Just a reminder that if Unity developers with pro licenses coming to Godot contribute even a small fraction of what they might have paid for those licenses on Unity, Godot can develop even faster.
It’s not a gurantee, but cutting the time down when QA is already paper thin ain’t gonna make shit better and likely won’t even retain the quality it currently has.
That’s the fear the author raises, yes. I always say people are fluid, and we expand to fit our containers, whether that’s our schedules, filling our homes with junk, or anything else. Hopefully what the industry is coming to realize is that their container is smaller than they think it is, but yes, scope creep is a real threat. I’m rooting for the industry to scope down.
A problem with AAA games is the development time is longer, the time spent working on the final game is not.
Time and time again when a game as been “in development” for 5/7/10+ years, the game that shipped was only really being worked on for the last year or two, once they finally got the design and gameplay nailed down and worked on the final game. Anthem is one of the more egregious examples in that some of the developers working on the game learned at the E3 presentation a year before launch that the game involved flying.
There’s an iceberg of effort and only a fraction of it gets released.
Does that mean you would prefer sequels to just be glorified map additions to the game you already own? If Doom 1 and 2 were done today, Doom 2 would have been a DLC.
Nah dude, today we have Death of the Outsider, and Blood Dragon, both doesn’t need the base game to run and is standalone, even though they use the same asset and engine from their base game. Not to mention ODST and Reach, both come out within 3 years of Halo 3. All phenomenal, even though they’re using same engine, same asset, with some additional content and new map. The scope is also significantly smaller than the base game. They’re all standalone even though they’re DLC.
Also Tear of the Kingdom use the same map and asset, and it’s considered sequel instead of DLC. same thing goes for Majora’s Mask which they did within a year after Ocarina of Time. It’s totally fine to do that as long as the game is good.
Honestly, they should sue Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo. The fact that we allow such restricted computers that can land you in prison for manipulating them is just absurd.
More realisticly Epic is just choosing their battles where they can see that they can make progress but they can’t say that.
They only need one big win. If they manage that, the rest would be much easier. As arguments will have been made and ruled. They can refer to the case against Google as precedent, making the subsequent court cases short, cheaper and/or not be necessary. If Google loses apple, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo will all examine changing policy or settling any disagreements earlier.
Precisely, it would be a stupid waste of money to launch simultaneous lawsuits against everyone. Get one victory, then use that precedence to get settlements from the rest.
I mean don’t get me wrong, it’s absurd how locked down their stuff is, but I’m not aware of prison time for opening up consoles yet. You can get sued, like Sony vs Hotz, and get ordered to pay some outrageous restitution, but that road ends in bankruptcy, not prison. Still complete bullshit that they can bankrupt a person, but there’s no prison…yet.
That’s not necessarily a good example. He probably would’ve gotten arrested just for the modchip part, which does seem kinda ridiculous, but they were also (according to Bowser’s admission) more directly aiding piracy:
Bowser also admits he and TeamXecuter “created and supported ROM libraries” for its customers to use through websites like MaxConsole.com and rom-bank.com.
That’s shitty. I hope Valve goes down in this law suit but Gabe specifically asked for a remote deposition because he’s old and obese. Two serious factors for COVID or really any illness. Apparently that wasn’t enough to get them to allow remote deposition. What a really shit situation to put a person in.
It’s not even a valid excuse any more at this point. People can get vaccinated at their leisure against the current variants no problem, and other fat old dudes don’t get to bail on an uncomfortable situation either, this is just special treatment for the rich. Also all the accommodations that are already being made with everyone wearing masks. Also I’m sure they can open a fucking window or so for some fresh air
I might be more inclined to agree if there was some benefit to having him show up in person, but I don’t see why he can’t just attend this remotely. People get sick after being vaccinated too. Maybe is a minimal risk, but it seems like a pointless risk nonetheless.
It’s a court of law. People appear in person to ensure they are who they are, their answers are theirs and they fully own them, they aren’t being coerced or manipulated, and so on. FaceTimeing in from the bathroom at his home isn’t cutting it.
Why do the courts require an in person attendance? How is it okay for our government services to ignore technology? Imagine we still went with God’s will as proof of a crime. This is just the ignorance of the judge making someone take a day to come down and give their side. This whole thing could be done via text message. We just have a government that isn’t utilizing technology.
cause you would then have to dispatch a 3rd party audit to make sure Gabe isn’t reading from a teleprompter that his lawyers prep to answer any questions on the fly. You can prep your script “before” but not during, once you are on the stand you are on your own, subject to the court rules, etc.
Anything they haven’t been prepped on is just answered with I don’t know. So the end result is just who is the better actor? Who memorized their lines the best.
Did you followed the Debb vs Heard one? I know it’s kinda special case with lots of video and court recorded footage etc. Gabe isn’t exactly a celebrity that expose their private life, but if internal emails is on the table for discovery then it can also be very different. Cause they will just tell you “you said/wrote make a decision here from this email” then start off that. Like you said who is a better actor? Can you suddenly remember details with which “partial” quote are referenced without context from email 6 months ago for your argument? And then suddenly don’t remember any details making a decision 2~3 weeks ago? From neuroscience, our memory is pretty unreliable as we can fill the gap all we want. But it’s court case just how the judge/jury believed what part they saw/hear.
I hope you understand the principle of putting down names and/or title in email for paper trails is a thing, you don’t really think Valve is a “flat” structure as marketed, right? I’ve consider myself lucky that I didn’t run into much political or ethical drama thing for my career, but simply put names down and confirm the decision in writing dodge me quite a couple big bullets.
Yes but again what do those names do? They simply point a stake holder. You may put them on there stand but everyone has the ability to their 5th amendment rights. So again it doesn’t really matter and comes down to whose better under pressure which seems like an unfair justice system. Specially considering it’s a form of interrogation to force someone up on a stage and ask them a bunch of questions with tons of pressure.
I didn’t design that system, and I think it is this way because in the past without forensic evidence, the witness role basically put the burden to people who are testifying or on the stand for questions. That’s why nowadays when the suits wants to push shady things they go off record cause they don’t want to keep any evidence. It’s up to the minions to smart up to make sure you cover your own ass.
And, sometimes company make or break during trials. I don’t want to see value flop, but I also think 30% is a lot if you don’t even use steam features. (here I mean you only publish on steam, but you don’t use their DRM/Friend/Matchmaking, workshop, lobby, etc. But if a dev do indeed use those backend service I think it’s justified. )
He’s required to wear a mask. He can’t wear one while giving the deposition though. A remote deposition isn’t different than an in person one. So this argument falls flat. Why require a person to travel if we have the technology to not? Why did we even do all of this Internet building if our government services won’t use it? Technology is supposed to make our lives easier. The 80 year old judge is clearly behind the technical times and doesn’t want to learn a skill that should be required at this point.
Counterpoint: Cardinal George Pell tried to pull the same move in a child sex abuse case. Here’s Tim Minchin’s Come Home (Cardinal Pell) for your viewing pleasure.
Usually consolidation is done by expensive buy outs (which this one was). And if the company is public, the CEO’s next goal (since it now has valuable IP and has eliminated a competitor), is to make that money back and do so fast (see Disney with Marvel, Star Wars, etc.). This means exploiting its newest IP, farting out something that a known audience / fanbase will show up for (again - unfortunately - see Disney).
This doesn’t necessarily guarantee shitty outcomes (see Andor in the case of Star Wars being bought by Disney, see Overwatch after Activision bought Blizzard), but usually it comes with the territory of new bosses eventually trying to squeeze more value out of the IPs and team resources they purchased (see “Secret Invasion” by Marvel under Disney, and see “Overwatch 2” by Blizzard under Activision).
Depending on the company, they’ll also do MASS layoffs to “eliminate redundancies” - which in theory means firing people whose jobs encompass the exact same practice, but in reality means a bunch of people are about to have their work load doubled.
The people at the very top of the bought out company will get HUGE piles of cash, plus some requirements they stay on board usually for some amount of time… and then most of them will probably bail the moment their stock “vests” - allowing them to start up new companies and begin the cycle of “make stuff, then get bought out by big company” all over again.
Rarely a key person stays on board for some time (see Carmack with Facebook / Oculus for example), but eventually even the most passionate dev sees that their new bosses will never fully get behind them in the way they were able to do when they were not owned by said parent company.
From a broader “industry-wide” perspective, it’s probably not great either, because the mass layoffs at a gigantic well-regarded company means more workers competing across a mostly non-unionized industry for less jobs (and if you’re just starting, now you’ve got to compete with someone who has “Blizzard” on their resume).
Worse still - because the video game industry is already pretty exploitative of its workers, since it (like VFX) mostly came into being after the Reagan era completely destroyed the public perception of unions, the jobs everyone will be competing for will just have even worse conditions since soooooo many (younger folks especially) dream of working on video games (until they get their first industry job, get a few years under their belt, and been there for more than one studio closure and decide that - if they ever want to enjoy having time with their family, owning a home, and living somewhere for more than 5 years, they probably should change jobs to some relevant field in software dev that pays better, has less hours, and is overall more stable).
One thing missed is the fresh set of eyes on old IP.
Some of the older games / IP that is being bought over has had no or little interest with the old group, so the new company may have a team inside that says “hey we use that now”.
It doesn’t always work. But it’s better than nothing.
One thing missed is the fresh set of eyes on old IP.
Right - like the Andor example.
I feel like Andor was a result of someone talented taking advantage of the Disney Star Wars money hose that got lucky that the corporate Eye of Sauron (aka a bunch of producers and company execs) weren’t watching them too closely.
On the opposite side, look at what Microsoft did to Halo (under Don Mattrick’s leadership, btw). They decided they didn’t want to pay Bungie a nice fat thank you in their potential contract renewal, instead decided to keep the Halo IP, spin up a studio with only a handful of key people and then people who had no idea what Halo was for their LITERAL FLAGSHIP IP.
In general, I am skeptical of how companies will handle IP after big buyouts / corporate consolidation. That way when an Andor comes along, I’m pleasantly surprised instead of finally satisfied as a result of high expectations.
Layoffs have already hit this and other industries, including Microsoft, regardless of buyouts, and since this deal is fresh, it will likely happen again in the near future. But there's no need for them to squeeze value out of what they bought. They can revive dormant IPs just by making sure they run on modern platforms and putting them on Game Pass. That alone is a tremendous amount of value that Activision couldn't get regardless of how much they squeezed.
And a lot of people who leave or are let go in these situations go on to form new studios. If you think about it too, it doesn't make much sense that the jobs would disappear. The industry will support a certain number of games being produced, and someone's got to make them still.
A worse outcome to me still seems to me to be a world where Sony is uncontested in its console space.
All of what you said is true, but usually consolidation results in a net negative overall. It’s why we (at least used to) have anti-trust laws. Companies - regardless of industry - tend to be monopolistic when they can get away with it.
However, I will say that your point about “reviving dormant IPs” is just another way of framing (albeit much more charitably) what I described previously. Capitalizing on well-known or well-regarded IPs with built-in large fan bases who will likely buy based on name recognition rather than what its Metascore is or how well it runs according to technical tests run by Digital Foundry.
Also, I agree with you that as long as Sony and Nintendo exist in the console space, the industry can probably endure. That sort of consolidation would probably result in some really bad shit. Price gouging, no more owning games - just licensing with shaky terms that they can change at any time, required subscriptions, upgrades, more egregious micro-transactions… ugh… as long as there are major competitors, they will do things like this every time one of the other one makes a greed-driven decision that pisses off the consumers.
I just wish we had the number of big game companies we had in the 90s and 2000s. There used to be dozens of pretty big name independently owned game dev studios in the city where I am, and now - among those still even open - I can’t think of a single one still independently owned. The only 2 big ones I know of now in the area are subsidiaries of 2 major giant companies.
Trusts would be a very extreme case of consolidation, and if Microsoft were to qualify (they're close), it's certainly not because of its presence in video games.
I don't think I'm being charitable at all when I say these old games are dormant IPs. Star Wars Episode 3 was only a handful of years old when Disney bought Lucasfilm, and they were still making all sorts of merch and other products. Actually dormant IPs would be things like Metal Arms and Tenchu. They're not powerhouse franchises, but they're fodder for porting to modern platforms and bolstering Game Pass. Activision is reluctant to revive any of this stuff because it's money that could be spent on Call of Duty.
As to your last paragraph, it was inevitable, but we've been slowly trending toward getting that diversity back in the industry. It may not hit your town specifically, but the Devolvers, Paradoxes, TinyBuilds, Embracers, and Anna Purnas of the world are finding success catering to the customers the mammoth AAA companies abandoned.
It's all for game pass. They want to lock people into their favourite games with a subscription, that's where the money is for Xbox at the moment, all these buyouts are for securing their service as 'the one to want' before others clamber into the space. So I suspect things at ABK will continue as they have been doing for the most part, but with the games on game pass and maybe some more Xbox ports.
The interface gets a little better and that’s it basically? (Alternatively: They try to spin a social medium around it and fail somewhat and succeed somewhat?)
big published reviews don’t mean anything to me and I’m surprised they do to most people. everything is an 8-10 out of 10. how do people not find an issue with that
The only conclusion to make is that the video game industry has matured to a point where only masterpieces are released. Bad games just don’t exist anymore.
I think you can explain much of the lack of lower scores by the fact that the games that would get lower scores are also likely to be ignored by just about any established reviewer.
There are thousands of games released every year that a site like IGN will never review. Would you find it valuable for IGN to scour Steam or the Switch eShop for terrible games just to use more of the score scale?
Find an independent critic you respect and listen to the tenor of why they say a game is good. Or ignore critics and develop your own taste and sense of which studios, directors, artists, composers, or otherwise will compel you to buy a game.
i use word of mouth mostly but its not that all critics are bad, just what seems like most, but if you find that you consistently align with a critics opinion I’d trust them
Exactly, it feels like 50/100 is the baseline and 75/100 is mediocre. 75/100 tells me I have to be a fan of the genre to enjoy it. This rating inflation really shows how dependent reviewers are. This is one of the reasons I like organisations like Stiftung Warentest instead of depending on some biased product comparison blogs.
You may notice that this parallels the american school grading system to a T. Most major gaming review sites and such are done by americans that spent anywhere between 4-10+ years with that being the what grading/reviewing/scoring was done in almost every interaction they ever had past childhood, there’s no wonder it’s the standard here even if it’s changed the scoring paradigm.
Exactly this. 50/100 looks like an F, because that’s what it would be on a school paper. Often we’d even be given points out of a hundred just like that. So giving a 50 to a middling/okay game feels really harsh, vs 70 (aka a C) or 80 (B).
Even gollum, by far the buggiest and most boring AAA game to come out in a few years was given a 64% by pc gamer. At least gamespot was honest and gave them a 2/10
Can you name some? Honest question, I don’t know either Unity or Unreal in depth, I’m just aware that Godot still struggles with performance in the 3D department
This is a bit old now, but has a good break down of stuff that’s missing for large games. Godot 4 works well for smaller 3D games just fine, it just doesn’t do stuff like level streaming. Also it’s missing a landscape tool. (Though there is a third party one, not sure if it was ported to Godot 4 yet or not)
Games as a service has always been a scam. They use literally addictive gambling traps to keep people hooked to a money drip feeder with season passes and loot boxes.
All that only to rip the plug out when the servers are on life support.
Avoid them just like preordering. They are no benefit to the players.
Hard disagree -before it went Free to Play, Team Fortress 2 was a shining example of GaaS! A steady stream of updates and external media that constantly kept that game in the limelight.
Games As A Service is not a scam in and of itself - the issue is the greedy people often behind them.
There are lots of good examples, they’re usually smaller studios/indie though. GaaS sucks when you get the people with business degrees in on it. It’s great for people who are working on a game they’re passionate about and just want to keep adding more content.
At least with Team Fortress 2 they have always had dedicated servers you can host yourself. Most GaaS never provide a server that you can run and host yourself.
Hard disagree -before it went Free to Play, Team Fortress 2 was a shining example of GaaS!
How was TF2 (pre-FTP) a GaaS? I bought it in the Orange Box for a one-time cost. Where is the as-a-service component to that business model you’re citing?
They performed multiple free content updates over several years. I believe Gabe is quoted as saying the GaaS model had replaced the episodic model for them, the idea being that they weren’t selling a product, but a service that would continue passed the exchange of funds. We saw that in their games during that period like Left 4 Dead 1/2 as well.
As time has gone on, we’ve seen approaches to the idea morph to the anti-consumer versions we see and associate with the name, but there was a time when it wasn’t a negative.
I think you may be using a different definition of GaaS than mine. My definition includes a regular fee to play or a subscription as a continuous revenue generation from the product. From your replies I don’t think your definition does. That leaves me more confused about your definition.
When I think of Games as a Service, I think of things like:
"The crux of the Newell’s address focused on the concept that direct communications with customers, transparency, and constant updates are the best ways to maximize profits from a product. In this way, Valve views its products as a service rather than a finished project. When the company shipped Team Fortress 2, work wasn’t done. Rather, the team said, “Now we can start.” The team has then gone on to ship 63 updates – which include anything from bug fixes to new game modes – to the game in just over 14 months. This can directly result in increased sales that would normally taper off over time. As Newell put it, “When you want to promote your product, you’re going to use your customers to reach new customers.” " www.ign.com/…/dice-2009-keynote-gabe-newell
Games as a Service I think of as an overarching concept based around the idea of service not stopping at the point of sale. After that, the different approaches are almost “sub-classifications”.
There are those games that are touted as “Live Services” - when I use that term, I think of games that provide ongoing content, and maintains the game servers in exchange for varying streams of income. These are games that will typically “stop working” when the official servers go down. I consider games like Anthem and Loadout to be examples of Live Services in this respect. Games like World of Warcraft I consider Live Services, but I go one further and call those “subscription services”, since they require the subscription to play and in theory this is the main income that funds the game staying online.
The way I see it, all Live/Subscription Services fall under the Games as a Service banner, but not all Games as a Service will necessarily be either. To me, it’s more nuanced than one general classification, especially with the way things blend together these days; games can have multiple income streams (subscription, microtransactions, battlepasses, season passes, so on), as well as multiple forms of content delivery (free updates, expansions, DLC).
The lines have been blurred further with “early access” and “incomplete” titles being released that have constant content updates simply to get to a release state. However, these types of games have those stars that typically shine through. Such as No Mans Sky or (contentiously) Fallout 76.
tl;dr To me GaaS is the literal idea of treating games as more than a one-time product, but evolution in how content is delivered and monetized have lead to many different approaches. Unfortunately, the normalized ones (the maliciously monetized and despair-inducing) are so far apart from the “good ones” like L4D2, that it is difficult to consider that they are both actually examples of “Games as a Service”.
Games as a Service I think of as an overarching concept based around the idea of service not stopping at the point of sale. After that, the different approaches are almost “sub-classifications”.
By your definition, we’ve had Games-as-a-Service since the dawn age of home PC gaming.
This is a game called Temple of Apshai. It was released in 1979 for TRS-80 and Commodore PET home computers. The years ahead would see it released on Apple II, Atari, Commondore 64, and others.
Two years later in 1981 this paid expansion kit (software addon) was released (for Apple II and TRS-80). To use the expansion, you needed to own the original game. It added on additional maps and levels to play using the same game engine as the original. This would seem to match your definition of “not stopping at the point of sale” because obtaining the expansion kit would require yet another trip to the point of sale to continue to play the new content.
tl;dr To me GaaS is the literal idea of treating games as more than a one-time product, but evolution in how content is delivered and monetized have lead to many different approaches.
Then what you’re citing as GaaS as a new phenomenon has been with us since the beginning.
It’s long and I’m sorry.
No need to apologize. I appreciate the time and you took to explain your thoughts. It gave me a more clear view of your vision, and I appreciate that understanding. Even though I only quoted a small part of your post, I read and considered the whole thing.
I absolutely appreciate your response - I rarely get a chance to discuss this topic and have my ideas on it refined or thrown out through discourse. And hoo boy, it’s another long one but I love talking about stuff like this.
I want to say first that I agree that there might be earlier games that exhibited examples of the philosophies in the definition provided by Valve back in 2008-2011 and my definition, but my stance is that digital distribution platforms made it more feasible for games to be developed in such an ongoing way and lead to it becoming a more prominent idea. A rough parallel could be drawn between the way DOOM popularized First Person Shooters, yet there were definitely games of the genre before it. Some games were developed that employ similar or the same philosophies to GaaS, but it was less common and easy (I remember getting “official” content for games by having to go to a website, find the download link, download the maps, etc) until the technology caught up.
On Temple of Apshai, I see your points but I don’t agree that it completely breaks my ideas surrounding what makes a Game as a Service… I think I should clarify that I consider a “point of sale” to be when I have to make a purchase to have the content.
I consider the ports and expansion to fall under points of sale, as a result. You are purchasing exactly the products as boxed, and nothing else takes place beyond that exchange. You have the product to play, the developer’s obligation to you is finished.
Expansions are an arguable bit of grey area, since they do technically build upon the earlier game, but I still think of that as a straightforward point of sale; The only content is that which you buy, with no additional content or service provided by the developer beyond them. I consider Diablo 2 and the Lord of Destruction expansion to be an early example of GaaS, since after the points of sale the game received additional content (I think to online play only).
I acknowledge the water definitely gets muddied with this digital age. Some games receive a stream of paid expansions over time, like Borderlands or Fallout 3. However, I struggle to consider these to be Games as a Service - these items are all independent points of purchase. If a game has a mix of paid and free content updates, then I’d consider it a GaaS because of the things other than the paid DLC/expansions.
I know that my ability to word my ideas is flawed and limited to my own vocabulary, and there are undoubtedly issues with my definitions. I don’t think my ideas are completely without merit though, and believe I just need to refine them somewhat, which can only be done through beholding a plucked chicken.
I don’t think Unreal Tournament 2004 would have been considered live service just because they occasionally gave out a free new map. It was a form of marketing for the thing they already made. TF2 at least was a product when they sold it up front before it was free to play, when it had no microtransactions and they weren’t the goal for getting paid for having made TF2.
It was always the goal, just a different approach. I posted this quote in another reply but:
"The crux of the Newell’s address focused on the concept that direct communications with customers, transparency, and constant updates are the best ways to maximize profits from a product. In this way, Valve views its products as a service rather than a finished project. When the company shipped Team Fortress 2, work wasn’t done. Rather, the team said, “Now we can start.” The team has then gone on to ship 63 updates – which include anything from bug fixes to new game modes – to the game in just over 14 months. This can directly result in increased sales that would normally taper off over time. As Newell put it, “When you want to promote your product, you’re going to use your customers to reach new customers.” " www.ign.com/…/dice-2009-keynote-gabe-newell
The thought pattern still has roots in sales/marketing - by releasing more content for the game, you attract new players. I would say No Mans Sky is a good example of this in recent years - its free content updates leading to constant attention and sales. No other forms of monetization are included.
I played UT2004 but was too young to recall things, but if the game did this through game updates I’d consider it an early form of Games as a Service. However, I consider Live Services to be a sub-classification under the banner, which by my definition UT2004 would not be:
I think of games that provide ongoing content, and maintains the game servers in exchange for varying streams of income. These are games that will typically “stop working” when the official servers go down (stop being “live”?). I consider games like Anthem and Loadout to be examples of Live Services in this respect.
So while L4D2 was by definition an example of a Game as a Service, it has a different approach to the concept compared to a game like Destiny 2. From how the game is played (offline/online, hosting servers), to how it is monetized and the updates are delivered can vary significantly.
I believe that all Live Services fall under the GaaS label, but not all games that fall under the GaaS label are Live Services. The lines have just become so blurred that it is hard to consider that games that can be so different fall under that label. We are in the pot, and the temperature is getting higher.
I don’t think you’re going to find many sharing your definitions. GaaS has just been simply replaced by the term live service in how people talk about this stuff. Perhaps Valve showed their hand early with this interview, but the expectation we had as customers with early TF2 was very different back then. I definitely wouldn’t consider No Man’s Sky to be any form of service; it might be the industry’s best example of being a form of penance for what they promised their customers at the start.
I agree that up to a point their approach was to fix things, but at a certain point they reached the point of achieving most everything they promised. Then kept going and adding more.
However, my point of bringing it up is that even in the past few years, the game has continued to be updated and each update brings with it new players/sales, as well as further marketing thanks to the attention those updates get. This was one of the significant reasons stated for the approach to GaaS by companies like Valve back in the day, and No Mans Sky is an example that this is something that can be done in the modern era.
I also agree that the concept has been bastardized in recent years. As I see it and as was defined at the time, games like Left 4 Dead 2 are/were delivered as “Games as a Service”. Yet despite that fact, Left 4 Dead 2 doesn’t include the trappings that are attached to “Live Services” of the modern era. Like many things, big publishers have corrupted what started off as a pure win for consumers…but that is why I make the distinction of “Live Services” as a fork from the concept.
well that’s the thing, it went free to play. Pretty classic enshittification arc.
I don’t remember any one thing getting worse with TF2 after that change. What would be enshitified for it? Microtransaction cosmetics? I’ve never had a problem with those, as long as they are just cosmetic. If they change the balance of a game though, I simply refuse to play those games.
While Overwatch and CS:GO are often games pointed to as the one that popularized and lead to the loot box/gambling popularly, TF2’s implementation of crates/keys is a clear point of inspiration for those games :(
However I agree, the initial Free To Play decision wasn’t a bad thing for TF2, though the culmination of that with the store/creator relationship and how things evolved in the company have lead to a less than desired development cycle for TF2 content when you look at what Valve actually provides in modern updates. And we waited how long for that comic? :P
Funnily enough, I want an offline addicting loot machine to play with podcasts or youtube. That’s why I play arpgs, but only-only games, for money? FUCK NO!
Thats why I cant play them, whats the point, cant open it in 10 years and have nostalgia over it, none of them seem that fun to me, but visual progression is my favorite part of games so they aren’t really meant for me, I miss cool looking stuff meaning the person nolifed the game
as someone who was reasonably deep with unity, the alternatives really are quite thin - Godot is a big contender or otherwise it’s time to pick up some Rust game development
Thanks for sharing, I’ll check it out. Games in rust could help that whole endeavor in finding insecurities and whatnot even faster with game hackers and whatnot too
So if Google sold its phones at a loss then Epic would have no problem paying the fee? Sure.
The more interesting part of the argument is saying that people will contact Microsoft/Nintendo/Sony for technical support with a game and expect them to help while Apple or Google would send you to the developer.
google isn’t the only company selling android phones.
Other Android OEMs are allowed to ship whatever store they want in addition to Google Play. The Epic Games Store is on the Samsung Galaxy Store: galaxystore.samsung.com/…/com.epicgames.portal
The 2020s hot new business practice is self immolation through hypercapitalist greed and assuming that just because you're the most popular in an industry you're the only choice.
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