

There is a chance but what is he convincing them of? That they should take a non-existent exclusivity deal with Steam? They already have the data that exclusivity with Epic does not work and Steam doesn’t do exclusivity deals.
There is a chance but what is he convincing them of? That they should take a non-existent exclusivity deal with Steam? They already have the data that exclusivity with Epic does not work and Steam doesn’t do exclusivity deals.
That’s what I mean by artificial exclusivity. There are games where the developer or publisher decided it’s the only platform they will release on but that kind of “exclusivity” is not at all the same as Epic paying developers or publishers to not release on Steam. Valve/Steam doesn’t prevent those games being released elsewhere, the developers/publishers themselves don’t want to.
I could understand smaller (I’m talking literal solo devs or studios with less than 10 people) choosing to be exclusively on Steam. Supporting other platforms can have huge overhead costs for them. But for a studio the size of Gearbox there’s no benefit to being exclusively on Steam. They have enough support staff to manage multiple stores. There maybe be suits wondering if it’s worth being exclusively on Epic but there are no suits sitting around wondering whether to be exclusively on Steam or not, the answer is obviously not.
Why are people taking this even remotely seriously? This is Pitchford doing marketing for BL4. BL3 already showed people don’t want Epic exclusivity and there’s no such thing as Steam exclusivity. They can choose to release exclusively on Steam but that’s just artificial exclusivity because nothing about Steam prevents them from releasing on Epic or GOG.
It’s a pointless poll made by Pitchford either to keep BL4 in the media cycle or to just shit stir, possibly both.
Yeah, I had plenty of time and money for gaming and other hobbies before having little mischievous halflings. Now at least two thirds of my free time goes into them instead of me. Would I love more me time, absolutely. But I also love them and I feel incredibly privileged to have the time that I can spend on them and I can’t fathom not wanting to spend time with them.
But this is more about letting potential future parents know that children are a fucking huge commitment and you better have your own life sorted because you won’t have time to fix your shit later. Kids are post-campaign content. You finish your main story and then if you’re looking for some challenging content, you get kids. Don’t get kids during your main story because then they become your main story.
There are two point I’m going to make. First is that I think it’s something the developer shouldn’t have to decide in the first place. They wanted to make a game with gruesome scenes and that’s the game they made. The only reason they’re making it less gruesome is because they want their game to reach a wider audience which is why they’re porting to console but they can’t release their game on console because consoles are a locked down platform and the platform owners are exerting power they shouldn’t have to force the developers to compromise on their vision. It’s absolute bullshit that Sony/MS get a say in how a game should be made.
The second point is that the developers did have to decide this, so it should be obvious why consumers are annoyed. They bought the product when it had one vision, and now the vision they were presented with is getting altered for reasons not at all related to their experience of the game and they’re not even given an option to retain the previous vision. Imagine if your favorite game was changed for some completely bullshit reason? Would you not get pissed?
Let me give a different perspective. The developers had an original vision of brutality and gore. The developers wanted to expand their game to different platforms. The platform holders said “Compromise on your vision and you can put the game on our platform”.
Do you think that’s okay?
That’s like saying you boycot Nestle but won’t stop using any of their subsidiary products unless you accidentally find out that a brand not named Nestle is actually owned by Nestle.
You had a bridge to sell to anyone with the naivete to believe it’s the only place AI was used. What about your naivity of believing that other games are not using AI, unless of course you stumble on the information about AI usage? Seems hypocritical to criticize others for giving the benefit of doubt while giving the benefit of doubt to all other developers simply because you don’t know any better?
Got it, you’re fine with AI usage as long as you don’t know about it.
So do you just not play video games at all? Because the way you’ve just presented yourself you’re not against using AI in games, you’re against any use of AI.
How can you be sure that in any game AI wasn’t used to generate some sort of an internal document or asset that would never be in the final product but was integral to the creation of the final product? Clearly you don’t write every dev and ask if they use AI in any capacity, so what do you do?
My point is that I think you’re taking a stance where you’re unwilling to compromise on the use of AI, but only if you’re aware that AI was used.
I don’t think it eats away the faith. Capcom fixes the performance and endgame before the next release, everyone remembers only the final product. Capcom releases a poorly optimized game with bad endgame. It’s a massive hit. Eventually people start complaining. Capcom fixes the game and the cycle continues.
People could’ve learned from the launch of World but people remember only the final update and final update World is great.
Yeah, there’s a certain risk for rolling with your own engine, but if you start the project with the idea of having a custom engine you probably know what you’re doing and have taken into account the complexities of having a custom engine. IMO if you’re a group of small experienced devs having a custom engine is not really a show stopper, if you’re a junior the project probably isn’t even getting off the ground.
But changing the engine mid-project is almost always a huge decision and more often than not a killing blow for most projects. Depending on the stage of the project you’re guaranteeing adding a year or two to your development. It’s better to accept the limitations of the existing engine and compromise on the vision rather than swap engines in hopes of realizing the vision that got refined during development.
Larian probably wouldn’t have turned it down if Hasbro hadn’t fired pretty much everyone who worked with Larian on BG3. Sven Vincke (CEO of Larian) seems like the kind of guy who would take such an action personally, which is probably why he doesn’t want to work with Hasbro again and rightfully so, fuck Hasbro.
He probably has a handful of investors who trust him, but overall it’s his company and he can do what he wants.
to somewhat defend Bungie, you can’t own an art style. The person whose work Bungie ripped off has a case for the specific assets that are clearly her (I think the artist was a woman?) work. However assets that are inspired by her work but aren’t exactly her work is completely fair.
But that actually makes Bungies situation even worse because they don’t even know how many artists they might’ve ripped off. Could be just this one, could be five, could be a dozen. They don’t know. IMO serves them right because they clearly don’t learn from their mistakes.
I’m going to throw a shout out to Environmental Station Alpha because I think it’s an excellent game that flew under the radar of a lot of people when it launched. It makes some bold decisions with the story that some people might not enjoy but the gameplay is solid and the backtracking problem (which most metroidvanias have) is solved by having the level get harder as you progress.
It’s cheap, it’s not at all hardware demanding and it’s very heavily inspired by Metroid. If you enjoy metroidvanias and you haven’t played Environmental Station Alpha you definitely should.
And a secret shoutout to Noita. The dev of Environmental Station Alpha worked on Noita. It’s been pushed into the roguelite category but I would argue it’s the worlds first open world(s) roguelite metroidvania. If that sounds stupid but interesting, prepare to suffer because Noita is not at all easy and that’s deliberate because the central theme of Noita is the pursuit of knowledge (the more you know about Noita the easier it gets).
I’ve had a similar response.I was kinda ready to accept the new price but then they started pushing an even higher price so I got an opposite reaction where stars would have to align for me to care about any game over 60 and even 60 is pushing my willingness to pay.
Them: “we don’t set the price”.
You: “I’ll buy it if you set a lower price”.
So people don’t even read the headlines anymore?
I was coming here to mention Dark Souls. It’s an excellent example of how to make a tutorial not feel like a tutorial. Either you take the time to understand what the game is telling you or not, up to you. Don’t care about going through the entire tutorial area? Just beat the boss and start the real adventure.
Same. I was willing to keep Outer Worlds 2 on my radar because I love Obsidian and they’ve earned my attention even though I didn’t particularly enjoy Outer Worlds 1, but at that price point the game has dropped off my radar. Unless it’s getting New Vegas level praise post launch I probably won’t be paying any more attention to this game.
When Stop killing games initiative started one people wanted Pirate Software to support and promote the initiative so others would be more aware of the initiative. Instead of doing that Pirate Software decided to take a massive shit on the initiative essentially making the argument that it would actually end up killing games. Which would be somewhat acceptable position to take, if he hadn’t completely missed the point of the initiative, hadn’t made things never said in the initiative and hadn’t told everyone to eat his ass when people said he doesn’t understand the initiative. That was about 10 months ago when he was still somewhat well regarded in the gaming sphere.
But in the last 10 months he’s been surrounded by controversies that have slowly changed the public perception of him. I won’t get into all those controversies because there are just too many to explain.
So about 2 weeks ago Ross (the person spearheading the Stop killing games initiative) made a video where he decided to more or less vent his frustrations with Pirate Software because he effectively derailed the initiative. That got covered by MoistCritical who sided with Ross and said Pirate Software is talking out of his ass. Any normal person would’ve gone “Maybe I am wrong when everyone keeps telling me I’m wrong?” But Pirate Software literally said he is doubling down on his statements and he has been adamant that his interpretation of the initiative is correct, everyone else is wrong and he has done nothing wrong. Because he’s a narcissistic asshole he has fueled the drama, turned himself into the villain and ended up being the catalyst to having the initiative signed.