I play and enjoy most genres at this point, but my favorite has to be Skullgirls. There are 18 characters and so many ways to combine them that you can still come up with new strategies in this game over a decade after its release.
An assumption that each employee costs them about $150k/year in salary/office space/benefits. There are lots of ways it can be more complicated than that, including the fact that they’re in Sweden, but last I heard, $150k/year/developer was about what you’d expect to pay in the US, if a company was interested in replicating this kind of development in a place where labor costs are probably highest.
From the same interview, they said they scaled up from a team of about 65 for It Takes Two to a team of about 80 for Split Fiction, which they made in four years. Back of the napkin math means that Split Fiction was made for about $50M. I find game budgets to be really interesting to track lately, because so many have become so reckless with them that it’s great to see what can be made if you scope down.
I don’t understand. So he had a team of over 100 people who worked on a Sony deal for like 3 years before it was shut down. Now he’s got a new studio and a new Sony deal? Has no one learned their lessons here?
I tried the demo, and I’ve got to say: I was hoping for more of an evolution to the stealth mechanics. This seems to be sticking very closely to what Monaco 1 was.
That’s just not true. They’re seeking profit by attempting to be the best place to spend your money. Epic would love for Valve to charge users monthly for Steam, but they don’t, because it would just drive people away from Steam. They stand to make more money by doing what they’re doing. This is not a public versus private thing. Arguably the negative that comes along with public companies is that there are more short term incentives at the expense of long term profit, but they’re both doing what they do for profit.
Striving for profit is a quality tied to being a company, not being a publicly traded company. Everything they do is in pursuit of making more money. Often times, that means making the best store out there so that we shop with them instead of their competitors, which is how it’s supposed to work.
I was specifically refuting, “They’re the only ones safeguarding the industry,” and how they got to their refund policies matters when it comes to that statement. I was not here to throw a gauntlet down, insult Steam’s honor, and challenge anyone to a duel. I prefer to shop on GOG these days, when possible, but my Steam profile says I have 991 games in my account, and I bought most of those. Valve and Steam have done lasting, measurable good to this industry and medium, but that doesn’t mean they’re safeguarding it or that it’s all good news. As to the thing about ads, I don’t think that model would actually work with the PC gaming audience, and I think Valve prohibiting it is just so that their audience still finds quality products on Steam and spends more money. Valve’s best behaviors and worst behaviors are motivated by profit.
Their refund policies only came about because different governments sued them. Check out either coffeezilla or People Make Games on CS:GO loot boxes, the latter of which has interviews with plenty of the victims of this system that Valve allows to continue because it’s so lucrative for them.
Valve says the data proves “Steam isn’t just a storefront—it provides social community, game discoverability, interactive events, and a deep set of game-enhancing features to attract and retain players who will be checking out new games in the future.”
I think it proves that Steam is the largest storefront on PC and that PC is growing and replacing other platforms.
I don’t think they want to sell the company. I think the family that owns the majority of it is doing everything possible to stay in control of the company called Ubisoft, regardless of how many of their IPs they still have left when the dust settles.