Lots of people feel this way. This thing is going to come in at a price around $650 or $700, sell pretty much exclusively to the people who need the latest high-end PlayStation regardless, and then free up a bit of inventory of second hand vanilla PS5s. It’s a way to justify keeping prices high, because they can’t afford to lower them.
I only own the game through itch.io, which I got through one of those charity bundles, and they contacted me by e-mail. Then people contacted GamingOnLinux about it, and at least right now, it seems to only be limited to itch.io.
EDIT: I actually do have the game via GOG as well, which is news to me, and I did not receive a similar notification about it.
For me and many others, it was a very divisive one, so I’m not so surprised by that. I guess Eurogamer is staffed by a lot of the game’s detractors, which is possible. Hell, if it was me making the list, #1 with a bullet would be Skullgirls, but that’s not here either.
If I have to tell every single unit where to go, who to shoot and when to hide, I’m not playing a shooter, I’m playing a strategy game in first person.
Yeah, that’s what I’m here for. Another way to look at it is this: remember how much “All Ghillied Up” wowed people when they showed it off at E3, and then again when people got to play it? I wanted to be the guy telling the player what to do, not just following a series of instructions. You’re right that when a game like Wildlands has to resort to wallhacks, there’s a lot of satisfaction that evaporates with it, and that’s why there might be a market for a game made the old-school way.
Its trajectory was that it was going to continue to burn money. Sega didn’t even launch Hyenas because they realized they’d only lose money by letting it rock. A lot of these games chasing the live service trend are spending so much money that they need to hit hard in order to turn that profit, like Avengers, Suicide Squad, Concord, the forthcoming Marathon and Fairgame$, etc. The Finals was huge at launch, lost most of its playerbase in the next couple of months (which, btw, happens for nearly every video game ever, live service or otherwise), and because it was so expensive, it’s not looking long for this world. Compared to something like Path of Exile or Warframe or The Hunt: Showdown, that launched a leaner game at the start and scaled up responsibly, they didn’t need to be the biggest thing in the world in order for it to make financial sense.
To be clear, I hate all of this shit, even when it’s a sound business strategy, but the risk involved in a project like Concord is visible from space, and the chances of it making up that cost are so clearly small when they’re not the first one of these to market.