9 months
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- 9 months
It’s a canon event for any game company that achieves moderate success
9 monthsAlthough Kerbal space program 2 had major issues from the dev team, only for the publisher to pull the plug because of how bad the progress was, and leave the game in permanent early access.
Uh, its more like a new publisher bought the IP, functionally fired almost all of the original dev team, and then hired a bunch of other people who had no idea how their insanely modified version of Unity worked…
And then the idiot in charge just started spamming out extremely grand and difficult to implement new core functionalities… with a team of mostly newbies who had no idea how anything worked.
So, basically, they started out where KSP started out… and would very obviously thus need years and years and years to get it out of Early Access / Alpha state… but it needed to make money NOW, and it didn’t, so everyone got laid off (other than the idiot in charge), and the game was functionally abandoned, but not totally abandoned, because MY IP MINE NO YOU CANT HAVE IT!!!
Or… maybe not? With regard to the IP rights?
Nobody seems to know who actually owns the KSP IP at this point.
https://techdriveplay.com/2025/01/03/kerbal-space-program-2-a-tale-of-corporate-neglect-and-failure/
I never understood the fixation on IPs. For a kick ass universe with amazing lore etc, ok sure.
I mean I love Jeb and the gang as much as the next guy, but they’re not core to my enjoyment of KSP1. The mechanics were.
lol, RIP Jebs 1 - 48395.
But uh yeah, the… the lore is basically:
We made some cute little dudes and dudettes that are… possibly animated, sapient fungi? Or something?
Anyway they are sm0l and live in sm0l solar system.
And they have a space program.
And most of the characters are just obvious cutesy knock offs of famous humans in spaceflight.
Woo!
lol
- 9 months
One of the original goals for KSP2 was the use of a new engine to get rid of the technical debt from the first game that caused issues like the Kraken…but then the publisher forced them to use the KSP engine because “it would speed up development.”
It was doomed from the beginning.
- cynar@lemmy.worldEnglish9 months
It was even worse than that.
They were basically given the KSP1 codebase and told to rewrite it to be better. However, KSP1 was still being developed, and they didn’t want to demotivate the KSP1 team. Therefore they were banned from even telling them it existed, let alone ask for help or advice with the existing codebase.
- kautau@lemmy.worldEnglish9 months
It’s a canon event for any
gamecompany thatachieves moderate successgets acquired by investorsVery much not exclusive to the game industry
- kautau@lemmy.worldEnglish9 months
Makes sense, wasn’t untrue and I wasn’t criticizing, just wanted to make sure everyone remembers that the problem goes up the chain due to capitalism.
Various companies/games were mentioned in the comments, but I think a good example is Hello Games. Clearly fumbled their game launch and were over ambitious with No Man’s Sky.
But it’s gotten an incredible amount of things that were promised, and many things that weren’t, all as free updates. Sure, they’re still making money, that’s the point, but instead of Micro-transactions, overpriced DLC, fucking over the devs, shutting things down, they just keep rolling. I’m sure they’ve gotten offers of acquisition that were probably very lucrative, but they didn’t take them, and have continued their slow roll of making gamers happy.
- 9 months
Individual devs seem to generally manage better I think :3. It’s once the companies expand is that stuff starts going awry
- brucethemoose@lemmy.worldEnglish9 months
Coffee Stain’s another good example on the bigger end.
It does seems like there’s a danger zone behind a certain size threshold. It makes me worry for Warhorse (the KCD2 dev), which plans to expand beyond 250.
Didn’t sell out to a company or publisher with shareholder profit motives. Truly independent (not “indie” as slang for low budget) development teams don’t follow this pattern unless they sell their IP and studio outright.
- burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish9 months
It would make sense for it to be canon in the subnautica universe. I think they were pretty much the epitome of authors with an anvil with the references to economics and governing.
- Dioxid3@lemmy.worldEnglish9 months
It’s Krafton. Just look at what became of PUBG. I mean it’s an OK game and a lot of QoL came to it after all these years, but there hasn’t been any major meta shift in 5 years or so. Only recently they’ve started looking into how broken certain semiauto snipers are.
Instead you are drowned in lootboxes and emotes
- mriswith@lemmy.worldEnglish9 months
The three people were replaced with a guy who used to work at EA. And one of their first announcements was an unprompted “we wont put loot boxes in the game”…
I’m not going to burn your house down, rest easy knowing that. :)
They did all this because they know that the vast majority of the playerbase will never hear about this, and many of those that do will either forget, or simply not care enough to boycott the game. We’re in an age of apathy across the board, with so much bad press that any given scandal just fades into the background noise.
- RizzRustbolt@lemmy.worldEnglish9 months
Who’s the streamer that boosted the Don’t Kill Games petition? Get them on it.
- Enkrod@feddit.orgEnglish9 months
Accurate but also not. PewDiePie came out in favour and PirateSoftware lied about it. But I think Thor lying created a huge burst of coverage about how he’s wrong and really created lots of noise about it.
Pop it in your calendars? Maybe I’m using calendars wrong, but mine aren’t filled with things I should avoid doing. But, I’m willing to learn. What date should I put “Don’t Buy Subnautica 2” on?
What about after it releases? How will I know to keep not buying it?
- Vintor@retrolemmy.comEnglish9 months
More importantly in the short run, remove it from your wishlists so that Krafton can see your choice! At the moment, they are super proud of the game being the most wishlisted on Steam.
Isnt every other new game “the most wish listed on steam”? Do any of them ever prove this with numbers?
- Yamanashi@sh.itjust.worksEnglish9 months
Seems like there is a plot twist to this story no one is mentioning https://bsky.app/profile/jasonschreier.bsky.social/post/3ltmyjaecpc2w
- abigscaryhobo@lemmy.worldEnglish9 months
It sucks that this is going around too. Because no matter what the “right” choice is the devs are still gonna have to see what should have just been their fun project get thrown around in gaming politic hell
- SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish9 months
Oh. Huh. That seems important. I wonder what they have to say in response.
- Swordgeek@lemmy.caEnglish9 months
Oooh, there’s a lawsuit waiting to happen.
$250M PLUS legal costs PLUS $250M in punitive fees. That should hurt them a bit.
- MJKee9@lemmy.worldEnglish9 months
You can’t typically get punitive damages for contract disputes. Also, there is a very real possibility that the contract hasn’t been breached by the new owners’ actions. It sounds like they used their superior bargaining power to put a lot of questionable yet enforceable provisions in the contract.
- Gt5@lemmy.zipEnglish9 months
I feel like I’m the only person on the planet who thought Subnautica was boring and tedious. It was definitely not for me
- Balinares@pawb.socialEnglish9 months
Nah, that’s valid. I loved it to bits, myself, but what made me love it was how adroitly I felt it curated feelings of dread and sincere awe as I explored deeper and deeper; and that’s highly subjective. I hope you’re finding as much joy in your own fave games as I did in Subnautica!
- Duamerthrax@lemmy.worldEnglish9 months
It’s a popular streamer game, which means long gaps where nothing happens.
I also wasn’t a fan, mainly due to how often you need to resupply to stay alive. You get a very small window of opportunity to do actual exploration before you need to go find more food and water, on top of gathering a bunch of other materials.
I liked parts of it, but ultimately just got frustrated with the tedious parts and bailed.
- 9 months
Is this definitely what those devs are asking for? Sure this isn’t just cutting them twice?
- Swordgeek@lemmy.caEnglish9 months
Probably not really feasible - it will require constant connection to a back-end server to play or some bullshit like that.
But even if you can, that’s not the answer. The proper action is to deny them entirely. Don’t play the game, don’t play PUBG, don’t do anything that expands their reach, money or not.
They need to suffer with NOBODY playing this game. They need to suffer by people deleting their Battlegrounds accounts. Software piracy is what makes games legendary.
- 9 months
I mean, does anyone above age 18 even have any evergy at all?
I’ve watched more gameplay than my total gametime combined, its more relaxing and for horror games, its less stress on the heart.
- Lovable Sidekick@lemmy.worldEnglish9 months
I will support this by continuing to be apathetic toward (and in fact ignorant of) the game known as Subnautica 2.
- 9 months
I’m not ignorant of it, just uninterested. I’ve watched gameplay footage of the first one, and it didn’t look like my kind of game.
First one was a cool premise but really annoying in some ways. The game sort of assumes you get certain fragments of blue prints by certain points but doesn’t actually make them easy to find nor really give you any hints to find them.
For people who’ve played it was for the sea moth and and later the moon well.
- kaidezee@lemmy.mlEnglish9 months
That’s the point of the game - it doesn’t tell you where to go and what to do because you’re meant to explore the environment yourself. And the debris you scan, the screenshots you take, and the thrills that you get - are the real reward here, and not some goal that game artificially imposes on you. So I think you were just playing it wrong.
So I think you were just playing it wrong.
Look, I genuinely get your point, and I was tracking with you until you said this. Fuck off. Fuck for with this stupid bullshit. I was not playing wrong. I was playing it the same way everyone else does. I was exploring. I was collecting. I was finding new things. It was getting very clear that the distances the game expected me to travel were meant to be done much faster than what I was capable of. I was getting multiple upgrades for things that I couldn’t use because I didn’t have the thing that lets me install them. It’s been ages since I’ve played and I’m not psychic so I’ll never know what the actual devs’ intent was, but something was off. I’d definitely missed something. What’s more annoying is that I was finding multiple blueprints I already had or something? I don’t remember the context. Like you needed 3 fragments or something. And I’d find more like “ah surely this is the third for the thing I need” only to get the 5th of something I already had. It was give years ago when I played, at least, so I’m probably explaining wrong.
But don’t fucking say I was playing wrong. That’s such a condescending, brain dead thing to say to someone who is critiquing a game.
“Hey, based on what’s going on and getting tons of upgrades and not unlocking the thing to install the upgrades, I think I’ve missed something and I have no idea where to find it. It would be nice if there was a way to unlock this without scouring every inch of the ocean I’ve been through multiple times and without looking it up online.” No, you’re just playing wrong! It’s a game about exploration and discovery!
🙄
Companies only answer to profit and unfortunately we get to see the results. Can’t have those proles making 250 million dollars now. That would eat into the profits of our shareholders.
- paultimate14@lemmy.worldEnglish9 months
I’m at least willing to wait until it gets reviews to make a sound judgement.
I don’t think the bonus would have been a big enough reason to delay the game. Delaying a game like this relatively last-minute and giving it an extra year of development is waaaay more expensive than the bonuses would have been. That’s a gigantic revenue spike they were expecting to get this year and now have to push out to next year, and they may well end up paying out similar bonuses next year too.
My suspicion, from the history of Steve Papoutsis, is that Kraftom wanted to add in anti-player elements and the original founders refused. Probably micro transactions, or maybe even having a bigger multiplayer focus to make it closer to a live-service game. Some mechanism to get money from customers beyond the original purchase. I suspect crap like that will be reason enough not to buy the game when it comes out.
- Boddhisatva@lemmy.worldEnglish9 months
Delaying a game like this relatively last-minute and giving it an extra year of development is waaaay more expensive than the bonuses would have been.
Is it still more expensive if they just shelve it and pretend to give it extra development? I haven’t seen any details on why it wasn’t ready for release or what they are changing or adding? A quarter billion dollars in savings seems like pretty good motivation for a company to park a project for 6 to 12 months.
- 9 months
Agreed. Subnautica 1 steam revenue breakdown offers a bit of perspective on why they might want to play pretend.
“How much money did Subnautica make? We estimate that Subnautica made $274,113,745.92 in gross revenue since its release. Out of this, the developer had an estimated net revenue of $80,863,555.05. Refer to the revenue table for a full breakdown of these numbers.”
$274,113,746
GROSS REVENUEADJ. REGIONAL PRICING
$24,670,237.13DISCOUNTS
$54,822,749.18REFUNDS
$32,893,649.51STEAM CUT
$48,518,133.03VAT / SALES TAX
$32,345,422.02NET REVENUE
$80,863,555.05- paultimate14@lemmy.worldEnglish9 months
Bloomberg reported that the bonus was tied to revenue targets. So the $250,000 estimate must be estimating significantly higher revenues for them in 2025.
What you posted is just the sales on 1 platform for 1 game, whixh came out in 2018 when games were cheaper.
- 9 months
It’s far and away their most profitable game to date, so it would make sense to get some perspective from it. Can you offer anything concrete about their other platform sales? I’m not familiar with any tools for that
- chocrates@piefed.worldEnglish9 months
According to one of the articles above the publishers operating profit last year was “only” $300m so that bonus would make the shareholders mad I guess.
- paultimate14@lemmy.worldEnglish9 months
Is it still more expensive if they just shelve it
Yes. Like, it’s not even a question it’s more expensive to delay it. First of all, they are choosing to pay for 6-12 months of extra development, which alone is probably several times more money than the bonus that they would have paid out. I don’t know what their payroll is, but we don’t need to know because math.
If the bonus was for 1/2 annual salary per person (which would be insanely high), then the cost of the bonus would be the same as 6 months of additional payroll. Meaning that with any longer delay than 6 months or smaller bonus structure than 1/2 of annual salary, it becomes more expensive to delay the game. Both of which are incredibly likely in my opinion.
And that’s just salary. It’s possible the studio was planning on laying people off after release, but more likely that they would have moved to a other project that is currently wrapping up pre-production. So this is causing a cascading effect unless they hire additional staff to catch up.
Then you have marketing costs. The rule of thumb in the industry is that half the overall budget is marketing. There are all sorts of contracts they probably had- digital stuff like banner ads on websites, on the console digital storefronts, partnerships with twitch streamers and YouTubers and review websites, physical stuff like cardboard cutouts and fliers. They may have started printing for boxes for physical releases (though I’m not sure whether this game would have had one or not). They may have started acquiring merch inventory: shirts and stickers and backpacks and flashlights and more perhaps. Some of these contracts they may be able to postpone or cancel, but they certainly aren’t getting back 100% of what they paid.
And in all of this time they aren’t getting the huge revenue spike they were expecting. The vast, vast majority of a game’s revenue comes at launch (excluding live services, which this hopefully will not have). They need to survive another year on the trickle of revenue coming in from the sales of their other games, or Krafton may need to pump more of their own money into Unknown Worlds. Or debt.
- Wolf@lemmy.todayEnglish9 months
I am also boycotting Microsoft and every product from companies owned by them.
Sure, that doesn’t leave a lot of games I can buy, but hey, Indie games are often the best games. Also I have a backlog so huge there will probably be peace in the middle east before I’m thorough with it.
Besides if there is a game I really want to play, I hear there arrrrr still ways to do so without supporting genocide.
- kingpoiuy@lemmy.worldEnglish9 months
Linux gaming is really hot right now. Out of my 575 games on steam I can play 568 of them.
- Wolf@lemmy.todayEnglish9 months
Ditched Windows permanently 11 months ago for Pop-OS and couldn’t be happier. I’ve been a big Linux fan for years, but would always dual boot for gaming purposes.
I’m so glad that isn’t necessary any longer. Almost feels cheating, being Microsoft free with Zero downsides and plenty of benefits.
You may already know, but a lot of times when a game isn’t listed as ‘playable’ it just means that particular game hasn’t been tested yet and will likely still work just fine*, unless it requires kernel level anti cheat ofc
Just so happens I’m boycotting that as well. If I wanted you to do shady shit to my OS, I’d have stayed on Windows.
Edit: *Check the games not listed as playable on protondb and see what that says. Since it’s a ‘crowdsourced’ platform, it’s often more up to date than Valve is.
- 9 months
I didn’t realize how truely frustrated I was with windows until I switched a few months ago. I realize now that most of my recent windows troubleshooting was trying to make windows stop doing things I didn’t want it to. Now most of my Linux troubleshooting is just learning how to get Linux to do things I actually want it to do, which is actually quite satisfying.
- justlemmyin@lemmy.worldEnglish9 months
For gaming, try bazzite, cachyOS, or nobara. Mint is also good, but might not have latest and greatest drivers or kernel etc, even then it is very popular. I switched to mint and then to nobara early last year and love it. I tested a few on VMware in windows before taking the leap. 3 months ago I wiped my windows partition coz I hadn’t used it in yonks. Good luck!
- Derpgon@programming.devEnglish9 months
Anything works really. Mint, Gentoo, Fedora, Arch all work - usually just need to install Steam and done, possibly install drivers using your package manager if it doesn’t come pre-installed. Hell, you can even do SteamOS or something like Bazzite or Nobara if i remember correctly.
- Typhoonigator@lemmy.worldEnglish9 months
I installed Mint recently but a lot of my games don’t show as playable. I’m not as tech-savvy as I was 20 years ago, so I’m not sure what I’m doing wrong. Any advice?
- Jesus_666@lemmy.worldEnglish9 months
In addition to what Wolf told you, here’s a few little extra tidbits:
Some games have native Linux versions. If they don’t, you typically play them through Proton, a gaming-ready version of the Wine compatibility layer. Steam directly supports this through compatibility settings (Steam -> Settings -> Compatibility for default settings or Game properties -> Compatibility for per-game settings). Sometimes specific Proton versions will be better for specific games but usually you don’t need to worry about it much.
Proton is damn good. Expect performance for most games to be within ± 5% of the performance you’d get on Windows. Yes, some games run better on Proton than on native DirectX.
Valve recently decided to enable Proton by default for games that don’t have a Linux version. You can enable it yourself in the settings if it isn’t enabled yet.
You can even force games with a native Linux version to use Proton by setting it in the game’s compatibility settings. In that case Steam will download the Windows version.
- cub Gucci@lemmy.todayEnglish9 months
I find it really hard to boycott Microsoft today. Yeah, fuck windows, office, Xbox. But there’s GitHub and Azure which you just ignore walking the internet
- Wolf@lemmy.todayEnglish9 months
Yeah, GitHub really hurts. Hopefully people will start to use SourceForge and similar alternatives once they realize that Microsoft isn’t just trying to monopolize Operating Systems and Gaming Studios, but the whole damn Internet as well.
- NuclearDolphin@lemmy.mlEnglish9 months
SourceForge sucks ass. I’ll use pen and paper to manage my repos before SourceForge.
Forgejo is the best git forge hands down. It’s FOSS, snappy & clean web interface, much lighter than Gitlab to self-host, integrates with a bunch of CI platforms, and instance federation is in the works. It’s like GitHub, but better in pretty much every way.
The most popular instance is Codeberg
- Wolf@lemmy.todayEnglish9 months
Cool, I’ll check it out. I’m not a dev so I mainly use GitHub to download and install other peoples work. It’s nice to know that there is a decent alternative for people who need it.
- NuclearDolphin@lemmy.mlEnglish9 months
Not only is it FOSS, but the experience is legitimately better than GitHub.
Also has a super fast & good repo migration & sync system. You can still keep the GitHub repo around for the network effect while porting over issues & PRs.
Forgejo Actions is maybe the only thing worse, but that’s because it isnt one-to-one with the whole GHA ecosystem, even if most GitHub Actions work out the box with no changes.
I’m not a dev so I mainly use GitHub to download and install other peoples work.
You’re gonna start seeing more of these pointing to codeberg.org in the near future. I have been seeing a ton of important projects move there or their own Forgejo instance. Once federation hits, I imagine a massive proportion of projects are gonna jump ship.
Best comment. Trust the publisher bro !
