Don’t let any company which chose to get involved in this blatant scam get exonerated just because they dumped it later. They still tried to pull the scam in the first place, and they only dropped it because they didn’t make any money on it, not because it was a scam.

Always remember this.

You are making the mistake of conflating game quality with profit. He did not lessen the profitability of the games, on the contrary, and that is what the board cares about, not the quality of games.

They have a very dedicated flock of whales (the industry term for microtransaction addicts). They know they have them hooked, and they are obviously intent on bleeding those whales dry for everything they own.

I don’t care how much I liked a game, if any publisher acted in this way I would never consider touching any of their games. This is absolutely criminal behaviour.

I don’t really understand what it is about HMMIII you don’t get. It is a relatively simple game concept, and the fundamentals has remained largely unchanged from iteration to iteration. I personally prefer III over most of the later ones exactly because of its simplicity (and none of those ugly 3D graphics).

For me what mostly antiquates a game is if it was primarily based on graphics which have been outdated, otherwise I don’t really have a problem even with much older games. But then again I also grew up playing games in the 80s, so I have been used to those my entire life. Some of the games which fascinated me on account of the complexity, like the early Ultima games (at least I and II), doesn’t exactly stand revisits, because they were very barebones compared to the later games in the franchise. Ultima V still holds up beautifully, simply because it is so complex behind those primitive graphics.

“The game isn’t boring for the reasons that you think, it is boring for these completely secret reasons.”

Ok.

The “but the game is good now” people are the ones who showed him he can do exactly the same thing again without any serious repercussions.

Yes, those poor scammers, won’t somebody think of them?

But they always intended to make it better and gradually did, because they are an actual gaming company with actual devs. The “devs” of The Day Before never did.

They are not “down”. They have run away with the money, they are scammers who have done this before and they don’t deserve any pity.

It is of course marketing aimed at Star Wars fans who have never played a strategy game before and who may be reluctant to buy it because it is a strategy game.

It doesn’t bode well for the strategy aspect of the game. Or maybe it is just PR bs, who knows.

I’m getting strong “free games you got when you buy cereal” vibes off of this. Or at least games whose sole purpose for existing is to promote something else.

I haven’t watched the video, but I suspect it aligns somewhat with my own experience. Online fps used to be my goto genre, but the competitiveness, toxicity and the widespread cheating made me realise that it stressed me out more than it entertained me. So I cut them off a couple of years ago in favour of single player games, often moddable single player games with good replayability like Kenshi or Stellaris (although I also like more linear games which just provides some good no frills entertainment).

It really has made a huge difference in how gaming functions for me. Much more relaxing and stress relieving, not to mention that I have more control over the amount I play, since I can always just save the game and turn it off without feeling I am missing out on something.

Kenshi. Unlimited replayability and modability.

Why does a game becoming streamlined to fleecing idiots make your experience better?

It is not a grim end, it is a fitting end for the live service.

Billionaires can afford to not get paid. Billionaires expecting normal people to get paid less is the pinnacle of arrogance.

Even if you know nothing about the past of this guy, the fact that he made a blockchain-based business sim should tell you all you need in order to form an opinion.

It is a free pay-to-win shooter. It is designed to get certain types of people addicted to it, to most other people it is boring as hell.

GTAO whales.

“Constantly updated games” is a ridiculously disingenous description of live service games.

It isn’t even an actual apology. “We apologise for you being too stupid to understand our runtime fee policy” is a terrible way to word an apology, especially since noone was confused about it.

Saints Row. I don’t see it being a possibility but I have this false hope that volition will bounce back and give a good game.

Well, that aged badly.

also Hitler was an effective leader, which we should all remember as a cautionary tale about how effective horrible people can be

That is not a factual claim. He was very effective at gaining power, but his actual reign was far from effective, most of it counterproductive to his own goals, and the actual system of decision making in Nazi Germany was a huge mess.

Well some of us have, but a huge swath (perhaps a majority?) of people haven’t and will happily continue to use these things as their main entry point for information seeking on the internet.

It is very US specific. There are other countries where ios have a majority market share, but in most countries the majority market share is android.

Again, this is already being done infinitely more efficient and secure with existing technology.

NFTs doesn’t let you own anything but a link. And it is inefficient, insecure and energy wasting. Also you can already do what you are suggesting with existing technology.

the game will be huge but also insanely empty

Most likely, especially since this is ubisoft after all, but I don’t see why this naturally follows having a hand crafted world in your line of arguments. On the contrary procedurally created worlds are usually the ones which are most prone to be huge but empty (or bloated with similar copy pasted content).

I played through more than half of Red Dead Redemption 2 before I accidentally discovered there was a thing called dead eye for shooting. For some reason the game just assumes that you know the concept exist, since it isn’t featured in the early tutorial missions.

How and where do you subscribe to rss?

A EU wide ban would have the same effect as a US ban, and is much more likely to happen since these singular EU countries legislation can become groundwork for EU-wide legislation on the subject.