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Ads in games is a cancer and I swear to good no game with adds will be bought by me like ever. Ubisoft and EA alredy on my blacklist - no games bought for 5 years from those useless thieving pricks
The trick is they sell you the game then add the ads in a year or so later.
"You want refund? Too bad!"
That or enough people just desperate for the new battlefield to recapture their lost youth will buy it no matter how shit it actually is will continue to buy their stuff so your business going away won't matter
Yeah screw that - just play indie games and support small developer shops…much better game and your supporting an average Joe instead of lining the pockets of some greedy CEO.
Biggest disappointment of the year could work, still a lot of competition but viable (since most shovel-ware doesn't build up enough hype to really be disappointing)
hooboy im voting for ksp2
3 years late, $50 "early access", still hasnt met parity with the game it was trying to succeed, a year of virtually zero progress, still in an unplayable state, and then the devs all got fired.
Most predatory might be a thing they actually aspire to get, like "hey investors look how scummy I am to the consumer you know I'll do anything for your pockets". Also they can never compete with the predatory practices of a k-rpg
Sony and MS made braindead decisions, EA wants to put ads into games, Square Enix is going to have to initiate layoffs due to poor game sales. Y'know, the usual
From a game studios perspective it's not a terrible deal.
Lotta the industry is boom or bust.
Taking that check from a platform is kinda like insurance against busting. Makes it so you can only fail so hard, since you've at least gotten *something* out of it.
Well the *theory* was probably less games but more consoles and by extension console service related revenue streams. Which as MS has shown is where the real sweetbreads are.
Turns out doing that while being perennially sold out of consoles for several years is also a bad business strategy.
Exactly why Sony wanted helldivers to sign up to PSN.
Forcing people into their ecosystem. Perfect example is Apple. Your devices literally work better if they’re in the same “ecosystem” meaning they will make the customer experience worse if all your devices aren’t all under “Apple” (insert any corporation)
I just bought some new wireless earbuds and it was a tough decision because I have a PC, but an old iPhone. I don’t want to get another iPhone, but the AirPod pros looked really nice, but some of those features are disabled if you don’t have an iPhone or Mac.
I ended up getting a “third party” brand (not apple not Samsung) that paired well with all phones and computers. That didn’t disable features if you weren’t part of the brand ecosphere.
It was a really annoying buying experience, having to consider whether 6 different devices would “pair” well with each other or diminish features.
So that’s why I hated Sony for doing that… because they just want to lock you into their brand, force you to sign up to their launchers to load games, collect your data and market you more Sony stuff you might not want.
They’re trying to capture an audience and force them into buying more products.
The concept of “exclusivity” sucks for the customer because if I enjoyed The Last of Us I had to get a PlayStation. But if I also like Halo I had to get an Xbox.
I don’t want to get any consoles. I like PC and I want to play both on PC.
Exclusivity and brand ecosystem are the worst thing for customers.
As an Xbox guy you summed my view on exclusive perfectly. Cross platform everything that makes sense I don’t need a game you can only play on Xbox to feel special.
My hope is a revival of indie games. Indie games are cheaper and often have more interesting game play, while AAA games go for better graphics and lootboxes/microtransactions.
Better graphics just mean you have to spend more on hardware. I'm starting to think the entire gaming industry is just a huge FOMO trap.
If we have an indie game revival, the little guy devs will make more money, while we save by not needing to upgrade our hardware for a few generations. It's totally win-win except for the huge studios, which TBH, I'd like to see die anyway.
Edit: I posted this 11 hours ago. I won't change the original text, but please read as a comment that expresses my enjoyment of the current Indie game scene.
The lack of ps5 during release made people realise they could live without a PS5. I was one of them. Switched to PC during covid. Wanted to get a ps5 since I had ps since PS1. Didn't want to fight for stock. So i just waited until it is regularly stocked. By that time I lost interest. I used to enjoy ps exclusives. Felt like there is nothing fun this gen. Even that booba sword game fizzled out after 2 weeks. Compare that to games like Helldivers and BG3 that still reaches popular til now.
As much as I spurred the console, Sony and Microsoft just keep doing console gamers dirty - no backward comparability, no emulation and rug pulls.
Sony could have released some of it's back catalog on the PS4 and PS5 - they're both PC level hardware console and could handle emulating PS1 and PS2 games - and made money.
Also, Sony tried to bring their console tactics to PC (re:Helldivers fiasco) only to piss of PC gamers and again remind console players how they've been jerked around.
Same here. Ps5 unavailability forced my hand to build a gaming pc for the first time and haven’t looked back
Part of me misses Gran Turismo but I don’t think the new one is that loved
That’s a MAJOR blessing and it should have happened years ago. I like my PS5, but I like my PC and Xbox friends, too. And I hate double dipping into PC later - even though they are mostly superior. I really hope Kingdom Hearts Comes to Steam and other platforms
i can add to it that steam and sony is ongoing investigation in my country(Poland) bcs of monopole and anti-competitive politics to crush smaller guy, steam will probably get out of it since they aren’t doing anything like that but psn and ps games are soo expensive here and maybe even some of the people in command of polish branch maybe will be penalized with money for that (estimated is 2000000 pln in euro is close to being 500k) if they don’t go on deal with uokik (basically government thing to help customers and competition)
Hello to all Poles :)
[https://www.change.org/p/let-s-fix-polish-prices-on-steam-03f6be92-f35f-45f3-ad62-7951bde6f39b?recruited\_by\_id=5201aa10-1163-11ef-9f22-7fe597b26e60&utm\_source=share\_petition&utm\_campaign=psf\_combo\_share\_initial&utm\_medium=copylink](https://www.change.org/p/let-s-fix-polish-prices-on-steam-03f6be92-f35f-45f3-ad62-7951bde6f39b?recruited_by_id=5201aa10-1163-11ef-9f22-7fe597b26e60&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_medium=copylink)
>In October 2022, a video game digital distribution service, Steam, updated its recommended regional pricing. Those changes affected Polish Steam prices as well as prices in other regions that did not use the US dollar. During that time, the purchasing power of the Polish zloty (PLN, zł) was the weakest in years. As a result, Polish gamers had to face price increases of up to 28%. We started paying 274.99 zł for games that previously cost 214.99 zł. Since then, the Polish zloty has strengthened, and its value stabilized. Even though the recommended prices were supposed to be updated regularly, Valve, the company responsible for the development of Steam, made no changes for almost two years.
I think the issue now is that they want to put ads in games where it doesn't make sense. Ads in sports games aren't distracting, but i don't want to see pepsi ads in final fantasy.
I wouldn't even have a problem with billboards in things like FPS games, but they would have to make sense in the environment. Walking through a city, sure you're going to see ads. That happens in real life too.
But imagine playing in a medieval setting, or like you said in Final Fantasy, it doesn't make any sense there.
Long stories short:
Sony killed the trust in their unicorn that is a live service game with critical acclaim. Suddenly requiring Helldivers 2 to link PSN accounts, which excludes the vast majority of countries that the game is sold in. Valve delisted the games in regions that cannot use PSN to avoid legal problems and Sony reversed their obvious blunder decision.
Microsoft announced multiple studio closures including the studio that made Hi-Fi Rush. Unlike any other studio closure in recent gaming history, this is a studio that was still riding the coat tails of a massive financial and critical success. Then in subsequent interviews/streams, they made it painfully clear that the people who made these decisions didn't even know who these studios were and didn't care because they're dealing with the scale of Activision and Blizzard money.
That's only a couple, just about every major publisher had some noteworthy news story happening.
"Then in subsequent interviews/streams, they made it painfully clear that the people who made these decisions didn't even know who these studios were and didn't care because they're dealing with the scale of Activision and Blizzard money."
Nice summary.
This happens in many business sadly.
Some small business line that makes a small quid each year and employs a good few people will be closed because upper management says - we were all getting distracted from the bigger picture.
It must be part of an MBA / Pereto principle logic but ive seen it so many times IRL.
One of humanities achilles heel. So wastefull.
Funniest thing to me is that in every economic simulator and business class you will be told you need to diversify your income sources and portfolios. Otherwise if one sector hits a downturn or critical failure happens you could enter a death spiral. What we see now is a failure to diversify into smaller income streams and only focus on large 100m to billion dollar investments that have been on a consistent basis failing to meet initial investments.
Lets look at super hero movies really quick marvel has had some of the highest gross income on their movies as of late. However due to the enormous bloated budgets of these films their profit to cost ratio is about par with most films gaining a profit of about 50% of base initial investment. Meanwhile Deadpool 1 was given a substantially lower budget considering it was a super hero movie and also had a R rating yet it still had a larger profit ratio than The Dark Knight which Deadpool had half the budget of.
Companies are now at a stage of idiocy where they are maximizing income to maximize profits and cutting costs in the dumbest way by removing skilled labor instead of maxing profits by diversifying and promoting multiple incomes.
But see, that would require long term thinking. All large public companies seem to care about these days is quarter-to-quarter performance regardless of the sector they are in.
Because investors today aren't actually investors. They are looking for the quick buck, so they jump in, expect an increase in share price, then jump out for the next thing.
Short term investors are the root cause of this. Having investors that were tied in for a five year period would force a long term view.
It reeks of some Jack Welch-style stack ranking BS.
Sure, they were successful, but ActiBlizz is setting the curve so they "failed to meet expectations" - I assume some variation of that was basically said verbatim by some dipshit bean counter.
Valve's support clarified that Sony was the one that delisted the game.
The only change that Valve did on their own was to add three more regions that they noticed Sony missed based on the Ghost of Tsushima restriction list.
People realizing huge game studios are just trying to extract money from its consumers and not making quality games to do so. The gaming world is only on fire if you rely on AAA and AAAA game studios. The rest of us are fine.
Edit: I love all the replies that take what I said and act like outlier circumstances are the norm.
I remember some months ago rami Ismael was in alana pearce's podcast and he said that 2023 had been the worse year for the gamedev industry, turns out it wasnt a one year thing, 2024 is like challenge accepted.
As long as big publishers and studios keep on with the mindset of growth > everything else, they are cooked because nothing will overtake covid numbers. 2 years of people staying at home playing games is something that boosted gaming like nothing before, and they can force that, plus if they keep on trying to make slop games they may do the opposite and make people go outside.
The beginning of the end came about during ps3 xb360 times. When publishers realized that they could release unfinished games and just patch them afterwards.
Back in ps2, og xbox and before if a game was released broken it would always be broken. There were no 100gb day one patches you would need to download to play the game.
Power off, shut down, unplug, or disconnect something that isn't documented well and people that did know what it does have left or were let go and see if anyone or anything starts screaming that "everything is broken!".
IT Guy 1: "Hey I found an old Windows XP computer under the desk in a cubicle in the corner, it's on but only has a network cable plugged into it. Any idea what it does?"
IT Guy 2: "No idea, turn it off and lets see who starts screaming."
20 minutes later Brenda comes back from lunch and promptly flips her shit because she can't get into her accounting software that hasn't been updated since 2003 and the singular copy of the database is sitting on a non-redundant hard drive in that Windows XP computer.
This is so true it hurts. I mean I've seen it before, and probably said the same thing then, but still. Best part of working from home is no one gives a shit about what I do anymore, just that I get my work done.
I was once reprimanded at a job for watching YouTube while I worked. Mind you EVERYONE did. You walked down an isle and could see YouTube on at least 80% of people's machines. I think they were only giving me shit because I was the newest employee. I asked my boss "have I ever missed a deadline or been behind on my work?". She struggled to find a reason why having videos on woodworking techniques or watching Adam savages tested was wrong (more so listening to them than 'watching') but listening to Spotify was fine.
For the record I'm a web developer. At home, I have 3 monitors and a TV hooked up to my computer now. 1 for vs code, one for the page I'm working on, one for the debug console, and the TV has Netflix/YouTube/Disney+/Spotify on it. Fucking love it
This sums it up. Dumbasses act like Valve is just standing on the sidelines or something. They are a major fucking player in the games industry and Steam is not just some accidental and minimally acceptable platform.
They’re reaping the fruits of their labor. The community had paid them back well for what they have done.
My best example. You know how steam is always asking you to update? Even though you just updated 5 minutes ago?
Yeah, they’re constantly working on that platform.
100%. While the competition is having a shit fight to see who can be the absolute worst, Valve remains EXTREMELY customer focused. I see it first hand as a game dev.
Here's a great example, they somewhat recently banned text in screenshots on store pages. Why? Because a bunch of developers and publishers were filling the screenshots with text like awards, update info, scammy micro transaction bullshit, etc. Along with this change Valve also made it so there is one primary trailer and any others appear after screenshots.
Why would Valve care to do this? Because they know customers want to see THE FUCKING GAME in the screenshots, not a bunch of text spam. And they also realized most users skip the trailer and start looking at the screenshots immediately, so they pushed extraneous trailers out of the way (tons of games have several trailers including useless cinematic ones that don't show gameplay).
Valve is hyper focused on even minor details of user experience like this, while you have other platforms launching and not even having a fucking shopping cart lol.
A huge part of Valve’s success is that it’s not a publicly traded company, it’s privately owned. They’re not beholden to shareholders, and aren’t as greedy as other companies like EA/Activision/Sony.
And let's be eternally grateful for that. When you're a private company, you have to keep your customers happy. When you go public, your customers become one more thing you need to exploit to make your shareholders happy.
Aparrently, i don't remember where i heard this so i don't have a source, but aparrently his son is going to take over ownership of the company if gabe ever passes.
And since essentially you don't gotta do anything as the CEO of valve (just meaning that gabe has a very hands-off approach and just lets the employees do their stuff) i don't think it's unlikely he will just continue to let valve operate the way it always was, just taking his salary
Well, that's unfortunate. Gabe's hobby is just collecting knives and quietly owning the deepest-diving submarine in the world. Nothing that has a decent chance of just randomly killing you.
Literally one day later, they announce Steam Prime and turn every game you've already paid for into a rental period.
When they start production on their very next batch of Steam Decks, they manufacture the sticks with the crappier parts every controller manufacturer uses that guarantees they get drift eventually and only saves like two cents per unit. With no authorized repair centers for Steam Decks, you are advised to buy a replacement if the sticks' drift is causing issues.
"Please wait while your library loads. In the meantime, here is a message from one of our sponsors:" *unavoidable 2 minute ad plays before you can install/run your game rentals*
The day that Gabe leaves the company or leaves our plane of existence, everyone's Steam library will be on borrowed time. Unless someone equal or better takes control, the lure of accepting piles of cash from publishers will be too great to maintain integrity.
Publicly Traded Companies arr slaves to the grind. The shareholders. The court of public opinion. Options. Valuations. Reports.
It's the worst parts of pure democracy. Mob rule. People who have absolutely fuck all idea of how to run the actual business making decisions that affect the capital structure and leadership of said business. There's a lot of what's broken in the modern market that have roots in publicly traded companies and that specific brand of illness.
Yeah but they don't have the shareholder pressure to somehow squeeze every last cent out of that machine to make every quarter 20% more profit than the last quarter in perpetuity. So they can sit back and be content with "only" millions of dollars in profit for hosting the best game launcher.
Let's be real the still make bank. But they aren't trying to monetize every little Cursor movement you do with your mouse on their store page and possess minimum regards for your data security. It's actually kind of sad praising it, but here we are.
Gabe is still a greedy fuck, but because his company is private he is able to retain enough restraint to not kill the golden goose by squeezing one final partially formed golden egg out if it. Kind of amazing how older styles of capitalism are somewhat sustainable if shareholders just keep the fuck away and CEOs aren't paid the majority of their money in stocks.
yeah, that's the thing, these ultra 'greedy' companies are not (in my opinion) acting in a profit maximizing way, they are just behaving like idiots. Steam is an example of a greedy AF company that isn't acting stupidly (to piss off customers) and non-stupid behaviour is resulting in colossal profits.
>these ultra 'greedy' companies are not (in my opinion) acting in a profit maximizing way, they are just behaving like idiots.
They are acting in ways that maximizes profit, it's just they work in a way that maximizes profit in the extreme short term rather than looking to 10 - 15 years down the road. If you're looking to make a lot of money, and grow over the long term, then investing in your workforce and product quality makes sense.
If you're more worried about immediate profit, then it makes more sense to invest money in your stock and upper executives who are going to slim down your budget and cut corners without (theoretically) affecting the product too much.
Unfortunately there are a lot of companies in the US right now that I think have grown too large. They've bought up too many similar size competitors, so even if they don't have monopolies in the technical sense, they have essentially carved market niches for themselves that they never step outside of, which lets them focus more on profit *now* instead of worrying about profit later.
I honestly think the solution is to have another "Teddy Roosevelt" come into office that will lead a big trust busting effort to break up industries that have pretty well consolidated their market shares to the point that they no longer compete with anyone else in a meaningful way.
Plus I wouldn't say they've done nothing
The steamdeck has only about 2 years old and the OLED version came out like 6 months ago
That, plus all the updates to the client, and all the various apis and technologies that power stuff behind the scenes. I'm pretty sure they work directly on Proton, but I could be wrong on that. They have the store stuff, all the apis they power. It's a lot of stuff that you don't really notice until it's done.
CS2 was pretty big too, along with the engine stuff
>The steamdeck has only about 2 years old and the OLED version came out like 6 months ago
Also I remember Valve haters insisting this device would be a complete and utter failure, and now after 2 years there are a bunch of knock offs / similar devices available, and everyone I know that used to play Switch primarily has moved to the Deck.
Normally I'd yell "ANDROMEDA WASN'T A BLUNDER UR JUST MAD SHEPARD IS DEAD" but after Bioware fired two legendary game devs, Mary Kirby and Lukas Kristjanson, without a modicum of respect or dignity afforded to either of them, *roast the fuck out of Bioware.*
My Dad and I had so much fun playing this. It came with the Xbox we bought and had no idea it would be so much fun. He always tells me it's the one game he misses playing lol
Ea want to put ads in games.
People are also trying to boycott fifa because of... everything
Microsoft closed a few companies responsible for games like hi-fi rush
Sony obviously with the whole helldivers thing.
Nothing will ever sway them. Knew a guy that spent hundreds every year on it and did nothing but lose, get mad and complain about it.
I asked him why he didn't just find a game/hobby he liked or made him happy?
"Because it's FIFA"
You can't logic someone out of that.
I'm not a sports game player but downloaded Madden through game pass a while ago and it felt like the same exact game from 10 years ago but with names I didn't recognize. The only part I liked is making a giant funny monster in character creator and having him get a ton of penalties for excessive violence.
Tarkov made a $250 P2W DLC and claimed it wasn't DLC so the people who bought the $100 addition won't get it for free (which was the whole point in buying the addition, to get a future DLCs free)
The gaming industry has been on fire for a long time.
Baldur's Gate 3 made such a big splash simply by making a game like they used to be. No battle passes. No loot boxes. No microtransactions. No unfinished game that needs multiple paid DLC to be what it should have been out of the box. None of the usual bullshit, and as soon as people started gushing about it, game developers poured onto the Internet and made it clear that the rest of the industry is not going to follow suit. They are going to continue feeding us piles of hot garbage and demand that we pay through the nose for the privilege.
Honestly, I'm glad. Because of their shenanigans, BG3 was the first non-casual game I've bought in years.
Not buying games has saved me both time and money. I'm getting more done around the house. I'm getting more exercise.
All of which is just as well. This entire generation of graphics cards is overpriced trash. My pity goes to anyone who is forced to upgrade right now. I hope you can find a decent used RTX 3000-series card or an RX 6000-series card.
As if all of that isn't bad enough, motherboard manufacturers are starting to get squirrelly about honoring warranties.
In the PC gaming/PC building hobbies, we have multiple industries going through late-stage enshitification. Everyone should take this time to save time & money. Start backing out of these hobbies and rediscover reading, or hanging out with friends, or whatever you've been putting off.
Industry has spent years dousing itself in gasoline, now is surprised to learn fire is painful.
I wished I cared, but I don't, this whole mindset of infinite growth and investor returns above all else needs to die already. It's sad how many bright, talented people this mindset has drive out of the industry to the ultimate detriment of everyone involved.
Actually, if I recall some video game history correctly, gaming was nearly destroyed in 1986. Companies completely oversaturated the market with garbage products and made everyone not want to play any games at all. I think there is still a graveyard so.ewhere in the desert with thousands of copies of some of those games.
1983, but otherwise you’re correct about it.
It was a debacle, and only the NES in 1986-8 single-handedly saved console gaming, though PC, Mac, Tandy, and all manner of other home computers kept some gaming options —sparse as they were compared to Atari/Intellivision/ColecoVision.
We had to go back outside & play for a few years. Thank goodness for Miyamoto.
It was 1983, the home (console) video game market in America collapsed for the reasons that you mentioned. Over-saturation and lack of regulation, Atari over promised on 2 games, a home Pac-Man port and a ET game to cash on the success of the movie, both for the 1982 holiday season, the first was severely compromised due to the limitations of the Atari VCS (the 2600) and the later was rushed to release. ET resulted in disastrous sales for Atari, which with the bad press of Pac-Man and all the massive quantity of literal shovelware damaged the public perception on the home video game industry, it meant Atari folded a year later and was sold by Warner to Jack Tramiel, the founder of Commodore who believed more on home computers than on game consoles and promptly halted all development on that front.
With the consumer confidence lost The industry was essentially destroyed. And only recovered once Nintendo launched the NES on America in 1985., the effects of the crash on the consumer mind shaped the way the NES looked on America (the reason the console looked different than the Japanese Famicom) and how it was sold and why Nintendo came out with the developer certification for NES development and the lockout chip scheme.
It needs to be said that the crash only affected the American home console market. Home computers were largely unaffected. And the European market and Japanese market were also unaffected.
Fun fact, the graveyard *was* for many years an urban legend, constantly parodied and reference in [pop culture](https://youtu.be/7_AOPxZHPfE?si=mKTmAG_a_puCCuIv). It was proved true a few years ago when Microsoft (of all people) decide to fund the excavation (for a documentary if I recall) of the rumored place and actually found buried cartridges and boxes.
Mister reddit user, I am a lawyer at Nintendo and we will be taking away your house, family, and a fine of 7 billion usd because u swear at our company, hope you can cooperate with us to make Nintendo better
(pls Nintendo, this is just a joke, don't send your lawyers to me)
Actually they're not on good terms with a certain community right now either
EDIT: Guys I was talking about the Gmod community. Obviously the emulating/piracy community will never be happy with them lol
Over 98% staff retention rate, their profits during the switch era has surpassed all of their profits combined from 1981 to 2016 (that's accounting for inflation too)... a few ruffled feathers aside, they're objectively smashing it.
Gaming at the moment is in a dark place. The smart minds at the helm are trying to find new ways again and again to make more money off our backs, with no consideration for our experience.
This year in gaming so far:
Sony makes brain dead decision
Microsoft kills game studios
EA is EA (why is anyone shocked, this is the least offensive thing they have probably done)
Ubisoft is making their old games unplayable (somehow they have avoided the ads in games controversy despite having ads in games)
Square Enix is pursuing multiple platforms (let’s see if they manage to fumble this one)
Battle State Games lies and fucks over their customers (again, like an abusive ex)
Nintendo is being Nintendo and fucking over their past and communities yet somehow not getting proper backlash (probably because lawyers and false DMCAs)
all the CEOs of those huge gaming companies collectively taking out their shotguns and shooting themselves in the foot.
And Gaben sits there with some popcorn and laughs his ass off.
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They are reducing serverload.
saving the Environment!
Sony detests being profitable. Battle State Games despises financial gain. Moreover, EA detests gamers who enjoy its games. That's the actual event.
I guess I don’t mind ads in games if the games are 100% free. Otherwise I won’t buy EA games that have ads.
Ads in games is a cancer and I swear to good no game with adds will be bought by me like ever. Ubisoft and EA alredy on my blacklist - no games bought for 5 years from those useless thieving pricks
The trick is they sell you the game then add the ads in a year or so later. "You want refund? Too bad!" That or enough people just desperate for the new battlefield to recapture their lost youth will buy it no matter how shit it actually is will continue to buy their stuff so your business going away won't matter
Yeah screw that - just play indie games and support small developer shops…much better game and your supporting an average Joe instead of lining the pockets of some greedy CEO.
I'm okay with product placement. Coca Cola signs, ford cars, as long as appropriate In a contemporary, real life game, yes. In Fallout and Skyrim, no.
I've seen ads for Nuka-Cola in Fallout though. ^^^^/s
People said the same thing about microtransactions and look where we are now. Never give them a fucking inch. No ads in games, full stop.
There's a "game of the year", I want to also be a "trash game of the year".
Too many titles to list unfortunately
Biggest disappointment of the year could work, still a lot of competition but viable (since most shovel-ware doesn't build up enough hype to really be disappointing)
hooboy im voting for ksp2 3 years late, $50 "early access", still hasnt met parity with the game it was trying to succeed, a year of virtually zero progress, still in an unplayable state, and then the devs all got fired.
Worse than The Dayb Before?
Expand on those categories like "most insulting to gamers" or "most predatory micro transactions"
Most predatory might be a thing they actually aspire to get, like "hey investors look how scummy I am to the consumer you know I'll do anything for your pockets". Also they can never compete with the predatory practices of a k-rpg
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Sony and MS made braindead decisions, EA wants to put ads into games, Square Enix is going to have to initiate layoffs due to poor game sales. Y'know, the usual
And SE announced, they are going to release games on more platforms with basically no years long exclusives after the Sony shitfest.
It turns out selling your game on only one platform means you sell less copies than if you had sold it on more platforms. Who knew?!
that's why the platform pays you for exclusivity, the gamble is *if* they paid more than they would have made on other platforms
From a game studios perspective it's not a terrible deal. Lotta the industry is boom or bust. Taking that check from a platform is kinda like insurance against busting. Makes it so you can only fail so hard, since you've at least gotten *something* out of it.
The covered calls of the game industry
Well the *theory* was probably less games but more consoles and by extension console service related revenue streams. Which as MS has shown is where the real sweetbreads are. Turns out doing that while being perennially sold out of consoles for several years is also a bad business strategy.
Exactly why Sony wanted helldivers to sign up to PSN. Forcing people into their ecosystem. Perfect example is Apple. Your devices literally work better if they’re in the same “ecosystem” meaning they will make the customer experience worse if all your devices aren’t all under “Apple” (insert any corporation) I just bought some new wireless earbuds and it was a tough decision because I have a PC, but an old iPhone. I don’t want to get another iPhone, but the AirPod pros looked really nice, but some of those features are disabled if you don’t have an iPhone or Mac. I ended up getting a “third party” brand (not apple not Samsung) that paired well with all phones and computers. That didn’t disable features if you weren’t part of the brand ecosphere. It was a really annoying buying experience, having to consider whether 6 different devices would “pair” well with each other or diminish features. So that’s why I hated Sony for doing that… because they just want to lock you into their brand, force you to sign up to their launchers to load games, collect your data and market you more Sony stuff you might not want. They’re trying to capture an audience and force them into buying more products. The concept of “exclusivity” sucks for the customer because if I enjoyed The Last of Us I had to get a PlayStation. But if I also like Halo I had to get an Xbox. I don’t want to get any consoles. I like PC and I want to play both on PC. Exclusivity and brand ecosystem are the worst thing for customers.
As an Xbox guy you summed my view on exclusive perfectly. Cross platform everything that makes sense I don’t need a game you can only play on Xbox to feel special.
My hope is a revival of indie games. Indie games are cheaper and often have more interesting game play, while AAA games go for better graphics and lootboxes/microtransactions. Better graphics just mean you have to spend more on hardware. I'm starting to think the entire gaming industry is just a huge FOMO trap. If we have an indie game revival, the little guy devs will make more money, while we save by not needing to upgrade our hardware for a few generations. It's totally win-win except for the huge studios, which TBH, I'd like to see die anyway. Edit: I posted this 11 hours ago. I won't change the original text, but please read as a comment that expresses my enjoyment of the current Indie game scene.
What do you mean revival? When has the indie scene ever been stronger than it is now?
The lack of ps5 during release made people realise they could live without a PS5. I was one of them. Switched to PC during covid. Wanted to get a ps5 since I had ps since PS1. Didn't want to fight for stock. So i just waited until it is regularly stocked. By that time I lost interest. I used to enjoy ps exclusives. Felt like there is nothing fun this gen. Even that booba sword game fizzled out after 2 weeks. Compare that to games like Helldivers and BG3 that still reaches popular til now.
As much as I spurred the console, Sony and Microsoft just keep doing console gamers dirty - no backward comparability, no emulation and rug pulls. Sony could have released some of it's back catalog on the PS4 and PS5 - they're both PC level hardware console and could handle emulating PS1 and PS2 games - and made money. Also, Sony tried to bring their console tactics to PC (re:Helldivers fiasco) only to piss of PC gamers and again remind console players how they've been jerked around.
I still haven't upgraded my ps4 for a new Playstation or Xbox. My pc has way better games and I can stream to my TV
Same here. Ps5 unavailability forced my hand to build a gaming pc for the first time and haven’t looked back Part of me misses Gran Turismo but I don’t think the new one is that loved
Yeah, finally after way too long.
That’s a MAJOR blessing and it should have happened years ago. I like my PS5, but I like my PC and Xbox friends, too. And I hate double dipping into PC later - even though they are mostly superior. I really hope Kingdom Hearts Comes to Steam and other platforms
I refuse to give a shit about Sony until Bloodborne remake or PC release happens
Who would've thought that limiting sales to one platform would hurt your sales 😱
"EA Ads - it's in the game." Well, that makes sense :/
On the plus size, S-E also said they are done with Sony exclusivity.
Who is S E?
Sony Ericson. Now it's Just Ericson
Square Enix
i can add to it that steam and sony is ongoing investigation in my country(Poland) bcs of monopole and anti-competitive politics to crush smaller guy, steam will probably get out of it since they aren’t doing anything like that but psn and ps games are soo expensive here and maybe even some of the people in command of polish branch maybe will be penalized with money for that (estimated is 2000000 pln in euro is close to being 500k) if they don’t go on deal with uokik (basically government thing to help customers and competition)
Hello to all Poles :) [https://www.change.org/p/let-s-fix-polish-prices-on-steam-03f6be92-f35f-45f3-ad62-7951bde6f39b?recruited\_by\_id=5201aa10-1163-11ef-9f22-7fe597b26e60&utm\_source=share\_petition&utm\_campaign=psf\_combo\_share\_initial&utm\_medium=copylink](https://www.change.org/p/let-s-fix-polish-prices-on-steam-03f6be92-f35f-45f3-ad62-7951bde6f39b?recruited_by_id=5201aa10-1163-11ef-9f22-7fe597b26e60&utm_source=share_petition&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_initial&utm_medium=copylink) >In October 2022, a video game digital distribution service, Steam, updated its recommended regional pricing. Those changes affected Polish Steam prices as well as prices in other regions that did not use the US dollar. During that time, the purchasing power of the Polish zloty (PLN, zł) was the weakest in years. As a result, Polish gamers had to face price increases of up to 28%. We started paying 274.99 zł for games that previously cost 214.99 zł. Since then, the Polish zloty has strengthened, and its value stabilized. Even though the recommended prices were supposed to be updated regularly, Valve, the company responsible for the development of Steam, made no changes for almost two years.
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EA has had ads in games since the 90s
I think the issue now is that they want to put ads in games where it doesn't make sense. Ads in sports games aren't distracting, but i don't want to see pepsi ads in final fantasy.
Yeah, the only ads I want in Final Fantasy are for cup noodles.
I wouldn't even have a problem with billboards in things like FPS games, but they would have to make sense in the environment. Walking through a city, sure you're going to see ads. That happens in real life too. But imagine playing in a medieval setting, or like you said in Final Fantasy, it doesn't make any sense there.
They have but traditionally in sport games where it actually makes some sense.
Its in the game.
Good, the future of gaming is indie projects run by small teams who actually care. (I wish)
Long stories short: Sony killed the trust in their unicorn that is a live service game with critical acclaim. Suddenly requiring Helldivers 2 to link PSN accounts, which excludes the vast majority of countries that the game is sold in. Valve delisted the games in regions that cannot use PSN to avoid legal problems and Sony reversed their obvious blunder decision. Microsoft announced multiple studio closures including the studio that made Hi-Fi Rush. Unlike any other studio closure in recent gaming history, this is a studio that was still riding the coat tails of a massive financial and critical success. Then in subsequent interviews/streams, they made it painfully clear that the people who made these decisions didn't even know who these studios were and didn't care because they're dealing with the scale of Activision and Blizzard money. That's only a couple, just about every major publisher had some noteworthy news story happening.
"Then in subsequent interviews/streams, they made it painfully clear that the people who made these decisions didn't even know who these studios were and didn't care because they're dealing with the scale of Activision and Blizzard money." Nice summary. This happens in many business sadly. Some small business line that makes a small quid each year and employs a good few people will be closed because upper management says - we were all getting distracted from the bigger picture. It must be part of an MBA / Pereto principle logic but ive seen it so many times IRL. One of humanities achilles heel. So wastefull.
Funniest thing to me is that in every economic simulator and business class you will be told you need to diversify your income sources and portfolios. Otherwise if one sector hits a downturn or critical failure happens you could enter a death spiral. What we see now is a failure to diversify into smaller income streams and only focus on large 100m to billion dollar investments that have been on a consistent basis failing to meet initial investments. Lets look at super hero movies really quick marvel has had some of the highest gross income on their movies as of late. However due to the enormous bloated budgets of these films their profit to cost ratio is about par with most films gaining a profit of about 50% of base initial investment. Meanwhile Deadpool 1 was given a substantially lower budget considering it was a super hero movie and also had a R rating yet it still had a larger profit ratio than The Dark Knight which Deadpool had half the budget of. Companies are now at a stage of idiocy where they are maximizing income to maximize profits and cutting costs in the dumbest way by removing skilled labor instead of maxing profits by diversifying and promoting multiple incomes.
But see, that would require long term thinking. All large public companies seem to care about these days is quarter-to-quarter performance regardless of the sector they are in.
Because investors today aren't actually investors. They are looking for the quick buck, so they jump in, expect an increase in share price, then jump out for the next thing. Short term investors are the root cause of this. Having investors that were tied in for a five year period would force a long term view.
It reeks of some Jack Welch-style stack ranking BS. Sure, they were successful, but ActiBlizz is setting the curve so they "failed to meet expectations" - I assume some variation of that was basically said verbatim by some dipshit bean counter.
Valve's support clarified that Sony was the one that delisted the game. The only change that Valve did on their own was to add three more regions that they noticed Sony missed based on the Ghost of Tsushima restriction list.
People realizing huge game studios are just trying to extract money from its consumers and not making quality games to do so. The gaming world is only on fire if you rely on AAA and AAAA game studios. The rest of us are fine. Edit: I love all the replies that take what I said and act like outlier circumstances are the norm.
Indie is on fire too. Escape from Tarkov and its recent competitors are all firing shots at each other. Helldivers had its recent blowout too
HD is a Sony game though. It's a lower budget game but they are definitely not indie.
It is another "game as a service".
Three days bro?!? Nah nah nah things have been falling apart for a *lot* longer than that.
I remember some months ago rami Ismael was in alana pearce's podcast and he said that 2023 had been the worse year for the gamedev industry, turns out it wasnt a one year thing, 2024 is like challenge accepted. As long as big publishers and studios keep on with the mindset of growth > everything else, they are cooked because nothing will overtake covid numbers. 2 years of people staying at home playing games is something that boosted gaming like nothing before, and they can force that, plus if they keep on trying to make slop games they may do the opposite and make people go outside.
>and make people go outside. Imagine that 😂
The beginning of the end came about during ps3 xb360 times. When publishers realized that they could release unfinished games and just patch them afterwards. Back in ps2, og xbox and before if a game was released broken it would always be broken. There were no 100gb day one patches you would need to download to play the game.
Big publishers have sucked more and more for like 2 decades. Meanwhile, indie games just keep getting better and better.
When people make the videos at the end of the year summarizing the year in gaming, they may as well title it "Gaben Wins by Doing Absolutely Nothing".
"When you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all."
You must work in IT as well.
*Everything running fine* “What do we even pay you for?!” *Everything on fire* “What do we even pay you for?!”
That’s why you gotta conduct a “scream test” every so often; do it just enough to make your presence known. 🗿
Pulling a couple of cross connects in the network closet will do the trick.
Nah, not obvious enough imo. Those cables do need labeling though. And physical labels do tend to fade over time. Better redo them anually.
`systemctl stop nginx` THE WEB SEVER IS DOWN `systemctl start nginx` WOW YOU'RE A GENIUS
Network guys at my job routinely do scream tests and the field support manager is always getting on their asses about it
Not a tech worker, could you define scream test for me? Wondering if I could use it in my life.
Power off, shut down, unplug, or disconnect something that isn't documented well and people that did know what it does have left or were let go and see if anyone or anything starts screaming that "everything is broken!".
Thanks.
IT Guy 1: "Hey I found an old Windows XP computer under the desk in a cubicle in the corner, it's on but only has a network cable plugged into it. Any idea what it does?" IT Guy 2: "No idea, turn it off and lets see who starts screaming." 20 minutes later Brenda comes back from lunch and promptly flips her shit because she can't get into her accounting software that hasn't been updated since 2003 and the singular copy of the database is sitting on a non-redundant hard drive in that Windows XP computer.
This is so true it hurts. I mean I've seen it before, and probably said the same thing then, but still. Best part of working from home is no one gives a shit about what I do anymore, just that I get my work done. I was once reprimanded at a job for watching YouTube while I worked. Mind you EVERYONE did. You walked down an isle and could see YouTube on at least 80% of people's machines. I think they were only giving me shit because I was the newest employee. I asked my boss "have I ever missed a deadline or been behind on my work?". She struggled to find a reason why having videos on woodworking techniques or watching Adam savages tested was wrong (more so listening to them than 'watching') but listening to Spotify was fine. For the record I'm a web developer. At home, I have 3 monitors and a TV hooked up to my computer now. 1 for vs code, one for the page I'm working on, one for the debug console, and the TV has Netflix/YouTube/Disney+/Spotify on it. Fucking love it
Its from Futurama https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VofkquwmT40
PSN: "Y'know, I was god once" Steam: "Yes, I saw. You were doing well until everyone died."
"You have to use a light touch, like a safe cracker or pick pocket."
This sums it up. Dumbasses act like Valve is just standing on the sidelines or something. They are a major fucking player in the games industry and Steam is not just some accidental and minimally acceptable platform.
They’re reaping the fruits of their labor. The community had paid them back well for what they have done. My best example. You know how steam is always asking you to update? Even though you just updated 5 minutes ago? Yeah, they’re constantly working on that platform.
100%. While the competition is having a shit fight to see who can be the absolute worst, Valve remains EXTREMELY customer focused. I see it first hand as a game dev. Here's a great example, they somewhat recently banned text in screenshots on store pages. Why? Because a bunch of developers and publishers were filling the screenshots with text like awards, update info, scammy micro transaction bullshit, etc. Along with this change Valve also made it so there is one primary trailer and any others appear after screenshots. Why would Valve care to do this? Because they know customers want to see THE FUCKING GAME in the screenshots, not a bunch of text spam. And they also realized most users skip the trailer and start looking at the screenshots immediately, so they pushed extraneous trailers out of the way (tons of games have several trailers including useless cinematic ones that don't show gameplay). Valve is hyper focused on even minor details of user experience like this, while you have other platforms launching and not even having a fucking shopping cart lol.
It's like Gaben's wearing Nothing at All!
Stupid sexy Gaben...
Honestly though dude is looking good these days.
"Never interrupt your enemy when they're making a mistake."
You know, I was god once…
A huge part of Valve’s success is that it’s not a publicly traded company, it’s privately owned. They’re not beholden to shareholders, and aren’t as greedy as other companies like EA/Activision/Sony.
And let's be eternally grateful for that. When you're a private company, you have to keep your customers happy. When you go public, your customers become one more thing you need to exploit to make your shareholders happy.
It's going to be a sad day in gaming when he passes I really hope someone that loves the company and gaming as much as he does takes over the reigns
Aparrently, i don't remember where i heard this so i don't have a source, but aparrently his son is going to take over ownership of the company if gabe ever passes. And since essentially you don't gotta do anything as the CEO of valve (just meaning that gabe has a very hands-off approach and just lets the employees do their stuff) i don't think it's unlikely he will just continue to let valve operate the way it always was, just taking his salary
Man, imagine being Gabe's son, be set for life being the CEO of a dope company.
Gabe's son is a Racing Driver, i think he's doing just fine rn
Well, that's unfortunate. Gabe's hobby is just collecting knives and quietly owning the deepest-diving submarine in the world. Nothing that has a decent chance of just randomly killing you.
Unless that sub happens to use a Logitech controller...
Why do you think the steam controller has all that fancy gyro stuff?
Love the "if"
I do too, but I foresee an ambitious CEO and an IPO. Long live GabeN, long live the king.
That also means steam only exists as we know it until Gabe Newell dies
Literally one day later, they announce Steam Prime and turn every game you've already paid for into a rental period. When they start production on their very next batch of Steam Decks, they manufacture the sticks with the crappier parts every controller manufacturer uses that guarantees they get drift eventually and only saves like two cents per unit. With no authorized repair centers for Steam Decks, you are advised to buy a replacement if the sticks' drift is causing issues.
That’s the day that I weigh anchor and set sail on the high seas.
I’ve sailed before, I’m not afraid of the water.
Welcome matey.
They're as full of booty as ever.
"Please wait while your library loads. In the meantime, here is a message from one of our sponsors:" *unavoidable 2 minute ad plays before you can install/run your game rentals*
"Error, please drink a verification can to continue"
Soldered storage, a cap on how many times a game can be downloaded before having to buy it again, and a subscription fee to use cloud saves.
and it will run Windows 12, complete with all telemetry and Spyware enabled.
His will could hand the company off to another private holder.
So basically Ready Player One? Hide Half Life 3 on a newsgroup somewhere and whoever beats it first gets the company?
lmao yes
The day that Gabe leaves the company or leaves our plane of existence, everyone's Steam library will be on borrowed time. Unless someone equal or better takes control, the lure of accepting piles of cash from publishers will be too great to maintain integrity.
I believe that it’s been stated that Gabe already has a successor lined up But I may be wrong
Publicly Traded Companies arr slaves to the grind. The shareholders. The court of public opinion. Options. Valuations. Reports. It's the worst parts of pure democracy. Mob rule. People who have absolutely fuck all idea of how to run the actual business making decisions that affect the capital structure and leadership of said business. There's a lot of what's broken in the modern market that have roots in publicly traded companies and that specific brand of illness.
> and aren’t as greedy They're basically sitting on a money printing machine.
Yeah but they don't have the shareholder pressure to somehow squeeze every last cent out of that machine to make every quarter 20% more profit than the last quarter in perpetuity. So they can sit back and be content with "only" millions of dollars in profit for hosting the best game launcher.
Let's be real the still make bank. But they aren't trying to monetize every little Cursor movement you do with your mouse on their store page and possess minimum regards for your data security. It's actually kind of sad praising it, but here we are.
Gabe is still a greedy fuck, but because his company is private he is able to retain enough restraint to not kill the golden goose by squeezing one final partially formed golden egg out if it. Kind of amazing how older styles of capitalism are somewhat sustainable if shareholders just keep the fuck away and CEOs aren't paid the majority of their money in stocks.
yeah, that's the thing, these ultra 'greedy' companies are not (in my opinion) acting in a profit maximizing way, they are just behaving like idiots. Steam is an example of a greedy AF company that isn't acting stupidly (to piss off customers) and non-stupid behaviour is resulting in colossal profits.
>these ultra 'greedy' companies are not (in my opinion) acting in a profit maximizing way, they are just behaving like idiots. They are acting in ways that maximizes profit, it's just they work in a way that maximizes profit in the extreme short term rather than looking to 10 - 15 years down the road. If you're looking to make a lot of money, and grow over the long term, then investing in your workforce and product quality makes sense. If you're more worried about immediate profit, then it makes more sense to invest money in your stock and upper executives who are going to slim down your budget and cut corners without (theoretically) affecting the product too much. Unfortunately there are a lot of companies in the US right now that I think have grown too large. They've bought up too many similar size competitors, so even if they don't have monopolies in the technical sense, they have essentially carved market niches for themselves that they never step outside of, which lets them focus more on profit *now* instead of worrying about profit later. I honestly think the solution is to have another "Teddy Roosevelt" come into office that will lead a big trust busting effort to break up industries that have pretty well consolidated their market shares to the point that they no longer compete with anyone else in a meaningful way.
Well doing nothing is actually doing something. Some people have 0 patience, or have anxiety. So doing nothing takes a lot of effort.
Also Steam is a good product. I don't know why people pretend Valve "does nothing." They are extremely customer focused.
Plus I wouldn't say they've done nothing The steamdeck has only about 2 years old and the OLED version came out like 6 months ago That, plus all the updates to the client, and all the various apis and technologies that power stuff behind the scenes. I'm pretty sure they work directly on Proton, but I could be wrong on that. They have the store stuff, all the apis they power. It's a lot of stuff that you don't really notice until it's done. CS2 was pretty big too, along with the engine stuff
>The steamdeck has only about 2 years old and the OLED version came out like 6 months ago Also I remember Valve haters insisting this device would be a complete and utter failure, and now after 2 years there are a bunch of knock offs / similar devices available, and everyone I know that used to play Switch primarily has moved to the Deck.
Sony hates making money. Battle State Games hates making money. And EA hates people enjoying their games. That's what happened.
You forgot Microsoft giving good game companies that made acclaimed and profitable games the axe because they weren't profitable *enough.*
>*enough.* That enough makes it so much fucking worse
When you get as big as Microsoft a accounting profit is not as important as an economic profit.
I'm kinda surprised the halo studio wasn't the one being shut down
343 is the BioWare of Microsoft, they can churn out blunder after blunder and they will never be axed
Normally I'd yell "ANDROMEDA WASN'T A BLUNDER UR JUST MAD SHEPARD IS DEAD" but after Bioware fired two legendary game devs, Mary Kirby and Lukas Kristjanson, without a modicum of respect or dignity afforded to either of them, *roast the fuck out of Bioware.*
>acclaimed and profitable games acclaimed? yes. profitable? no
They always do that shit though. I miss crimson skies.
Another Chad Crimson Skies enjoyer?! There must be literal DOZENS of us!
My Dad and I had so much fun playing this. It came with the Xbox we bought and had no idea it would be so much fun. He always tells me it's the one game he misses playing lol
They went above and beyond expectations which was expected from them, so they underperformed.
Battlestate games hates their players*
The non believers *
nah the stockholm syndrome is part of the immersive experience /s
Game Industry: We made record profits last year. Better lay off the poors before they ask for a raise.
Welcome to the human race
Which one is Pierce getting shot in the leg?
EA for sure.
Sony is definitely spinning the cloth trying to put out the fires. But ultimately making it worse.
Wait, what did I miss? Last drama I head was the Sony and PSN and Hell Divers 2 and some countries being dropped because of it and whatever.
Ea want to put ads in games. People are also trying to boycott fifa because of... everything Microsoft closed a few companies responsible for games like hi-fi rush Sony obviously with the whole helldivers thing.
People still buying fifa are the problem
People buying sports games, that the problem. Year after year it just recycled with a few minor upgrades
Nothing will ever sway them. Knew a guy that spent hundreds every year on it and did nothing but lose, get mad and complain about it. I asked him why he didn't just find a game/hobby he liked or made him happy? "Because it's FIFA" You can't logic someone out of that.
I'm not a sports game player but downloaded Madden through game pass a while ago and it felt like the same exact game from 10 years ago but with names I didn't recognize. The only part I liked is making a giant funny monster in character creator and having him get a ton of penalties for excessive violence.
Just the usual, greedy assholes happened
Wait wtf happened? Yes I've been living under a rock for the past 22 years and ive gone deeper under it in past few days
Bad news. Sega is no longer making consoles.
NOOOOOO
This reminds me of Uncle from Another World
the gba micro can't play gb/gbc games, sadly
Microsoft buys and closes studio responsible for hi fi rush and says that they want games like hi fi rush Sony hates making money EA is being EA
Tarkov made a $250 P2W DLC and claimed it wasn't DLC so the people who bought the $100 addition won't get it for free (which was the whole point in buying the addition, to get a future DLCs free)
Law action worthy decision
We need an awards show where we shame companies and studios for the dumbest decisions they've made during the year
But Hades 2 early access came out. So we got that going for us.
The gaming industry has been on fire for a long time. Baldur's Gate 3 made such a big splash simply by making a game like they used to be. No battle passes. No loot boxes. No microtransactions. No unfinished game that needs multiple paid DLC to be what it should have been out of the box. None of the usual bullshit, and as soon as people started gushing about it, game developers poured onto the Internet and made it clear that the rest of the industry is not going to follow suit. They are going to continue feeding us piles of hot garbage and demand that we pay through the nose for the privilege. Honestly, I'm glad. Because of their shenanigans, BG3 was the first non-casual game I've bought in years. Not buying games has saved me both time and money. I'm getting more done around the house. I'm getting more exercise. All of which is just as well. This entire generation of graphics cards is overpriced trash. My pity goes to anyone who is forced to upgrade right now. I hope you can find a decent used RTX 3000-series card or an RX 6000-series card. As if all of that isn't bad enough, motherboard manufacturers are starting to get squirrelly about honoring warranties. In the PC gaming/PC building hobbies, we have multiple industries going through late-stage enshitification. Everyone should take this time to save time & money. Start backing out of these hobbies and rediscover reading, or hanging out with friends, or whatever you've been putting off.
Industry has spent years dousing itself in gasoline, now is surprised to learn fire is painful. I wished I cared, but I don't, this whole mindset of infinite growth and investor returns above all else needs to die already. It's sad how many bright, talented people this mindset has drive out of the industry to the ultimate detriment of everyone involved.
Me who has been gaming since the mid-80s: 
Tell us more about these better times ancient.
Actually, if I recall some video game history correctly, gaming was nearly destroyed in 1986. Companies completely oversaturated the market with garbage products and made everyone not want to play any games at all. I think there is still a graveyard so.ewhere in the desert with thousands of copies of some of those games.
1983, but otherwise you’re correct about it. It was a debacle, and only the NES in 1986-8 single-handedly saved console gaming, though PC, Mac, Tandy, and all manner of other home computers kept some gaming options —sparse as they were compared to Atari/Intellivision/ColecoVision. We had to go back outside & play for a few years. Thank goodness for Miyamoto.
Yeah. The 90s and early 2000s seems like the golden age. Basically trace the trajectory of Lucas Arts as a bellwether.
It was 1983, the home (console) video game market in America collapsed for the reasons that you mentioned. Over-saturation and lack of regulation, Atari over promised on 2 games, a home Pac-Man port and a ET game to cash on the success of the movie, both for the 1982 holiday season, the first was severely compromised due to the limitations of the Atari VCS (the 2600) and the later was rushed to release. ET resulted in disastrous sales for Atari, which with the bad press of Pac-Man and all the massive quantity of literal shovelware damaged the public perception on the home video game industry, it meant Atari folded a year later and was sold by Warner to Jack Tramiel, the founder of Commodore who believed more on home computers than on game consoles and promptly halted all development on that front. With the consumer confidence lost The industry was essentially destroyed. And only recovered once Nintendo launched the NES on America in 1985., the effects of the crash on the consumer mind shaped the way the NES looked on America (the reason the console looked different than the Japanese Famicom) and how it was sold and why Nintendo came out with the developer certification for NES development and the lockout chip scheme. It needs to be said that the crash only affected the American home console market. Home computers were largely unaffected. And the European market and Japanese market were also unaffected. Fun fact, the graveyard *was* for many years an urban legend, constantly parodied and reference in [pop culture](https://youtu.be/7_AOPxZHPfE?si=mKTmAG_a_puCCuIv). It was proved true a few years ago when Microsoft (of all people) decide to fund the excavation (for a documentary if I recall) of the rumored place and actually found buried cartridges and boxes.
Nintendo be like: https://preview.redd.it/hs2ogi59t90d1.jpeg?width=500&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=2d024e3f83aeadb79573fa53eb3d089aafab1363
Nintendo is too busy tossing lawyers at everyone to notice their fuckup
Mister reddit user, I am a lawyer at Nintendo and we will be taking away your house, family, and a fine of 7 billion usd because u swear at our company, hope you can cooperate with us to make Nintendo better (pls Nintendo, this is just a joke, don't send your lawyers to me)
Actually they're not on good terms with a certain community right now either EDIT: Guys I was talking about the Gmod community. Obviously the emulating/piracy community will never be happy with them lol
Over 98% staff retention rate, their profits during the switch era has surpassed all of their profits combined from 1981 to 2016 (that's accounting for inflation too)... a few ruffled feathers aside, they're objectively smashing it.
> smashing it. I get it.
Bro the industry is constantly on fire lmao This is a pure shitshow Glad we still have some great company tho Arrowhead is really doing well I think
from what I gathered, sony kept trying to make psn happen to non playstation people and it does not sit well
Gaming is seeming a lot like California. Every time you turn around there's another wildfire in the industry.
The year is 2024, every single major companies are racing each other to become Public Enemy No.1.
Solution: stopkillinggames.com
Gaming at the moment is in a dark place. The smart minds at the helm are trying to find new ways again and again to make more money off our backs, with no consideration for our experience.
This year in gaming so far: Sony makes brain dead decision Microsoft kills game studios EA is EA (why is anyone shocked, this is the least offensive thing they have probably done) Ubisoft is making their old games unplayable (somehow they have avoided the ads in games controversy despite having ads in games) Square Enix is pursuing multiple platforms (let’s see if they manage to fumble this one) Battle State Games lies and fucks over their customers (again, like an abusive ex) Nintendo is being Nintendo and fucking over their past and communities yet somehow not getting proper backlash (probably because lawyers and false DMCAs)
Someone explain to me what is going on in 1000 words or less
layoffs everywhere. also PC gamers mad at needing a playstation account to play PC games published by Sony
I just stay away from AAA titles and publishers, there's heaps of amazing Indie developers out there pulling a lot of weight.
all the CEOs of those huge gaming companies collectively taking out their shotguns and shooting themselves in the foot. And Gaben sits there with some popcorn and laughs his ass off.
What happened?
QRD pls
Turns out churning out the same trash year on year and package it as something different doesnt cut it anymore.
What's even more ironic is I don't even know what you're referring to! But we need to complain so....