I agree it shouldn’t be the ESA’s responsibility. However as it says in the article:
In 2023, the Video Game History Foundation revealed 87 percent of games released pre-2010 were currently not preserved in any capacity. Attempts previously made by the Library of Congress were halted by the ESA, which said it’d rely on publishers to take care of those efforts themselves.
So the ESA have made themselves the problem by halting such attempts
Not sure what you are referring to. The refund policy on Steam is the same for any games, early access or not. The game’s version number or finished state makes no difference.
Maybe you are thinking of the pre-purchase situation, where you can refund up to 14 days after the game’s release, instead of the date of purchase.
Honestly, I always felt the $60 price tag for games (now $70+ for AAA titles!) was way too much, so I usually wait about a year or more, then buy it on sale.
So I get to sit back and watch the shitshow when people pre-order games and then get screwed when the game is garbage.
Dragon’s Dogma II was super hyped up recently, and even I got the free character customization demo to pre-build a character. Then it announced day-one microtransactions the day before release and pissed off the gaming community.
I get your point but you’ve got it backwards imo. Detailed reviews come out whenever, especially if it’s a single guy doing all the work. Pre-release reviews are, at best, rushed (very few publishers will give review keys more than two weeks before release, and you usually have several releases to cover each week), and at worse, more or less dictated by the publisher (lest your publication get blacklisted and you never get a pre release key from that publisher ever again).
The worst thing is that everyone seems to think that it IS where it should have been at release! Which I will admit that it is finally the polished bug-free game that any game should be at release. But anyone like me who was watching every last promo video they did teasing the game pre-release, knows it still isn’t and never will be the game they promised it would be.
Their insistence on releasing on previous gen hardware is surely as much to blame as the rush to get it out for that sweet sweet pandemic money. Still looking back it’s hard to say if it ever was going to live up to what they were teasing it would be.
Feels like forever since I heard Ken Levine ramble on about narrative LEGOs and game design. It's an interesting concept and hopefully the game lives up to expectations. I'm still cautious that it might all end up being pre-release hype, but he certainly seems passionate about the idea and I'm certainly curious to see what narrative LEGOs actually looks like in execution.
The titular arguments about game leaks: that would crush our sales as it shows the version of our product not on par with our quality standards and our vision. When we see how games from Ubi\EA\Beth\etc got released this raw and untested, this argument gets rekt. Digital releases and updates, forever-beta products, raw indies and many other things enabled AAA studios to do the same and get no repercussions, but they’d still bitch if their game is leaked earlier even if they ship undercooked product.
It’s rational to assume if you play leaked pre-release, you have a deficient product on your own terms. Like Diablo 2 remaster that still has LAN play before this P2P solution was killed. It’s on gamers to be that stupid to review-bomb games based on alpha, beta versions. It’s fair if it’s a contemporary comment, but not a final judgement with a youtube title GAMENAME FUCKING FLOPS - MY FIRST UGLY MOMENTS WITH THE GAMENAME. Clickbaity, unfair and tastes like piss.
You expand this conversation to games-as-a-service mode, that is a very different beast. I like seasons and regular updates to a polished games. I dislike games who defacto employed first players as beta-testers who paid money for that.
And I like leaks, not for me being a pirate, but for seeing what’s under the hood and how things changed for my favorite titles like Stalker, the game that has a very weird development cycle and had many traces of feautures devs either couldn’t realise or didn’t have time to do right.
Well, I mean, I would have launched it first (as an AAA game), but I’m no game developer. 🤷 And neither are they, from the looks of it. Good at perpetually raking in money for himself and his family, though!
What have you all been playing! Still on my usual binding of Isaac and helldivers grind, but I’m also getting back into elden ring to get ready for the dlc coming later this year! 🤩
I'm back into Final Fantasy VII, which I've never finished before. I've been playing this game off and on over the past several years, and boy is that a rough way to play it. It's very difficult to remember what I was supposed to be doing next, because that game often gives you one line of dialogue about where to go and then has no in-game reminder of it. As a result, I've got a walkthrough handy to reference whenever I'm lost. I just got to the bottom of the mountain after the snowboarding sequence, and those parts of the game where you're trying to navigate the pre-rendered backgrounds are where you can feel its age the most. I'm hoping to finish this one up in the next month or so, ahead of the possible Rebirth PC port that we might be lucky enough to get this year.
I'm replaying Horizon: Zero Dawn on PC ahead of the Forbidden West release as a refresher on the story, though I'm not going to play the sequel on day 1. They made me wait several years for it already. They can keep waiting for my money until it gets a sale down to about $40, maybe this summer. I still really enjoy the combat in that game, especially on higher difficulties, but this is a game that still feels like I'd enjoy it more if I could select missions from a menu rather than going through the open world trappings. It may have made these games cheaper to develop at the same time. Oh well.
I finished The Outer Worlds and its DLC. I highly recommend it. I feel like this game gets overlooked often enough. Did you wish Starfield was better? Play The Outer Worlds. Did you want another Fallout: New Vegas? Play The Outer Worlds.
Now that I've finished The Outer Worlds, another Obsidian game, I'm back to playing some Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire. I only progressed one quest a little bit this past week, but I want to keep pushing forward and finish this game before Avowed comes out.
Other than the above, still more Skullgirls grind. My pushblock guard cancel skills have atrophied, and I need to run some drills. Also, Peacock zoning, even when I know the answers, is tough to deal with.
Ripout is an online Co-Op horror FPS that will have players fight their way through procedurally generated derelict ships filled with mutants capable of reconfiguring their alien bodies. Survive with your trusty Pet Gun companion, collect loot, and customize your character to fit your playstyle....
Also it’s not a “remake” in the traditional sense, the first game in this series was just called that.
Yes, I know, I was just being snarky without spoilers. The whole “remake but not” thing is kind of a big deal meta plot point the fanbase is still arguing about.
Also, we both know that SqEnix is going to release an ultimate bundle of the games when the final part releases. They’re already giving digital copies of Remake+Integrade to people for free if they pre-ordered Rebirth, which was kind of a bitter pill for the fans who paid for Remake at PS5 game prices.
I mean, gaming exploded over the pandemic. Anyone who thought that was going to become some kind of norm was an idiot. Have we shrunk below pre-pandemic levels? Or is this just idiots who thought they could keep skimming free oil off the surface once the leak was fixed?
Also, I disagree with the idea that AAA games are performing poorly. Bad ideas in AAA games and chasing “easy money” in AAA is performing poorly. Helldivers 2 seems to be doing well, whereas Suicide Squad isn’t. Baldir’s Gate 3 killed it while Starfield kind of flopped. Final Fantasy 16 didn’t meet expectations, but we know Square Enix regularly sets expectations too high anyway.
Are people tired of the same Call of Duty games over and over? Are people full up on live service games and looter shooters? Yes and yes. But are people crazy excited for the new Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth? From the communities I’m in, very much yes. Did Alan Wake 2 release and sell faster than any other game from that studio? Pretty sure I saw that headline recently, yeah.
So when Diablo 4 dies on impact, was that the fault of the gaming landscape? Or was it because Blizzard execs pushed the team to maximize systems and balance they thought would bring in easy money but actually ended up alienating their core audience and reviewers?
I’ve seen this before when working in mobile. Execs want to chase the whales so badly that they don’t allow designers and devs to make the game actually fun to play. Doesn’t matter how “well” you monetize your shitty game if nobody wants to stick around to play it.
From what I hear, BG3 is great. The main complaint that I’ve heard about it is that Act 3 (I guess that act that wasn’t part of the pre release) is a bit janky. Are any of the patches so far (or any discussed future patches) fixing things in this area? Or is it just not as much of a problem as people have said?
Ah, you’re thinking about this too pragmatically. All they need to do is release it two weeks earlier on switch and add a Luigi donkey skin(he doesn’t even need to be playable). Do that, and people will pre-order everything, apparently. Gaming consumers are dumb.
Steam Next Fest is a week-long celebration featuring hundreds of FREE playable demos as well as developer livestreams and chats. Players try out upcoming games on Steam pre-release, developers gather feedback and build an audience ahead of their Steam launch, everyone wins!
Predicting the “most anticipated” games can be tricky, as everyone has their tastes and preferences. However, based on industry buzz, pre-orders, and general excitement, here are some of the titles garnering major attention for future release:...
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.
Thier last game (released over three years ago) is still in Early Access and they already got thier pay day. This is why I hate modern gaming. Gamers can’t help but pre-maturely ejaculate over some new thing, so devs are able to keep shoveling eternal Early Access games. I vote with my wallet and don’t buy EA games, but my game group still does. I miss out on a lot of gaming sessions because of it.
Personally I think gaming companies should not be allowed to charge for Early Access and basically just go back to free betas for testing. Or if they do have an Early Access, they should be forced to have a published release date or automatic refund if they miss. That will prevent devs from releasing half baked content and coasting on it for years.
They can still provide content and fixes via standard updates.
Cities Skylines 2: "Beach properties assets are all gone and my city is screwed. Thanks a lot." (forum.paradoxplaza.com) angielski
It doesn’t stop. It just never stops.
ESA says members won’t support any plan for libraries to preserve games online (www.gamedeveloper.com)
No Rest For The Wicked's first hotfix addresses durability and repair cost complaints (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
The Way Forward, an update from the team behind Cities: Skylines (forum.paradoxplaza.com) angielski
TL;DR:...
Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs Review by MandaloreGaming (www.youtube.com) angielski
CD Projekt CFO does "not see a place for microtransactions in single-player games" (www.eurogamer.net) angielski
Judas First Details: How Ken Levine Is Building on BioShock With 'Narrative LEGOs' (www.ign.com) angielski
Rise of the Ronin | Review Thread angielski
Game Information...
Denuvo Unveils New Tech That Will Make It Easier for Devs to Track Down Leakers (www.ign.com) angielski
Star Citizen's first-person shooting is getting backpack-reloading, dynamic crosshairs, procedural recoil, and other improvements to 'bring the FPS combat to AAA standard' (www.pcgamer.com) angielski
Well, I mean, I would have launched it first (as an AAA game), but I’m no game developer. 🤷 And neither are they, from the looks of it. Good at perpetually raking in money for himself and his family, though!
Weekly “What are you playing” Thread || Week of March 10th
What have you all been playing! Still on my usual binding of Isaac and helldivers grind, but I’m also getting back into elden ring to get ready for the dlc coming later this year! 🤩
RIPOUT Free Download PC Game pre-installed in direct link. RIPOUT was released on Oct 24, 2023 (unlocked99.com) angielski
Ripout is an online Co-Op horror FPS that will have players fight their way through procedurally generated derelict ships filled with mutants capable of reconfiguring their alien bodies. Survive with your trusty Pet Gun companion, collect loot, and customize your character to fit your playstyle....
TEKKEN 8 – Ultimate Edition Free Download PC Game pre-installed in direct link. TEKKEN 8 – Ultimate Edition was released on Jan 25, 2024 (unlocked99.com) angielski
GET READY FOR THE NEXT CHAPTER IN THE LEGENDARY FIGHTING GAME FRANCHISE, TEKKEN 8....
What's your love/hate game? (lemmy.zip) angielski
Mine would have to be League or Warframe tbh.
Nintendo just picked a fight with open-source project Yuzu - The Code Report (www.youtube.com) angielski
Didn’t know about this case history with Nintendo, nor the name for the common exploit used:...
Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance Pre-Orders Now Live, 'Extended Cut' Trailer Released | MMORPG.com (www.mmorpg.com) angielski
Pre-orders are now live for Shin Megami Tensei V: Vengeance, the definitive edition of SMT V. Check out the extended cut of the announcement trailer.
Game over? Industry suffers slowdown after decades-long winning streak (www.ft.com) angielski
almost certain this is behind a paywall and usually FT is one you can’t get around, so some choice excerpts:...
Baldur's Gate 3 - Patch #6 Now Live! (baldursgate3.game) angielski
Helldivers II Review Thread angielski
Game Information...
Steam Next Fest February 2024 is live (store.steampowered.com) angielski
Steam Next Fest is a week-long celebration featuring hundreds of FREE playable demos as well as developer livestreams and chats. Players try out upcoming games on Steam pre-release, developers gather feedback and build an audience ahead of their Steam launch, everyone wins!
Most Anticipated Gaming Releases in the Future angielski
Predicting the “most anticipated” games can be tricky, as everyone has their tastes and preferences. However, based on industry buzz, pre-orders, and general excitement, here are some of the titles garnering major attention for future release:...
The Day Before studio say the game's downfall was thanks to "a hate campaign" (www.rockpapershotgun.com) angielski
Palworld Has Huge Weekend, Sells 5 Million and Overtakes Cyberpunk 2077 in Steam’s Most-Played Games List - IGN (www.ign.com) angielski