This is just the same thing EA did with Mass Effect: Andromeda. Exec management wanted out of AAA singleplayer games, so they set the ME:A team up for failure, and then used that failure to justify the change to the shareholders.
WB wants out of large budget games, so they created a flop to justify it.
Over on Hackernews, a dev from a German emulator project that Nintendo shut down was saying that their settlement included a similarly large sum of money, but it was only actually to be paid if the other conditions of the settlement weren’t met, and that if they were, the “debt” was dropped after x years, basically insurance to ensure compliance.
People need to make sure they pull the code off of github and put it up on other sites, preferably private repos. Github has already dealt with other ‘banned’ projects by going through all forks and even re-uploads of them and cleaning house.
This sucks hard. They likely knew they could not overcome Nintendo’s infinite money for legal proceedings, and if they lost they could have been on the hook for far more than this settlement amount.
The upside is this has no legal impact, but the downside is they were the best-positioned group to take this to trial.
Now Nintendo is going to start going after the smaller guys, who definitely can’t afford to fight.
It’s been abundantly clear for a long time that Geoff is only in it for himself and his baby The Game Awards. He has never been a ‘rock-the-boat’ kinda guy, and insomuch as game companies have shown themselves to be incredibly petty and vengeful, I don’t think it’s completely unreasonable to think that some companies might boycott TGAs if called out, but 1) he’s not even calling the industry out indirectly, and 2) that’s still a choice on his part to prioritize his own pet project over the livelihoods of the people he claims TGA is there to celebrate.
Morrowind had (and still has) just as vibrant a modding community as ES4 or 5. Tamriel Rebuilt alone is still the largest modding project for any Elder Scrolls game.
All of that expertise was developed on and for Morrowind.
We don’t have the SF version of the Creation Kit yet, but all previous versions are largely similar, and FO4 modders will likely have no issue working on SF.
Yet somehow less absurd than the Colonel in MGS2 trying to stop Raiden from reaching the final boss by talking to the player and telling them to put down the controller and go outside to enjoy nature. :D
He’s always gonna be weird, but he used to be more fun about it.
I think he’s moved away from absurdism, and more towards surrealism: less existential and more fantastical or dream-like: Amelie and BTs and BBs, versus FOXHOUND or the Sons of Liberty.
Note that this isn’t really related to gaming: Capgemini, formerly Capgemini Ernst & Young, is a consulting company similar to Accenture. The proserv team they’re acquiring from Unity is focused on business services, not video game development.