Random video game news... Games are Randomly News Worthy

[kanisatha]

1 hour ago, Gfted1 said:

In addition to Sarex points, head bob and weapon sway are two more that will get me. Basically whenever Im looking at my own two arms then Im too close in. Even slightly over the shoulder view is ok, but looking out of my "own eyes" is . Goes all the way back to Doom/Duke Nukem/RoTT/Heretic/Hexen. Hell, even watching my own kid play Overwatch would give me a headache after about 15 minutes.  

You and me both. I had to drop it out of fullscreen to be able to handle watching it. For me, it's more about the motions that close-in being too disoreinting such that I can't follow what's going on.

[Wormerine]

2 hours ago, Keyrock said:

So in effect it's a DLC, they're just calling it a remaster because reasons.

I dunno. It got some graphical uplift, but nothing groundbreaking. Either it is not remaster, or remastering 3 years old game is stupid. Pick whatever you prefer.

 

Edited January 19 by Wormerine

[Keyrock]

35 minutes ago, Wormerine said:

Pick whatever you prefer.

 

I pick greed. The answer is greed. The reason for this existing is greed. It's something the studio can whip up quickly with little resources spent and shove it out the door to make a quick buck AND as a bonus keep their name on peoples' lips. It's not exactly the AAA equivalent of an asset flip, but same idea. Minimal effort for a quick buck.

I think Skyrim is one of the worst things to happened to gaming recent-ish-ly. Skyrim showed publishers that they can release the same game a hundred times and there are plenty of people out there dumb enough to buy it a hundred times.

Edit: I guess we can go back further than that with Street Fighter 2, Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo, Super Duper Extra Hyper Street Fighter 2 Turbo Alpha Diamond Edition, and so on. Thanks Capcom! 

Edited January 19 by Keyrock

[Lexx]

Honestly, they just took their source graphic files and didn't shrink them down on export. Then they cranked a few graphic settings up and called it a day. Calling this a "Remaster" is either hilarious or extremely dishonest, or probably both. Sure they apparently added some new game mode, but that easily could have been just a 10 bucks DLC like someone else said... of course it wouldn't sell as good as "hey look, we REMASTERED the game!"

[Hawke64]

https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/piracy-preservation-and-the-devs-who-dont-mind-if-you-have-to-pirate-their-game

Quote

Over the holidays, I saw two tweets. One may well have been a rephrasing or resurfacing of an old sentiment - if not, kudos to the OP for such powerful phrasing. “If buying isn’t owning, piracy isn’t stealing,” it read. The other was from Black Tabby, the two person dev team behind the popular and excellent horror game Slay The Princess. “Since a lot of new folks are discovering Slay The Princess: The game is at its best if your first experience is playing it yourself instead of watching someone else's play-through. (And if $ is an issue, pirate it and buy a copy later when you have money if you liked it!)”

Which reminds me to purchase Slay The Princess sometime this year - there should be an update. Not sure if getting it on GOG and playing the original version first would provide better experience and the ability to compare.

Overall, I like the attitude, though with the regular sales and occasional giveaways, the price is less of an issue than the system requirements or DRM. Which the developers mentioned.

Quote

Do Black Tabby feel there’s any potential risk of normalising piracy in a harmful sense? Not really. There are, says Howard-Arias, much riskier trends in indie dev, like undercutting prices to unsustainably low levels. He loved Vampire Survivors and its -likes, but felt the price had an impact. “A lot of people were interested in exploring that space. But it meant that if you’re going to be competitive, you also have to charge like $3,” he says. That’s before Steam’s 30% and card fees, which aren’t insignificant at such a low price, meaning developers have to shift huge numbers just to survive in that genre space. “I don't blame any developers for doing that, but I think the tendency for indies to undervalue and underprice their work is a much more real risk to sustainability than, you know, not being mad at people for pirating your game.” Pirated copies, says Howard, aren’t ones they would have sold anyway. “These are numbers aren't just cutting into your bottom line so much as they are bonus numbers. That's how it's always felt to me.”

Then again, with the number of titles released daily, I find it difficult to determine whether something from an unknown developer should be purchased or not, while the above-mentioned sales bring the insta-buy price significantly lower. The full/enhanced/definitive versions coming a year later after the initial release encourage patience as well. Granted, I do occasionally back crowdfunding projects or purchase Early Access, but it must be very close to what I want to play or from a developer I know well.

[Lexx]

I dunno about all of that. The amount of money lost from piracy and exploiting VPN to buy something for cents is still quite high. Sure it's too expensive for some people... but you also don't need to buy and play every game. That said, the people I personally know who pirate every game could easily buy every game...

Kinda curious how many of those pro-piracy devs are just talking like that in the hopes of advertisement / boosting exposition. Since, yeah, so many titles are released every day now, it probably does make sense to just go pro-piracy until more people know your name. You're likely gaining sales from this, not losing them.

Oh, also, since piracy is so damn common, you can't really allow to piss off some people and potentially cause a ****storm on the internet.

Edited January 23 by Lexx

[Wormerine]

 

[Mamoulian War]

55 minutes ago, Lexx said:

I dunno about all of that. The amount of money lost from piracy and exploiting VPN to buy something for cents is still quite high. Sure it's too expensive for some people... but you also don't need to buy and play every game. That said, the people I personally know who pirate every game could easily buy every game...

Kinda curious how many of those pro-piracy devs are just talking like that in the hopes of advertisement / boosting exposition. Since, yeah, so many titles are released every day now, it probably does make sense to just go pro-piracy until more people know your name. You're likely gaining sales from this, not losing them.

Oh, also, since piracy is so damn common, you can't really allow to piss off some people and potentially cause a ****storm on the internet.

You have to think also in a way, that people who use VPN to get some game, are mostly getting it just to own it, which in other words means, that a lot of these sales would not happen at all, if it was not possible to circumvent the price tag with VPN. Is it moral? Not really, but it still generates some revenue for the dev. Contrary to the piracy, or buying cheap on G2A, which is currently mostly used for money laundering, which in the end could cost a lot of money to the dev... Even piracy is potentially more rewarding to some devs than their games sold on G2A and the likes...

[Hawke64]

44 minutes ago, Mamoulian War said:

You have to think also in a way, that people who use VPN to get some game, are mostly getting it just to own it, which in other words means, that a lot of these sales would not happen at all, if it was not possible to circumvent the price tag with VPN. Is it moral? Not really, but it still generates some revenue for the dev. Contrary to the piracy, or buying cheap on G2A, which is currently mostly used for money laundering, which in the end could cost a lot of money to the dev... Even piracy is potentially more rewarding to some devs than their games sold on G2A and the likes...

If I'm not mistaken, Steam and GOG have some protection from VPN shopping, while Itch.io does not have regional pricing?

Agreed about G2A - the fees from the banks hit the developers.

[Mamoulian War]

4 minutes ago, Hawke64 said:

If I'm not mistaken, Steam and GOG have some protection from VPN shopping, while Itch.io does not have regional pricing?

Agreed about G2A - the fees from the banks hit the developers.

Yes they do, but can still be circumvented. Especially if you plan to resell account on G2A. The GOG has only protections for gifts afaik. If you buy it for yourself, there are no limits as I am aware.

[Hawke64]

14 minutes ago, Mamoulian War said:

Yes they do, but can still be circumvented. Especially if you plan to resell account on G2A. The GOG has only protections for gifts afaik. If you buy it for yourself, there are no limits as I am aware.

I assume that the inconvenience should be enough to dissuade most people from attempting, considering that Steam and GOG, in general, seem to be affordable, especially with the regular sales.

[Lexx]

2 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

You have to think also in a way, that people who use VPN to get some game, are mostly getting it just to own it, which in other words means, that a lot of these sales would not happen at all

Truth told, if I'm making like 20 cents from a sale in Turky (in the past, now not anymore since regional pricing was canned there)... it doesn't really matter that they bought it. They might as well just have pirated it. In my statistics this is barely noticeable. It's probably worse, because a pirate who likes the stuff you make still could buy your game for realz. Meanwhile a person who used a VPN to buy your game for cents sure as hell will not buy it again for the real price.

So yeah... if you plan to exploit VPN technology to buy games cheap, you might as well just pirate them directly.

[Mamoulian War]

25 minutes ago, Lexx said:

Truth told, if I'm making like 20 cents from a sale in Turky (in the past, now not anymore since regional pricing was canned there)... it doesn't really matter that they bought it. They might as well just have pirated it. In my statistics this is barely noticeable. It's probably worse, because a pirate who likes the stuff you make still could buy your game for realz. Meanwhile a person who used a VPN to buy your game for cents sure as hell will not buy it again for the real price.

So yeah... if you plan to exploit VPN technology to buy games cheap, you might as well just pirate them directly.

My argument was about game collectors, who buy games but don't play them. It's very unlikely, that they buy any game at full price, so the mentioned 20 cents from their Turkiye copy might be still better than nothing for a starting indie dev. It is definitely **** behaviour, to buy it through VPN and then spent 50 hours on it, there is no argument about that.

[Sarex]

46 minutes ago, Lexx said:

Truth told, if I'm making like 20 cents from a sale in Turky (in the past, now not anymore since regional pricing was canned there)... it doesn't really matter that they bought it. They might as well just have pirated it. In my statistics this is barely noticeable. It's probably worse, because a pirate who likes the stuff you make still could buy your game for realz. Meanwhile a person who used a VPN to buy your game for cents sure as hell will not buy it again for the real price.

So yeah... if you plan to exploit VPN technology to buy games cheap, you might as well just pirate them directly.

Then what is the point of selling the game in Turkey? Not even talking about the game dev, but for Steam?

[Lexx]

Well, selling it with reasonable pricing to the local population is not the issue - that's totally fine. The issue is people abusing it a lot(?).

 

1 hour ago, Mamoulian War said:

My argument was about game collectors, who buy games but don't play them

Maybe it's just me, but I think it's retarded to "collect" games on whatever online platform like that. Don't even know if you still own or have access to that stuff in 20 years.

Edited January 23 by Lexx

[Mamoulian War]

42 minutes ago, Lexx said:

Well, selling it with reasonable pricing to the local population is not the issue - that's totally fine. The issue is people abusing it a lot(?).

 

Maybe it's just me, but I think it's retarded to "collect" games on whatever online platform like that. Don't even know if you still own or have access to that stuff in 20 years.

To each it's own . Though, are we not all some kind of collectors, with a big amount of backlogs?

[Lexx]

Just checked my Steam purchase history. Bought 8 games in 2023. 5 of those purchases were DLCs.

Hah, in 2022 I also bought 8 games on Steam. 1 of those was a DLC.

Generally I only buy games if I'm planning to play them right now. Never bought a game because "maybe I will play it some day" -- experience tells me that I'll never play it then.

[LadyCrimson]

2 hours ago, Mamoulian War said:

Though, are we not all some kind of collectors, with a big amount of backlogs?

I have no backlog, only some games I tried for a few hours and am never going back to.
I think I am, however, up to 130ish games "owned" on Steam, after, uh, 14 years. That doesn't include DLC's, I think they aren't counted in "games owned." Which reminds me, there's probably some more games I need to get Steam to remove, because I don't care about them being available to me ever again and are just list-clutter.

[Zoraptor]

11 hours ago, Sarex said:

Then what is the point of selling the game in Turkey? Not even talking about the game dev, but for Steam?

The ultimate answer to that is that it still makes Valve money. Not like they have massive staffing or infrastructure costs- in absolute terms, sure they'd be large, but not on a per transaction basis. Indeed, the more transactions they have the lower the cost per transaction is and the cheaper they could sell at profitably (in theory). And Steam certainly has a lot of sales volume.

[sorophx]

On 1/18/2024 at 8:22 PM, kanisatha said:

How very Soviet!

not to derail the thread but while you owned "nothing" in the USSR, you didn't pay for it either. I don't think that's the model Ubi execs have in mind

[LadyCrimson]

A release date for Manor Lords? Yes!
*last seconds of trailer* wait...Early Access? ... sigh. I should've known/realized. Oh well. I'm still hoping it'll be a cross between city-builder and something like Stronghold.

 

[Keyrock]

Doesn't matter to me, since I can count the amount of games I've done NG+ in on one hand and have multiple fingers left over, but it's still a scummy move to lock NG+ behind a paywall. Dammit SEGA, I thought you were better than th... Haha, just kidding, I knew SEGA wasn't better than that. Seems like a fantastic game otherwise, though. I'll find out soon enough. /rubs hands together

Edited January 25 by Keyrock

[Malcador]

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/01/25/microsoft-lays-off-1900-workers-nearly-9percent-of-gaming-division-after-activision-blizzard-acquisition.html

https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/25/24050297/blizzard-survival-game-cancelled-layoffs

 

1900 cut.  Cancelled their survival game as well and Ybarra is out the door

Edited January 25 by Malcador

[Mamoulian War]

Not a surprising move. The golden goose in the deal were the IPs

[Keyrock]

People getting let go when there's a merger or acquisition of a large corporation is fairly standard as there are bound to be redundant positions. 1900 is kind of a lot, though. I don't think redundant positions can account for all of that. Trimming the fat, I guess.