It’s published by Epic (Control was published by 505). Unless Epic significantly compromises on their insistence of pushing the Epic store, it wont happen.
Remedy games have been “underperforming” despite rave reviews for a while. Yet they’ve been chugging along doing what they think is neat, instead of caving into the current money-making models.
And in this case, the Epic partnership definitely hurt the game. And they know it did. Before AW2, it was microsoft putting the breaks of Quantum Break despite it being great.
Control was the first time since Max Payne I felt they truly achieved the success that their level of quality deserves (and even then it was a timed epic exclusive).
Now Remedy has set themselves up to finally self-publish the follow-up to Control. I can’t wait.
Remedy has fans, but something always seems to get in the way.
Wait until you find out about the child labour stuff.
There may not be sweatshops in the developed world, but you can bet your ass a lot of roblox “dev studios” are really just one or two adults, exploiting a bunch of kids for free labour via discord.
Oh, and then there’s the fully integrated speculative market for assets and cosmetics, where ten-year-olds gain and lose thousands of real dollars in robux.
The ecosystem around Roblox is a complete shitshow that no sane parent should allow a kid anywhere near.
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.
2048 is so good. I love the teams each having three craft types. The tracks are really fun, with both wide sections where you can go flat out without a care, and narrow parts where you have to really thread the needle and use the airbrakes with total precision.