You do have to wonder if this was the plan all along, and they're changing from an extremely unpalatable option to one that's still unpalatable, but in saying they've "listened to feedback" it makes the unpalatable option seem more reasonable. It just seems odd that two games companies (albeit different genres) would make the same mistake in the space of six months.
With WotC, piecing the whole debacle together from various sources, I think it boiled down to Hasbro execs having a vastly incomplete understanding of the OGL which resulted in them demanding it to be monetised. It sounds like there were internal protests and warnings, but the execs kept coming back to "we have a licence used by most of the industry and we're NOT getting money from it?!"
I can easily imagine that some suit at Unity had a similar thought and insisted on monetisation despite those who understand the situation issuing drastic warnings. I guess the stance from both Hasbro and Unity was that their dominance in the market meant they'd get away with it.
There were reports coming out of Unity after the policy was announced that staff had tried to tell higher-ups that this was going to cause major issues.
As Sly said I think the reputational damage this has done makes the idea that they were always going to pivot seem unlikely. They have wiped a chunk off their stock market value, nobody does that on purpose.
Have to admit that this looks like fun. The OTT blood splatters and destructive environments are great. Think it's the same guys who made that pretty good Terminator game a few years back. Maybe they'll do a Commando or Predator game next!
"Hey guys, our game doesn't work, but we're releasing it anyway. But it's cool because we're telling you about it! We still want your money, but please don't review bomb us!"
"Hey guys, our game doesn't work, but we're releasing it anyway. But it's cool because we're telling you about it! We still want your money, but please don't review bomb us!"
I'd noticed how choppy some of the pre-release videos had been, but the Youtubers in question never mentioned their system specs. I can't say I'm all that surprised though - the truck and car models look like they'd have been adequate for a third-person open world game from just a few years ago, and this is simulating entire cities of the things. I'd like to think they're not being rendered at full detail at a distance, but they've put a crazy amount of detail into the game that won't often be necessary.
Following the disappointing reception to The Lamplighter's League (it speaks volumes how after the demo I couldn't even be bothered to download it on Gamepass), Paradox and Harebrained Schemes have parted ways. Apparently a mutual decision, but it comes after Paradox laid off about 80% of HBS' staff.
Really enjoyed their Shadowrun games and while I understand licensing issues make another one in the franchise unlikely, I'd love to see somewhat similar titles from them in the future, away from a publisher obsessed with chopping up games and selling them to consumers piecemeal as DLC.
This morning there was a pretty detailed look at Squadron 42, the single-player experience that was announced as be part of Star Citizen. It's been in development for so long I have no idea whether that's still the case or whether it's a standalone game.
It's no wonder they've spent more than ten years making this - it looks ludicrously ambitious. It's no longer just a space sim, it now contains FPS and terrestrial-vehicle sections, and at least on the face of it none of them look particularly compromised in terms of depth. This also means I'm less interested; I've been longing for a new story-based space sim in this style (my favourite genre when I was a kid) for nearly half my life - I think the last one I spent any real time with was 2001's I-War 2. Instead I've been resorting to playing fan-made remakes of older games (TIE Fighter, X-Wing Alliance, heavily enhanced versions of Freespace 2) But the whole reason I liked the genre was that I loved space combat; I'm just not enthusiastic about spending hours at a time switching to playing Halo. It also means it'll be a pain the arse for me personally to play, as all of my flight sim gear is attached to a separate piece of furniture that I'll somehow have to work a mouse and keyboard into.
A game that's been in development for this long is probably going to be either a) terrible, b) full of bugs, or c) terribly optimised requiring beefy hardware to run well, but I can't pretend it doesn't look exciting in a lot of ways.
Providing you can play it with mouse and keyboard (and that it actually works), I can imagine me being interested in this. For me, being able to dogfight in space one moment and then land and do stuff on the surface of a planet in first-person the next is a definite attraction.
No Man's Sky was an alluring prospect, but I wasn't engaged by the lack of purpose to anything and the prevalence of crafting and survival mechanics, and Starfield just completely failed on the space exploration part (amid other faults). But something that can marry those gameplay elements while providing a compelling story campaign would be incredible.
