This one in particular may not have been dumb considering the studio they closed wasn't the same one they built. Previous reporting said that they had about 70% turnover of employees due to Redfall not being the game that anyone wanted to make when they got a job at Arkane. So mandating Redfall in the first place was the dumb move.
They're also in the enviable position of having made a game with some of the highest profit per employee in history, so they're not under the pressure that most are.
Yeah, last year was not a weak year. There was a new highly-regarded Zelda game as well, which is easy to forget when Baldur's Gate 3 won every award so unanimously.
You don't need to slash a AAA studio down to the size of an indie; you can just spin off a small team from your larger one and roll resources on and off of that project as needed.
I'm not asking you to stop liking a studio you like, but I am asking you to take them off of the pedestal you put them on. If you care about the SKG campaign, that new shooter of theirs is at odds with it.
Whether it's any more exploitative than any other game, it's still got all of the same baggage. It's always online and will one day be unplayable, and it's relying on continual revenue to support it rather than just selling it for an up front price and letting it rock, which both encourage exploitative monetization anyway.
I know, but this past year in particular, there wasn't much contention over what the game of the year was.
If I buy the game on Epic, I'm given no assurance that the game will continue to work for me on Linux. Others will have different issues with the service that Epic offers. I'm not going to buy from Epic just because Valve has reached some threshold of market saturation.
Not with how unanimous BG3's award was at basically every outlet.
Didn't they just announce a live service shooter? Isn't that caving into current money-making models?
Probably not, unless Remedy buys the publishing rights back from Epic, which they did for Alan Wake 1, from Microsoft.
BioShock 2 was interesting for improving the combat of the original (but not as much as Infinite did) and for what they did with the story, turning it into a parable with its ending. The story was pretty one-note in that regard, but they went for it, you know?
The cheat in this case would send legitimate actions. Like maybe you, the human, would have missed the headshot, but your cheat corrected to the inputs that would have landed one.
They bought Easy Anti-Cheat during the Fortnite boom.
Well, we've seen gameplay of this one already, and it's got more in common with Dishonored than it does Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines. I'll happily be pleasantly surprised, even if that means they made a really good vampire version of Dishonored, but I also know The Chinese Room's track record, so it would be really wild if this was somehow the game that Bloodlines fans wanted.
I don't think there's any modding community that will make Bloodlines 2 an acceptable sequel to Bloodlines 1.
It does prevent Linux compatibility, but even if it didn't, it's a computer security problem, for those who care. You're essentially allowing different game companies to install a rootkit on your computer so you can play a video game.
I think they're already running out of people who want to buy the latest PlayStation, and Sony clearly can't afford to throw hundreds of millions of dollars after this level of graphics anymore, because it's not resulting in equivalent growth of console sales to make up for it.
Just checking, but you're aware this is GameSpot the video game website and not GameStop the brick and mortar retail establishment, right?
That's one way to do it, but I worry less about those things by not supporting them with my time and money.
Valve announced a change for Steam today that will make things a lot clearer for everyone, as developers will now need to clearly list the kernel-level anti-cheat used on Steam store pages.
Now if only they could more clearly communicate when games are playable offline.
Fandom-owned media outlet GameSpot has commenced another round of layoffs today.
*Below is an internal email from Hermen Hulst, CEO, Studio Business Group, Sony Interactive Entertainment distributed today to SIE employees. ********************************************************************************** Dear Team, Today, I want to share some important updates from Sony Inte...
Neon Koi was developing a mobile action game. Firewalk Studios recently launched and quickly delisted Concord.
The Video Game History Foundation decried the 'lobbying efforts by rightsholder groups' that have 'impeded' proper efforts to archive old games at libraries.
This sucks.
Lots of changes in here that will take a trained eye to see, and there are plenty that I couldn't spot.
- Sol's Heavy Mob Cemetary looks like you can combo into it now, perhaps finally making it useful 3 years after launch.
- Faust can launch an afro at you with the golf club.
- Asuka can change decks during mulligan super.
- Zato can combo into command grab (presumably to allow him agency to rebuild Eddie meter).
- I can't tell if they reworked Baiken parry or if this is only on clash, but it now puts the enemy into a punishable crush state.
- Ramlethal gets diagonal sword throws for some reason? Did she need that?
- Goldlewis can cancel Behemoths into other Behemoths?! I play this character, but did he need that?! It does not appear to be any more scaled, lol.
- Potemkin Buster has armor on it now, yikes!
- Johnny's Mist Finer destroys projectiles.
- I think Jack-O' now has a dash cancel off of soccer kick.
- Slayer can cancel his Dandy Step mixups now. Sure, he needed that... /s
- Nago can convert off of popping blood rage in the corner.
- Anji can cancel spin followups into a new spin.
- I-No can kill her music note after it's been set and cancel the recovery.
The Last of Us studio has multiple single-player titles in development…
Information originally from MinnMax's Ben Hanson. There is an existing game used to describe this new game to Hanson as a point of reference, and all we know is that that game is not Hitman.
An Alien: Isolation sequel is in the works, with original director Al Hope at the helm.
(Bloomberg) -- Tencent Holdings Ltd. and Ubisoft Entertainment SA’s founding Guillemot family are considering options including a potential buyout of the French video game developer after it lost more than half its market value this year, according to people familiar with the matter. Most Read from ...
Tencent would be capped at a 10% stake. The Guillemot family would remain in control, just the way they want it.
The Prompt
Anecdotally, I've seen a lot of people jaded with modern gaming. I understand why. If you only see the games that have the most marketing, which are the ones you're most likely to see for obvious reasons, then you're primarily seeing the likes of AAA games with second-job-esque battle pass FOMO tactics, loot box gambling, pay to win, and constant reminders that you're missing out on the full experience of the game like coming across fan favorite characters in the DLC of an already-expensive Star Wars game. The plural of "anecdote" is not "data", but it could be this fatigue with the games that the average person is aware of that has led to a drop in spending and the crash that the industry is currently facing (but let's not sugar coat it; there are surely other factors, too). I sympathize with these people, but respectfully, there's a whole wide world out there of great games that never ask for a dime after it's in your possession, so let's call out those games and spread the word.
The Rules
- One game per top level comment, with the game name behind a "#" symbol so that it forms a heading, and platforms it's available on in parentheses. Leave a brief synopsis with no spoilers and a brief critique. I'll be starting us off with a number of examples. Upvote the ones you agree with, and leave a comment on the top level one for discussion.
- The game should have no paid DLC, no announced paid DLC, and feel like a complete product as it stands right now. I actually don't mind the most common types of DLC, like what you would find in the Paradox model, but I know there's a large enough contingent of folks who really do mind, so any DLC whatsoever is a deal-breaker for this thread. I'm making an exception for soundtrack and artbook DLC since, as far as I know, the existence of this stuff doesn't bother anyone and just allows for avenues for certain artists to get a better cut for their work from super fans. I'm not making an exception for cosmetic DLC like you'd find in V Rising, as innocuous as I personally find it to be.
- The game's first release must have been in 2024. By this, I mean that if it came out on PS5 two years ago but launched on PC this year, it doesn't count, so no God of War: Ragnarok. No collections of old games like Marvel vs. Capcom.
- No early access games, except for games that were in early access and hit v1.0 this year. So no Palworld, but Satisfactory is on the table if you'd like to recommend it. I personally didn't care for it, but if you did, feel free to list it!
- Only games you've played thoroughly enough to be sure you'd recommend it. If you only started playing the early chapters or levels, maybe let someone else recommend it, just in case the quality nosedives later on. I'm personally only recommending games I've finished or beaten, though that definition admittedly becomes challenging with the likes of UFO 50.
Ubisoft, take note.
If you don't retain some kind of actual ownership, they will not be allowed to use terms like "buy" or "purchase" on the store page button. I hope there aren't huge holes in this that allow bad actors to get around it, but I certainly loathe the fact that there's no real way to buy a movie or TV show digitally. Not really.
EDIT: On re-reading it, there may be huge holes in it. Like if they just "clearly tell you" how little you're getting when you buy it, they can still say "buy" and "purchase".
They seem to be very caught off guard by Star Wars: Outlaws' underperformance, and after investor pressure, are trying to massively course correct. This is what happens when you vote with your dollars!
Watch September 24 on YouTube and Twitch for news and updates from over 20 titles.
A half hour, 20 PS5 games, at least one PSVR2, ahead of TGS.
The game was reportedly referred to as “the future of PlayStation” internally…
$200M before the Sony acquisition and $200M after. It's a little hard to believe. The story seems to only be coming from Colin Moriarty right now, but I trust Jordan Middler to consider it at least reasonably plausible if he wrote it up for VGC.
UPDATE: Sources not corroborating $400M number.
https://80.lv/articles/multiple-sources-dispute-concord-s-usd400-million-budget/
The PS5 Pro has better specs for the most demanding games.
$700, and the side by sides look barely different, from my perspective. The chat seemed to have the same opinion.
Night School Studio sent out an email to owners of Oxenfree on itch.io, to notify that it's going to be completely removed from the store on October 1st.
Luckily it's DRM-free. Back up your installers. I wanted to call attention to this, because in a very unusual move, it's being removed even for people who own a copy, whereas usually stores will only remove a game from sale and still host the files for existing owners to download.
The virtual rival thing could be cool. There's a lot of room for it to go wrong, and we're no worse off if it does. But replay takeover is huge. This is the holy grail of fighting game training mode features. You can go into a replay of a match and correct the things you did wrong or find answers to situations that are difficult or time consuming to recreate yourself in training mode.
I know most are probably talking about Path of Exile II or Diablo IV's latest expansion, but those are online-only, and I don't care even a little bit about "seasonal" content, so this is the one I'm excited for.
The 26-year-old designer Xalavier Nelson Jr. is behind some delightfully weird games, including an organ-trading simulator and a Lynchian neo-noir.
An epic dark fantasy where fates are decided by mighty Eikons and the Dominants who wield them. This is the tale of Clive Rosfield, a tragic warrior who swears revenge on the Dark Eikon Ifrit, a mysterious entity that leaves naught but calamity in its wake.
$50 for the base game, $70 with DLC included.
Steam link provided. Also available on Epic.
This game has made the rounds before, but now it's got a slightly new title and plenty of new gameplay footage. Finally, more campaign FPS games!