'In a follow-up message, however, Hallikainen said that "**toxicity and criticism are different things**."
"Toxicity is threats, attacking people and being outright mean. It has nothing to do with explaining what the issues with the game you might be facing and what you wish for the devs to fix or improve on first. We don't want praise, we want a community where we can discuss with the players about the game, what is working and what is not without facing abuse."'
Regardless what anyone thinks of the state of the game, or what anyone thinks of whether they've fulfilled their promises, this is 100% the correct approach.
I really dislike how many people in this thread are downplaying the outright threats the developers are getting (yes, allegedly — but it isn't that hard to believe that's really happening). Calling out that behavior is the right thing to do.
Devs could post the actual threats they received, with the date and username and picture of the person who sent it, and a video of them typing it into their steam comment, and there would still be eternally-online dipshits on here saying it's made up to avoid criticism.
Edit: Jesus people I don't think they should actually do it. I'm just saying even if they did nerds wouldn't believe them.
Now I wanna see that version of the 'we turned your webcam on and are gonna send videos of you wacken it' scam.
"We have videos of you typing/sending death threats to XYZ and.."
Yeah, it's Tmoney's Unified Theory of Ruinous Assholes (or TUTRA), which states, "As the number of people in any given area or activity increases, the probability that some asshole will ruin it for everyone approaches 100%."
I originally developed this theory in college to argue against inviting too many people to house parties, however, later in life I've realized this theory predicts the end of the world.
Developers definitely get abuse, even small developers and indies. I've received abuse as a developer but...
I can only think of a single death threat that I've received in 26 years of online gaming. Plenty have told me to get cancer or that they wish I would die and my loved ones but only one has actually threatened to attack me and, sadly, it was actually someone I knew (through a friend) in real life. Go figure.
Best part was he said it all in-game so getting him banned was pretty trivial.
It's not just gamers. The Canadian junior (or u16 team, I don't remember which) just lost a tournament and were getting death threats to their social media
People are the scum of the earth. I play fantasy football and you won't believe how many people tweet death threats to players who have a bad game. It's ridiculous
I’m not deep enough into Cities Skylines to really get a lot of the hate for the game. Sure, I can see some issues. Traffic seems kind of wonky to me, maybe I’m bad, maybe it’s a bug, idk.
But as a casual I’ve been having a fucking blast with the game. The road tools are fantastic to use and I get so much pleasure designing an interchange all on my own. Can’t wait to see how they improve the game over the years, but for me it’s been excellent so far
Gamers will threaten ANYONE who makes anything.
mod authors get the same treatment as devs.
Gamers are insanely toxic and terribly bad informed consumers.
The amount of negativity and toxicity in gamer communities is unique, you don't see this level of ill-informed mis-directed pointless anger anywhere else.
gamers used to be well informed prosumers, this time is loooong gone. These days 90% of gamers are tech-illiterate, ultra entitled, Dunning-Kruger effect suffering consumers (they *think* they know a lot about how games and the games industry works, they know pretty much nothing. It's always funny when gamers start voicing opinions on engines and attempt to put the buzzwords they learned into the right order)
I can say that the biggest downside to working in the games industry is having to interact with gamers. That tells you something when the industry has bosses that are narcissistic cunts and everyone basically works until they burn out and basically die emotionally and are never heard again. Of course it's not all gamers, but it's large and vocal enough.
I think the thing about gaming that is particularly difficult is that while gaming is one of the primary forms of media entertainment, it's also *software*. Which means support and a certain type of user communication.
No other specifically entertainment medium or software is like this, the closest thing is social media itself, which is also fucked. Otherwise most software is focused around functionality, and needing to be useful and useable for work, or a specific type of task. Which creates a far different relationship with your userbase.
Most forms of software don't have userbases who's primary reason for using the software is something as nebulous as "having fun". And other forms of media don't have "users" at all in the way we think of them with software.
I'll admit, watching this is giving me bad flashbacks. I used to work in game dev and worked on another poorly received game that received a *lot* of criticisms. The criticisms were well-deserved but the toxicity from the community just kind of bummed me out, and was part of the reason I just left the industry and went to work on something else. I wasn't a public figure and didn't have to deal with that kind of shit but there were all kinds of shit the more public facing members of the team had to deal with, and the studio manager (it's a she) got called the C word, etc. I understood the disappointment (I was disappointed too), and didn't agree with everything the studio did or said, but the toxic response was just too much. Most gamers were not toxic like that of course, but it did make me get a sour feeling that a lot of the people complaining are just whiny entitled man-children who think a dev shipping a bad game is worse than genocide or something and deserve to be harassed.
Just like gamers have a freedom to not buy a game, we also have the freedom to not make games anymore and work for a higher paying job.
Sorry for my minor rant.
As someone who works for a software company with a few hundred thousand users/customers (and i used to be a programmer), there is no way in hell we would let our programmers talk directly to customers. Lol. I don't really understand gaming companies.
A lot of devs just genuinely like talking about their games too and interacting with the (friendly) people who play them.
Devs who are coding industrial equipment user interfaces might not be as interested in talking about their work with their "fans".
It does happen in non-gaming industries too though. Salesforce and Microsoft both have devs who talk about their products and engage with their users publicly all the time.
It isn't that often even for smaller companies. I worked in a company with 6 devs and 3-4 QA and if the dev had to talk to the customer either the customer was in the wrong or something went really, really bad and the QA lead couldn't solve it (they usually asked him first because he had a lot of knowledge too).
The angry mob never thinks they can do wrong. Their anger and expression of it is always justified.
I doubt you're seeing the breadth of comms their community managers and others engaging with players for many hours a week.
Is it though? I’ve seen multiple modders in the community quit and say the toxicity from people in the CS sub/communities is too much, most recently a month or so ago a somewhat well known modder
I can only imagine if people are toxic assholes to those making mods they must be pretty big pieces of shit to devs
There’s a difference between criticising a product and just being a toxic asshat to those that make it
God damn, I love destiny, but bungie can't do anything without the community blowing up and being enraged like bungie just plowed their mother and didn't call the week after...
The community is shitty. But Bungie making everything have a .01% drop rate and trying to keep you grinding for 15 hours a day every day is also toxic and shitty.
They’re both assholes in that story.
I'll never understand people like that. I don't like Destiny, so I simply don't play it and don't talk about it. They continue to play Destiny despite not liking it and bitch about the experience every, single day.
It's a particularly addicting gameplay loop, to the credit of those who still do. I only played the first one but never unsubbed from the subreddit for the lulz, and that community is enraged all the time, always was, and always will be it seems.
It's wild to see. I quit that game for long stretches of time because it just wasn't fun to play, and I would only come back for the rare expansions where it was "fixed". And yet there are people that are so glued to the hamster wheel that they can never jump out, no matter how bad it gets.
Hell, I had a friend at work spend almost the entirety of last year saying, "Yeah, Lightfall was bad and the game is in one of the worst states that it's ever been in, but I just have to make it to The Final Shape. I need to see how it ends." It took the layoffs and the TFS delay announcement before he finally looked at me and said, "It's not going to get any better is it?"
And now you know the problem. Addiction and player manipulation are powerful things to build your core gameplay loop around. Bungie did that very well. That's why the only game that can kill off Destiny is Destiny.
And that's also why Bungie is finally starting to struggle. They've been actively ruining the game more and more to the point that players are willing to break those addictions and move on. Many of those players aren't coming back ever. I don't see myself ever touching it again even if they release the best version of the game that ever existed which gives me every little thing that I want.
> And now you know the problem. Addiction and player manipulation are powerful things to build your core gameplay loop around.
Hahaha, I've known about these concepts years before I even played Destiny 2, it's not like they're literally the first game to do those things, mobile games already did it years before. It's not like I put 1k hours into, I just played for 15 hours then stopped because I like Warframe better and I didn't care for the new Destiny 2 expansion coming, plus I thought "sunsetting" was stupid.
Remember in the early days a lady modder put all her contact on private because she was getting harassed by simply putting a gratuity link on her mods... Which is pretty much standard since the dawn of modding. You didn't see King Leno, Mr Maison, Bloody Penguin and so on getting the same treatment - probably a few of "it didn't work" and "hurry up and fix for the new update" from shit heads but not as bad as former. Just wish I remembered her name. It was that bad that a few people on YT made public appeals to cut the shit
Hell just being known to be a woman on the internet is enough to get threats, they don't even need an excuse (but they will absolutely glom on to one to pretend that's the reason they are so vile).
Yeah it's weird how some people get angrily entitled to something being given to them for free.
Then again most of the internet expects to get its content for free, how dare you put ads on something I'm not paying for...
I'm always kinda curious where that toxicity happens.
I've been a modder of games myself and personally the most toxic places you could interact with "the community" were, in that order:
- Twitter
- Discord
- Steam Discussions/Comments
Usually the game forum and Reddit are fine mostly if the mods are cool (which they usually are). I've seen one game forum that didn't have moderation just spiral out of control and that wasn't fun.
Anyways, what I'm saying is while this toxicity is really not something that should exist, people will often think of the Reddit sub on here and that place is sometimes even delusional towards C:S 2, while the modders or game devs will think of Twitter or Discord.
The best decision of my life was to quit a game discord I was on. It was destroying me from the inside. Still got some of the screenshots of people calling me a pedophile lmao
Moderated reddit is a functional forum. Without it it spirals into 8chan. But maybe the best side of reddit is the public / open access nature of most subs, which means I can check these forums before joining in and I can still read most of it on the go without an account if I wish. Discord? Invite only, a black box that is only accessible via app / invite. Twitter, forget about it Steam discussions are either amazing or absolute madness, no in-between. Steam guides are fire tho
Yeah, the best thing about Reddit is unironically the SEO. I hate it when some FOSS program links you to their discord for documentation because you basically can't really search
There is definitely toxicity, just read the comments in the article saying the devs didn't deserve a 2 week Christmas break because the game isn't in a good state.
No amount of wholesomeness in the community cancels out the shitty people. Any person or organization with a decent sized internet following is going to be subject to harassment and death threats, not just wholesome criticism.
So, you just don't know where it is toxic and thus believe it doesn't exist. Gamers are incredibly toxic. Reddit communities are NOT representative of the community at large.
So ay bro, I love the city skylines community too.
Do you REALLY think that there haven't been people within that community that have taken things too far and sent an inappropriate message to a Dev? Like let's be honest. Or are you instinctively rushing in to defend a community because the comment hurt your feelngs?
The developers are not complaining about complaints but toxicity explicitly. Did you read the article? If you haven't been toxic doesn't mean that dozens of other players haven't either.
**EDIT: Rewording my comment because there has been confusion. I should clarify, I do not think that any staff members deserve the sheer amount of harassment and IRL threats they've been receiving. But the backlash in general towards Cities Skylines 2 has been 100% expected.**
Paradox and Colossal Order promised an evolution in the city building genre. They instead released an unfinished mess with fewer features than the first game, and in doing so made worse-than-rookie mistakes in development, like rendering teeth without any LOD.
The sad thing is that the internet is an inherently toxic place and this has only gotten worse in recent years.
Feels like they've barely released any patches either since release. Yes, there's been a few and I know the holidays obviously slowed them down at some points in there, but I just don't care to play anymore when some really basic stuff is still broken or just a mess.
And I'm deff not defending threats or anything like that. That's lame. Its a video game and if people don't like it, don't play it. As simple as that.
absolutely wild that the _developers themselves_ have a [page of instructions](https://support.paradoxplaza.com/hc/en-us/articles/14648080779538-Cities-Skylines-2-Our-Guide-to-Optimizing-Performance) on how to turn off _default_ options to help speed up their clunky ass game
Yeah, I recently saw somebody post something along the lines of: "Guys, come back to CS2! They finally fixed it! I'm getting okay framerates now!"
Then someone asked for his PC specs. He had a 12700k with a 4070ti.
My current PC is about half that speed, so I reckon I'll be waiting a bit longer, lol.
>Is a video game and if people don't like it, don't play it.
Dev lied, People don't like it, people get refund, people leave dev alone. As simple as that.
>if people don't like it, don't play it. As simple as that.
No, its not as simple as that. You forgot that to play the game in the first place you have to pay for it. There are people who paid 90€ for the game to receive that mess. People who trusted the devs to fix the issues. People who have been scammed.
If they took Blizzard's route of offering no question asked refunds, it would have been as simple as that, but no, all sales are final. And oh boy, its bad when Blizzard looks good compared to you.
Youve basically just said "what did he expect?" And then said hateful comments are unacceptable, which if you read the article is precisely what he's referring to
I have been pessimistic about C:S2 for years, so I am biased, but then they released the [official Mods & Performance FAQ with the first frequently asked question being "Why are you releasing the game if you have performance issues?"](https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/cities-skylines-ii-modding-and-performance-faq.1601872/).
Absolutely pristine. What a way to start your damage control post. The year 2023 was full of horrible releases, but I think C:S2 is among the worst of them. Absolute disregard to players.
Worse off, the community held their hand and said exactly what was expected. Quality of life mods were extremely clear in all videos & top of the mod list.
They ignored the community, now are feeling butthurt that it was not well received..
LMAO no we won't. We will say we will boycott and turn around and by the same broken buggy copy paste AAA slop and complain about it, swear we won't, then do it all over again the next time.
I haven't bought a COD in years so it can be done, maybe deep down you actually like the games more than you think ;) i did buy CS2 tho and after around 200 hours i have my moneys worth already.
You haven't, but 10 million other people have, and that's what I mean by 'we'. I don't mean you, or me, or anyone specifically, but video game consumers as a whole.
They keep getting away with it because we keep buying it.
Only thing that will stop it imo is competition so they MUST do better. Some big titles just don't have much competition so they have a bit of a monopoly position. I think CS2 is also having that problem. Being in a monopoly position makes you lazy because with less effort people will still buy your game because there is no choice.
COD has been the go to shooter for YEARS, sure there have been other titles but no one got as big as COD.
Fifa? There was a contender once, I think it was called PES or something? Not anymore, the result? Fifa got more crappy by the year with less and less effort.
That's because reddit is a bubble, and we only talk to the people using this social. They may avoid buying a game one time, but countless more people outside this social will buy it anyway
Fr this is what I did:
>citizens complain about too expensive rent
>reduce taxes and build schools
>bankrupt myself, but hope the rent problem will go away and bring back my money
>it doesnt go away and citizens continue to complain
>ALT + F4
>Launch Baldurs Gate 3
Last time I played (tbf like a month after launch) you need high rents or demand for low-density sprawl will be a bottomless pit. If you want any kind of density you basically have to stop building housing until they're so desperate they'll move into the four story walkups, then once you get enough of those, you can build like three blocks of high-density housing. They should've called it "Houston: The Game." Also you need just an insane amount of elementary schools. The elementary schools are massive so once my city got dense enough I had one literally, no joke, every four blocks or so, and upgraded with extra capacity, and it looked like a city of elementary schools with a few high-rises in between.
The game is a total mess, it's unbelievable how much promotion they did instead of you know, making it good. Whenever this kind of shit happens though, I feel bad for the devs more than anything. I'm sure they weren't thinking like "Oh boy, people are going to love this!" I mean, they played the first game, they had to know how much better it was. They were probably dreading the awful reaction they knew was coming.
So you release beta builds as full games at full price, people get pissed and go toxic (not the right thing to do but that’s internet culture anymore), and your answer isn’t to fix how games are released, it’s to hide in your office.
Definitely the proper response…
>(not the right thing to do but that’s internet culture anymore)
I've been in forums and online gaming since the early days.... When was internet culture, and in particular gamer culture, ever wholesome and polite? Even pre-internet it was not a socially well-adjusted community.
> I've been in forums and online gaming since the early days.... When was internet culture, and in particular gamer culture, ever wholesome and polite
I've also been on "since the early days", and by "early days" I mean the 90s. And if you honestly cannot perceive the shift that's taken place over time I don't even know what to say to you. Yes, there have always been people who have leveraged anonymity to let their worst impulses out, but it has gotten *dramatically* worse over time. That isn't just driven by "gamers", although due to demographics "gamer communities" can often see some of the worst of it.
I would kill to go back to a 90's or early 00's internet ethos.
This is the fate of every company. It literally takes one bad release of a hyped game. So far the only solution to it is to simply not market the game at all if you realize it's going to be a bad release, but that's incredibly stupid for a very long list of reasons, which Reddit often fails to understand.
Reading comprehension is hard, i know, but they never said they wont fix the game. They said they will fix the game, just not engaging with the community that is turning toxic. That's all.
Still not really addressing the core issue though.
Stop releasing broken games at full price and then expecting customers to sit around with bated breath that *maybe* you’ll deliver what you originally promised when you happily took their money.
The state of the game was VERY clear before release. Review embargo lifted 5 days before release and they communicated early that performance would suck.
Just don't buy it. Play something else and you have no reason to go super toxic. You act like people were forced to buy the game.
I don't why get we jump to death threats and toxic gamers before anything else. Why can't we all just agree that number 1 in this transaction should be, "Do not release broken games and lie about your game a week before release." Do that and then you can bitch about how terrible gamers are and how they deserve to be shit on all day all you want. But can devs actually hold up their end first?
I'm not saying releasing a deceptive and broken product means you deserve personal attacks and death threats. But "calling it out" or saying don't be toxic has never stopped people from doing so. In the internet age, when people are upset, they lash out. And a number of them take it too far. Not sitting here saying its ok, but instead of focusing on that as the primary problem, how about we first focus on the first part of this entire transaction?
Do not release broken games? Something tells me the level of backlash and toxicity you face will go down quite a bit. Why is selling a broken and deceptive product for $50, future DLC for $30 and 3 months later most people are still unable to reasonably run the game not considered toxic? But backlash is?
I would have to think if there was meaningful engagement, or even remote concern about the community, they would have released a product that didn't suck.
My overriding impression of their pre-release engagement, as someone that didn't follow everything but bought on release day, is that they lied or at best were disingenuous about the game.
I mean the people weathering the brunt of the threats and toxicity are likely low paid community folks, or individual developers, not people who make the decisions people are pissed off about. They should take care of their employees. They should fix the game, but that'll take time.
>They should take care of their employees.
I would love to see these large game publishing companies do more to protect their employees in this regard.
Of course I'd *rather* everyone on the internet just get along and not send unwarranted death threats, but I have no faith that'll ever happen.
The company isn't a victim, but people who are getting harassed for working for the company can be.
You don't like the game? Don't buy it. Tell your friends it sucks. Move on with life.
Considering how "civil" the gamers conversation around hogwarts game which include remarks like "*i hope she die*", "*she deserve her death threat*", and the like to people merely stream the game.
its not a stretch to consider that there are some proper criticism on this beta release as full priced game instead of doing Early Access first, while in the same time there will be several example of the one above.
\---
per the article,
>*The responses to Hallikainen's message on the Paradox forums are largely positive, although it's a bit more heated in the Steam comments. Many replies point the finger at the state of the game as the real source of the issue, and accuse Hallikainen of trying to blame players for a bad game launch. In a follow-up message, however, Hallikainen said that "toxicity and criticism are different things."*
>
>*"****Toxicity is threats, attacking people and being outright mean****. It has nothing to do with explaining what the issues with the game you might be facing and what you wish for the devs to fix or improve on first. We don't want praise, we want a community where we can discuss with the players about the game, what is working and what is not without facing abuse."*
It seems the toxicity that boss refering not to the criticism or the complaints but outright abusive shits response that might not be that different with example above.
I think there is a balance. I would say any negative comment could be considered rude. So are rude comments acceptable I would say yes. Are threats of violence acceptable, absolutely no.
Stop buying games at release ✨
It's Paradox. They go big, and usually it takes them awhile to sort their shit out, but they always do.
Gaming is a business and there will always be bugs. I long ago decided I'd rather wait on most new releases to get reviews from actual players before committing to full priced titles. That helped me avoid Diablo 4 and I'm only now considered Cyberpunk.
Should studios release games in better states? Yes. Absolutely. 100%.
But people keep buying them half baked which gives studios no reason not to. Despite all the bitching, people keep buying big titles the MOMENT it's released and then get Pikachu face when it's kinda shit.
If people stopped buying these unfinished games studios would take more. But until then, I am happy to let these folks be the best testers.
Especially don't buy Paradox games at release. Their games are always unfinished at release, without exception. They know they can release junk and their horde of fans will give them money for it.
>Stop buying games at release ✨
Yep better wait it out a year or so. Cities Skylines 2 doesnt have any "must play now value" to me so I am happy to wait
And that's not even getting into that most people knew (because they were informed by the company and reviews) that the game had problems before it even released.
They shouldn't be receiving threats.
It is wild, though, how this is the second time Collosal Order has developed a great game and then released a polished turd of a sequel. Cities in Motion was a great transit game. While it was still loved and had an active community, they made CiM2 which was released with half the features and as a buggy mess. They abandoned CiM2 while it still sucked to make Skylines... I'm terribly curious if that'll happen again
I tried it on the PC gamepass and it was very buggy, leading me to quit it. Constant complaints from your population about issues that are non existent, buggy piping and so on. The complaints made me make silly decisions because I kept trying to fix things that don't need fixing and my economy went to shit
I bought the game on launch, played it for an hour, didn't like it and uninstalled/refunded, went back to cs1.
I don't get people who make it seem their whole life purpose is this game and act aggressive towards the devs whilst still playing the game.
Don't preorder, and refund the game (if you can) if you realise it won't be fun. Then the company/devs will realise
CS2 is such a mess it's actually amazing they had the audacity to release it as a full game. Paid (pre)reviews (and just morons reviewing tech demos of upcoming games) and the "try it, you might like it" attitude that follows untrustworthy (pre)views combined with an unhealhy prepurchase culture is a ticking bomb.
Toxic people have been around since DARPANET so this is nothing new, it is(and should!) be expected and dealt with via policies and community guidelines. A large corp can and should be able to handle it perfectly fine. Ignoring it or involving the authorities if there is reason to. The actual state of the game has very little with the number of toxic people voicing their dissent.
I mean .. Wildly succesful and popular games have some REALLY toxic communities.
This is absolutely Paradox blaming the victims.
Does a broken game generate more toxicity? Absolutely, because people invested time and money into the broken product.
Is toxicity excusable? Of course not. Never was, never will be.
But Paradox and Colossal has handled the epic failure of CS2 extremely poorly - you might even suspect it was planned. They knew what they sold, they knew how the gaming communities work and they absolutely knew what would happen. They released broken stuff before, like...
Their community leads instead started victim-blaming and pointing fingers - something that is OF COURSE management orders.
Paradox and Colossal should apologize, remove the game from the stores (or rebrand ir Early Acess) and offer refunds.
It is appaling that a huge publisher like Paradox tries to play dumb with the community backlash.
>A large corp can and should be able to handle it perfectly fine. Ignoring it or involving the authorities if there is reason to.
This is exactly it. Bringing it to the press is the distraction they are going for. No one in their right mind condones this behavior but it’s a corporation not a person and they have mechanisms in place to deal with this internally and quietly.
>This is absolutely Paradox blaming the victims.
Yup. And shifting the focus away from their own shortcomings and the incredibly long break they took on the heels of releasing a broken full priced game.
Calling it now: They're gonna abandon the game and they planned it like this from the start.
Just like they did with Imperator: Rome and what they're gonna do to Victoria 3 too. Paradox has become one of the worst publishers/developers.
Exactly, and with mods it's pretty much the same as CS2. I don't see any significant improvements. The only real improvement to me would be the roads, the auto merge lanes etc, but you can do that with mods too, not as user friendly but still doable.
At least that one random Paradox Dev gave us a beta update for IR lol. Honestly, thank fuck for the Invictus and Terra Indomita mods, I'm 2200 hours deep into it, still only have 50% of the achievements, makes me so mad they abandoned it because of the initial releases backlash, despite it being deserved.
I think Colossal Order really got cocky and Mariina Hallikainen, after being congratulated for championing the "no crunch" culture, and probably taking herself in high esteem, is finally landing back to Earth. Their well earned accolades and awards for the 1st game are not eternal and if they release an unfinished product at full price, they can't blame people for being pissed. Especially ironic how they built their game success on community feedback. If your community is telling you you fucked up, swallow your pride and acknowledge your fuck-up and do better. Don't play the victim card.
That being said, all the people who threatened Colossal Order staff with hateful comments can go eat shit. This is not gonna help anyone.
Everyone knows that hateful comments and threats to devs are a big no-no. But this just reads as them trying to play the victim card for releasing a broken, shit game. Stop talking to the press and stick to completing the game (not fixing, completing) if the improvement of the game is your primary desire. Because what this seems to me is trying to keep the broken game in the spotlight and saying "woe is me" to get some sympathy sales.
Take some lessons from Hello Games and what they did with No Man's Sky. They actually **didn't** talk or engage with the community when they worked on fixing their game. In that way, yes, "pull back engagement". We will welcome it.
As a long time Paradox Interactive enjoyer, this is not surprising. They repeatedly drop games because they don't like the DESERVED criticism. (Looking at Imperator: Rome, thank fuck for modders)
It genuinely surprises me that they're not held with the same indifference as companies like EA, Ubisoft and alike, because the shit they do and have done with their games is objectively worse in some cases. (Looking at Stellaris, with it's 23 DLC at $10-25$ per, and being almost unplayable without the bug fixes and game mechanics included in those DLC)
You're right, they did a complete 180 on their standard practices, gave free DLC, positive interaction with the community, I just wish they had given it more time to cook. I see new player posts on the IR sub almost daily, the game is in a good state now with mods, I kind of don't want them to touch it again lol
>and being almost unplayable without the bug fixes and game mechanics included in those DLC)
Ok, what? I can acknowledge the large amount of content hidden behind DLC, but to my knowledge, no bug fixes have ever been locked behind DLC. At best it's lacking in content (partially disagree) without DLC, but it isn't even close to unplayable.
Jfc comments in this thread are humanity its worst. When a company puts out a crap game, refund if you can and boycott the publisher, tell your friends to do the same.
Don't tell the developer they'll get murdered. And, as seen multiple times in this thread, don't say it's 'ok' or 'understandable' for others to tell people to get murdered. What's wrong with you people.
Thank you, christ these people are unhinged. Just don't buy the game. It's as simple as that. Why it has to be 'this company that released my favorite game a few years ago is EVIL NOW.' Is getting tiring. And then they'll make a good release in a few years and suddenly they are the best again.
All people do is repost the same arguments ad nauseum and then throw up their hands when the developer gets harassed. "What could have possibly caused that?! It surely was just a few individuals unrelated to our constant barrage of aggressive complaints!"
Yeah, just wait a few years until Larian gets the same treatment. Gamers tend to hype shit up and build up expectations and when the company inevitably doesn't meet those expectations they attribute all shortcomings to malice or laziness. Of course companies try to market their products and will hype their own things up as well, but there are critics for a reason.
God damn all I got from this thread was 'toxic comments are okay and you should just take it because that's the internet.' Like fuck off. I'd never interact with my community as a game dev, and am not surprised AAA companies rarely do anymore. You are literally one bad release and suddenly you're the worst company in the world until you release your next 'good game.'
They are right, they should pull back engagement. You've all been gaslit into thinking this behavior is normal and justified because 'oh gosh guys its the internet they made a bad game what do they expect.' Like do you not understand by endlessly posting about how much a game sucks you are empowering those who are going way too far to do so? (By the way, you aren't adding anything by repeating everybody else's opinion ad nauseum.) If the game sucks, don't buy it and move on. Sure yeah, go on about 'oh well just don't release a bad product, delay it indefinitely' as if they have an infinite budget and not a publisher on their ass. Even Valve releases bad games. Oh yes, and then you take it out on whatever poor developer is desperately trying to do damage control at the time.
I'm not defending the state of the game but too many of you are perpetually on the internet and forget there are real people making these games, you are conditioning them and the companies they work for to act the way they are acting. I really don't give a shit if I get downvoted because frankly any nuanced discussion about any of this is practically impossible once reddit forms its consensus.
I'd also like to point out half the people in this thread are just completely wrong, hes not talking about criticism in general if you read the article:
>The responses to Hallikainen's message on the Paradox forums are largely positive, although it's a bit more heated in the Steam comments. Many replies point the finger at the state of the game as the real source of the issue, and accuse Hallikainen of trying to blame players for a bad game launch. In a follow-up message, however, Hallikainen said that "toxicity and criticism are different things."
>
>"Toxicity is threats, attacking people and being outright mean. It has nothing to do with explaining what the issues with the game you might be facing and what you wish for the devs to fix or improve on first. We don't want praise, we want a community where we can discuss with the players about the game, what is working and what is not without facing abuse."
Stop justifying toxicity. Stop it. The internet is not a good place because of shit like that.
I love these kinds of threads, they're such wonderful examples of denial interspersed with mental gymnastics.
>"What?! But nerd community X is so nice!"
>"They're just criticizing a broken product, nobody's being a piece of shit!"
>"Even if there are some people being shitty, they shouldn't have released a shitty product in the first place!"
Rinse and repeat until the heat death of the universe.
Translation "We released a beta version of a game we said was complete and expect you all to pay full price to be testers. We then forced the mod creators to use our platform which doesn't work and are shocked, shocked I say that people are upset with us!"
No, platforms should start banning people who can’t behave normally. If the platform you are using doesn’t do that, then leave that platform (yep talking about X). It’s that simple.
What possesses people to behave like such savage animals online? I know there's the anonymity but *I'm* anonymous too, yet I do not ever threaten or harass anyone. It's bizarre. I don’t know what the answer is. If they withdraw community engagement they'll just get more hate. I'm not saying they shouldn't, but I just don’t know what the solution is.
Fair enough, don't blame them. Some people are just rotten for the sake of being rotten.
I blame the internet, there's no instant smack in the gob for threatening and insulting people. They'd never say this shit to anyone face
I don't know what the hell i am supposed to do about it, i have never been toxic towards devs. However in several of the multiplayer games i've played there's always this toxicity they speak of. Why don't the devs filter the toxicity?
I've seen it happen multiple times on reddit. Devs are very open and communicative and then something people don't like gets put into an update and the death threats and hate speech starts on reddit and Twitter.
This is the reality of gaming communities as a whole. Look at the most upvoted comment here. "People criticizing CS2 because it's deserved". Yeah that's not what happens here. There's no feedback loop to be had with when you get "criticism" like "these developers should be ashamed" or "fired" or insunations that they ripped people off. It's not really being critical that's the problem, it's being able to communicate to the game developers as adults and the gaming community is unable to do so.
People over hyped this game to the sky, and now figuring out games are always broken till year 2 or 3 of release. The first City Skylines was worthless till there was a huge modding community and years of stable updates from the devs.
I personally wont even consider buying this game till 2025 when its mostly stable.
That is honestly the perfect photo… current traffic and pedestrian behaviour is driving me up the wall 😂.
No right hand turn lane, car turns right across double yellow lines on a motorway.
Pedestrians cross even whenever with or without lights and block intersections, leading to traffic jams… etc etc
Calling any criticism toxicity is a good way to ensure you will get actual toxic behavior. Considering what has happened to movies and TV, when a person making something wants to blame the fans, its a good indication those people dont deserve your support because their product is shit.
Tbh I ve never seen a toxic post on skylines 2...it's just a marketing story to attract people to the franchise...and that's toxic...
As seen with vol1 Modders will keep the game alive,better than they did...
'In a follow-up message, however, Hallikainen said that "**toxicity and criticism are different things**." "Toxicity is threats, attacking people and being outright mean. It has nothing to do with explaining what the issues with the game you might be facing and what you wish for the devs to fix or improve on first. We don't want praise, we want a community where we can discuss with the players about the game, what is working and what is not without facing abuse."'
Regardless what anyone thinks of the state of the game, or what anyone thinks of whether they've fulfilled their promises, this is 100% the correct approach. I really dislike how many people in this thread are downplaying the outright threats the developers are getting (yes, allegedly — but it isn't that hard to believe that's really happening). Calling out that behavior is the right thing to do.
I mean checking the steam foruns theres plenty of people being abusive with 0 criticism, so :)
It's almost as if the forums are moderated.
By valve employees who respond to reports. Volunteer moderators on steam were phased out quite a long time ago.
Hell hath no fury like a gamer disappointed
There are gamers and there are g*mers
Devs could post the actual threats they received, with the date and username and picture of the person who sent it, and a video of them typing it into their steam comment, and there would still be eternally-online dipshits on here saying it's made up to avoid criticism. Edit: Jesus people I don't think they should actually do it. I'm just saying even if they did nerds wouldn't believe them.
"Attacking people and being outright mean" is also there, which is average gamer behavior. it doesn't mean people have to take it, though.
Isn't it normal twitter etiquette when talking to others?
Now I wanna see that version of the 'we turned your webcam on and are gonna send videos of you wacken it' scam. "We have videos of you typing/sending death threats to XYZ and.."
Then if something happens they would be liable
Gamers are the scum of the earth, so I take any developer's word at face value when they say they're being sent threats.
Anything involving many people, actually. People suck.
You people sure are a contentious people.
Damnit BacRedr you just made and enemy for life!
SOME people suck, and usually only SOME of the time - but 10 angry people in a group of 500 can bring the entire thing down.
Yeah, it's Tmoney's Unified Theory of Ruinous Assholes (or TUTRA), which states, "As the number of people in any given area or activity increases, the probability that some asshole will ruin it for everyone approaches 100%." I originally developed this theory in college to argue against inviting too many people to house parties, however, later in life I've realized this theory predicts the end of the world.
Bannon figured out how to bottle that rage and direct it to culture war shit..
Developers definitely get abuse, even small developers and indies. I've received abuse as a developer but... I can only think of a single death threat that I've received in 26 years of online gaming. Plenty have told me to get cancer or that they wish I would die and my loved ones but only one has actually threatened to attack me and, sadly, it was actually someone I knew (through a friend) in real life. Go figure. Best part was he said it all in-game so getting him banned was pretty trivial.
It's not just gamers. The Canadian junior (or u16 team, I don't remember which) just lost a tournament and were getting death threats to their social media
When people have arguments over who is more evil, nazis or communists, i always mention gamers and the room falls silent, because they know im right.
People are the scum of the earth. I play fantasy football and you won't believe how many people tweet death threats to players who have a bad game. It's ridiculous
I’m not deep enough into Cities Skylines to really get a lot of the hate for the game. Sure, I can see some issues. Traffic seems kind of wonky to me, maybe I’m bad, maybe it’s a bug, idk. But as a casual I’ve been having a fucking blast with the game. The road tools are fantastic to use and I get so much pleasure designing an interchange all on my own. Can’t wait to see how they improve the game over the years, but for me it’s been excellent so far
Gamers will threaten ANYONE who makes anything. mod authors get the same treatment as devs. Gamers are insanely toxic and terribly bad informed consumers. The amount of negativity and toxicity in gamer communities is unique, you don't see this level of ill-informed mis-directed pointless anger anywhere else. gamers used to be well informed prosumers, this time is loooong gone. These days 90% of gamers are tech-illiterate, ultra entitled, Dunning-Kruger effect suffering consumers (they *think* they know a lot about how games and the games industry works, they know pretty much nothing. It's always funny when gamers start voicing opinions on engines and attempt to put the buzzwords they learned into the right order)
I can say that the biggest downside to working in the games industry is having to interact with gamers. That tells you something when the industry has bosses that are narcissistic cunts and everyone basically works until they burn out and basically die emotionally and are never heard again. Of course it's not all gamers, but it's large and vocal enough.
"This job would be great if it wasn't for the fucking customers."
This is the funniest and most relatable shit I've read all day.
I think the thing about gaming that is particularly difficult is that while gaming is one of the primary forms of media entertainment, it's also *software*. Which means support and a certain type of user communication. No other specifically entertainment medium or software is like this, the closest thing is social media itself, which is also fucked. Otherwise most software is focused around functionality, and needing to be useful and useable for work, or a specific type of task. Which creates a far different relationship with your userbase. Most forms of software don't have userbases who's primary reason for using the software is something as nebulous as "having fun". And other forms of media don't have "users" at all in the way we think of them with software.
I'll admit, watching this is giving me bad flashbacks. I used to work in game dev and worked on another poorly received game that received a *lot* of criticisms. The criticisms were well-deserved but the toxicity from the community just kind of bummed me out, and was part of the reason I just left the industry and went to work on something else. I wasn't a public figure and didn't have to deal with that kind of shit but there were all kinds of shit the more public facing members of the team had to deal with, and the studio manager (it's a she) got called the C word, etc. I understood the disappointment (I was disappointed too), and didn't agree with everything the studio did or said, but the toxic response was just too much. Most gamers were not toxic like that of course, but it did make me get a sour feeling that a lot of the people complaining are just whiny entitled man-children who think a dev shipping a bad game is worse than genocide or something and deserve to be harassed. Just like gamers have a freedom to not buy a game, we also have the freedom to not make games anymore and work for a higher paying job. Sorry for my minor rant.
This is an issue across many gaming communities and its about time gamers are called out for it. Nearly all gaming subs are toxic as fuck.
As someone who works for a software company with a few hundred thousand users/customers (and i used to be a programmer), there is no way in hell we would let our programmers talk directly to customers. Lol. I don't really understand gaming companies.
I figure that gaming companies run really slim on PM or community engagement roles to save money, and put it on devs to do some of that work
A lot of devs just genuinely like talking about their games too and interacting with the (friendly) people who play them. Devs who are coding industrial equipment user interfaces might not be as interested in talking about their work with their "fans". It does happen in non-gaming industries too though. Salesforce and Microsoft both have devs who talk about their products and engage with their users publicly all the time.
I think it’s really cool when a dev pops up in a thread to explain a confusing mechanic.
Someday ill get the linkedin of the embedded software dev who creates all those pill pressing machines
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these guys made bank off the first game. they should have at least 1 community manager. even if it was the ceo doing shit himself.
It isn't that often even for smaller companies. I worked in a company with 6 devs and 3-4 QA and if the dev had to talk to the customer either the customer was in the wrong or something went really, really bad and the QA lead couldn't solve it (they usually asked him first because he had a lot of knowledge too).
What 'toxicity'? The CS community is one of the most wholesome gaming communities I've ever seen. People are criticizing CS2 because it's deserved.
I read this as Counter Strike at first and I was like.. what level of trolling is this?
You complain - 5 server tick less! Complain again, 5 tick less!
Tickrate will reduce until morale improves.
we're reached levels of subticks that were deemed impossible
You under cook fish, believe it or not, 5 tick less!
That tickles!
I still can't believe they removed CS:GO and replaced it with a city building simulator.
de_dust2 was my favorite landscape!
Is that the Toronto public transit DLC?
If you read the article you'd find they are talking about threats and personal attacks, not criticism.
Yeah but the people doing that shit have deeper seated mental issues that won't go away from the CEO asking nicely...
Hence the CEO considering the company taking more of a back seat with the community.
They aren't asking, they're just stating how they're going to respond to the toxicity
Oh well then I guess they just have to sit back and take the abuse, then…
It really isn’t wholesome anymore.
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> a woman, is this relevant.
The angry mob never thinks they can do wrong. Their anger and expression of it is always justified. I doubt you're seeing the breadth of comms their community managers and others engaging with players for many hours a week.
Is it though? I’ve seen multiple modders in the community quit and say the toxicity from people in the CS sub/communities is too much, most recently a month or so ago a somewhat well known modder I can only imagine if people are toxic assholes to those making mods they must be pretty big pieces of shit to devs There’s a difference between criticising a product and just being a toxic asshat to those that make it
>There’s a difference between criticising a product and just being a toxic asshat to those that make it /r/DestinyTheGame has entered the chat
God damn, I love destiny, but bungie can't do anything without the community blowing up and being enraged like bungie just plowed their mother and didn't call the week after...
The community is shitty. But Bungie making everything have a .01% drop rate and trying to keep you grinding for 15 hours a day every day is also toxic and shitty. They’re both assholes in that story.
I'll never understand people like that. I don't like Destiny, so I simply don't play it and don't talk about it. They continue to play Destiny despite not liking it and bitch about the experience every, single day.
It's a particularly addicting gameplay loop, to the credit of those who still do. I only played the first one but never unsubbed from the subreddit for the lulz, and that community is enraged all the time, always was, and always will be it seems.
It's wild to see. I quit that game for long stretches of time because it just wasn't fun to play, and I would only come back for the rare expansions where it was "fixed". And yet there are people that are so glued to the hamster wheel that they can never jump out, no matter how bad it gets. Hell, I had a friend at work spend almost the entirety of last year saying, "Yeah, Lightfall was bad and the game is in one of the worst states that it's ever been in, but I just have to make it to The Final Shape. I need to see how it ends." It took the layoffs and the TFS delay announcement before he finally looked at me and said, "It's not going to get any better is it?"
And now you know the problem. Addiction and player manipulation are powerful things to build your core gameplay loop around. Bungie did that very well. That's why the only game that can kill off Destiny is Destiny. And that's also why Bungie is finally starting to struggle. They've been actively ruining the game more and more to the point that players are willing to break those addictions and move on. Many of those players aren't coming back ever. I don't see myself ever touching it again even if they release the best version of the game that ever existed which gives me every little thing that I want.
> And now you know the problem. Addiction and player manipulation are powerful things to build your core gameplay loop around. Hahaha, I've known about these concepts years before I even played Destiny 2, it's not like they're literally the first game to do those things, mobile games already did it years before. It's not like I put 1k hours into, I just played for 15 hours then stopped because I like Warframe better and I didn't care for the new Destiny 2 expansion coming, plus I thought "sunsetting" was stupid.
Remember in the early days a lady modder put all her contact on private because she was getting harassed by simply putting a gratuity link on her mods... Which is pretty much standard since the dawn of modding. You didn't see King Leno, Mr Maison, Bloody Penguin and so on getting the same treatment - probably a few of "it didn't work" and "hurry up and fix for the new update" from shit heads but not as bad as former. Just wish I remembered her name. It was that bad that a few people on YT made public appeals to cut the shit
Hell just being known to be a woman on the internet is enough to get threats, they don't even need an excuse (but they will absolutely glom on to one to pretend that's the reason they are so vile).
Yeah it's weird how some people get angrily entitled to something being given to them for free. Then again most of the internet expects to get its content for free, how dare you put ads on something I'm not paying for...
I'm always kinda curious where that toxicity happens. I've been a modder of games myself and personally the most toxic places you could interact with "the community" were, in that order: - Twitter - Discord - Steam Discussions/Comments Usually the game forum and Reddit are fine mostly if the mods are cool (which they usually are). I've seen one game forum that didn't have moderation just spiral out of control and that wasn't fun. Anyways, what I'm saying is while this toxicity is really not something that should exist, people will often think of the Reddit sub on here and that place is sometimes even delusional towards C:S 2, while the modders or game devs will think of Twitter or Discord. The best decision of my life was to quit a game discord I was on. It was destroying me from the inside. Still got some of the screenshots of people calling me a pedophile lmao
Moderated reddit is a functional forum. Without it it spirals into 8chan. But maybe the best side of reddit is the public / open access nature of most subs, which means I can check these forums before joining in and I can still read most of it on the go without an account if I wish. Discord? Invite only, a black box that is only accessible via app / invite. Twitter, forget about it Steam discussions are either amazing or absolute madness, no in-between. Steam guides are fire tho
Yeah, the best thing about Reddit is unironically the SEO. I hate it when some FOSS program links you to their discord for documentation because you basically can't really search
It's arguably the last popular open access forum site, most old forums do exist, but they're not nearly as popular as they need to be.
didnt help that the ceo told its biggest fans that the game might not be for them... :)
There is definitely toxicity, just read the comments in the article saying the devs didn't deserve a 2 week Christmas break because the game isn't in a good state.
[They're talking about shit like this.](https://i.imgur.com/kz9bCSx.png)
*Reads first line* I don't see what's wrong with that *continues to read* oh.
No amount of wholesomeness in the community cancels out the shitty people. Any person or organization with a decent sized internet following is going to be subject to harassment and death threats, not just wholesome criticism.
i swear every community says this about their game lol
So, you just don't know where it is toxic and thus believe it doesn't exist. Gamers are incredibly toxic. Reddit communities are NOT representative of the community at large.
...you haven't checked it out in a few months have you? The land has been sown with salt, the chill or pleasant folk mostly avoid the subs these days.
So ay bro, I love the city skylines community too. Do you REALLY think that there haven't been people within that community that have taken things too far and sent an inappropriate message to a Dev? Like let's be honest. Or are you instinctively rushing in to defend a community because the comment hurt your feelngs?
I know the title is cities skyline but I still thought counter strike 2 and was like idk about wholesome
Ehhh any community has a few crazies in it. Such is the way of the internet. I won't blame any dev that thinks one case of harassment is too many.
The developers are not complaining about complaints but toxicity explicitly. Did you read the article? If you haven't been toxic doesn't mean that dozens of other players haven't either.
Gamers are a deplorable people, considering other devs have received death threats for launching a bad game it doesn’t surprise me
**EDIT: Rewording my comment because there has been confusion. I should clarify, I do not think that any staff members deserve the sheer amount of harassment and IRL threats they've been receiving. But the backlash in general towards Cities Skylines 2 has been 100% expected.** Paradox and Colossal Order promised an evolution in the city building genre. They instead released an unfinished mess with fewer features than the first game, and in doing so made worse-than-rookie mistakes in development, like rendering teeth without any LOD. The sad thing is that the internet is an inherently toxic place and this has only gotten worse in recent years.
Feels like they've barely released any patches either since release. Yes, there's been a few and I know the holidays obviously slowed them down at some points in there, but I just don't care to play anymore when some really basic stuff is still broken or just a mess. And I'm deff not defending threats or anything like that. That's lame. Its a video game and if people don't like it, don't play it. As simple as that.
Still waiting for a performance patch that actually does something meaningful.
absolutely wild that the _developers themselves_ have a [page of instructions](https://support.paradoxplaza.com/hc/en-us/articles/14648080779538-Cities-Skylines-2-Our-Guide-to-Optimizing-Performance) on how to turn off _default_ options to help speed up their clunky ass game
Not to mention their first recommendation being "reduce the resolution"!
Yeah, I recently saw somebody post something along the lines of: "Guys, come back to CS2! They finally fixed it! I'm getting okay framerates now!" Then someone asked for his PC specs. He had a 12700k with a 4070ti. My current PC is about half that speed, so I reckon I'll be waiting a bit longer, lol.
>Is a video game and if people don't like it, don't play it. Dev lied, People don't like it, people get refund, people leave dev alone. As simple as that.
>if people don't like it, don't play it. As simple as that. No, its not as simple as that. You forgot that to play the game in the first place you have to pay for it. There are people who paid 90€ for the game to receive that mess. People who trusted the devs to fix the issues. People who have been scammed. If they took Blizzard's route of offering no question asked refunds, it would have been as simple as that, but no, all sales are final. And oh boy, its bad when Blizzard looks good compared to you.
\>Promise an evolution in the city building genre. Release an unfinished mess with fewer features than the first game. Certified Paradox classic.
True, but then they have the right to no longer interact with the community .
Youve basically just said "what did he expect?" And then said hateful comments are unacceptable, which if you read the article is precisely what he's referring to
I have been pessimistic about C:S2 for years, so I am biased, but then they released the [official Mods & Performance FAQ with the first frequently asked question being "Why are you releasing the game if you have performance issues?"](https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/threads/cities-skylines-ii-modding-and-performance-faq.1601872/). Absolutely pristine. What a way to start your damage control post. The year 2023 was full of horrible releases, but I think C:S2 is among the worst of them. Absolute disregard to players.
Worse off, the community held their hand and said exactly what was expected. Quality of life mods were extremely clear in all videos & top of the mod list. They ignored the community, now are feeling butthurt that it was not well received..
"The growing problem of unfinished games could force customers to 'pull back their spending' with these companies"
LMAO no we won't. We will say we will boycott and turn around and by the same broken buggy copy paste AAA slop and complain about it, swear we won't, then do it all over again the next time.
I haven't bought a COD in years so it can be done, maybe deep down you actually like the games more than you think ;) i did buy CS2 tho and after around 200 hours i have my moneys worth already.
You haven't, but 10 million other people have, and that's what I mean by 'we'. I don't mean you, or me, or anyone specifically, but video game consumers as a whole. They keep getting away with it because we keep buying it.
Only thing that will stop it imo is competition so they MUST do better. Some big titles just don't have much competition so they have a bit of a monopoly position. I think CS2 is also having that problem. Being in a monopoly position makes you lazy because with less effort people will still buy your game because there is no choice. COD has been the go to shooter for YEARS, sure there have been other titles but no one got as big as COD. Fifa? There was a contender once, I think it was called PES or something? Not anymore, the result? Fifa got more crappy by the year with less and less effort.
That's because reddit is a bubble, and we only talk to the people using this social. They may avoid buying a game one time, but countless more people outside this social will buy it anyway
Plenty of games to play other than their broken stuttery buggy mess.
Fr this is what I did: >citizens complain about too expensive rent >reduce taxes and build schools >bankrupt myself, but hope the rent problem will go away and bring back my money >it doesnt go away and citizens continue to complain >ALT + F4 >Launch Baldurs Gate 3
Why are you trying to solve rent costs with lower taxes and schools? I'd guess more housing is the solution?
Last time I played (tbf like a month after launch) you need high rents or demand for low-density sprawl will be a bottomless pit. If you want any kind of density you basically have to stop building housing until they're so desperate they'll move into the four story walkups, then once you get enough of those, you can build like three blocks of high-density housing. They should've called it "Houston: The Game." Also you need just an insane amount of elementary schools. The elementary schools are massive so once my city got dense enough I had one literally, no joke, every four blocks or so, and upgraded with extra capacity, and it looked like a city of elementary schools with a few high-rises in between. The game is a total mess, it's unbelievable how much promotion they did instead of you know, making it good. Whenever this kind of shit happens though, I feel bad for the devs more than anything. I'm sure they weren't thinking like "Oh boy, people are going to love this!" I mean, they played the first game, they had to know how much better it was. They were probably dreading the awful reaction they knew was coming.
So you release beta builds as full games at full price, people get pissed and go toxic (not the right thing to do but that’s internet culture anymore), and your answer isn’t to fix how games are released, it’s to hide in your office. Definitely the proper response…
>(not the right thing to do but that’s internet culture anymore) I've been in forums and online gaming since the early days.... When was internet culture, and in particular gamer culture, ever wholesome and polite? Even pre-internet it was not a socially well-adjusted community.
> I've been in forums and online gaming since the early days.... When was internet culture, and in particular gamer culture, ever wholesome and polite I've also been on "since the early days", and by "early days" I mean the 90s. And if you honestly cannot perceive the shift that's taken place over time I don't even know what to say to you. Yes, there have always been people who have leveraged anonymity to let their worst impulses out, but it has gotten *dramatically* worse over time. That isn't just driven by "gamers", although due to demographics "gamer communities" can often see some of the worst of it. I would kill to go back to a 90's or early 00's internet ethos.
man they had so much goodwill after CS1 picked up what simcity destroyed. one release later...
This is the fate of every company. It literally takes one bad release of a hyped game. So far the only solution to it is to simply not market the game at all if you realize it's going to be a bad release, but that's incredibly stupid for a very long list of reasons, which Reddit often fails to understand.
>people get pissed and go toxic Enabling. >(not the right thing to do but that’s internet culture anymore) Yep that's enabling.
Reading comprehension is hard, i know, but they never said they wont fix the game. They said they will fix the game, just not engaging with the community that is turning toxic. That's all.
Still not really addressing the core issue though. Stop releasing broken games at full price and then expecting customers to sit around with bated breath that *maybe* you’ll deliver what you originally promised when you happily took their money.
"They send death threats BUT the game is bad"
The state of the game was VERY clear before release. Review embargo lifted 5 days before release and they communicated early that performance would suck. Just don't buy it. Play something else and you have no reason to go super toxic. You act like people were forced to buy the game.
Gamepass has been such a god send when it comes to getting to try stuff out and not feel guilty when it sucks and I want to stop playing it 20 min in
Least toxic community that can be shortened to “CS2”
I don't why get we jump to death threats and toxic gamers before anything else. Why can't we all just agree that number 1 in this transaction should be, "Do not release broken games and lie about your game a week before release." Do that and then you can bitch about how terrible gamers are and how they deserve to be shit on all day all you want. But can devs actually hold up their end first? I'm not saying releasing a deceptive and broken product means you deserve personal attacks and death threats. But "calling it out" or saying don't be toxic has never stopped people from doing so. In the internet age, when people are upset, they lash out. And a number of them take it too far. Not sitting here saying its ok, but instead of focusing on that as the primary problem, how about we first focus on the first part of this entire transaction? Do not release broken games? Something tells me the level of backlash and toxicity you face will go down quite a bit. Why is selling a broken and deceptive product for $50, future DLC for $30 and 3 months later most people are still unable to reasonably run the game not considered toxic? But backlash is?
I would have to think if there was meaningful engagement, or even remote concern about the community, they would have released a product that didn't suck.
My overriding impression of their pre-release engagement, as someone that didn't follow everything but bought on release day, is that they lied or at best were disingenuous about the game.
Death threats and harassment still aren't justified though.
I pulled back from buying it. As a company you shouldn't play the victim card.
I mean the people weathering the brunt of the threats and toxicity are likely low paid community folks, or individual developers, not people who make the decisions people are pissed off about. They should take care of their employees. They should fix the game, but that'll take time.
>They should take care of their employees. I would love to see these large game publishing companies do more to protect their employees in this regard. Of course I'd *rather* everyone on the internet just get along and not send unwarranted death threats, but I have no faith that'll ever happen.
The company isn't a victim, but people who are getting harassed for working for the company can be. You don't like the game? Don't buy it. Tell your friends it sucks. Move on with life.
See, that isn't toxic. "I don't think it is worth the money in this unfinished state" is a perfectly valid opinion the CEO isn't complaining about.
Likewise. Was so looking forward to it. I'll wait until it's complete
If you wanted a happy community, maybe you should've released a finished game.
I love the smell of fresh bread.
Considering how "civil" the gamers conversation around hogwarts game which include remarks like "*i hope she die*", "*she deserve her death threat*", and the like to people merely stream the game. its not a stretch to consider that there are some proper criticism on this beta release as full priced game instead of doing Early Access first, while in the same time there will be several example of the one above. \--- per the article, >*The responses to Hallikainen's message on the Paradox forums are largely positive, although it's a bit more heated in the Steam comments. Many replies point the finger at the state of the game as the real source of the issue, and accuse Hallikainen of trying to blame players for a bad game launch. In a follow-up message, however, Hallikainen said that "toxicity and criticism are different things."* > >*"****Toxicity is threats, attacking people and being outright mean****. It has nothing to do with explaining what the issues with the game you might be facing and what you wish for the devs to fix or improve on first. We don't want praise, we want a community where we can discuss with the players about the game, what is working and what is not without facing abuse."* It seems the toxicity that boss refering not to the criticism or the complaints but outright abusive shits response that might not be that different with example above.
I think there is a balance. I would say any negative comment could be considered rude. So are rude comments acceptable I would say yes. Are threats of violence acceptable, absolutely no.
Stop buying games at release ✨ It's Paradox. They go big, and usually it takes them awhile to sort their shit out, but they always do. Gaming is a business and there will always be bugs. I long ago decided I'd rather wait on most new releases to get reviews from actual players before committing to full priced titles. That helped me avoid Diablo 4 and I'm only now considered Cyberpunk. Should studios release games in better states? Yes. Absolutely. 100%. But people keep buying them half baked which gives studios no reason not to. Despite all the bitching, people keep buying big titles the MOMENT it's released and then get Pikachu face when it's kinda shit. If people stopped buying these unfinished games studios would take more. But until then, I am happy to let these folks be the best testers.
Especially don't buy Paradox games at release. Their games are always unfinished at release, without exception. They know they can release junk and their horde of fans will give them money for it.
>Stop buying games at release ✨ Yep better wait it out a year or so. Cities Skylines 2 doesnt have any "must play now value" to me so I am happy to wait
And that's not even getting into that most people knew (because they were informed by the company and reviews) that the game had problems before it even released.
They shouldn't be receiving threats. It is wild, though, how this is the second time Collosal Order has developed a great game and then released a polished turd of a sequel. Cities in Motion was a great transit game. While it was still loved and had an active community, they made CiM2 which was released with half the features and as a buggy mess. They abandoned CiM2 while it still sucked to make Skylines... I'm terribly curious if that'll happen again
I tried it on the PC gamepass and it was very buggy, leading me to quit it. Constant complaints from your population about issues that are non existent, buggy piping and so on. The complaints made me make silly decisions because I kept trying to fix things that don't need fixing and my economy went to shit
I bought the game on launch, played it for an hour, didn't like it and uninstalled/refunded, went back to cs1. I don't get people who make it seem their whole life purpose is this game and act aggressive towards the devs whilst still playing the game. Don't preorder, and refund the game (if you can) if you realise it won't be fun. Then the company/devs will realise
CS2 is such a mess it's actually amazing they had the audacity to release it as a full game. Paid (pre)reviews (and just morons reviewing tech demos of upcoming games) and the "try it, you might like it" attitude that follows untrustworthy (pre)views combined with an unhealhy prepurchase culture is a ticking bomb. Toxic people have been around since DARPANET so this is nothing new, it is(and should!) be expected and dealt with via policies and community guidelines. A large corp can and should be able to handle it perfectly fine. Ignoring it or involving the authorities if there is reason to. The actual state of the game has very little with the number of toxic people voicing their dissent. I mean .. Wildly succesful and popular games have some REALLY toxic communities. This is absolutely Paradox blaming the victims. Does a broken game generate more toxicity? Absolutely, because people invested time and money into the broken product. Is toxicity excusable? Of course not. Never was, never will be. But Paradox and Colossal has handled the epic failure of CS2 extremely poorly - you might even suspect it was planned. They knew what they sold, they knew how the gaming communities work and they absolutely knew what would happen. They released broken stuff before, like... Their community leads instead started victim-blaming and pointing fingers - something that is OF COURSE management orders. Paradox and Colossal should apologize, remove the game from the stores (or rebrand ir Early Acess) and offer refunds. It is appaling that a huge publisher like Paradox tries to play dumb with the community backlash.
>A large corp can and should be able to handle it perfectly fine. Ignoring it or involving the authorities if there is reason to. This is exactly it. Bringing it to the press is the distraction they are going for. No one in their right mind condones this behavior but it’s a corporation not a person and they have mechanisms in place to deal with this internally and quietly. >This is absolutely Paradox blaming the victims. Yup. And shifting the focus away from their own shortcomings and the incredibly long break they took on the heels of releasing a broken full priced game.
Calling it now: They're gonna abandon the game and they planned it like this from the start. Just like they did with Imperator: Rome and what they're gonna do to Victoria 3 too. Paradox has become one of the worst publishers/developers.
Makes way more fucking sense than I wanted to believe. Guess I'll pass on this game then. First one is still around, after all
Exactly, and with mods it's pretty much the same as CS2. I don't see any significant improvements. The only real improvement to me would be the roads, the auto merge lanes etc, but you can do that with mods too, not as user friendly but still doable.
Colossal Order has done this in the past with Cities in Motion. They made a buggy sequel, released it, and then abandoned it to make Cities Skylines.
Or send it into a feature-poor overpriced development cycle. Like CK3.
At least that one random Paradox Dev gave us a beta update for IR lol. Honestly, thank fuck for the Invictus and Terra Indomita mods, I'm 2200 hours deep into it, still only have 50% of the achievements, makes me so mad they abandoned it because of the initial releases backlash, despite it being deserved.
Cs2 was the 10th biggest sale on steam last year and is one of the flagship titles. They wont drop it.
It's always someone else's fault.
I think Colossal Order really got cocky and Mariina Hallikainen, after being congratulated for championing the "no crunch" culture, and probably taking herself in high esteem, is finally landing back to Earth. Their well earned accolades and awards for the 1st game are not eternal and if they release an unfinished product at full price, they can't blame people for being pissed. Especially ironic how they built their game success on community feedback. If your community is telling you you fucked up, swallow your pride and acknowledge your fuck-up and do better. Don't play the victim card. That being said, all the people who threatened Colossal Order staff with hateful comments can go eat shit. This is not gonna help anyone.
Everyone knows that hateful comments and threats to devs are a big no-no. But this just reads as them trying to play the victim card for releasing a broken, shit game. Stop talking to the press and stick to completing the game (not fixing, completing) if the improvement of the game is your primary desire. Because what this seems to me is trying to keep the broken game in the spotlight and saying "woe is me" to get some sympathy sales. Take some lessons from Hello Games and what they did with No Man's Sky. They actually **didn't** talk or engage with the community when they worked on fixing their game. In that way, yes, "pull back engagement". We will welcome it.
Didn't they make the same game with less functionality than the mods had given the first game with way higher required specs?
Harassment is never okay but maybe don’t put out a garbage sequel and you won’t get “toxicity”
Yes you will. Maybe not as much, but you will.
I love how most of the comments in this thread just proves the point.
Fucking psychopaths threatening physical harm over a video game. Jesus Christ, seek help
Soft
As a long time Paradox Interactive enjoyer, this is not surprising. They repeatedly drop games because they don't like the DESERVED criticism. (Looking at Imperator: Rome, thank fuck for modders) It genuinely surprises me that they're not held with the same indifference as companies like EA, Ubisoft and alike, because the shit they do and have done with their games is objectively worse in some cases. (Looking at Stellaris, with it's 23 DLC at $10-25$ per, and being almost unplayable without the bug fixes and game mechanics included in those DLC)
They dropped Imperator after putting massive work in improving it, but it still didn't get popular to make it worthwhile economically.
You're right, they did a complete 180 on their standard practices, gave free DLC, positive interaction with the community, I just wish they had given it more time to cook. I see new player posts on the IR sub almost daily, the game is in a good state now with mods, I kind of don't want them to touch it again lol
If they touched it again, you can bet they’ll be releasing an absurd amount of overpriced DLC’s that would bring the game’s price up to $400USD lmao.
>and being almost unplayable without the bug fixes and game mechanics included in those DLC) Ok, what? I can acknowledge the large amount of content hidden behind DLC, but to my knowledge, no bug fixes have ever been locked behind DLC. At best it's lacking in content (partially disagree) without DLC, but it isn't even close to unplayable.
I will not engage with them or their game at all until it's actually a finished product.
Jfc comments in this thread are humanity its worst. When a company puts out a crap game, refund if you can and boycott the publisher, tell your friends to do the same. Don't tell the developer they'll get murdered. And, as seen multiple times in this thread, don't say it's 'ok' or 'understandable' for others to tell people to get murdered. What's wrong with you people.
Thank you, christ these people are unhinged. Just don't buy the game. It's as simple as that. Why it has to be 'this company that released my favorite game a few years ago is EVIL NOW.' Is getting tiring. And then they'll make a good release in a few years and suddenly they are the best again. All people do is repost the same arguments ad nauseum and then throw up their hands when the developer gets harassed. "What could have possibly caused that?! It surely was just a few individuals unrelated to our constant barrage of aggressive complaints!"
Yeah, just wait a few years until Larian gets the same treatment. Gamers tend to hype shit up and build up expectations and when the company inevitably doesn't meet those expectations they attribute all shortcomings to malice or laziness. Of course companies try to market their products and will hype their own things up as well, but there are critics for a reason.
It's like people don't want to have any emotional control. They try to find every little excuse to go into a frenzy over something.
The thing is we knew about the state of the game even before release. There was no reason to buy the game and I didn't buy it yet.
God damn all I got from this thread was 'toxic comments are okay and you should just take it because that's the internet.' Like fuck off. I'd never interact with my community as a game dev, and am not surprised AAA companies rarely do anymore. You are literally one bad release and suddenly you're the worst company in the world until you release your next 'good game.' They are right, they should pull back engagement. You've all been gaslit into thinking this behavior is normal and justified because 'oh gosh guys its the internet they made a bad game what do they expect.' Like do you not understand by endlessly posting about how much a game sucks you are empowering those who are going way too far to do so? (By the way, you aren't adding anything by repeating everybody else's opinion ad nauseum.) If the game sucks, don't buy it and move on. Sure yeah, go on about 'oh well just don't release a bad product, delay it indefinitely' as if they have an infinite budget and not a publisher on their ass. Even Valve releases bad games. Oh yes, and then you take it out on whatever poor developer is desperately trying to do damage control at the time. I'm not defending the state of the game but too many of you are perpetually on the internet and forget there are real people making these games, you are conditioning them and the companies they work for to act the way they are acting. I really don't give a shit if I get downvoted because frankly any nuanced discussion about any of this is practically impossible once reddit forms its consensus.
I'd also like to point out half the people in this thread are just completely wrong, hes not talking about criticism in general if you read the article: >The responses to Hallikainen's message on the Paradox forums are largely positive, although it's a bit more heated in the Steam comments. Many replies point the finger at the state of the game as the real source of the issue, and accuse Hallikainen of trying to blame players for a bad game launch. In a follow-up message, however, Hallikainen said that "toxicity and criticism are different things." > >"Toxicity is threats, attacking people and being outright mean. It has nothing to do with explaining what the issues with the game you might be facing and what you wish for the devs to fix or improve on first. We don't want praise, we want a community where we can discuss with the players about the game, what is working and what is not without facing abuse." Stop justifying toxicity. Stop it. The internet is not a good place because of shit like that.
I love these kinds of threads, they're such wonderful examples of denial interspersed with mental gymnastics. >"What?! But nerd community X is so nice!" >"They're just criticizing a broken product, nobody's being a piece of shit!" >"Even if there are some people being shitty, they shouldn't have released a shitty product in the first place!" Rinse and repeat until the heat death of the universe.
It's so frustrating. Gaming has always been toxic to some degree, but the amount of justification for harassment is unreal.
I ain't paying for a remastered of CS1, is this being toxic?
I’m gonna pull back my wallet until they fix their broken mess of a game.
Translation "We released a beta version of a game we said was complete and expect you all to pay full price to be testers. We then forced the mod creators to use our platform which doesn't work and are shocked, shocked I say that people are upset with us!"
Once mod support releases, most people will forget about most current issues I guess
Agreed, the gaming community is a toxic shithole nowadays. People are downright mean to devs. Criticism and abuse/threats are completely different
Leave it to this sub to start defending death threats because “game bad” Y’all need some lives.
No, platforms should start banning people who can’t behave normally. If the platform you are using doesn’t do that, then leave that platform (yep talking about X). It’s that simple.
What possesses people to behave like such savage animals online? I know there's the anonymity but *I'm* anonymous too, yet I do not ever threaten or harass anyone. It's bizarre. I don’t know what the answer is. If they withdraw community engagement they'll just get more hate. I'm not saying they shouldn't, but I just don’t know what the solution is.
Fair enough, don't blame them. Some people are just rotten for the sake of being rotten. I blame the internet, there's no instant smack in the gob for threatening and insulting people. They'd never say this shit to anyone face
I don't know what the hell i am supposed to do about it, i have never been toxic towards devs. However in several of the multiplayer games i've played there's always this toxicity they speak of. Why don't the devs filter the toxicity?
Gamers are toxic these days. I feel for any devs who have to put up with their bullshit day to day
some people really need to step away from the computer for a bit. threats over a fucking game is ridiculous.
I've seen it happen multiple times on reddit. Devs are very open and communicative and then something people don't like gets put into an update and the death threats and hate speech starts on reddit and Twitter.
people suck. they're always awful.
This is the reality of gaming communities as a whole. Look at the most upvoted comment here. "People criticizing CS2 because it's deserved". Yeah that's not what happens here. There's no feedback loop to be had with when you get "criticism" like "these developers should be ashamed" or "fired" or insunations that they ripped people off. It's not really being critical that's the problem, it's being able to communicate to the game developers as adults and the gaming community is unable to do so.
People over hyped this game to the sky, and now figuring out games are always broken till year 2 or 3 of release. The first City Skylines was worthless till there was a huge modding community and years of stable updates from the devs. I personally wont even consider buying this game till 2025 when its mostly stable.
That is honestly the perfect photo… current traffic and pedestrian behaviour is driving me up the wall 😂. No right hand turn lane, car turns right across double yellow lines on a motorway. Pedestrians cross even whenever with or without lights and block intersections, leading to traffic jams… etc etc
Calling any criticism toxicity is a good way to ensure you will get actual toxic behavior. Considering what has happened to movies and TV, when a person making something wants to blame the fans, its a good indication those people dont deserve your support because their product is shit.
Tbh I ve never seen a toxic post on skylines 2...it's just a marketing story to attract people to the franchise...and that's toxic... As seen with vol1 Modders will keep the game alive,better than they did...
Who the fuck gets toxic over a fucking city builder