from passerbyes, destitute in their poverty. /s
The shareholders at the local yacht club were really bummed out because many of them were saving really hard to add another ship to their collection, and some might even have to cancel a 2 week international vacation. Ive started a GoFundMe because no shareholder should feel so deprived of those basic needs.
It really is sad these days. You can see them holding signs written on the back of Form 10-K documents at road intersections say things like:
“Need dividends. Any amount helps. God Bless.”
But really, you have to just ignore them. You know anything you give them they’re just going to blow on equities in unproven klepto-corporate business models with over aggressive spending attempting to capture market share in industries paying abusively small wages to their destitute workers. You can try to help them like I did one time:
Me: "Hey, here’s a couple of shares in a company that hires those recently released from prison for light industrial assembly work giving them a good reference for future employment. Its not worth much, but they do some good for the community."
Them: "Can I as a shareholder petition the board to fire the ex-cons, ship the assembly work offshore, and perform a stock buyback increasing the value of the shares?"
Me: "I don’t think the board is interested in that as it violates the company mission"
It’s refreshing to see evil motherfuckers being evil openly instead of trying to hide it with doublespeak or outright denying it. I love Coffee Stain Studio’s games and how they handle monetization, and this announcement makes me worried for both the studio and their projects.
Don’t worry, the business model of companies like Embracer is literally to strip mine “inefficient” businesses run by artists through short circuiting the positive feedback loop between game developers passionate about what they do and loyal fans, trashing the work environment for the employees by cutting everything, and ripping off fans until they realize the place that made the art they love is alive only in name.
Gaas was a mistake and I’m hoping companies begin seeing this and course correcting. I get why it happened as it was wildly successful for most, but I’m pretty sure customers don’t actually want the same game and content for forever. Maybe there’s a way to fix it without abandoning the model entirely, but personally I’m hoping it goes away for good.
but I’m pretty sure customers don’t actually want the same game and content for forever.
The success of long lasting MMOs like WoW, EVE, FFXIV, GW2, Warframe seems to suggest otherwise, as well does the longevity of games like Fortnite, LOL and other non-MMO gaas games. There are even other examples that I'd count - I'd call paradox games like stellaris GaaS as well since they live off constant updates (stellaris has had them for 7 years now and going) and paid DLC. Hell, there's people that have been playing Ark, Rust and games like that for a decade now.
So I'd say there is definitely an audience for it, a massive one, as long as its done well. Destiny devs just sucked at it and had years of controversies, this is just the latest of their fumbles.
Wasn’t one of the main selling points for the EGS that there would be strict quality control so only “good games” would be on this store? And now it will be filled to the brim with the worst shovelware anyone has ever seen.
That is, if this will actually happen. I feel like Sweeney found a couple of seconds away from Epic’s lawyers and is talking out of his ass
While I don’t approve of Epic’s stabs at exclusivity, Steam needs a competitor to keep it in check, and one that is making some efforts to support the preservation of art is a welcome choice.
My experience with GOG is that it is a fringe option, at least in the combined North American (USA+Canada) culture. Plus, the unfortunate reality is that in many cases GOG’s principles preclude it from being a genuine competitor to Steam. Insisting on being DRM free means half of released games never go to the platform, so it will always be the secondary “better if” option.
I worry about Steam’s functional monopoly on PC game access. It hasn’t been an issue so far, because it has remembered that it is, first and foremost, a service, providing consumer protection through a generous refund policy and supporting devs with easy access to simple matchmaking and anti-cheat systems. But without a healthy competitor, it would be easy for Steam to start milking it’s users and developers alike.
Really, if any game in your Steam library has a playtime of over 500 hours, you may be getting enough value from the games you buy that a catalog service actually becomes worse value by comparison.
I fit in this bucket, and so do a few of my friends. I’ve gotten so used to the Steam gamer lifestyle of waiting for games to go on sale, buying them on sale, and then slowly building up a massive catalog of games that I think I will enjoy gaming. It’s very rare that a hot new game will entice me to play it without waiting for a sale, because I know what it feels like to be disappointed in a $70 purchase.
If there is a hot new game that I am interested in, Game Pass might be appealing because it allows me play a new game for cheaper. But I also don’t play games very quickly, because I’m busy. A narrative single-player game usually takes me at least two months to get through. If I play that game via PC Game Pass, that’s at least $24. Most of the time, I can get a game on sale for $24 or less within 2 years of that game’s initial release.
I also think about how, if I go the Game Pass route, I will feel a pressure to play that game quickly, because I feel like the meter is running and I don’t want to waste my money. This makes it harder to enjoy the game because I am forced to play it at times that I don’t really feel like it. If I instead buy the game on sale, I can pick up and put the game down at my leisure, which just fits my life better. Sometimes waiting for the sale sucks, but I have my backlog to keep me warm.
Yeah, when I did the 3 month trial I felt pressured to make the most of the subscription so I put aside some games I had planned on playing that I already had. I didn’t find myself needing game pass since I already had enough games so I never renewed once the trial ended.
If there is a hot new game that I am interested in, Game Pass might be appealing because it allows me play a new game for cheaper. But I also don’t play games very quickly, because I’m busy.
Steam allows us to avoid FOMO. I’ll wishlist it, meanwhile I’ll play my massive backlog. By the time I complete one single player game, the wishlisted game is already on sale and the game has matured with updates. It’s perfect for the adult gamer.
gamedeveloper.com
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