Seems like you’re confusing what subjective and objective mean here! Just because you dislike a game, doesn’t in fact make that a universally held belief!
Considering the game is sitting at:
Very Positive (4,503) - on Steam
86 (critic rating) and 7.0 (user rating) on metacritic
…it seems like this is not (once again) a universally held belief. Sorry you’re not liking it, though.
Man, I appreciate this happened but seeing the price all I can do is chuckle and move on since this thing is almost 3x the reasonable price in my local currency. Never expected to get priced out of AAA gaming but here we are.
Still, nice catch for GOG. I hope this is a good sign for the future.
It probably happened way earlier for me as well to be honest, I’m just mainly into older and indie games so I don’t really pay attention to new (mainstream) releases. Seeing this was a bit of reality check.
Alright, this is great, but also people need to start confirming GOG drops before the Steam launch. I check for GOG launches whenever I buy a game, but just this month there's been a couple of big games that got stealth GOG launches just after their Steam release and it's been extremely frustrating. I don't know if it's a publisher thing to work around pirates waiting for DRM free versions or Steam being dicks about it, but it's infuriating.
Yeah, I’ve had this experience, too. Kingdom Come: Deliverance II communicated ahead of launch that the GOG release would come only a few months later (I did get the sense this was a publisher decision). Great! I can wait a few months. Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 made no such mention, and despite waiting several months to see how it would shake out, I bought it in the summer, and the GOG version came out right after I finished it. The developer behind Knights in Tight Spaces, when asked directly, said they were only focusing on the Steam release. Likewise, the GOG version came out shortly after I finished the game. From here on out, of the games on my radar, I’m playing the ones on GOG first, and maybe the other ones will get GOG releases in the meantime.
Yeah, it sucks for Silent Hill especially because a) it's super expensive, at 80 bucks on PC, and b) I was on the fence about getting it at launch and only jumped in a few days ago. I'm just out of the refund window and... hey, I like it so far, but I don't like it 160 bucks' worth.
Whoever is screwing with GOG screwed them out of my purchase and I'm starting to think that not buying anything on Steam at all if I can help it may be the way to go.
If anything, purely anecdotally with no data-based analysis, it looks as though GOG is getting more new releases than it used to. So I think as long as we show that DRM-free matters to us by buying there first, the situation will continue to improve.
It's come and gone a couple times. There was a period where a bunch of big games did simultaneous launches, then a big period of drought where a few large publishers withdrew entirely from new releases and recently a few isolated AA and AAA releases started popping back up. I wonder if it's driven by how much effort they can put into outreach or something like that.
My general guess: The delay is tied to Denuvo. Smart devs will launch with Denuvo so that pudding-headed pirates (my label for a certain small demographic among pirates) drooling over marketing will see the trailers, try to pirate, fail, be told by crackers to wait like 2-3 weeks for them to unlock it; but instead become impatient and buy the game full price.
But the time period to capture pudding heads is not constant, and is not perfectly predictable before release. So, the developer may not want to commit to a certain release schedule where they will release on GOG, dropping Denuvo at that same time. They might even want to reserve the possibility the game will go years without dropping DRM, if it’s somehow staying constantly popular, and constantly desired by pirates, and/or they can see that the hacking communities have failed to unlock it.
Yeah, it’s a pretty easy conclusion to come to from the outside looking in, but BG3 can launch on GOG day and date, and KC:D2 can communicate the GOG release ahead of time and still sell multiple millions of copies, so…it’s a practice I’d like to see change regardless.
That is a conclusion made in hindsight, the easiest place to make predictions. Not every studio has the same forms of public popularity and good will they can bank on.
Also, selling millions of copies is not an indicator of a studio’s upper bounds. Publishers - even indie-oriented ones - need the lightning in bottle releases to pay for games that didn’t do well. We can’t do an experiment where KC:D2 releases on two planet Earths, one with a DRM-free release and one with DRM, and say for certain that the second wouldn’t let them additionally fund another studio’s pet project.
Basically, given how many failed releases happen that we never hear about, it can be misrepresentative to point to some good games and say “See? Studios are able to pay their mortgage.” Denuvo is able to sell to studios, costing those studios money, in part by showing raw data (that we might not ever see) explaining how it promotes early sales.
No, I get that. But likewise, Denuvo doesn’t have access to a second Earth either, and their pitch meeting will never include data of customers you’ve convinced not to buy the game due to the presence of their product. At some point, I don’t think those pirated copies are moving the needle, and that it’s just a cost of doing business like some units of physical goods breaking during shipping. The games that are most pirated are the ones that also sell the best. The anti-piracy case for the consumer is made pretty well these days by being downloaded faster, getting bug fix patches instantly, and keeping cloud saves.
Irdeto’s been on a PR push lately. If they actually had robust studies backing their product, we would have seen them. Considering how they’ve got their hooks into the major Japanese PC port publishers (Sega, Capcom, and Square Enix), part of a segment of the industry that has long had specific stereotypes and prejudice surrounding PC gaming, I highly doubt the sales pitch for Denuvo amounts to much more than FUD and snake oil.
And while Steam doesn't typically sign exclusive stuff they are known to use store positioning as a bargaining chip for preferential treatment. You'd think Konami would be above needing that, but who knows.
Anyway, good game, whatever the reason for the delay. Someone who is on the fence about getting it on Steam go get it on GOG instead to make up for them tricking me.
Ironically (or perhaps completely unironically) the bundle requires a very weird workaround to get it to work in Australia.
Anyway, I redeemed it and got all those games added to my account. I doubt I’ll ever even install any of them tbh, but I just felt like saying “screw you” to my compatriot.
I found this solution worked for me in Australia. It involved clicking a link to add the bundle to my cart, and then another link to check out, rather than going through the normal process.
I found this solution worked for me in Australia. It involved clicking a link to add the bundle to my cart, and then another link to check out, rather than going through the normal process.
I’ve never played a NSFW game. I’m also, like, very much Ace, so, like, no chance in hell I’ll ever will. BUT I can’t resist the allure of free games! No matter what they are…
There’s also Postal 2 in there lol, that convinced me to click the Claim button.
I’ve already hidden the games from the library, so I’ll probably never see them again and forget they exist in about 6 months from now…
Man, I really appreciate GOG. They’re not perfect and, as with all corporations, one shouldn’t take them completely at face value but their approach to game preservation, DRM and stuff like this are the reasons why I keep them as my primary choice for purchases whenever possible.
Is it a relatively cheap PR stunt? Maybe. Probably. It’s still more than any other store did or said in regards to the recent events. Might as well grab some free publicity.
I mean, Valve’s silence isn’t really surprising to be honest. They generally tend to keep quiet and let things go away on their own whenever possible. I’d be more surprised if the came out in force on this issue.
They did respond to the recent claim by Mastercard about them not being responsible for this recent mess - that’s something, I guess? Here is a Kotaku article (don’t kill me, that’s the source I have for this) and here is the relevant part:
“Mastercard did not communicate with Valve directly, despite our request to do so,” Valve’s statement sent over email to Kotaku reads. “Mastercard communicated with payment processors and their acquiring banks. Payment processors communicated this with Valve, and we replied by outlining Steam’s policy since 2018 of attempting to distribute games that are legal for distribution. Payment processors rejected this, and specifically cited Mastercard’s Rule 5.12.7 and risk to the Mastercard brand.”
There’s a bit more in the linked article but that’s pretty much the gist of it.
Valve relies on Visa/Mastercard to process billions worth of transactions occur every year. They’re not going to rock the boat unless they want to risk the whole business.
Their (relative?) silence, to me, is indicative of just how bad this duopoly is, and that Valve sees no alternative worth publicly mentioning at this juncture.
Oh absolutely, that’s as much (if not more) of a reason for them keeping quiet. No big company will willingly jump into the pit against payment processors, there’s way too much to lose.
Steam is criminally understaffed and always caves in with no resistance when any actor wants to block access to thousands of games to millions of potential customers. This is just the latest chapter in a long history of them neglecting their users.
For example a large number of affected games in this case have already been blocked in Germany for a while because Steam refused to implement any type of age verification. They didn‘t even want a dialog with authorities and flat out region blocked affected games instead.
Now, I will say that this move by Germany was complete hypocrisy because it only affected unrated games and porn, when other 18+ games are still perfectly available because they „only“ contain massive amounts of violence. Somehow age verification isn‘t necessary here for some reason and gambling with cosmetic items is fine too? Good to know we have our priorities straight. /s
Whatever the case, the point is Steam always choses the path of least resistance. Germany has a system that lets users verify their age anonymously. Sony has implemented it for their store no problem but Steam doesn‘t even bother to have a single German speaker in their support team.
gog.com
Gorące