ampersandrew

This deal happened because Embracer is shedding debt, and this is how you shed it. They just listed their debt a few months ago as 2.12B, so this and Gearbox will go a long way toward getting it down to a level they can actually afford. Meanwhile, it’s very hard to track what they still own, but one of those things is Tomb Raider. They’ll also have tons and tons of smaller bets. Alone in the Dark, Titan Quest II, and Gothic look to still be under their control, for instance.

A few dozen hours of content over the course of a month; I don’t think it’s strange that the player count dropped substantially. Live service games just broke how people think about video games, and this isn’t a live service.

So what? Baldur’s Gate 3’s player base is about a tenth of what it used to be too. So is Elden Ring.

Volition surprised me by staying open as long as it did. It hadn’t made a hit since Saints Row IV, and it had several high profile flops since then. I would have loved for Free Radical to finish making a type of FPS that doesn’t get made anymore, but apparently they spent two years of that studio’s life chasing Fortnite.

It’s getting bad press from reviewers who didn’t enjoy it for 10 hours as well.

Live service games really did a number on people. Why does it matter if people stop playing Palworld between now and when those new people they hire can produce the things they’re hired for?

Which is funny, because they’re not built to last.

Factorio’s a great one for this, as is RimWorld, but specifically on the modes where there’s no combat in the former and “base builder” difficulty on the latter. Lately, Palworld has been filling this slot for me. Just build stuff, occasionally tackle enemies, and listen to podcasts while you do it.

Single player is not the opposite of live service. Suicide Squad can be played single player. Baldur’s Gate 3 can be played multiplayer.

They said their profits (not just revenue) were up by more than the cost of those 1900 employees they just laid off.

It certainly has. Try pirating Marvel Heroes or The Crew.

Perhaps, but the devs have now said that offline single player mode is a feature coming “soon after launch”, which says to me that perhaps it’s more coupled to a server than just a bit of telemetry, or they’d be far more reactive to the public response about the online requirement. Not to say that I know for sure; it’s just a gut feeling.

Also, doesn’t the game currently require an internet connection to play?

What are you talking about? Indie development studios spring up out of mistreatment at AAA studios all the time. Where do you think Supergiant, Second Dinner, and Frost Giant came from, for instance?

As said in the last thread, these aren’t revelations. This is someone’s opinion.

The method of delivery for movies can be accomplished more independently too, if the movie studios hadn’t formed enormous cartels.

You’re right. TCGs with blind draw boosters are also bad. I didn’t complain about Pokemon cards back in 2000 because I was a child and didn’t comprehend that that was what I was doing. I definitely stopped partaking in Magic: The Gathering as an adult though when I realized it was a neverending gambling treadmill. Today I frequent fighting game locals that are kept afloat by Yu Gi Oh gambling addicts who fill the trash cans with booster wrappers as they go back to the counter over and over again to buy more packs.

I came across this video yesterday, and I’m 100% on board with Ross and his stance toward games as a service, but this isn’t a plan for a lawsuit; it’s asking for help in creating the plan. I hope he can make something happen, because games as a service is going to leave a wake of destruction in the history of video games, but temper your expectations.

I didn’t mean to imply that it’s close, only that it’s already awful enough that I’m not about to run some experiment for how much worse it can be. It’s already an activity so bad that I haven’t engaged with it in years.

Online games that let you talk to strangers aren’t great when you’re a guy either. Not because of targeted harassment, but because you often enough just end up with people screaming into the mic or repeating the N word over and over again for no reason. The last time I turned on voice chat with strangers was 7 years ago, with PUBG, and I quickly turned it back off. (It feels wrong that that game is somehow 7 years old.)