The quality of the game isn’t why The Crew makes a good target. It’s because it’s made by Ubisoft, which is based in France. And France has some pretty strict consumer protection laws. Were this, say, EA, which is based in the US, the lawsuit would be a non-starter. In adddition to that, France is a part of EU, which means Ubisoft has to comply with EU law in addition to the aforementioned French laws. So if this goes through, they will have to fight this on at least two fronts. The Crew is also a singleplayer game with an online component, which shouldn’t be necessary for the game to function, but here we are.
So to sum up: the lawsuit is not because people are super passionate for The Crew (though some probably are), but because if you’re going to make an example of a game, your best shot is suing a company which is located in a country with good customer protection laws. The Crew just happened to fit that bill.
Nah, I didn’t forget. It’s just that Pitchford’s list of screw-ups is so extensive that if I wanted to list of each and every one, we’d be here all day.
Good. I hope that sleaze Pitchford loses a mountainload of money on this. I absolutely hate the guy, he’s a liar and a thief. And arguably, depending how you look at it, a pedophile.
As a short reminder: Borderlands was originally meant to look like this. Then, at the MTV Asia Awards 2006, an artist by the name of Ben Hibon premiered a neat-looking animated short by the name of Codehunters. You can see it here. Witchford saw this and wanted to use the artstlye for his new game. He and Ben had a back-and-forth for a while and then, radio silence.
2009 comes around and Pitchfork’s new game Borderlands is released. And to say that it looked familiar to Codehunters would be an understatement. Kitschford, being an upstanding and virtuous citizen that he is, straight-up aped Codehunter’s style. No discussions or agreements were made with Ben and as such, despite Borderlands becoming hugely profitable, Ben didn’t see a cent. And that is why I will always hope for the Borderlands IP to crash and burn. Or, at the very least, for someone to actually pay Ben Hibon for (unknowingly) creating the game’s artstyle. Anyway, rant over, thanks for coming to my TED talk.
I know, I would love to see more games using that style! Then again, I completely understand that it might be easier for some devs to use skeletal animation on voxel models instead of making a static voxel model for every frame of animation.
I loved Picross 3D 2 (or Round 2 or whatever it was called) on the 3DS! As you surmised, it’s not what I’m looking for, but I’ll try to snag it the first chance I get. Thanks!
True for most screw-ups in gaming, yes, but not this time. The studio in question, Paradox Tectonic missed three Early Access deadlines. It sounds like Tectonic bit off more than they could chew. I like bashing execs as much as the next guy, but if you miss three deadlines at any job, you’re probably getting the axe.