Their definition of "strategy game" really bothers me. Most games in this are RPGs! Sure RPGs with tactical elements, but they are not just "strategy games" - they are at least half something else (I'd argue they are more than half RPG). Strategy is a huge genre, full of very distinct subcategories; lumping it with stuff that is only vaguely connected like this is very frustrating. People that like Civilization and Starcraft won't necessarily enjoy Hard West or Shadowrun (and vice-versa). It is like calling Mass Effect a shooter, or saying Skyrim and Cyberpunk 2077 are "action games".

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Quoting: Trinexx

Quoting: ssj17vegetaAnother sad example about how going public never bodes well for companies and their products.

Paradox went public eight years ago.

That is about the timeline for the shit to hit the fan (visibly to us, at least). Between EA buying BioWare and Anthem, it was 10 years, for example. The Paradox IPO was in 2016, Paradox Tectonic was founded in 2019, 5 years is the development cycle for a game like this - it should be finished, but it was delayed before being killed.

The first years after going public/being bought out, everything is still working as usual, finishing stuff they already were doing or had planned to do. The cash injection is still live and most of the "restructuring" is yet to come: we got Battletech (amazing game), Surviving Mars, Age of Wonders Planetfall. Probably CK3 was developed during this early stage, as it came out in 2020.

Then Imperator underperformed in 2019 (unrelated to the IPO, I'd say), they get some controversies, Bloodlines 2 development started to have problems, and they started restructuring the company, moving people to different studios, re-evaluating their strategies. In 2021 the CEO leaves (over "strategic differences"), which is a really bad sign.

And then, after a couple of investment cycles the investors are expecting the payoff for their investment made 5 to 8 years earlier. And we get failures like Lamplighter's League and Life By You, which get the typical AAA treatment: mass layoffs, aggressive cost-cutting. We also get games like Cities 2, that aren't commercial failures but that have the usual problems associated with AAA development (buggy release, too much attention to graphics). I'd expect in the next couple of years we will see some other drastic changes, then it will probably settle into the role of AAA.

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Quoting: KimyrielleThat's the saddest gaming news I have seen in a while. I was SO looking forward to delete the last EA game from my SSD (Sims 4). I guess I will be stuck with them a bit longer.

Not sure what's going on with Paradox lately.

They had an IPO, bought a bunch of studios (and opened a few from scratch) with the investor money, and now are trapped in the cycle of "need to make more money every quarter to appease the stock market" regardless of whether is best in the long term or results in better games. Already went through one CEO (back to the old, pre-IPO one though).

Basically they tried to become a AAA, and succeeded in the worst way possible. They are going through all the problems of AAA publishers

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Wow, fuck. I personally wasn't super interested in it, but it was a cool ambitious idea that I wanted to succeed. It is the kind of simulation game with a huge scope that benefits a lot from a big studio, and yet we have so few examples (and The Sims suffers a lot from the EA bullshit). It was quite advanced already and I am surprised they decided it was just un-salvageable. Quite sad.

I understand the sunk cost fallacy, keeping working on a project that is not going well just because you put so much work into it is a bad idea. But on the other hand, when companies cancel games like this it isn't just "we won't finish", it usually means the entire thing is trashed. I'm sure there are cool things in it, maybe not enough for hundreds of thousands of people to pay $60 but it probably could bring enjoyment to some people, inspire some people, but nope it gets buried. Everyone that worked on this, and not only no one will ever play their game but they don't get to keep it, use it for their future projects, revisit it... A project of this size, involving this many people, should have something to show even if it isn't finished. I mean, good for not "releasing" a mediocre/bad game, but I wish this kind of cancellation came with something like (but not exactly) open-sourcing the game instead of throwing it in a black hole.

I'd guess they went too big in scope, with the whole "take control over anyone, everything is modable, everything is simulated" thing plus the AAA-grade 3d graphics that make it super expensive to do any new thing (no matter how minor) in a game where you want lots of variety. Trying to match AAA graphics these days is a huge proposition, and while I understand the "need" for it (because for a game of this size you need that kind of audience so you need to compete in that space) it still feels wasteful.

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Well, about point 1 it is what Liam said, people often misunderstand what it means (it is for steam keys, not for the same game in a different store), and while people might choose to price similarly to avoid retaliations it is not something Steam has ever said, and there is no evidence of it.

About point 3, I do think it is too high from a moral perspective, but I don't know how you would make a legal argument against it. It isn't even uniquely bad - competitors in the same industry (like GOG) and in similar industries (like mobile app stores) do the same.

Quoting: Philadelphus#2…how do they expect this to work? I buy a game on Steam, then buy the expansion on EGS? That seems like a major technological hurdle, so I can see why Valve wouldn't be incentivized to design systems to allow it when it would only lose them money. It also sounds like an incredibly good way to generate hard-to-track bugs if I'm getting my base game updates from Platform A, my expansion updates from Platform B, and then my extra bonus DLC from Platform C and they've all got slightly different versions of the game.

Well, it would be really simple with how it used to work (with physical media and with older downloadable stuff), or with how GOG and itch handle expansions: you get an installer for the base game, and an installer for the expansion, and there is no real reason you have to get them both from the same place. You would need to get matching versions of course, and probably platforms would have to keep older versions for compatibility purposes. (I'm not convinced this is a worse method, tbh - store clients in general tend to be way more of a pain in the ass than an asset for players). It would also be a lot easier if software these days didn't expect you to update your shit daily and fuck you if you don't want to.

When stores design an entire application to manage game installation and update, and to integrate features with the game, sure it becomes difficult to work with different stores. But that is very much a problem that they created for themselves... and honestly if these tools weren't made by stores it wouldn't be an intractable problem: package managers can handle different repositories, and there is no reason middleware for multiplayer or mods needs to be store-specific. The issue is that, as you pointed, a dominant store has no incentive to make their stuff interoperable, making it easier for people to buy elsewhere and for competitors to enter the market. Quite the opposite, in many ways the purpose of offering those services is to "increase customer retention" and cause lock in. Which is exactly what makes anti-trust regulation necessary, companies won't just choose to give up their monopoly (or oligopoly) powers.

The problem is that I don't think a simple lawsuit against one company in particular is a reasonable solution - most tech companies do exactly the same shit. Some do much worse! Maybe it could set up precedent, but most likely it will just fail because it is common practice (even if unjust). I'd love to see regulations that required interoperability between software products and stores and vendors, but that would be a much bigger shakeup than an UK lawsuit could do.

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Wait, it is just another remaster/remake? So boring. Make a cool sequel at least.

The extended edition is already fine. It is not even like this looks particularly good from the trailer, not that this is that important for this kind of game.

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Quoting: Jarmer

Quoting: KimyrielleNot sure why some devs think everybody loves first person games. I certainly don't.

I mean, you really need to ask that question? ................ Skyrim is one of the most popular and highest selling games .. EVER. In history.

Fallout games (like all of them) are incredibly popular.

Dragon Age series.

Deus Ex series.

Far Cry series.

Cyberpunk.

Borderlands.

I could keep going for a very long time.

The reason some devs think everyone loves first person games ........ is because everyone loves first person games. LOL.

Dragon Age isn't even optionally first-person, it is third-person and optionally top-down. Fallout and Skyrim can pick between first and third person.

But if you want to list incredibly popular games that use other perspectives, we sure can find some examples. Picking just RPGs from the 2010s afterwards, so it can be compared directly (don't even need to go to tetris or super mario or different genres), Baldur's Gate 3 is third-person with optional top-down, recent Zelda games are third-person

Want stuff that isn't even third-person? Recent Pokemon games are best-sellers and top down, Diablo 3 was top down, we have indies like Terraria (sidescrolling) and Stardew Valley (top-down) that aren't even 3d and still managed to make into lists of the best-selling games of all time.

Yeah first-person is popular, but there is a reason many of those games you mentioned offer multiple camera angles... it surely isn't everyone that prefers first-person, and honestly it isn't even clear whether it is a majority of people.

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This kind of thing pisses me off immensely for a few reasons.

1) This is the big one: when they made the game, Obsidian was an indie studio with limited resources, that had a very successful crowdfunding campaign but still a lot of risk. But they have since been bought by Microsoft, one of the biggest companies on the world. There is absolutely no excuse to not give proper support to some people, it is all greed and dishonesty. "Oh but it is not profitable" - yeah after-release support often is, you still have to do it. Didn't want to pay for Linux support, should not have bought a company with Linux games
2) Making the entire game work on Linux in the first place is a (potentially) huge task, and adding Linux as a new platform implies taking on a new responsibility, so sure if you want to focus on the main release and leave it as an extra it is understandable. But "porting" the updates is the opposite - it is something you already committed to.
3) They picked an engine with Linux support. Sure they built a lot on top of it (I think they did some pretty big extensions to the engine iirc), but it is not like they would have to port the entire engine again just for a few fixes. Sure it is still not trivial, but it is one less thing for them to blame.
4) I don't care if Linux players are few, every single player has a very reasonably expectation of good support. Even if a problem only affects one person, as a "paying customer" that person should be able to reach customer support and get it sorted out (if at all possible). "Sorry we won't fix our fabrication defect because there aren't enough people affected, so you'll have to cope with your defective product" is not acceptable. It is a Linux game, they need to support their Linux customers.

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QuoteIt's not exactly something new, or surprising, given that Steam's Subscriber Agreement clearly notes "You may not reveal, share or otherwise allow others to use your password or Account except as otherwise specifically authorized by Valve.".

[...]

It's also another reminder that on Steam, you don't own any games on it at all. Once again, as per the Subscriber Agreement, "Content and Services are licensed, not sold" and your "license confers no title or ownership in the Content and Services".

That is not necessarily true, as it depends on your jurisdiction and applicable laws, and possible court decisions against it. The Subscriber Agreement clearly says "in the event that any provision of this Agreement shall be held by an arbitrator, court, or other tribunal of competent jurisdiction to be illegal or unenforceable, such provision will be enforced to the maximum extent permissible and the remaining portions of this Agreement shall remain in full force and effect."

We need to stop treating those unilateral bullshit terms as if they automatically had the strength of law. Companies will try to get away with everything they can, no matter how ludicrous, and are hoping no one will challenge them.

QuoteReally, the only time this will change is when physical media properly dies off and people cause enough of a fuss that governments and legal bodies around the world put in new laws around digital ownership, which is not likely for a long time.

The physical media will have the same terms for anything they contain. You don't own the copyrights to movies you have on DVD, so you are granted a license to watch it. Installing software from disks you'll have to accept the same terms. Doesn't mean the courts will let them forbid you from re-selling or ban you from watching, and neither should they do it for digitally distributed media.

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Quoting: dpanterWhat exactly do these people consider "quality", I wonder.

Yeah every time a AAA company says something like "quality over quantity", what I hear is "we are spending even more on a handful of big franchises in the most popular genres instead of doing anything new or creative or investing in more diverse games".

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