Shame it’s a Unity project. I’d be worried for the developer if Unity ever decides to start charging fees per install or something equally bullshit again.
That’s not what I’m saying. I was just hoping this law has teeth, because companies who are greedy for money will always try to circumvent whatever new restrictions are sent their way.
I’m thinking back to earlier policies set by China like the restrictions against showing undead/human remains in video games. World of Warcraft set up all these euphemistic workarounds to circumvent the law while realistically changing as little as possible, basically defeating the purpose of it.
China outlawed loot boxes, but then season passes and gatcha models were implemented in short order to continue exploiting consumers. If the law doesn’t account for all sorts of scenarios that can be abused, it’s just going to be a game of cat and mouse.
I haven’t had a look at the original text from China, but wondering how much they accounted for. Any of these rules could be easily circumvented if they didn’t account for multiple scenarios.
Rewards for spending money within a game for the first time
“We don’t have a reward for spending money for the first time, but everyone does have a digital coupon for $5 off of their first $10 purchase when they make an account.”
Rewards for buying consecutive microtransactions
“The players don’t get any extras when they buy more of our digital currency, but every gacha pull does make the next 5 pulls a bit cheaper.”
Rewards for daily log-ins.
“No, we’re not giving rewards for daily log-ins, but players can buy this bonus that adds a gift-giving NPC to the main town for 30 days, who will trade a small parcel of premium currency for a single gold coin once per day.”
A lot of people stick with ongoing/live service games as their main mode of play. FFXIV is the majority of my playtime, with Baldur’s Gate 3 really being the only “this year” game I’ve played to a great extent.
Also plugging the Patient Gamers crowd that I find myself aligning more strongly with over time. Waiting to pick up games when they go on sale is not only easier on the wallet, but it is also a better experience overall with way too many developers these days releasing products on a “ship now, fix later” mindset.
It had been mentioned previously. After Sony acquired Bungie, they put them to task on auditing a few other projects to figure out how to optimize the live service models of several upcoming games, with TLoU 2’s multiplayer mode being among them. After Bungie’s assessment was not overly favorable, the project was frozen (in news earlier this year) and now appears to have been officially canceled.
Hoping they can get the multiplayer mod fixed after this update. Been playing bit by bit with a friend which has been fun, but it’s a travesty we have to rely on a mod because multiplayer wasn’t supported by default like basically every Tales game to come before.
New IP comes out, people are apprehensive if they know nothing about it.
Sequel to popular IP comes out, people trust it because they know and like the earlier game, and assume a sequel will be more of that.
And if a sequel ever deviates from the proven model of its predecessors, people lose their shit and send death threats to developers.
That’s why you see so much recycled garbage come out, because trying something new usually results in more risk and lower returns. Not always, but usually.
People who are too poor for more than 1 TV to play games on but rich enough to buy another 1/2 of a PS5 to keep gaming when someone else wants to use the TV.
Edit: Also people who thought the Wii U was a good idea.
I’d say probably not. Unless the graphics were the only thing holding you back, this update does not appear to have done anything to improve the gameplay loop, menu system, or story content.
Compared to previous Bethesda games, it actually ran rather well at launch even when missing the features added by this update. But I’d say there’s quite a lot more that needs to be done to call it a good game, with graphics/performance being the lowest priority on the list.
Western game dev certainly seems to be in a bad place. I think there are probably a few factors explaining what is happening now:
1: Overhiring during the pandemic. There was a lot of money flowing into tech during the earlier days of the pandemic, and companies were hiring and expanding like crazy. The economy settled, and now companies are laying people off left and right. Not even limited to game dev, as we saw this occur for Facebook, Twitter, Google, Microsoft, and pretty much everywhere else in tech.
2: The knock-on effect. When big developers start to lay off staff in bulk, other companies may be incentivized to copy that behavior. It’s easier to justify firing a bunch of employees when everyone else is doing it, and then when you have a surplus of people in the market for a new job, you can selectively hire new talent for cheaper.
3: More attention in reporting. If it wasn’t a trend, a studio laying off 30 employees might not otherwise be newsworthy. A lot of studios actually make it an unfortunate common practice to lay off their contractors/temps right at the end of dev cycles so that they don’t get any sales bonuses. But there’s a lot of layoffs happening, so even smaller ones are generating buzz, and with a lot of workers’ rights/pro-union sentiments going around following the successful strikes in Hollywood and the automotive industry, people are starting to pay more attention when workers are being treated unfairly or being taken advantage of elsewhere.