So it was just a take the money and run scam.
I wonder how much they really will get. As per Steam’s policy, they won’t receive the payments until January 30th. By then, tons of people have time to request for a refund. They are also apparently more generous on the refund window. (more than 2 hours)
They ran with their investors’ money, not the money from Steam.
Uh, have you not seen how many game studios are collapsing? It’s more likely an “oh crap we’re bankrupt interest rates jumped and we can no longer pay our loans’ carrying costs”.
The interest rate jump screwed a lot of businesses that depend heavily on loans to make it to profitability.
They probably took one look at their launch-day take, compared it against their loans, and said “fuck this we’re filing for bankruptcy and I’m and going to go get a regular-ass job”.
Lol no, not for this one. This was scammy from the start. The weird thing is they had decent games out before this. Why would they intentionally screw up so badly idk.
Why would they intentionally screw up so badly idk.
“Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”
They probably started with an overambitious design, took some ill-advised short-cuts, and pivoted the to the “extraction” format after they’d already marketed it as a different concept, and made a bad gamble or two. Normal gamedev stuff. Same as every Molyneux game.
A few years back this could’ve been another No Man’s Sky story where they fix it after launch… but that means going deeper and deeper into debt while you salvage the mess you’ve made. Post-COVID interest rates make that impossible. So now they’re broke and the project they spent the last years on is a stinker and they don’t have enough runway to fix it.
So they’re done.
They claimed a 5 year development time, and what they shipped was a tutorial that lasts 2 hours (to cover the refund window) and a completely empty game afterwards, that consists of you wandering around a map they bought as an asset pack.
They used the hype about the game to make “behind the scenes” videos which were actually ads for an app they made on the side.
The last 2 games they released were abandoned in similar circumstances shortly after launch.
There’s enough evidence of malice here.I mostly agree with you, but I’m pretty sure NMS took home about $15M in the first month ($78M sales in first month). If they hadn’t, they might have closed shop, too. Now, we have a small group of millionaires who can make whatever they want.
Same as every Molyneux game.
Fuck, I totally forgot about that dingus.
Touché
I first learned about the patient gamer lifestyle in like 2017.
I’ve been through No Man Skies, through Fallout 76s. I been seen big budget AAA games take over TV and now aren’t even heard of again (Anthem, all those superhero games like Gotham Knights and Avengers, Babylon’s Fall). I’ve watched multiplayer games rise and fall.
And if I’m ever curious, I wait and pick up the best version of the game when it is at 90% off.
And best part of this patient gamer lifestyle - games like this, I never even have to bother with. Doesn’t even phase me.
So I’m a “patient gamer.” Neat, I didn’t know there was a name for it.
Join one of the PatientGamer communities, usually a good way to find out interesting older games you may have missed in the current and/or previous hype cycles.
Thanks, I’ll have a look!
Not playing bad games is super easy. I don’t do it all the time.
You don’t not play bad games?
I don’t not un-play not bad games.
I didn’t even LEARN about the patient gamer lifestyle, just fell into it. There’s too many games and not enough time.
Also discovered my local library system, which has pretty much every game. Just borrow and played resident evil 4 remake from the library and I already have a hold placed on Mario rpg, so even new games I can get there
I’m in the same boat, and I have been for a loooong time. It’s awesome, because, half the time, I see a game get super cheap, and I’m like, I’ve been waiting for this moment for 5 years (eg, Skyrim.) Then, the other half the time, some amazing game will just fly by my head and I won’t even notice, like, huh, wtf is this, $5 and like 50,000 YouTube videos about it…? (Eg, Just Cause 2.)
I put hundreds of hours into both Skyrim and JC2, for a total of like $10.
I don’t mind the PlayStation Network as a patient gamer, it’s worth it for me since I find at least 2 or 3 games a month there to keep me occupied and make it worth it
Master of Orion 3, AKA Spreadsheets in Space, is where I learned to wait. I bought it on release day and tried so hard to enjoy the game.
I’m playing Yakuza series at the moment and never even knew this game existed until I heard how shit it was.
I’m not always a patient gamer, but I’m never disappointed when I am one
The Yakuza series is unanimously loved for its quality.
That’s such a good feeling!
Like when you just find a cool game and then go, “Holy cow! This is from 2014?!”
What does this have to do with the Yakuza series?
Nothing except that it’s an example of them being a patient gamer.
I have that Spider-Man game on my steam wish list, have seen it. 30, 40 % off but it’s not getting off my list until it’s 70% off. I am patient. I have other things to play.
The problem is many multiplayer games are fun on release and for a few months and then die off. If I get my moneys worth during that time im willing to pay full price. But I usually buy the game after a few days/weeks. But for single player games I also go the patient route.
Yet another reason to never buy games on release.
Now they can’t get sued for not doing anything with the kickstarter money yay!
The game was not funded by a Kickstarter as far as I’m aware.
People are so desperate to never experience a moment of FOMO in their whole life that they’ll buy some terrible looking game like The Day Before. Rips off TLOU like crazy, but otherwise looks like complete shit. You’re not going to be a popular youtuber. Stop trying to keep up with youtubers who get sent games for free.
There is never any reason to pre-order a game. Like, ever. It’s always stupid and reinforces terrible incentives that drive the enshittification of gaming. Even when the devs aren’t straight up scammers, preorders mean they can be profitable before they’ve even released anything so they’re incentivized to put out whatever half-baked garbage they can.
But you are missing all the cool pre-order cosmetics! /s
Reminds me of the fabled MMO where your character would age, the world would be constantly shaped by player actions etc.
I remember this marketing. What was the game again?
Chronicles of Elyria?
Ashamed to admit I put a few dollars on their Kickstarter back in 2016. I was young and naive
Yeah, that’s it, couldn’t remember the name. No need to be ashamed, if I had the money to spare back then, I probably would’ve given them some money as well.
It sounded really great and at the same time doable.
I remember seeing a video on this game a loooong while back saying it’s “very obviously too good to be true” and the footage released was sus as fuck. I distinctly remembered that when this came out last week and I said I’ll pass.
Killzone 2?
What’s also wild is the game doesn’t look like UE5, one of their reasons for the delay was their migrating the game to UE5.
That one’s not really a red flag. If they keep all of the same assets and lighting settings, UE5 will look damn close if not identical. Updated code doesn’t mean it magically updates the graphics, though I bet plenty of UE-sourced assets have easy upgrade paths.
For an example of a game that doesn’t suck that did this, see Satisfactory. It looks nearly the same. Though I think some things have improved slightly, since they at least enabled a few things.
Then why upgrade to UE5 6 or so months before launch for minimal improvements?
Same as any library/framework upgrade in code: if you don’t upgrade, you will not eventually get any new features/security updates/asset etc. If you have stopped development, then no point, but if you plan for support game for longer period, it makes sense. Also in the future if UE 7 brings something awesome, upgrade from UE5->UE7 is much harder than two simpler version upgrades.
And ofc this thing is clear scam, so this was just in general
In this scam’s case, I’d say purely marketing wank so they could say it uses latest. For Satisfactory, I’m sure they mostly just don’t want their code base to fall behind before they’re even out of Early Access.
I know OP, you’re not the first to post about this. Try harder next time
