Of course they will, they make too much money off people buying replacements. Since the games also got an increase in price, I expect the joy-cons bought separately will also be marked up by a non-trivial margin.
they make too much money off people buying replacements.
Didn’t they start offering free repairs at some point due to it being such a widespread issue? Or did they stop doing that at some point?
Between the damage to their reputation it would cause (knowingly releasing a very flawed product despite having already publicly apologized for it years ago) and the potential for more class-action lawsuits down the line, it seems like it’d be profoundly shortsighted for them to do this.
But maybe the profits from selling replacements outweighs all that in their eyes. I sure hope not. One would hope the profits from a considerably more expensive console and moderately more expensive games would be enough.
I don’t know for sure if it was ever a thing in the USA. A cursory search only showed mention of Europe offering that repair. I didn’t even bother checking and just went straight for the hall-effect replacement sticks when I had joy-cons that drifted, probably a bunch of other people in that same boat.
IMO, the profits from this would still come even if they offer repairs. I’d venture to guess many out-of-the-loop parents would just buy the replacements ‘cause they probably think their kid is abusing it somehow. The good ol’ “sigh 'n buy” phenomenon to keep the kiddos entertained.
Nope. I’ve sent several pairs of Joycons (at least 4 sets) to be repaired by Nintendo absolutely free of charge. Never had an issue though I remember the process being a little convoluted.
Still though, from the fact you had to send in 4 times means that replacing mine from the get go with hall-effect was much less hassle. Sounds like the new controllers will be exactly the same quality, joystick-wise, since you had such a great experience. Why change the process?
They initially also only did it in places that consumer protection laws would force them to. Some markets (at least initially) didn’t get the same benefit.
I used it a few years ago, and it was fine and i didnt have to pay anything. I wish Sony offered this because I’m on my 4th ps5 controller…
If it’s not fixed in the new one, they can screw off… it’s bad enough they got away with it, but to totally redesign everything and still say yes we’ll keep the defective parts going forward is a big no from me.
The monetization director should never say anything ever and should be beaten with a stick if he tries, but the standpoint the article is writing from is clear:
the unveiling of Assassin’s Creed Shadows, which quickly gained controversy for numerous allegations that Ubisoft was mispresenting Japanese heritage through unpopular artistic design choices.
“unpopular artistic design choice”, hm? What does that mean?
Neither the author’s writing nor the quote from the director actually name it specifically, but we can infer that it’s probably talking about Yasuke, which means that unfortunately this ghoul director is probably completely right and this author is no better than a concern troll.
He’s very clearly talking about celebrating people losing their jobs, and does so without saying anything super crazy.
Full quoteI rarely post on social media, but today I am sad. Ashamed and sad. > >The gaming industry is rough at the moment, we all know it. > >But seeing how “gamers” react on social medias, wishing ill-fate to companies and people alike is sad. (And not only towards Ubisoft) > >Even though it is always the vocal minority that express themselves on social media, I was hurt, hurt and ashamed to be a part of this community. > >What is even more revolting, is coming on Linkedin and seeing the same comments from people within the industry. > >On top of exposing yourself as a clearly non-decent human being, you are affecting thousands of employees that are already impacted by all the hate despite doing their best to deliver incredible experiences. > >How can you wish a company to fail simply because they do not cater to you or that the product does not please you is beyond me. > >We are all on the same boat, please please please, stop spreading hate, we should all uplift each other instead of bringing each other down.
Ubisoft as a company deserved to fail though. It sure sucks for the poor bastards working there but something tells me the tune would be a lot different if this was just another round of layoffs.
I don’t disagree with that. But he’s almost definitely responding to all the vitriol directed at employees losing their jobs as a result of bad decisions passed way down the chain to them, and this article is trying to make it some gotcha hit piece.
I do think being in charge of monetization at a company that does so in the way almost any AAA studio does is an inherently unethical job and will have a hard time feeling sorry for him personally, since he’s willing to do that job, but people are also being miserable assholes to everyone else who just is trying to work on a game for a stable employer. And all he’s actually saying is “maybe don’t be an asshole to people”.
He literally says “How can you wish a company to fail simply because they do not cater to you or that the product does not please you is beyond me.” I’m not saying he never mentioned employees or hate towards them, but his statement definitely comes off as purposefully misleading. Is there hate on the internet? Yes. People are sometimes hateful, but he even mentioned it being a vocal minority. To post something like this while there’s active backlash against the company and their games when he admitted to not posting much makes his intentions pretty clear. The majority of the “hate” is towards the company not the employees, but by being a concern troll he gets to lump in valid criticism of the company with a minority of people being hateful to the employees (some of which are directly responsible for the bad decisions of the company btw).
Maybe you disagree, but bad companies deserve to fail, and people responsible for harmful decisions the company makes should be held accountable. I think it’s ok for people to say that. I don’t want anyone anywhere to be treated poorly, but he seems to care more about the hate hurting their bottom line than actually hurting the people there. His statement would have read very differently otherwise.
“I understand if you are upset with decisions made by companies, including ours, but please do not direct hate towards individuals trying to do their jobs. If you take issue with the behavior of an individual, you should be able to express that while still respecting the person.” Or something like that.
People don’t hate these companies because they “don’t cater to them”. They love or loved the games, but these companies then turn around and try to screw their own fans out of every cent, nugget of personal data, and free time, that they have. There is no anger like the anger of a true fan.
To get that pissed, you had to have cared quite a lot to begin with.
The rest, are simply indifferent.
That, is why people are upset enough to experience schadenfreude when their stocks and releases fail. Because that is an event that SHOULD be proving to these companies that if they keep pushing the bullshit, they soon won’t be catering to anyone anymore. Hence it’s something that gives fans hope that they will pull their shit together and get back to doing right by their own franchises and talent.
And we are not all in the same boat. Some of us just want good games.
Even when companies like Ubi make good games, they come with a shitload of strings like “but the monetisation is unethical” or “the devs were forced to crunch” or “the company leadership did nothing about a festering company culture of criminal mysogyny”.
Simply by operating as ruthlessly as they do, these companies are slowly convincing the world they are “non-decent” institutions. Such institutions need massive restructuring, when the don’t deserve complete disassembly.
And angering your fans is a process that only goes one way. Every fan you piss off enough to make them swear to never again give you a chance, is one you probably wont ever have as a customer again.
Yeah, some will be malicious enough to cheer at the individuals getting screwed over when megacorps eat shit. But every sane person is cheering because there is now a large pool of talent looking to do something good with their skill, out from under the thumb of managers demanding every mechanic be optimized for monetization, rather than gameplay.
This person isn’t wrong to be disgusted with people who cheer at jobs being lost, but he is also MASSIVELY out of touch with how his own company is operating, and how it is coming to be viewed by the world as a result.
No matter what he meant, he sounds like he’s trying to paint the people with legitimate gripes about the way he handles the company as the harrassers when he is a huge driver of the problem.
It’s like Republicans complaining about the quality of current public schooling and blaming ‘woke’ policies when they’ve been the ones cutting school funding for decades, and they know it. It’s feigned concern.
So what you’re saying is you’re victim blaming the people the director here is expressing sympathy for?
There is a huge harassment campaign based around flagrant racism, and there are probably some racists who are more excited to attack ubisoft because it’s a shitty company in general, but that’s just icing on the cake when the main content is racism and someone who doesn’t have a horse in that race isn’t going to be involved in the same way.
It sure seems to me like you’re trying to find a way of talking around the racist harassment campaign like the author in the OOP does. Really makes you think.
I couldn’t possibly know your motivations, nor the author’s, I just find your choice to whitewash racism disreputable. Maybe you just have such a burning hatred for EA that you think that it’s expedient to run cover for racists – I think you wouldn’t be alone in that mindset, though not in good company either – but I think it’s silly to waste time on such speculation into the internal state of some random account. All I am concerned with is the result.
Coming from their director of monetization, all I hear is “waaah waaah booo waaah”
All this nickel and diming is super profitable and it shows. Just because it makes them fuckloads of money doesn’t mean we should applaud it, because it awful for the customers.
The man is mad that people don’t like how he monetizes Ubisoft games and game mechanics. He is upset at the messages he gets when he upsets a game to inject a micro transaction. He is part of the wave of business professionals that don’t see game players as people - we are just cash waiting to be harvested from idle wallets. This is what quid-pro-quo looks like; he is seeing what we look like to him and he doesn’t like it. He wants to be a person with a name and friends and credibility that allows mistakes to be made in good faith. We want to have fun, sometimes with friends and other times alone, in a game world where we can be a person with a name, friends, and have the ability to explore. We both want the same thing.
So why is he treating people like cattle instead of people who are trying to have fun with the system they have been given? Fuck this narcissistic piece of executive hypocrisy. He doesn’t deserve peace until he exits the industry or finds a way to be actually useful.
I’ve said it before, but until Epic adds some way to provide feedback to others, I won’t spend any money on it. Being able to read if a game is buggy, runs on my hardware, etc, is too essential to the experience to not have.
Epic wants to be the pro-developer storefront, but since that seems to involve being anti-consumer, I as the consumer have no interest.
Hell EA is doing good now in some ways like open sourcing the command and conquer games. Maybe they got rid of their Shit executives to Ubisoft and Nintendo.
I recently broke a decade plus boycott of EA products to purchase Split Fiction for full price. My friend asked me to play It Takes Two with him for free through friend pass and I was so impressed by it that I wanted to support the devs. Besides, the whole point of the boycott was to “vote with my wallet” and I want them to know that I want more games with that kind of quality made by teams that are (seemingly) happy to be doing what they do.
I’m far from being a business savvy person, but honestly, from business perspective what exactly is Epic offering that sets them apart from other competitors? Even if Epic fixed their launcher issues, how would they be different to Steam that is already well established for 20 years? That’s why I like GOG as Steam’s competitor. GOG focuses on selling DRM-free and retro games. If a game also happens to be available in GOG, I would prefer to buy it from there than Steam. Moreover, GOG keep old games well maintained and updated to run in modern computers; something that Steam is very poor at doing. What does Epic even do differently, apart from doing exclusives which any companies could do?
It’s slightly cheaper for developers to put their games on there. But that sucks as a business model, because game prices aren’t any lower so for the end user it doesn’t matter. And on features, Epic just loses every matchup against Steam.
Specifically, if they’re also wanting to be on Steam (the largest marketplace by far, so you need to be there) your game can’t be cheaper anywhere else. It’s a little fucked up that Steam can wield their power like that, but they essentially have a monopoly so they can.
Sure, but even Epic exclusives aren’t any cheaper than the games on Steam. These savings directly go to the game developer/publisher, not the consumer. This means there’s no incentive for the consumer to switch to Epic other than exclusive games, which is a pretty poor reason to switch away from a well-established platform.
That’s only true if you’re selling steam keys. Eg you are using Valve’s infrastructure. And they don’t even require the 30% cut in this case. If you sold the game using another infrastructure then you can price it how you want.
Hmm… that’s fair but it seems that Epic even forgot to think of end users-- the gamers-- in that regard before trying to compete with Steam. They prioritised devs first over the actually most important stakeholder.
To be honest, I totally forgot about Epic until articles are popping recently that it’s not going well even after all these years.
Also, what’s wrong about discussing this? Epic is a good example of a business venture not doing well for failing to do one of the most basic business philosophy: set yourself apart from the competitors.
As the customer, which in a practical sense is the only perspective that matters to me day-to-day, Epic offers me nothing close to what Steam or GOG can give me. Hell, even EA’s and Ubisofts launchers were more useful since they at least had exclusives. All Epic has is Fortnite and for someone like myself that doesn’t care for that kind of game, there is no reason to even consider their platform for anything.
And given my recent switch away from Windows and to Linux full time on my gaming PC to put a further wedge between me and the things Microsoft has been doing with Windows that I don’t like that is a good thing given Epics history of embracing things that will never work as smoothly on Linux as Steam games do with Proton or GOG’s native Linux options do.
I recently recommended the game to my wife and since then she tells me every day what her progress is and what she hates about the game and how tedious it is and how bad and inconsistent the controls are. And then she’s off to play more.
having played maybe 500 hours with controller only, maybe I don’t know what I’m missing, but the controls don’t seem that bad. Only thing which comes to mind as terrible is the slingshot, i never even try to use that.
Recently? Or early on? The slingshot controls got an accuracy rework and also the option to be aim direction instead of pullback direction if the player prefers.
I think most of the control issues for new players unfamiliar with the genre is how precise you need to be to water crops and stuff. Those of us that have been playing farm sims(not farming simulations, totally different beast once you write both words in full like that, lol) for decades already probably don’t even remember a time when it was tough to manually align our tools to the grid. For a lot of people, stardew is their first one, and for a decent subset of them, it’s not just their first farming sim, but their first video game on a controller.
There have also been grid aligning innovations in other farming sims for onboarding new players. Some games have a modifier key you can hold down that basically turn the analog into digital movement while holding it. Your character will move exactly one grid space at a time and keep facing the same direction. That sort of thing can help, but honestly, probably better to just make the game fun enough that people are willing to keep playing while they are bad at it, to eventually get good at it. Not every farm sim can accomplish that.
The issue I had with slingshot was in whatever version released for the switch at release, maybe in 1.3? Tbh I have not tried with the slingshot in newer versions
Now that you mention it, I remember that I would play it with mouse + controller for some reason (back at 1.0), not sure why I picked that as the best way to play but there was probably something bad about using the keyboard and also something bad about not using a mouse.
The slow movement is what kept me from playing it forever. I know there’s mods that improve it, but I wish the base speed would be higher.
Back at 1.0 launch it also had a bug where walking diagonally was even slower, so that may have affected my judgment as well - it was fixed after a week or so.
There are plenty of both permanent and temporary speed increases, with the permanent ones you are almost as fast as the horse. And with temporary ones you can be faster than it. No need for mods, just base game. And these are things you easily earn part way through the first year.
I don’t recall there being permanent move speed increases at all, but it has been some time since I played. I think there second island was relatively new when I last plagued. Is that something that was added, or something I missed when I played before?
Not sure specifically when they were added, but they are there now. Play the game once every 3 years or so, hehe. Last playthrough we did a 6 player group game. Basically played it like it was dnd sessions. That playthrough had the move speed stuff. Comes from a book seller. So if you know when that book seller was added, it would be then probably.
Existing owners can upgrade to the Switch 2 version for $10, gaining better framerates, higher resolutions, and HDR support.
I didn’t realize they had this option. As far as legal routes go, that’s not terrible (assuming there’s no weird downside, like no longer being able to play the original on the switch 1). Free would be better, of course, but $10 certainly beats paying $90 just to play the improved version on switch 2.
The upgrade pack is also free for Expansion Pack tier switch online subscribers from what I've heard at least for botw/totk. So if youre already on one of those for N64/GBA/Genesis/GameCube then it's no extra cost
It’s basically the PS4 to PS5 $10 upgrade thing. The difference is that Nintendo isn’t dropping the price of their 8 year old game, unlike what the rest of the industry does. So it’s $60 BotW + $20 DLC + $10 Switch 2 upgrade = $90. Absolutely ridiculous.
I think Project Tamriel Rebuilt and Project Tamriel are the ones.
I’ve not played them, watched a stream play one of them. The tippy part is they go off the OG lore so Cyrodiil is a more tropical/Mediterranean climate which is fun.
I’ve used Tamriel Rebuilt a while back and it was pretty fucking cool. There was only one small patch of the map that wasn’t completed when I played it, and none of it was populated. But they had the landmasses and cities all built and decorated. If they haven’t gotten NPCs populating places by now, I have no idea what they’ve been doing this whole time (it’s been several years now since I checked it out).
The fully lit portions of this map have been fully NPCd and quested. You might have enabled the preview landmass, which includes (or included, not sure if they still distribute it) a bunch of mostly mapped exteriors with partial interiors and typically no NPCs.
The tippy part is they go off the OG lore so Cyrodiil is a more tropical/Mediterranean climate which is fun.
Fucking Thalmor denying the power of Talos of Atmora.
Seriously though, the canon explanation for Cyrodiil being the way it is now as opposed to original lore is that when Talos achieved CHIM he changed it, because that’s a thing you can do with the secret syllable of royalty. All part of the path to mantling Shor/Lorkhan via one of the Walking Ways and forging an empire.
I’ve joked in other places in the past that CHIM stands for “Character Has Installed Mods” because what it allows is roughly on par with the character opening the modding tools and changing what they want to change.
The Epic v Google lawsuit is bringing to light a lot of interesting tidbits of info, so I think it's just that. It's an interesting tidbit, but not really relevant to much outside the trial. That said, I do like seeing this kind of info shared, as it gives us a peek behind the curtain of these megacorps' operations.
I could totally be misremembering, but I seem to recall the Ezio trilogy being praised for accurate cities. So not the original originals, but probably some of the best.
Not all of it though. I remember Blue from Overly Sarcastic Productions going on a tangent about how he went over to florence (or venice) and looking for a place that didn’t exist. Ubi had made it up completely.
He hasn’t had a great streak in completing progress in haunted chocolatier because he keeps getting pulled back into stardew valley ports and making new content for stardew valley. If he and his collaborators soon have to support both stardew valley and haunted chocolatier across multiple platforms, I don’t expect development on a new stardew valley game to progress quickly at all. I would expect half life 3 like timelines.
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