I do see them stopping soon. Those deals are benefiting basically no one anymore. Partners like Square Enix are doing way better by putting their games on PC without an exclusivity period. Sony’s not growing their console business over the previous generation, even when their competition has been destroyed. At some point it’s just money down the drain.

It was still pretty inherently tied to Bhaal under Baldur’s Gate, so it made enough sense to have continuity.

There’s a beta test branch on Steam that was uploaded 5 months ago, and the game has been age rated in South Korea. Yes, that game is coming. For good reason, it’s also the belle of the ball when it comes to marketing deals, so as much as it’s a meme to say maybe it’s at the next Nintendo Direct, it might be at the next Nintendo Direct. For everyone’s sake, I hope it gets its release date soon so that we can stop talking about it.

I read novels too, and there are ways to deliver a story more organically.

Thanks. I gave it a search before asking, and I didn’t see it, but with the link you posted elsewhere, I just voted on it.

In general, I’d agree that games are getting better, if for no other reason that there are so many made these days that eventually you’ll find something great.

That’s a high bar to clear, but if you add it to the GOG Dreamlist, I’ll vote for it.

I’m totally fine with playing a character who is always a shitty person, but when the world was littered with those characters, it was undesirable to spend any more time in it, especially considering my issues with the story’s delivery as well.

True, but I hated the player character too, and I’d have appreciated a more elegant introduction to the world.

I don’t think I came to it with many expectations other than that people praised it for the writing, but I found the characters to nearly universally be abrasive and the story delivered via info dumps.

I played BG1 and 2 for the first time shortly before the release of BG3, and I just wanted to hear Irenicus talk more.

Disco Elysium, on the other hand, just did not hit for me. The only things I hear about it are praise, but my friends list is filled with people who played it for a few hours, like I did, and stopped, so maybe the dissenters just aren’t so vocal.

I play and enjoy most genres at this point, but my favorite has to be Skullgirls. There are 18 characters and so many ways to combine them that you can still come up with new strategies in this game over a decade after its release.

An assumption that each employee costs them about $150k/year in salary/office space/benefits. There are lots of ways it can be more complicated than that, including the fact that they’re in Sweden, but last I heard, $150k/year/developer was about what you’d expect to pay in the US, if a company was interested in replicating this kind of development in a place where labor costs are probably highest.

From the same interview, they said they scaled up from a team of about 65 for It Takes Two to a team of about 80 for Split Fiction, which they made in four years. Back of the napkin math means that Split Fiction was made for about $50M. I find game budgets to be really interesting to track lately, because so many have become so reckless with them that it’s great to see what can be made if you scope down.

Who’s the abuser and who’s the abused? This deal didn’t work out for either of them last time.

I don’t understand. So he had a team of over 100 people who worked on a Sony deal for like 3 years before it was shut down. Now he’s got a new studio and a new Sony deal? Has no one learned their lessons here?

I tried the demo, and I’ve got to say: I was hoping for more of an evolution to the stealth mechanics. This seems to be sticking very closely to what Monaco 1 was.

That’s just not true. They’re seeking profit by attempting to be the best place to spend your money. Epic would love for Valve to charge users monthly for Steam, but they don’t, because it would just drive people away from Steam. They stand to make more money by doing what they’re doing. This is not a public versus private thing. Arguably the negative that comes along with public companies is that there are more short term incentives at the expense of long term profit, but they’re both doing what they do for profit.

Striving for profit is a quality tied to being a company, not being a publicly traded company. Everything they do is in pursuit of making more money. Often times, that means making the best store out there so that we shop with them instead of their competitors, which is how it’s supposed to work.

I was specifically refuting, “They’re the only ones safeguarding the industry,” and how they got to their refund policies matters when it comes to that statement. I was not here to throw a gauntlet down, insult Steam’s honor, and challenge anyone to a duel. I prefer to shop on GOG these days, when possible, but my Steam profile says I have 991 games in my account, and I bought most of those. Valve and Steam have done lasting, measurable good to this industry and medium, but that doesn’t mean they’re safeguarding it or that it’s all good news. As to the thing about ads, I don’t think that model would actually work with the PC gaming audience, and I think Valve prohibiting it is just so that their audience still finds quality products on Steam and spends more money. Valve’s best behaviors and worst behaviors are motivated by profit.