theverge.com

maxie, do games w Meta is closing down three VR studios as part of its metaverse cuts

Companies like meta and Amazon can’t be trusted with gaming, it’s just a silly side project to them. If I was working at a studio acquired by either I would be shit scared for the studios longevity.

bytesonbike,

Microsoft too.

They flip flop over if gaming is important to them all the time.

bytesonbike,

I remember when Amazon went all-in on gaming. Everyone was skeptical, and they partnered up with so many Asian companies.

Then they pulled out. Then they pulled back in. And now they’re kinda in a weird place.

sukhmel,

What did they make?

orochi02,

New world and Amazon Luna (maybe im getting the names Mixed up)

sukhmel,

Yeah, I eventually found a Wikipedia page about Amazon Game Studios, they still exist and make games, and it looks like they only make mediocre stuff even when they have chances to make something interesting (like King of Meat, that seems to be a well received game, but has awful name, is too pricey, and is almost unknown, making the online too small)

C1pher, do games w Meta is closing down three VR studios as part of its metaverse cuts
@C1pher@lemmy.world avatar

Why not shut it all down?

SaharaMaleikuhm, do games w Meta is closing down three VR studios as part of its metaverse cuts

You’d think they would lose a lot of money making all those shit investments, but then America is the upside down and nothing makes sense over there.

Aielman15,
@Aielman15@lemmy.world avatar

It’s a bug in our simulation. If you’re poor and you lose a little money, you go bankrupt. But if you’re rich and you burn a fuckton of money, you can buffer overflow into richness and go back on top.

Luminous5481, do games w Meta is closing down three VR studios as part of its metaverse cuts
@Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus avatar

they took the meta out of Meta 🤣

ParlimentOfDoom, do games w Meta is closing down three VR studios as part of its metaverse cuts

Oh look, that completely predictable outcome of an obviously stupid fucking idea, that people still felt the need to argue with me about so many years ago despite it being obviously doomed for failure.

Can Facebook unsteal the name now?

BreadstickNinja,

I’ve always appreciated that they stole the name from Snow Crash. Like Zuck completely unironically named his company after a technological dystopian hellscape infected with a virus that destroys people’s brains. Honestly, I don’t think there’s a better name for Facebook.

tacosanonymous,

Did he say he named it for that? Bc I can totally believe he has no idea what Snow Crash is.

BreadstickNinja,

I mean, Neal Stephenson coined the term “metaverse” to reference a virtual world not limited to gaming but to all kinds of business and commerce and social interactions.

Zuck’s concept for the metaverse was basically the same thing. I’d be surprised if the connection wasn’t intentional.

Alcoholicorn,

completely predictable outcome of an obviously stupid fucking idea

Nah, it could have worked if Meta started by

  1. sell the hardware to businesses and schools at a loss, with a requirement users be able to take the sets home.
  2. Publish standards to allow all apps to have multiplayer and compatible full body avatars, same control scheme, movement, etc.
  3. buying up VRChat and any other apps with a large user base, refactoring them for compatibility.
  4. Develop and release free multiuser apps, from virtual office/meetings to virtual movies to home decor.

Somehow FB didn’t even try to exploit the same effects that forced everyone into Apple, MS, and FB.

To be clear, its for the best, the end result of FB giving out millions of headsets at a loss would have been making even more money selling much more precise user data, and virtual nikes and shit.

ParlimentOfDoom,

No. The entire concept is just dumb. Adding less efficient means of doing things isn’t a selling point.

echodot,

Clearly the idea isn’t done because there are other versions of the metaverse that work very well and are making money.

Alcoholicorn,

there are other versions of the metaverse that work very well and are making money.

What do you mean?

echodot,

ChatVR, RecRoom, Roblox, BattleBit, Project Loom (Which Google killed for no reason, but it wasn’t because of lack of success), and of course the OG, Second Life.

Hell you could even make the arguement for Elite Dangerous and Star Citizen if they ever finish it.

Some of those projects haven’t just been successful they’re so successful that they are starting to affect government policy.

Alcoholicorn,

How have they affected government policy, beyond Roblox probably causing some laws being passed about exploitation and protection of minors?

You have a point, I think the big thing FB failed to capitalize on is that someone who wants to use ChatVR or Roblox has to go into chatVR or roblox. FB had an opportunity to build an entire ecosystem they control, and they failed to get anyone inside of it.

I genuinely have no idea how they managed to spend that much money and not get a single decent app. Horizons literally looked like a tech demo someone slapped together for a gamejam or something.

ParlimentOfDoom,

You’re just listing random games, none of which are remotely related to the metaverse…

echodot,

Do you even know what we’re talking about? Have you ever played any of those games, they are very much in the style of what meta where trying to do.

If you took Meta’s description of what the “Metaverse” is and then looked at chatVR it’s basically the same product.

ParlimentOfDoom,

Yes I have. And they all act as independent games, not the centralized hub for all work and play “ready player one” style that meta was pitching this whole things as. Those non meta products being semi successful games doesn’t mean the overarching master plan for the metaverse was ever feasible, or even desired. Facebook didn’t have a good game to tout in the end, let alone the rest of it. Despite the billions they spent on whatever the fuck they spent it on.

It really seems YOU don’t know what we’re talking about.

Alcoholicorn,

The real selling point would be that everyone else is using it and you need to use it to interact with them, same with FB. How many people are still forced to maintain a FB account to talk to their boomer relatives?

ParlimentOfDoom,

Except no one is using it because it’s dumb. You need to get people there first before that longevity matters.

frog_brawler,

Wait, hold up, are you telling me that you knew no one would want to wear a headset to join a 90’s style AOL chat room?

FellowEnt,

~40000 people playing VRChat right now FYI.

Natanael,

Because it has legs

skooma_king, do games w Meta is closing down three VR studios as part of its metaverse cuts

So, they were still throwing tons of resources into this years after it flopped?

Zorsith,

“Flop”, to me, implies some sort of jump. “Metaverse” just kinda rolled off the edge of a cliff immediately, like a dog shitting on a frozen hill.

RightHandOfIkaros, do games w Meta is closing down three VR studios as part of its metaverse cuts

That’s probably a lot of lost jobs.

TehWorld,

But also 100% predictable. Sad, but not unexpected.

For reference, I could absolutely take a job in the next couple weeks with a $50k signing bonus where I get to shoot people in the face with impunity, but I also know that the Nuremberg Trials were a thing. Also, I’m not a horrible human.

Etterra,

I expect that everyone there has seen this coming for ages now.

UnspecificGravity, do games w Meta is closing down three VR studios as part of its metaverse cuts

Who cares about billions of dollars wasted on the last profitless scheme when there is a whole new profitless scheme to dumb money into? Line goes up!

bytesonbike,

I want cloud gamified LLM GenAI NFT Cryptocurrency Neural network IoT Web3 Metaverse!

BroBot9000, do games w Meta is closing down three VR studios as part of its metaverse cuts
@BroBot9000@lemmy.world avatar

Nothing of value was lost

MurrayL,

Fuck off, sincerely. It’s hard enough out there for game devs as it is without heartless idiots online celebrating the demise of their studios.

Also, obviously, fuck Meta for closing them.

BroBot9000,
@BroBot9000@lemmy.world avatar

I’ll celebrate every aspect of the scam that is Metaverse and the oculus rift dying off.

Like any other studio bought by a big corporation this is the inevitable outcome and I wish the best for the employees that had no say in the matter.

makingStuffForFun,
@makingStuffForFun@lemmy.ml avatar

The metaverse was always going to be a flop.

I get why devs jumped in, for that sweet Facebook cash injection.

But, gotta be realists here. It was always going to fail, and it was easy free money until that point.

superglue,

Always. Buying hardware from Facebook just feels gross to a lot of people, even those that dont even really care about privacy.

Chozo,
@Chozo@fedia.io avatar

It's not like Meta just shut down some random game studios. They chose to get into bed with Meta. This was the most predictable outcome.

bytesonbike,

My brother in arms, my heart goes to you. I know it sucks.

Never fall in love with your work, ever. Metaverse and VR has always been a neat niche piece of tech.

As a dev, make the thing for that money, and always be ready to jump ship.

echodot,

My man what are you on they sold out to Meta, they 100% knew what they were getting into, and have been well compensated for it.

JustEnoughDucks, do gaming w The LCD Steam Deck is no longer being manufactured
@JustEnoughDucks@feddit.nl avatar

They had said on release (a few years ago) that they were selling the base model LCD just a bit above “at-cost” to try to break it into the market and capture share. It worked.

Now that RAM prices have >3x’ed, they would likely be selling that model at a significant loss if they keep manufacturing it. Completely logical move.

Bad for the consumer, but RAM being sucked up by shitty never-accurate, lying plagerism machines with the goal of replacing jobs for extra corporate profit is also bad for the consumer and probably a large part of the cause behind this production stop.

Powderhorn, do gaming w The LCD Steam Deck is no longer being manufactured
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

To a certain extent, this is the equivalent of being shocked that Intel discontinued 386 production. Or that Google is no longer manufacturing Pixel 3s. It’s the nature of the industry.

DebatableRaccoon,

Yes and no. Yes in that OLED is a mostly-better technology, but no in that having more price options is almost always better for the end user.

tal,

If they’ve got their heart set on an LCD model, it looks like eBay has a number of secondhand ones.

I don’t own a Steam Deck or intend to — I have more than enough portable electric devices capable of running games that I lug around already — but if I were going to get one, it looks like the OLED model has a 25% larger battery, which would be interesting to me.

DebatableRaccoon,

I’m not 100% but I’m pretty sure the bigger battery is there to compensate for the increased power use of the OLED rather than being supplementary. Keep in mind, the OLED is also a 50% step-up in refresh rate up it likely just balances out. There’s likely a plethora of reviews out there that quickly confirm that, or prove me full of it. Either way…

any1th3r3,

All other things being equal (same game, settings and refresh rate / fps limit), the OLED and LCD models have comparable power draw.
If anything, the OLED max power draw at 15W TDP is lower, usually around 23W max versus 26/27W for the LCD iirc.

tal,

Based on the screenshot in the article, the OLED model has longer playtime; Valve says that the LCD model has “2-8 hours of gameplay” and the OLED “3-13 hours of gameplay”.

Though they do also say that this is “context-dependent”, and I’m sure that you can come up with pathological cases for each. Like, a game that has a nearly all-white screen and runs at 90 Hz is probably relative worst-case for the OLED in terms of battery life, and a game that has a dark screen and runs at a locked framerate of 60 Hz is probably relative worst-case for the LCD.

morbidcactus,

I have an LCD one, got my partner an OLED one last year. It’s noticeably better looking with a sightly larger screen and the battery life is decidedly better. I got the LCD when it was steeply discounted and don’t regret it, but the oled one is a nicer device. Thumbsticks are broader and it’s also a bit lighter.

Telorand,

I don’t care to find the source right now, but around the time when the OLED came out, the battery performance was nominally better in third-party tests. It did come down to specifics in what you played (game optimization) and how you set the power profiles, but the extra battery didn’t add much in terms of playtime—maybe an hour extra in real world use cases.

I don’t know if that’s still the case; it could be that Valve has OLED specific improvements by this point, but I suspect that it still would not be a significant enough point for someone to decide upon a model just on battery specs.

TehPers,

The main appeal of the LCD one was you could get the cheapest Steam Deck, then swap out the hard drive for a 1TB+ drive. The total cost was super cheap, far less than a Switch 2 anyway.

It sucks to see it gone, but the whole economy around tech is fucked, so I guess it’s another casualty.

Midnitte,

Yea the price jump of $400 to $550 kinda hurts.

thingsiplay,

The oled model is roughly the same price as the original Steam Deck launched. And there are so many improvements, not just screen and battery. And given that other devices get more expensive over time, and with the higher RAM prices than before, its actually a good price; relatively speaking.

termus, (edited )
@termus@beehaw.org avatar

The touch pads and touch screen are sooooo much better. They drove me a little nuts when I had my LED.

thingsiplay,

I have nothing negative to say about the Touch Pads, in fact I fall in love. But the Touch Screen is not very good, especially compared to who good touch works on smartphones in example. Didn’t know it was improved too!

Midnitte,

Huh?

Launch Price:

399: 64GB LED

$529: 256GB LED

$649: 512GB LED

Current Price:

$549.00 512GB OLED

$649.00: 1TB OLED

thingsiplay,

$649: 512GB LED vs $549.00 512GB OLED

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

My god; they’re robbing us!

Midnitte,

That completely ignores the $400 price point model though.

thingsiplay,

No, you ignore that both models are different classes. You compare 64gb model without SSD against 512gb SSD model. It’s like saying the 2tb model is more expensive.

Midnitte,

…that’s how different price points work, yes.

thingsiplay,

So it did not got more expensive then.

DebatableRaccoon,

Yeah, that’s not exactly an insubstantial increase.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

Inflation is a bitch. That’s tame compared to, say, beef.

DebatableRaccoon,

Really taking the old expression of “Apples and oranges” to the extreme there, friend.

Powderhorn,
@Powderhorn@beehaw.org avatar

I fully agree. Industry is simply not set up for a sustainable model in which price-conscious consumers can stay in the game.

Krauerking, (edited ) do gaming w An unsettling indie game about horses keeps getting banned from stores

They made an art piece that tows the line in the minefield so hard that it is causing explosions when people try to follow along…

Yeah ok, so sounds like they accomplished their goal in the art sense and just won’t get the wide audience and monetary rewards for making an art piece that hurt people.

I see nothing wrong here.

AngryMob,

Theyre getting more attention from all these articles every day than they ever had before for sure. Theyre loving this. None of their games have had much success, reviews low, player counts near 0… steamdb.info/developer/Santa+Ragione/

I dont care what obscure indie awards they won, 99% of people commenting, complaining, etc have never heard of the studio or their games, even within the indie space, the numbers show that.

Krauerking,

Yeah, honestly this is a fantastic ad campaign for them and they are in fact getting rewarded for towing that line by getting the conversation on them.

karashta, do gaming w An unsettling indie game about horses keeps getting banned from stores

My sleepy brain was expecting something about Umamusume or however you spell that horse girl game

JackbyDev,

Honse

krooklochurm,

Hornse

snooggums, do gaming w An unsettling indie game about horses keeps getting banned from stores

Banned is the wrong word.

Steam chose not to distribute it because it they understood an early build to include children in sexual situations. Further builds did not dissuade them from the original decision.

Epic, who originally was going to distribute based on the developer filling out some form chose not to after filling it out themselves and finding it had a higher rating (adult only) at the last minute.

The developer speculated it was about a specific scene, but based on both steam and epic there are fundamental concerns about the content that led to no distributing on their platforms, which is not banning, that do not align with the story the developers are presenting. It is not likely to be about one scene that was in an earlier build that was the issue for them.

The important thing is that the game is not BANNED in any way whatsoever. It is available on fewer distribution platforms, which reduces visibility, but is not banning any more than exclusive deals or limited releases are banning on other platforms.

Personally I get the impression that the developers see the content very differently than steam and epic because the developers focus on intent and steam and epic focus on what actually exists in the game.

SGforce,

ban 1 of 3 verb ˈban banned; banning; bans Synonyms of ban

transitive verb 1 : to prohibit especially by legal means ban discrimination Is smoking banned in all public buildings? also : to prohibit the use, performance, or distribution of ban a book ban a pesticide 2 : bar entry 2 sense 3c banned from the U.N.>

Wolf314159,

So, by that definition and the definition everyone else is using, the game has been banned from various marketplaces for games. Context matters. In this context ban is used EXACTLY the same way we talk about banned books at the library.

Endymion_Mallorn,
@Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org avatar

No, banned is the right word colloquially. The media is not eligible to be distributed in the monopolistic or anti-competitive web service run by Valve. It wasn't banned by a government, but it was indeed banned.

thingsiplay, do gaming w An unsettling indie game about horses keeps getting banned from stores

Oh, so its not just Steam banning the game. So shitting on Steam is not fair then: eurogamer.net/its-extremely-frustrating-and-also-…

Amnesigenic,
@Amnesigenic@lemmy.ml avatar

“Other people did thing so you can’t blame Steam for doing thing” I absolutely can though

Rose,

Steam is the one with monopoly power, and the Horses developer has said that publishers didn’t event wasn’t to publish the game if it cannot be on Steam. This argument isn’t applicable to Epic, let alone Humble, which ended up reinstating the game within the day.

Endymion_Mallorn,
@Endymion_Mallorn@kbin.melroy.org avatar

Someone needs to bring a trust-busting suit against Valve.

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