it includes how much they spent on making the DLC and marketing for it. Around 2/3rds of the money still went into fixing/reworking the game from what I can tell
Why do you think it didn’t go into devs? Maybe you are being cynical, but managers and CEOs are definitely devs too, they need their extra motivation to convince themselves the game is gooder.
headline number is only the equivalent of ~200-300 tech employee salaries for 3 years, less for junior, more for senior, less for designers, marketers, more for Directors, VPs, Execs…
Marketing isn’t cheap either. Can’t rely on word of mouth when that word is “shite”. Fixing the code would have been relatively cheap compared to fixing their reputation.
CS2 feels like a downgrade from CSGO in a lot of ways, but CSGO at launch and CSGO at end of life were two completely different games, the same is probably true for CS2. Long term support is what keeps games going.
One of the really fun details about this fiasco is a few years back, after they had made a big PR fuck up like this, Unity stated they would make their Terms of Service version-bound. If you had Unity 2019 and continued to use it forever, you would only have to abide by the ToS for that version. Put simply, they could not retroactively apply new changes to you.
...Guess which segment got quietly removed last year!
I would think their public statements would significantly hurt the ability to do this, even if developers "agreed" to the terms without that clause.
I straight up don't think they could legally do it either way. But if they made public statements specifically addressing this particular thing, it has to significantly weaken their case.
That's the part I don't get. If I bought it in 2020 or whenever that was in the license, how can they decide to violate the license on the software you bought?
It's one thing of you go into the agreement knowing about the fees, but enforcing them retroactively against your own license agreement sounds like you're asking for a lawsuit.
Put simply, they could not retroactively apply new changes to you.
Sounds like they could though?
Jokes aside, this is another in a recent string of "let's pretend our ToS are legally binding documents as fool-proof as the law" actions by major companies because ... well, who's stopping them?
your customers retroactively owe you money just because you unilaterally said so?
John Riccitiello is Unity's CEO, you may remember him from being EA's CEO or for being the guy who said the devs who don't monetize (you know adding microtransactions, loot boxes and all that greedy stuff) their videogames are "fucking idiots". I think that explains all
Only monetized games have to pay. If they stop selling the game, they shouldn't be affected anymore.
Also
Does the Unity Runtime Fee apply to pirated copies of games?
We are happy to work with any developer who has been the victim of piracy so that they are not unfairly hurt by unwanted installs. (source)
As far as I understand (someone correct me if I'm wrong) games that are free / non-commercial and have zero revenue are not affected at all by this, they still don't have to pay anything regardless of the number of installs.
If the game is no longer being sold (and thus no longer commercial / having revenue), then I expect that even under those new rules Unity would also not charge the dev.
“Will games made with Unity phone-home to track installs?
We will refine how we collect install data over time with a goal of accurately understanding the number of times the Unity runtime is distributed. Any install data will be collected in accordance with our Privacy Policy and applicable privacy laws.”
Sounds like they’re gonna add tracking data to the game, so probably pirated installs won’t count
“Will games made with Unity phone-home to track installs?
We will refine how we collect install data over time with a goal of accurately understanding the number of times the Unity runtime is distributed. Any install data will be collected in accordance with our Privacy Policy and applicable privacy laws.” They already do, and fuck you for asking.
I’m confused. I’ve never licensed a game engine, but I figure you’d write what charges you pay into the contract, and as far as I know, you can’t just add additional charges in later without renegotiating the contract. At least, you’d have no way to enforce those. So I’m sort of at a loss how this is even supposed to work.
The game engine is licensed as a subscription. When January 1st rolls around and the dev’s meed to renew their subscription it will have these new terms. Their options are to accept this or to never update their games again.
Makes sense. I hope the unity guys come to their senses. This whole thing seems rather self-destructive on the company’s part. Unity is far from being a monopoly, with one competitor being free and open source (Godot). And pulling stunts like these, even if you walk them back later, does not engender trust.
So then you still get to play them. The only people this affects are new buyers, which… scans internet will be approximately nobody, given the raging hate-boners on display. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
Then you’ll play the DLC with the updated graphics etc. There’s nothing mystical about the upgrade pack - it’s just engine optimizations to let the game run natively on new hardware, probably some revamped textures, etc. The base game has been DLC-aware since the DLC was released. Having the DLC doesn’t change the game code, it just makes the extra content accessible.
Okay, so then it’s just like normal? This is no news at all? It’s the same as buying the game on the original Switch? Because the DLCs weren’t included with that version either. 🤷♂️ How uninteresting of a post.
When I hit 360 hours in BotW, I asked myself, was this worth a dollar an hour? Yes, yes it was. That was almost 8 years ago, and doesn’t take into account time spent playing other games, or the 7+ years of playtime since.
Different strokes for different folks. I’ve been playing MK8 for 9ish years on two systems. I don’t expect World to be a step backwards, but it could happen.
I may have bought a Switch at launch solely for BotW (even though I had a Wii U), but that’s not the only game I played, even if was the only game I owned for a bit. More games came later. Anyone saying “I’m only going to buy one game” is basing that off of what’s available at launch. More games will come later, at which point people will make their value decisions.
People are losing their shit about Nintendo bumping prices for the first time in several gaming generations. Broad declarations of “never, not me, I won’t!” There seems to be a large overlap between the most vocal and the following two groups:
Happy with your Steam Deck? Great! I’m glad another actual gaming company (Valve) has entered the hardware space. (For MS and Sony, gaming is just one part of their enormous portfolios.) Nintendo doesn’t interest Deck folks. That’s fine. I can’t play first person or close third person games, and never liked RTS-style click as fast as you can games, so PC gaming has never been my thing. The impressive Steam library doesn’t do much for me. That’s fine. We all have options. Great!
People that just pirate their shit? Great! Piracy always has and always will exist. Companies have always fought back against it, and always will. Getting around those barriers is part of the scene. Remember when Sony lost in court against Connectix, then bought VGS just to kill it? I do. I was an adult at the time, and played a lot of THPS using a shitty USB gamepad on my computer. The world kept turning. Games are still free for those that want them enough.
The thing those groups have in common? Neither of them were all that likely to buy anything Nintendo. But any unfavorable news makes them come out of the woodwork to declare that they’re not going to buy any of it even harder. Great! Just totally irrelevant. It’s the latest chapter in the long running saga of the console wars. It’s never been a good story, but does it ever have staying power. Yay tribalism.
$/h is a shitty metric. Some hours are more enjoyable than others, and also time is a resource we spend, just like money, not something we’re gaining, so it taking time is a negative. Enjoyment/$ is the metric to use, or maybe (enjoyment/h)/$.
$/h is a marketing term. It isn’t a term consumers should bother with. It’s what has lead to boring over-inflated games that waste your time doing things that don’t matter and aren’t fun.
Enjoyment/$ is the metric to use, or maybe (enjoyment/h)/$.
Or, as I stated, “worth the money.” I’m not interested in turning it into a hard formula, universally transferable. As you noted, there’s too many variables. I was stating that the money was well spent. That’s it.
I’m not at all defending the price, but am secretly hoping this outcry will make it easier for me to be an early adopter. I still don’t have a PS5 due to how burned I got trying to preorder one.
I was on the fence about Switch 2, leaning toward not getting one. This just solidified that position. No way I’m paying for something that charges for the instruction manual.
For 10 bucks, it better have a button combination that unlocks Mario Paint 2.
I haven't seen a damn thing in the marketing that justifies it being anything other than free. If it's worth 10 bucks, you better show that shit off. The audacity to call it "welcome tour" with a $10 price tag is wild
The big reason I’m hearing in this thread is “Denuvo and I don’t trust Ubisoft.” However I doubt that is the reason the mainstream audience skipped over this game. Ubisoft franchises generally sell like hotcakes, and for the most part only nerds care about DRM (like the type of person who knows what a lemmy is).
It’s hard to say why it didn’t sell more units. Certainly it seems their internal expectations were sky high:
similarly to the biggest Metroidvania’s in the market, with millions of units sold in a relatively short space of time
The game is good, but metroidvania is not exactly an easy market; there’s some juggernauts in that genre, and they came out with a completely new and unproven concept. Apparently it sold a million units or so still, to me that’s not unimpressive.
On PC, it initially launched only on Epic afaik, which certainly doesn’t help. And by the time they brought it to steam it was much too late.
What I don’t really get is, why disband the team? They’ve proven they can produce quality stuff. Just hand them some other promising projects? I suppose that’s too much of a risk for a publisher like Ubisoft.
If you’re playing on ps3 or emulation you can play online using lbpunion.com they’re currently looking into ps4 support, but just know that it requires CFW.
This has been the case with console addons all the way back to R.O.B. the Robot, if not earlier. People won't buy an addon if there are no games for it. Companies won't make games for an addon if no one buys it. Catch-22.
But… R.O.B. wasn’t an add-on. It was a way to market the NES as a toy rather than a console, in the wake of the video games crash of 1983-85. Was just a way to sideload NES systems into the houses of wary consumers.
You either need the company to commit to making software for it even when hardware sales are lacking (Wii U is a decent example, had really good Nintendo made games despite bad sales), or be a company with such a dedicated fan base that they’ll buy your product regardless of if the software support is there or not (Apple for example).
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