commentlife

I hate this timeline. AAA gaming has become cancerous to the industry at large.

Patch this thing up and then let’s talk

Skul is a seriously great game, 93% positive on Steam with 40k+ reviews

Only reason it’s even needed is because publishers don’t want developers to optimize their games anymore, cost cutting their production budgets and passing the buck to the hardware to make up for it

This game is great when it works, but the bugs have been killing it for me lately. I’ve crashed out of 3 of my last 4 missions, two of which had super samples in hand, my load out resets every time I close the game, the major orders continue to get affected by bugs, there’s longstanding issues with matchmaking. I really wish they could get a handle on the technical issues.

“future updates” this one’s staying broken for a while :/

That’s unfortunate but very much forewarned

Oh heck ya, Rollerdrome!

@Mephisto2869 that’s unfortunately not how it works, every company regardless of size is beholden to a system that measures anything short of consistently rising shareholder profits as a complete failure. There’s a ton of factors here, COVID had a much larger impact on industry and markets than expected, the rising costs and extended development times of the average AAA video game, the consolidation of gaming revenue in the hands of a few large titles/companies (Fortnite, COD, etc), it’s a list a mile long. It affects every company. I’m not trying to justify any of this, I think it’s awful what’s happening, but it’s a systemic problem, not a Microsoft problem. Capitalism is coming in HOT right now.

@Flaming_Kaiser yes, layoffs are happening throughout the tech industry. Those cuts represented around 5% of their global workforce. Google recently cut 12,000 and Amazon recently cut 27,000. The cuts MS made to their gaming division, while a seemingly large number, still only represents about 8% of that division. Recent layoffs at other companies were much more severe, with some companies laying off over 50% of their workforce.

People acting like Microsoft the only company to ever layoff a developer. There was news reports as early as December about Sony pressuring its 1st party studios to make massive cuts, including talks of layoffs, in the face of increasing development costs. This is an industry wide issue, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better. Not a single game company is above this.

@BusyOlf yeah that boss fight is one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever attempted, the wave attacks in the first phase are just pure luck. I’ve been making some attempts lately at lvl 98 ball lightening sorc, pretty well optimized, and it still feels like none of that even matters. I’m passing the DPS checks but the one hit kill mechanics are just busted. I am chasing the platinum as well but it’s not very fun.

The campaign is great, season 2 made some huge adjustments, but yeah.. the albatross is the itemization once you hit tier 4, which isn’t getting overhauled until season 4. I’m assuming this will be D4’s equivalent of D3’s Loot 2.0 update, which brought that game back to life. D3 had an equally rough time post-launch, I remember it well.

Man, some of these comments. Some of you don’t realize how big a part you play in incidents like these because of the language you use. Sure, you’re not “that guy”, but you certainly pave the way.

“Offerman added jokingly” is crucial context intentionally left out from the original article, I think. He clearly wasn’t being serious.

I can see the series x/s being the last Xbox hardware and this an inevitable result

Naw, Sony’s too busy milking the goodwill they gained during the PS4 era. They’d rather sell 50$ plastic panels, overpriced “premium” controllers, a half arsed controller with a screen on it and an unsupported VR headset to people who would buy anything with a Sony logo on it than do anything halfway interesting. The hardware equivalent of a GaaS skin shop.

Shows you how small the vocal minority really is. I have 100% confidence this is the last gen with a physical option.

Cautiously optimistic. Season 2 has been a huge glow up for the game, and shows the devs are at least trying to turn the ship around.

2023 has been a tough year for tech jobs. I just dodged some layoffs at my own company, thank frig.

Season 2 brought me back and it actually feels pretty fun so far! Before this, every time I played felt like I was just playing to justify my purchase.

More like IQ FINALLY amirite? Our prayers have been answered.

AAA gaming in such a sorry state right now, I can count on one hand the big developers who maintain their quality alongside of their successes.

Wow, would love to have been a fly on the wall for that decision. Goes to show the risks involved in this space, you’re either making money hand over fist, or you’re losing more than you put in.

This is a good month for me, Weird West puts it over the top.

Pretty solid. Farming Simulator is a banger on PC, not sure how it translates to a controller.

I’ve been using the Gulikit controller for Switch and PC, which has Hall effect sticks. It’s been great so far. I will probably pick this up, I prefer asymmetrical layouts.

Bethesda’s best output is well and truly behind it

Dragon's Crown Pro is probably the only interesting game to land on Premium so far

A whole string of people should be fired for this haha, if that’s JCVD, then I’m the King of England

D4 is like a movie set version of the game it says that it is. It seems like it’s all there initially, but the further you get into it, you realize it’s all chipboard and being held together by some tape and twine. I’m sure if you paid for a couple seasons and yearly DLC’s, you might have a full game on your hands, some 200-300$ later…

This is absolutely insane

wish dot com matan

cool maybe they’ll actually finish making Diablo 4 if enough people buy it /s

exciting! first one rocked my world

Gaming gets sadder by the minute

Same with that horrid POS GTA trilogy. Clearly enough dum-dum gamers rolled over for that one that we now get an even lazier effort. Fanboys are literally ruining the industry.

Definitely not the first sketchy story involving Kai Cenat.

Those names though, woof.

Another typically measured response from the comments haha

What are people on about with Dreams? All they’ve announced is that they’re ending updates, every feature still works, doesn’t it? Another solid month.

Able bodied people commenting on the value and design of this thing is the biggest face palm I’ve seen on the internet in at least 3 minutes.

@MFTWrecks that pretty much sums it up

This is the state the game should have been in at launch, not after people have had time to bring multiple characters past level 50. It's not so much the content of the patch, but rather the timing of it. People are rightfully pissed in my opinion, the game has no meaningful endgame so instead, everything will just take longer. I expect the anger to increase after tomorrow's stream, when they tell everyone how they're listening but don't plan to do anything about it.

I had fun with this game, but they really sucked the life out of it with the latest patch, my sorcerer build was barely hanging on as it is, now it's borderline useless. I feel like they want the base game to feel like poopoo so you participate in the seasons, but I'm not going to bite.

@Tatarimokke if it's anything like the first one, you can play solo but it's a LOT harder, that was my experience with the game anyways

What an unexpected collection of words and images.

My guess is this game was developed solely with Game Pass in mind. Keep the production costs low, slap it on Game Pass, charge full price on other platforms, etc.

I’m super into Diablo 4. It is way better than I thought it was going to be.