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I’m not going to defend Valve because I haven’t seen anything confirming why they banned Sean from multiplayer and it could have nothing to do with the story even if the timing could be inferred as a reason. But I will crap all over the article writer for what he wrote in the article.
For context, Sean is the only person who comes up in a search about being banned for sharing info about Deadlock despite many people doing so.
Sean said in the Verge article :
And I’m not under NDA. I have signed no contracts and made no verbal agreements; I haven’t even clicked through a EULA.
Then he has a picture with a thing that says not to share information about the game, and the caption is:
This message does pop up when I launch Deadlock, but I didn’t click “OK”; instead, I hit the Escape key and watched it disappear. Screenshot by Sean Hollister / The Verge
Sean is being an absolute pedantic tool. Saying that there was no agreements because he used the escape key to get past a message saying to not share information is what lawyers do for technicalities, not what journalists should brag about in an article where they clearly understood that they were not supposed to share the information. They could have said that they had an obligation as a journalist or some other positive thing, but instead did the equivalent of eating free bread at a restaurant and then leaving without buying anything because the menu doesn’t say you have to.
When I saw Sean was banned after writing the article my first thought was 'This tool probably got himself banned by doing some jerk thing in game, since he clearly hates being told not to do something." I do not expect Valve to respond to the article, since they aren’t as petty as Sean, so all the public will get is his assumption that the article lead to his ban.
Call me old fashioned but I miss the old days when shit like this would take decades to discover and even then it would be shrouded in doubt and mystery.
You are old fashioned, but also wrong. In the old days there were gaming guides sold alongside games that provided the same information that players can get on youtube. Only a few games have had secrets revealed years after they came out.
The youtube full of ads and sponsors is crappier though, if you don’t just block them.
Sports are able to be replayed indefinitely.
Summer sports leagues are specificly set up for a limited time engagement based on how the games play out and respond to the player base. It is a perfect comparison to well executed live service games.
Not all gsmes need single player or long term playability just like not all games need online multiplayer.
The HD2 maps are procedurally generated so that they are not identical each time you play.
The overall storyline is set, but they craft how it plays out in response to community engagement, which isn’t possible with random generation. We never would have had the mines vs orphans set up in random generation.
Not every game needs to be playable forever. Yes, BG3 should be playable indefinitely and with mods it would probably be worth it too!
But there is also space for games that have a design for a shared group experience with a changing world that will result in a limited lifespan. If the world in HD2 didn’t chsnge and there wasn’t an evolving setting it would probaably grow stale a lot faster as the gsme play itself is repetitive. Events like wiping the automatons off the map and them reappearing are only clever once, and wouldn’t hold up on a replay. Without major orders there is less community engagement with the fantastic setting leading to more multiplayer dives once all the unlockable stuff has been unlocked.
It is a different kind of game and there is space for that alongside the other replayable games that don’t have a limited lifespan. It isn’t like all the games similar to BG3 are going to hold up nearly as long as BG3 either, it stands out as one of the best of its genre.
There are a ton of underwhelming and outright predatory single player games too. I think the biggest takeaway is that live service is the new hotness for over monetized live service games using popular IP and players should be extra wary of those games just like they should be for single player games.
There are still a few live service games that are not predatory. I picked up Helldivers 2 for the $40 standard price and have unlocked all the warbonds and bought a chunk of the stuff off the super store with super credits earned in missions. While you can spend more money on the game if you want, it is not in your face or predatory at all. And they are keeping the living world changing on a constant basis.
It can be done, just have to watch out for the worst offenders like Multiversus.
The Multiversus approach!