FROM’s and Elden Ring’s good names will be forever tarnished with this bullshit. Even if, and it’s a big if, this turns out to be a decent port it still feels really, really gross. This is really disappointing.
EXCITED. Even Update 3 was completely fun and enjoyable to play. I've been putting off playing again because there were so many breaking changes in the later updates.
I guess it’s cool that some people may be able to play the game when they wouldn’t otherwise, but yeah I wouldn’t be surprised if this ends up being shit.
You know there are people at tencent unironically thinking “People were happy with how unmonetized Elden Ring was. How can we monetize that satisfaction?”
Usually, the devs aren’t thinking that, management is and that’s what’s shoveled downward. Still people at tencent, but I imagine it’s not everyone ludicrously evil.
Still, this is a reminder not to get too attached to any particular developer. Doesn’t matter how sincerely dedicated to producing fun and satisfying experiences From is: when Tencent talks, they have to listen.
Servers cost money, adding content costs money, if you want something for free, who’s paying these costs? Because if it’s the business, they won’t be in business very long if they just spend money and have nothing coming back in.
I say this as a person in their 30s, age is irrelevant here.
FFVII for PS1 didn’t need a server. There were no mtx or post to social media buttons or pay walled content crap, just a game you paid for and played. It didn’t need to always be online or require a secondary launcher.
Fast-forward and here we are with profitability being the most important aspect of gaming. Sucking every tiny bit of money and attention away from competing games that do the same thing. Character licensing fees and in game ads literally everywhere. Single player experiences requiring online components so that even though you aren’t directly participating in the mtx system the companies you buy from are still mining your usage data and selling it off to third parties. Mtx and ads and all that are just how gaming is now. Younger adult gamers have a pretty big role in his this had turned out. Instead of saying no to these types of games, they were just like ‘meh I like posting $5 for horse armor…’ and that’s all it took.
The key difference being you paid for the game…. This is a free game… totally different scenarios. So yes I will downvote you for completely missing the point of the discussion and ranting on about something totally irrelevant.
How does a company keep paying for servers and content when they don’t charge for the game or anything else….? With proper MTXs….
I didn’t miss the point. You’re talking about free games that live on mtx and ads… That’s the problem. There shouldn’t be games that function that way, and the fact that you’re using that as some gotcha talking point just proves how normalized they are. They’re predatory.
It’s another unrelated market, mobile games can’t charge $80 for a game. People don’t even like paying $10. That style of developing is barely affordable nowadays as well for pc/console anyways, but that’s another argument and not relevant to this one.
You are comparing apples to oranges. And there’s nothing predatory when it’s done correctly, but there’s also some people who just see the devil in everything, lien you apparently.
It’s hard to take seriously because people don’t like their hobbies and interests being scrutinized.
I’m not going to argue about this anymore. It’s one of those things where the hobby I used to enjoy is no longer for me. It’s for you kids to buy your V Bucks and season passes at an ever increasing price. Let the publishers know you love giving them more and more money for beta software wrapped in a new Peter Griffin skin!
I didn’t choose it and neither did you. You had this forced on you and you were like “yes, daddy more” because people don’t have the stones to say no with their wallets. You won’t give up your Diablo IV Season Pass trinket pack with 666 Devil Coins and a new Overwatch “Dablo” skin for Moira. You’re out of your depth.
Listen if you want to piss away money on transient shit you are welcome to go and do it, but the person missing the nuances here is you. The industry moving towards these models is negatively affecting gaming as a whole and it’ll only get worse, even if you’re too blinded by tacky skins to notice the reason why.
My guy, I wasn't even trying to make a defense of micro transactions, I was pointing out the really weird comparison of a PS1 game from 1997 with no baked in online features, and a modern game with baked in online features.
Matchmaking is also peer to peer as far as anyone knows but I can’t find any info on how messages are handled. It’s entirely possible those also work on their peer to peer system but even if not a server that serves short text snippets with coordinates to all these players could be run on 20 year old hardware so not even costly enough to register.
Oh, yea, they have a verification server for shadowbans but it isn’t strictly necessary for matchmaking, if that verification process were removed you can still play. The seemless coop mod for example does that.
Saying you were 13/14 when horse armor came out doesn’t help your case arguing against their comment. It just means you were prime gaming age when dlc, map packs, and smaller content were replacing larger expansions. The acceptance of those (which based on your demographic you probably did accept) made it easier to transition to more and more egregious micro transactions.
There used to be (maybe still are) complete games released on mobile. They usually cost $6.99 and didn’t need more. If they want Elden Ring on mobile without tarnishing its reputation, they could sell a complete experience for $10 or $15 since it’s been a decade since those $6.99 prices. That’s what Elden Ring was and it was widely praised. That’s what the rest of their games have done and that has turned out well for them.
There may be servers for the multiplayer, but based on the fact none of the other From Soft games charged for it the cost must be minimal.
No, they aren’t. DLC is an expansion upon the content. The best case scenario for mtx that do not affect gameplay are cosmetic only.
If a game in any way has anything else than cosmetic mtx, the game is worse.
“But you don’t have to buy it!” Is how I often see them defended, the subtext being that, if I don’t buy them it doesn’t affect my experience.
Here is the secret, games with mtx are designed to have problems and they sell you the solution. They are designed WORSE intentionally, so you will spend money to bypass the inconveniences. Often your time.
A perfect example is something like long standing games selling boosts to max level. They’re aware the old content is dead, and they’re aware the only people playing it are the people who don’t want to spend money. Why don’t they fix that?
The answer is they did, they decided that inconvenience was acceptable in their game in order to convince the player to spend money.
MTX is not content, often it’s used to bypass content or save time. DLC is content. DLC often expands upon the experience of the game. MTX worsens the experience of the game just buy existing. Dlc doesn’t change your experience if you don’t purchase or use it. MTX changes the game at a base level no matter if you spend money or not.
I feel like it’s just wrong to call these games ‘free’. They are ‘partially free’ with the incentive to extract as much money from you as possible in order to get the ‘good stuff’ or simply to avoid endless hours of unfun grinding. It’s just inferior in every way compared to games you pay for once and that’s it, because they don’t need to drip feed you ‘fun’.
Exceptions apply to competitive games that need a changing meta and content updates. New content for non-competitve ‘free’ games mostly amounts to new stuff you can buy to surpass new arbitrary walls built in front of you.
IMTX can be fair if these don’t abuse the players time, and offer fun content.
IMTX and not wasting players time are nearly mutually-exclusive. These games are designed with the MTX in mind at every single step of the process, and are made with the soleintent of maximizing MTX sales. Them wasting your time is not a mistake, but an intentional (and meticulously-researched and -designed) feature.
There are exceptions, yes, of course, but they are few and far between.
These sorts of decisions can impact future decisions. It is to early to say that this is a trend, so people shouldn’t get all up in arms over things. But still, using other company histories as a basis, it is concerning about where this could end up.
They hated it because it fucking sucked, dude. Just one look at the final product and you can tell you how fucked up it is. You don’t even need to play it to see it sucks; that’s how bad it fucking sucked.
Yeah same thing happened to the Ford Pinto. People just hated on it for literally no reason. Not that it was a terrible vehicle that would kill you on a rear end impact via instant combustion. Hate campaign!
Gothic 1 and especially 2 were absolute gems. Clunky as all fuck - especially the first one - but they were hugely impactful on me and way ahead of their time. The soundtrack from Gothic 2 still lingers in me today and makes me feel the way it made me feel even then.
Would anyone mind posting their statement? For some reason the writer of the article didn’t include it anywhere, just a link to shitter, which I don’t use
Recently, a lot of misinformation has emerged on the Internet from supposedly anonymous sources. Fntastic provides an official response to these statements.
Anonymous people allege that we deceived players
We worked hard and honestly on the game for five years. We didn’t take a penny from users, didn’t use crowdfunding, and didn’t offer pre-orders. Even after the game was closed, we, together with the publisher, returned money to all players, including forcibly issuing refunds to those who did not request them. How many companies return money like that? We are not a fly-by-night company. We have been operating since 2015 and have always conducted our business honestly.
Anonymous people allege that we deceived the investor
This is not true. We still have a great relationship with our publisher. The closure of The Day Before did not affect our partnership. Since 2021, we’ve had a New Zealand venture called MytonaFntastic (mytonafntastic.com) and a successful game, Propnight, which has sold almost a million copies. Propnight also co-financed the development of The Day Before.
Anonymous former employees tell different stories about the development
We’re unsure whether these employees are real or not, but we had excellent relationships with our team. Despite being a small indie company with a limited budget, we assisted employees with relocation and healthcare and helped some of them to buy equipment and with their mortgages and other personal matters. We offered an extra non-working day off each month, vacation pay, and timely salary payments, along with the option of working remotely. Our low churn rate and the fact that half of those who left returned to the company demonstrate our positive work environment. One hundred percent of the team did everything they could to make The Day Before a success.
Who made money on The Day Before?
Certain bloggers made huge money by creating false content with huge titles from the very beginning to gain views and followers, exploiting the lack of information about the game’s development. Their actions triggered a gold rush among content creators due to the game’s pre-release popularity.
Why do they say that the released game is not the same as that in the trailers, and why was the game closed?
We implemented everything shown in the trailers, from home improvements and a detailed world to off-road vehicles. We only disabled a few minor features, like parkour, due to bugs but planned to include them in the full release.
Remember the experiment where you’re asked to count pink objects in a room and then recall the blue ones? You won’t remember any. It’s all about focus. The negative bias instilled by certain bloggers making money on hate affected perceptions of the game. Look at unbiased gameplay like Dr. Disrespect’s stream at release. Despite the initial bugs and server issues, he liked the game, which we fixed later, and the game received improved reviews over the weekend. Unfortunately, the hate campaign had already inflicted significant damage.
By the way, after sales closed, many people wrote to us that bloggers had deceived them and they liked the game, and they asked for access. We also heard that petitions were created to continue development, and on the black market, the game’s price exceeded $200, and some even began to make their own mods.
We are grateful to all the senders of mails who expressed support and appealed not to give up and to continue to work. Finally, we encourage you to subscribe to our social networks to know what will happen next.
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