The worst part about the unity thing wasn't the price or fees. The worst part was that this would've been applied retroactively to older licenses of unity too. So it would go into effect in 2024, and hence should only apply to unity licenses that were issued in 2024, but they instead want to apply it to everything, changing a signed and agreed upon contract AFTER THE FACT, which is ILLEGAL! And they deleted the git hub repository that tracks these contracts.
@@GojosBackHand Uh no, when you use Unity in any capacity for the first time and after some changes(meaning a change like having to pay per install), you agree to a EULA(end user license agreement) which is a form of contract and I bet they never mentioned this in there until now in there. and that also means some entities involved with older titles would never have agreed to the new EULA making it illegal. However, I do agree that they will lose business and they should if they implemented the way they wanted to.
@@GojosBackHandwrong, it very much is illegal First of all it is illegal to retroactively adjust a contract without express approval on both sides Second, it'd be illegal to track installs as the player does not have any contract with Unity. The player has a terms/conditions agreement with the developer. Unity cannot take data from any game without breaching many laws surrounding privacy and safety, especially in the EU It's not about "charge what they want". That's not illegal. You're intentionally obfuscating what the real problem is: the retroactive application of these terms on older installs and the tracking of data on PCs that they do not legally have access to Add to that that they deleted the terms and conditions from Github, which on itself is also illegal as terms and conditions should ALWAYS be readily available, and it's just a big mix of illegal shit Why do you think they changed their entire plan? Not because of the outrage. Because of the legal ramifications and the loss of business this would mean.
@@GojosBackHand Attempting to retroactively change a license agreement that another product was made under and enforce it on the product using that older license is illegal. Furthermore, tracking installs is an illegal action by Unity in and of itself. Downloading a unity game is not making a contract with Unity. There are literally thousands of small developers that release Unity projects that are then freely shared among people on the web with zero EULA or TOS agreements made at ANY point in the process.
Yeah, I mean, I get that a corporation is greedy and wants to extract as much profit from their resources as possible, but this is so detached from reality it's baffling. This is like if Google started demanding website owners to pay 20c every time someone uses Google to get to that site. No site could be found with google anymore.
They shoulda just offered devs a premium subscription for access to prototype features. Then devs would have had an incentive to participate so they could be at the cutting edge of gaming.
I still point the finger to that delusional CEO, who already had a very shitty record to begin with, and look who also seems to get away with all of this? Him again, letting the company take the full front of the mess.
It's the same reason Blizzard put that term for custom maps, Acti-Blizz didn't want to see another DOTA slip their hand but in the stupidest way possible. The main target isn't quite indies but rather games like Genshin Impact, FGO, and COD Mobile but given they care little about the collateral damage their decision makes speaks volume.
For real the people in charge of video game companies are just greedy don't care about the players and don't care about their own employees and I hope it always comes back around & bites them the ass.
I think we are closer to another gaming crash than people think. The same things that happened in 1982-3 are happening now. Low effort "AAA" games that are getting worse and worse, increasing prices, greed and corruption.
Biggest misconception is people think Embracer Group is a video game company. They are not. They are an investment firm that buys companies which run autonomously of one another and the profits is what brings the investors. Having a portfolio of 40 companies insures success because when 10 of the studios are struggling you have 30 more to take up the slack. Embracer does not run the studios nor do they manage the studios which makes buying and selling studios seamless.
You are right but that “take up the slack” is poor logic and makes no sense in business in terms of insuring success like you said. I’m a business owner myself. If I have 40 companies and 10 are failing and 30 are carrying the financial load, my business will fail even worse by putting me in a bigger hole if a few of those 30 companies start to fail or just slow down. It’s simple anti-fragility 101.
@@BabyKobeeee It has nothing to do with companies failing. Investment groups are known to shutter the dead weight. But these groups put their eggs in 100s of investments to to reduce the risk to the investors. So the whole point of these groups is to grow. So if the group had their investments in only 2 companies. If 1 were to fail their best hope is to break even. Whereas the groups spread the wealth to 100 companies and 10 are floundering. The fund still increased in value.
@@PhinneusPruneThe only flaw with this argument is this is assuming every company is the same in terms of value. That's really the determining factor. For instance if I own let's say Apple plus like an some clothing stores, a restaurant, maybe a souvenir shop, etc. If my 10 or 20 other stores fail but Apple is thriving, its not the biggest deal. However, if vice versa, I'm probably screwed because the operating costs of Apple and to cover the losses are gonna take more than those other places and it hurts. I'm not saying this is the case, but the fact that Embracer is already dropping studios like flies is probably indicative of them biting off more than they could chew even if they do have some heavy hitters in revenue.
@@midwestyle that's what investment firms do, they invest in a lot of thing simultaneously, and they figure out what to do with "dead weigh" afterwards. They can even stockpile a lot of assets into one fund, which from outside looks good and make ppl invest in it. You gotta understand they are not investing thier own money into those companies they make other ppl do it for them. From outside it looks like they own shitloads of diffent IP's and I bet some of those componies own proprietary game engines and things like that, a lot of those Dev's still making games etc. Plus shutting down studios doesnt really say much.
Unity really tried to fix the microtransactions/gacha games from being half assed and rushed and all the fortnite kids protested to make sure they can keep doing it 😂 if only gamers protested the same over 20 dollar skins and 70 dollar unfinished games as they did with the same companies having to pay a extra 20 cent fee
Live service games seem to have rubbed too many people the wrong way at this point. I'm really hoping that people get so fed up with so many bad games, that just being labelled as a certain thing hurts the games to the point that we go back to a great gaming era. This year wasn't terrible in games. Lots of good RPGs came out and a lot of promising projects were announced. Like Dragon's Dogma 2 and Crimson Desert. Even WWE seemed to have cleaned up their act with games with the last two installments, and now they finally have a competitor starting up. Might take a while for AEW to be a real rival to WWE games, but once they're there, it should help keep both games operating at a better level. Souls games are breaking through since Elden Ring. Honestly, I don't know if it were just me, but the last two years felt like a shift in gaming. A good and much needed one.
Yeah, live service shouldn't be implemented the way it is. I think multiplayer games should always have the option of hosting your own local dedicated servers so people can still play them after official servers are down and that should be an industry standard
AEW Fight Forever was meant for those of us who grew up with No Mercy and WWF Wrestlemania 2000, but those games where fun, and this one lacked so many things that I cannot fathom how it took so long for development
The pandemic mate, thats what happened. Every studio and their momma had enough time to finished and Polish ther games. Thats way for the past two years we have seen a big amount of excellent games.
@@parkout95 Thats so wrong, many games in the first 5-6 months of this year were disasters in terms of optimization and last 2 years? Brother people were blaming pandemic for disastrous launches. Good games had come along with bad games, it always does. Pandemic would be a reason for bad launches, not the otherway around.
Honestly, single player games are still in a pretty good spot. As long as you don't get too involved in live service games, single player is still going strong.
to be fair to striking distance, Callisto didn’t fail because they went triple A, it failed because Glen cared more about his “cutting edge gore engine” than he cared about “making a good game”
Callisto Protocol is the only game where I've actually used accessability options and had it improve the experience, tbh. Once you turned QTEs to auto complete, the game was an enjoyable weekend game, even if it still wasn't anything to write home about.
Glad you have put the Embracer debacle on the first position. It is a scary thing and it surely happens in so many other areas besides video games. There needs to be some way to start putting these disgusting investments "scams" under some legal and public scrutiny given that if affects so many employees across the world, they're livelihood, their mental health, their families, etc. All absolute pawns and just reduced to numbers for these disgustingly rich people and groups to play around without any consequences.
Embracer made a major mistake, I will admit that, but they had received 2 billion from the Saudi government BEFORE this deal. So they had the capital, as well as dozens, upon dozens of studios to support. The Saudi group that pulled a Nintendo was what screwed Embracer over. But I would like to point out that the Crystal Dynamics studio that was closed down was their MOBILE division, not the actual Crystal Dynamics. People really tend to overlook details at times, which can be annoying. Why was Volition shut down? I mean their last games was Agents of Mayhem and that stupid Saints Row disaster. It does suck that hundreds of employees lost their jobs, but blaming Embracer is like blaming the missing link for modern human problems.
@@ArcaneSorceror their mistake was stricking a deal wit saudits and the crown prince, who killed that journalist, paid musk to give him info on arab spring activists while he burns twitter down, etc.
@@ArcaneSorcerorEmbracer has shut down more studios than just those and there have been considerable layoffs at more studios as well. I absolutely do blame Embracer. And I don't think Volition would have shut down without them. Embracer had too many studios to manage so just opted to close down studios and hit them with layoffs as they're so deep in the hole. If Volition had more free agency they could have at least had the chance to work through their troubles.
I'd love to see an opposite to this series, like the rise of video game companies. I've been rather fascinated with how Electronic Arts' rise was hugely important because of one of their big-wigs was really good at negotiating with other major companies of the '90s and it saved the video game market from being monopolized by Nintendo. Something like that, the details are foggy, I just remember thinking it was such a cool success story.
Yeah, but see you said words that don't get the clicks. People don't want to hear about a good EA, they only want the hate that gets recycled from over and over.
Today's Atari was once known as Infogrames, S. A. They scored the Atari name off of Hasbro, believe it or not, while the arcade division pressed on for a while as the Atari Games Corporation (they were technically not affiliated with them) until their purchase by Midway.
THANK YOU for placing the confused and out of touch devs from Diablo in the video. Not a lot of people show how they acted after questions where asked. Great video.
When it comes to the video game crash, is the thing nobody talks about, Atari's decision to make more games than they had sold consoles, they had 3 different titles (E.T. being one of them) sitting on store shelves and in warehouses that outnumbered the consoles sitting in people's homes. I guess nobody said "Hey Boss, we made 3 million copies of a crappy game, but we've only sold 1.5 million consoles"🙅♀
The E.T. thing was an incredible mess of incompetency. They had one guy make the game in, I think 3 months. And expected people would love a game made under those conditions, just because of the name on the box.
@@SakuraAvalon you'd be surprised how many games people loved back then were made by 1 guy in a few months. They just handed the wrong guy the wrong game on a short amount of time.
Another issue with the Unity debacle is not only are some games FTP, but some of us have multiple devices where we install games (desktop, laptop, Steam Deck, ROG Ally, etc).
For me personally the Unity thing was my Number 1...that announcement was super outrageous. Also, I hoped the current shitstorm with CA and Sega, for Hyena and the Total War Series was included...maybe in Part 4 (;
It was discussed in a broad sense for the GaaS section, and even shown as a clip, but Anthem was the first thing that came to mind. Because it was in a bit of development hell, bad management and bad choices, going back and forth causing what could have been an amazing game to flop, then the bad decision to just abandons it. I come here all the time talking about it, because Anthem is one of my favorite games ever. I still play it occasionally because I enjoy the moment to moment gameplay, but it hurts see so many places it had so much potential. Even the fact it was a GaaS wasnt the end all be all, could have been good even with that, but when you make sure it has an MTX model at launch but its missing lots of content and corners, its a recipe for failure. Still waiting for someone else to attempt an Anthem. Anthem meets Armored Core is what we need. give me the open world and individual suits of Anthem, but give me missions to make money to gradually upgrade my suit over time. take out the RNG. Would make for a good long term progression game.
the worst part about Anthem was they apparently were near as damn done with this big overhaul update that would have fixed a lot of shit, but then EA just did what EA does and pulled funding and shut down the updates development because the game wasn't making money, ignoring the fact that had that update come out, then the game *would* have made them money. fuckin capitalism
Warframe is doing for years what Anthem tried to do. Yet people seem to go out of their way to not talk about it. Best believe Bioware knows and watched closely while hoping people stay quiet about it.
It's pretty often I hear/see the lament: "There's no original IPs anymore." And it's usually in the disgruntled mindset of "gaming is dead, nothing is good anymore. It's all just sequels and remakes." Well, Number 8 is a huge testament as to why companies take the safe route with remakes and sequels. Apparently market research shows that people stick to what's familiar and any new IP attempt, (even from a veteran developer/publishers at times) is quite a gamble. Calisto Protocol...uh, moving on. Immortals of Aveum had a mostly positive reception and yet that wasn't reflected sales wise unfortunately.
Most of those people wouldnt even try a different type of food, let alone play a JRPG or a insert X here. Cant exactly rank their opinion high when they probably havent even played the best of the last 5 years.
Modern gamers are the biggest group of toxic crybabies I have ever seen. Sure, there's a lot wrong with the industry but gamers will whine about everything.
The 360 debacle is truly astonishing. I had the 360 Elite and I had to get it replaced eight times over the three years of the extended warranty for the red ring. The last replacement of the warranty, thankfully, lasted for several years until I switched to PC gaming.
i actually voided my warranty on my 20 gb white model before my red ring came along because i had to fix a disk tray issue.thankfully when i did get the red ring , there was a little chinese shop in my area that would take your red ringed console and give you a refurbished one they did for 90 bucks. and that one still works for me to this day.
Personally, I think the biggest problem that the video games industry is facing right now is the fact that video games got way too big way too fast period so game companies are coming out with bigger and better games every single year, but it's costing more and more money to make them and a lot more time and so they're not making enough money to keep the sustainable cycle of development going.
Apologies for long post. TL/DR: Developing games is cheaper than ever, marketing isn't. A big part of games costing more and more to develop is just because the producers think that bigger budget makes a better-selling game, which is not inherently true. Or it is, but only kinda. Toby Fox' _Undertale_ sold over a million units in 6 months with a budget of about $50k, in kickstarter backing, for a 1-person dev team. Ubisoft's _Far Cry 3,_ released 3 years prior, sold about 10 times that across it's entire lifespan, and I guarantee that the dev team for that game was much bigger than just 10. The chances are, the budget was something between $100 million and $150 million (though I'll admit I haven't found the actual number anywhere). There's nothing stopping big publishers making smaller games that are fun, full of character, and captivating. It would be insane to assume they wouldn't have the technical know-how. The problem is, you can't make _that_ game by just throwing money at it. And they're much more difficult to market and to create hype for, to boot. But imagine if Toby Fox had had not only his vision of the game, but also access to an army of artists, programmers, testers and whatnot. That's kind of what Swen Vincke and Larian had with Baldur's Gate 3. And boy, do the big publishers hate them for it. There is the minor hickup though. Despite its success, BG3 hasn't really sold all that well, in absolute terms, despite how big it seems to be at the moment. Despite the budget, perhaps due to its niche genre, BG3 has "only" sold something like 5.2 million units. _Far Cry 5_ sold around 25 million units, after it released in 2018. That's more along the numbers the big publishers are after, and I don't believe those are achievable without massive marketing budgets, which are _always_ part of the budget but _never_ make the actual game any better. Unless the company is attempting to better their public image or garner good faith in customers, investing in making the game better than the bare minimum isn't really worth it. It's not that game development has become more expensive, it's that marketing budgets for big games have. If making games really was too expensive, there wouldn't be any indie devs. They'd just never have the resources needed. Yet we have more than ever.
@@TheRawrnstuff whether it is development costs or marketing it does not change the fact that one failed game can bankrupt an entire company. just this year alone we have lost several well respected AAA studios. games may be cheaper to develop than ever due to technology getting better, but you also have to factor in inflation. employee salaries cost considerably more than they did in 2015 when undertale came out. i guarantee the staff on these dev teams make more than minimum wage, i imagine they probably paid more than 50k just paying employees to work on farcry 3. As far as undertale is concerned, 50k budget for an indy pixel graphics game from a single person developer is not equal to a AAA studio working on next gen quality graphics with large dev teams. and thats still not factoring in production costs for physical copies, distribution and the cost for shelf space in stores. Undertale btw did NOT initially have a physical release. it wasn't until after it was hyped up by streamers that it went viral enough for a physical release. I'm sorry pal but you are comparing apples to oranges. games may be cheaper to make but the size and scale of modern AAA games makes that a moot point games take atleast twice as long to develop because they are bigger and better so the games have to make considerably more money to make up for increased development times also the fact that the more complex a game it is the more bug testing and revising need to be done. that is why most of the newer games are shipping unfinished or even downright broken. why btw also severely hurts the companies bottom line, people skipping buying or refunds. just look at cyberpunk 2077.
@@scwintz101 "it does not change the fact that one failed game can bankrupt an entire company." I don't know how you think I was claiming the opposite. That's what budgets and market research is for. If your product is likely to sell 1 million, maybe don't invest so much it needs 2 million units sold to cover the cost. "50k budget for an indy pixel graphics game from a single person developer is not equal to a AAA studio working on next gen quality graphics with large dev teams" I wasn't saying it is. I was saying that games can be made without bloating up the budget. Toby Fox didn't invest millions on Undertale hoping it would be worth it, he invested within his means, and focused on his vision and what he could make with the budget he had. Big publishers _could_ operate like that, but for them it's - in a way - reversed. They want 25 million sales. The game is just something that needs to be done to make that. And it's getting too hard for them to "guarantee" 25 million, so raising the sales price means fewer sales are needed - 20 mil instead of 25 mil, for example. "games take atleast twice as long to develop because they are bigger and better" Bigger games are more expensive, and better games are probably more expensive, but that doesn't mean the opposite is true. An expensive game might be barren of any of the features that make the game fun. Developing a long stealth section where the player can do nothing but wait, or having a bunch of questlines that boil down to "go there and grind monsters" make the game technically bigger, but not necessarily better.
The Unity runtime pricing hasn't gone away, it's just been kicked into the long grass. In a world of every increasing game sizes it has the potential to come back, in the end forcing platforms like Steam and Microsoft to have to charge the end user (i.e. gamers) a download management fee, if we want to reinstall a game that we want to go back to but have had to uninstall due to space management on the hard drive.
I think if we can learn anything, grudges are easy to get and hard to remove. Especially when your company doesnt "sell" a thing that isnt booze to the people persay.
Great now I got a hankering for videos from when Steam and bug thug esda tried to make paided mods on steam. I swear like 50 to 80% donations are more then 1% profit from paided Mods? Friggin lol
My random take for all of the layoffs after bad sales for those new trying to be AAA game studios is a sign that they just had too many people as a new studio to start with. If you're brand new, no games under your belt, I don't care how many years of experience you have; be patient, take your time, and deliver a game that has the passion of everyone in the studio in it. Don't just pump out a game that should work because it has worked. Seems almost like there are just too many hands working on some of these games and it gets a little jumbled in production.
I wish Falcon had some kind of live podcast in AM time where together with Jake reported news and commented early. Honestly would love this. You guys are so made for this!
Always love Falcon’s videos. This tho, is especially great. What a well put together slice of history of the industry surrounding video games, both past and present
Immortals of Aveun was also released at a bad time;, there's been so many good games released recently and highly anticipated games releasing this month
I love no. 1. It does a perfect job of highlighting how business ventures detached from any sense of love or human value simply leads back to a barren emptiness.
Can't remember if it was brought up in either of the first two vids, but Microsoft's attempt at DRM for the Xbox One has definitely gotta be up there in terms of boneheaded moves that backfired.
@@blueninjanoname7338 Why? THey make enough money from their ENGINE. THey don't deserve royalties for a game that wasn't their IP. That's just being a leech. Should Gibson Guitars get royalties for all the songs every played and recorded on one of their guitars?
Good to hear from Falcon again. I feel like it's been a while since I've seen you do a video. I hope all is well. Jake, I love your stuff, too. Great content. Keep it up.
I hope (but don't necessarily expect) that game companies would learn the right lesson from the failures of Immortals of Aveum and The Callisto Protocol. It will be sad if many will decide that "Nah. New IPs = immediately bad." As someone who actually adores The Callisto Protocol for its simple premise, atmosphere, and a lot of its combat-focused features, I also know a lot of the reasons as to why it failed. From the scuffed PC launch to the admittedly weird/experimental melee system and especially the overtly-linear structure of the game that honestly felt suffocating to go through at times, it wasn't that it was a new IP that made it a failure. It was simply bad design and a misplaced focus on graphics instead of gameplay first and foremost. Heck. I'd even say many people actually wanted to dive into a new game that feels like a spiritual successor to Dead Space. I do think having alternatives to major IPs is a good thing when done right. It's why I love The Evil Within and am hopeful for the survival-horror approach being marketed in Alan Wake II and even somewhat excited for the Alone in the Dark reboot. Not everything in the survival-horror pool has to be just Resident Evil after all. Good competition is healthy. Just look at what the Souls-like genre has spawned along with the boomer-shooter scene in the indie side of things.
Hi! You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for putting out videos for us subscribers every day. I watch them every lunch time as a break from my stressful job in healthcare. It would be so interesting if you could do a meet the team video or something. Your process is so interesting and fast paced, I’d love to know which talented people help create this great quality content, so I can thank them in my subconscious to haha if that makes sense.
It's crazy annoying when some scrub pro gamer gets raked with a particular thing so they cry about it. Getting devs to modify the game to fit their exact playstyle regardless of how it affects the rest of the community.
cant wait for the assasins creed mirage review! the game actually has the old style of assassinating back, but still includes the style of some stronger enemies as well. pretty interesting for a game people thought they wouldn’t like. that’s why you give games a chance 😊
20:17 man, I was lucky. I bought a 360 Elite cause I had an HDTV at the time and it was the only Xbox that had an HDMI port. I never once got the RROD, or the YLOD on the PS3.
As a note on the Diablo 4 section, the patch in question was a combination of nerfing AFK power levelling and bringing down some of the power level in preparation for the season 1 mechanic being added that'd ramp up damage, along with a nerf to an overused legendary aspect that boosted armour. So there were reasons other than spite, but the timing wasn't great for a nerf. The other thing with the viewership on twitch, it doesn't matter. D3 viewership always dropped off after the first few weeks or month or so of a new season because there's not a lot to watch after that because it's just the grind by then, and since the grind for incremental improvements doesn't get viewers, streamers don't do it and they move off to other games until the next season starts.
Obviously. In a seasonal model, that's actually what you'd expect. D4 viewership will likely go up again when Season 2 starts, and from the sounds of it, the annoucements for S2 have also been reasonably well received. I think this is more a general change in how people treat games than any actual issues. You see the same with Blizzard's other big franchise. WoW players and viewers go up when a new patch releases and then shrink back down. I kinda doubt they're particularly concerned about this.
Immortals also released too close to the highly anticipated Starfield, Armored Core 6, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Mortal Kombat 1. It would’ve been preventable had they delay it away from that timeline. The marketing wasn’t doing the game any justice either
2:00 call of duty did exactly the same thing with warzone 2.0. Same company, Activision/blizzard. Doing the opposite of what the players asked for, trolling the players effectively. I honestly think it is something either about activism within the company in regard to pay or workplace misconduct. Or more interestingly, about reducing the popularity/influence of their titles in hope of deflating the perceived market value of the publishing company to allow regulatory approval of the Microsoft acquisition.
At this point, I'm willing to believe it. It really does feel like they make the wrong decision intentionally sometimes, but I also don't know if it's that deep. I think they might just be the biggest group of dumbasses to ever exist. Thinking back to the "frat boy" culture.
The issue with unity is its CEO. The man has sold $400 million in stock since they went public. He did the same stuff when he was at EA. He has history of doing and suggesting bad shit crazy ideas. He is the reason FIFA had loot box; he once suggested that during a board meeting that they should Charge players a $1 to reload their guns in Online Multiplayer Shooters.. I am not surprise by unity announcement because you know if John Riccitiello (CEO) is at the helm you know the user base is going to get screwed somehow.
Immortals of Aveum is a great game. They problem was the release date. They were up against BG3 and Starfield, the two of the most anticipated games of the decade so far. If it had been released earlier in or later on the year it probably would've gone better.
This game might have done better if they released it earlier, but it would need to be an entire generation or two earlier for the image quality to be acceptable. Even on PS5 and Xbox Series X this game looks bad, the studio doomed itself by having unrealistic ambitions that it couldn't deliver on.
@@SkulletI hate people who talk like graphics are the only thing that matters in a videogame. The game doesn't even look bad at all, you're unironically delusional for even suggesting that it belongs to the ps3 and 360 era of graphics
The UNITY disaster is one of the worse and, quite frankly, BAFFLING messes I’ve ever seen in all of Gaming Companies. I still get headaches just thinking about it….
I was actually going to buy Diablo IV because I actually was really impressed with the beta in terms of the art direction, and I even liked the Rogue gameplay of quickly switching from blades to a bow, but quickly after it came out, Blizzard started to roll back the curtain on how barebones the mmo experience of the game actually was and it only really seemed to push for those microtransactions. I think I want to at least play the campaign through once, but definitely one of those wait for a sale titles for me...
Prerelease, I was locked and loaded ready to buy, but wanted to wait to make sure there were no complaints. Instead I played an indie (dysmantle ) and couldn't be happier.
Same here. Was hyped but decided to wait a couple months. Showed their true colors and decided to spend my cash elsewhere. Coincidentally, TH-cam's algorithm recommended a video about Monster Hunter World. It's an older game but decided to check it out. The bundle was on sale, bought it and now I'm addicted. Thank you Blizzard for saving my money.
Skull and Bones could've been the greatest adventure/action game of all time, with all the ideas and implementations already done before, with only needing a reskin and not much more. But corporate business mismanagement (and abusing gov policy) got in the way so much for so long. It really makes you wonder about the missed potential, especially when you have games like Starfield having a modder fix the UI literally DAY ONE of release.
If you're doing part 4 you might want to take a look at the Creative Assembly situation. The really short version: Neglecting the one product that actually makes their money, pissing off it's fanbase and dumping it into games with low chance of success. CA released a DLC for Total War: Warhammer 3 that cost 150% more (10€ to 25€) than the previous lord pack for the same amount of content and the price hike had no warning. When the fanbase was upset CA released a statement that the "costs were up" (that's literally all they explained) and hinted that if the players won't buy it they'll drop support. TWWH3 has had issues from the launch and clearly wasn't getting the support to warrant such a price hike. Issues like one of the previous DLC lords not having his preferred units available for recruitment for months it took for CA to put up a patch while a modder fixed this on stream in 5 minutes. As the result the playerbase boycotted the DLC and it sold a lot less copies and the playercount at release was significantly lower than the previous DLCs. So the fans did some digging what CA was up to. It turned out CA was trying to create a new hero shooter called Hyenas that was eating all the money. Of course this led to a lot of bad PR and Hyenas got actually cancelled. Some sources claim it ate as much as much as 100 million but I can't verify that. Then there's the Total War: Pharaoh. CA used to have this Saga brand of titles for games that weren't as comprehensive as the mainline games but were easier to develop and sold for cheaper. Pharaoh is very much a Saga game but since the Saga games weren't very popular CA dropped the Saga from the name and is trying to sell it at full price. Total War: Troy did the same and a lot of the reason why it got as much attention as it did was that Epic gave away a lot of copies. At the moment Pharaoh doesn't look like it's going to become much of a success once it launches tomorrow. But since it is just a Saga game it didn't need the full investment and can make the money back easier. So CA is now in a situation where they have no new products coming up with high chance of success and they pissed off their money maker audience. The situation is not unrecoverable but CA really needs to tread carefully here. At least they've started putting out patches more frequently for TWWH3.
I suppose that didn’t help, but I think it was the lackluster combat that barely even made ANY sense. When you fight more than 1 enemy with that “dodge” mechanic you quickly see that it’s half assed. I got halfway through it before getting tired of it.
This series is like those infomercials where the host has done a run down of (allegedly) great features then looks right into the camera and says "but wait, there's more"
Thank you! Another truly excellent video narrated by our favorite game bird. It's important for gamers to learn about the recent and distant past. I too hope that employees that lost their job in the Embracer Group deal land on their feet. I wonder what happens to all the IPs like Tomb Raider, etc. I assume they could get bought by other companies?
they won't do it... you don't get the clicks from positivity and it's too hard to verify positive stories when these negatives half-truths keep getting recycled.
Jake's commentary is 100% more entertaining, authentic and transparent. Just a likeable dude. Falcon's commentary is repetitive, he talks in circles, takes low blows and complains a lot.
Man I loved Diablo 4. Put in easily over 100 plus hours. When that patch came out it literally killed my barbarian. My overall damage went down 60%. Played it once since patch and never touched it again. Was so pissed.
John Riccitiello should be ostracized from the gaming community and made an example of. No one should hire him if they are looking for someone to help direct game development. His name should be held up as one of the most incompetent, out of touch bosses to ever disgrace the gaming space. He doesn't have good ideas. He floats predatory practices to see what he can get away with, he has sexual misconduct allegations against him, he has no respect for the consumers, he has no respect for his employees, he's the embodiment of everything wrong with the industry. The whole industry should treat him like he's radioactive.
Unity attempting what they wanted to do will go down as 1 of THE MOST BONEHEADED moves in recent memory . I've only heard of the Embracer fiasco thanks to you guys . But if there's anything good to come of it , there's ALOT of very talented people looking for gaming related work, and that is never a bad thing in my books . Yes, it sucks that it went down like it did , but if you're half as good as you think you are in the gaming world, work will find you .
Larian Studios should be on there. They were supposed to make a game that was highly praised by other greedy developers for their microtransactions and instead decided not to. Instead they made a good game and now players love it. What a backslash
Listening to Falcon talk about this Unity debacle. A part of my brain is saying "What if this was the original plan." I mean the way they said they weren't going to have the same monetary plan Epic has sounds like a thing they said to discourage Dev's from using Unreal and then drop this bomb on em.
My grandpa had one of the 500 test 360s, he worked for Microsoft in Redmond as a software engineer and me and my uncle got to come play games and try out new stuff like when they first started trying out online games on the original Xbox
I think the worst part with Imortals of Avum is that by all accounts its a fine game, but it was a new ip from an unknown studio literally sandwiched between two goty contenders from established studios and ip in Armored Core 6 and Baldurs Gate 3. Not to mention Starfield was right around the corner as well. In other words when you launch a game is just as important as how you launch a game.
The thing with Callisto Protocol is that it is actually a good game. The problem it had was when it released. With the Deadspace releasing just over a month later why would anyone buy the new IP that may or may not be as good as Deadspace and is in many ways a clone, when you only have a short time to wait for the real deal? I will admit I did not buy it due to having enough games on my playlist, lack of money and never really playing Deadspace, but as it was added to PS+ this month I gave it a try and am really enjoying it. I don't think moving to a AAA title was what backfired, it was all down to the timing. Had it released much earlier or delayed the release, it might have had more of a chance. People knew Deadspace was coming, and did not bother with CP.
Most gaming companies are run by zombies who are simply not gamers. The more you try and push your microtransactions in our face, the less likely you are to get us to pay. If I load up a game and am instantly met with like 4 pages of BUY THIS, BUY THAT, they've created a bad impression immediately when all I wanted to do was play. If I arrive at the item shop naturally, I'm more likely to check it out because it's not invasive, especially if the game is good enough to keep me playing long enough to do so. Basic psychology! These days, companies are that desperate shady salesman who bothers you on the street or door to door begging for money while your just trying to go about your day. If I want to buy something, I'll go to the store.
Would it be possible to drop the links to the previous two installments of this video series as a pinned comment or answer to this one ? I can't find the second part and this would make it so much easier to be able to go back and watch them.
The real reason why I think Unity back pedal sooo hard was because they got a call from Nintendo's lawyer 15min after they posted the changes, those lawyers are searching for problems and are ready to destroy anyone that moves wierd.
A little random, but I remember when I was supervising a pizza store back in 18, I saw Overwatch League come on the tv, which always played ESPN. I was pretty deep into OW with my girl at that time and my roommate. It was dope as hell to watch during my shift. 😅
A new one to add probably to a part 4 is Project Wingman and its advertising of it being a PSVR2 full game only for customers to find out today that only 6 missions are playable in VR.
Imagine being that one person that was still playing babylons fall and seeing that article saying there was one person still playing...then realizing why there were no other players!
Concerning the Skull & Bones game, hasn't there been an announcement of a Black Flag remake? Lol, seems to me they're using all the budget & assets wasted for S&B to develop the BF remake.
19:42 I went through 6 or 7 Xbox 360's, I lost count after returning the 5th or 6th one... finally by the time I returned my final one, the next gen console was set to come out and it lasted long enough for that to release.. I'm still haunted by the red rings..
I still loved my 360, only had one rrod and played so many hours on that system. My PS3 was an expensive Blu-ray player, and the power supply went out. Too bad I got rid of it as they are going for $500 or so now (backwards compatible version) I did miss a few gems that I later played on PS4.
On the live service topic it reminds me of the mmo boom after Wow came out. For awhile everyone was making mmo’s thinking it would be a license or print money when in actually you’re setting yourself up to compete with games that have a multi year content lead on you.
The Embracer one is savage... It shows how a single decision of a bunch of stupid people could lead to A LOT of people losing their jobs as colateral damage
Skull and bones was a disappointment as a game. You take all of the things people loved about Blakc Flag out of the game, make it a garbage live-service model, and overall just make yet another laughing stock. It was marketed as a AAAA game, but in the end it was just a shell of a development hell project that should have been scrapped
Embracer is busily doing the same thing in the boardgame industry. They’ve bought at least twenty different publishers, and are now in the process of closing them down and firing everyone.
![7 Game Company Decisions That BACKFIRED [PART 2]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/CT8adHnDuwI/mqdefault.jpg)
The worst part about the unity thing wasn't the price or fees. The worst part was that this would've been applied retroactively to older licenses of unity too. So it would go into effect in 2024, and hence should only apply to unity licenses that were issued in 2024, but they instead want to apply it to everything, changing a signed and agreed upon contract AFTER THE FACT, which is ILLEGAL! And they deleted the git hub repository that tracks these contracts.
Snatcher: You understand that's not how contracts work, right?
None of what their doing is illegal. They can charge whatever they want🤷🏿♂️. But they will lose business
@@GojosBackHand Uh no, when you use Unity in any capacity for the first time and after some changes(meaning a change like having to pay per install), you agree to a EULA(end user license agreement) which is a form of contract and I bet they never mentioned this in there until now in there. and that also means some entities involved with older titles would never have agreed to the new EULA making it illegal. However, I do agree that they will lose business and they should if they implemented the way they wanted to.
@@GojosBackHandwrong, it very much is illegal
First of all it is illegal to retroactively adjust a contract without express approval on both sides
Second, it'd be illegal to track installs as the player does not have any contract with Unity. The player has a terms/conditions agreement with the developer. Unity cannot take data from any game without breaching many laws surrounding privacy and safety, especially in the EU
It's not about "charge what they want". That's not illegal. You're intentionally obfuscating what the real problem is: the retroactive application of these terms on older installs and the tracking of data on PCs that they do not legally have access to
Add to that that they deleted the terms and conditions from Github, which on itself is also illegal as terms and conditions should ALWAYS be readily available, and it's just a big mix of illegal shit
Why do you think they changed their entire plan? Not because of the outrage. Because of the legal ramifications and the loss of business this would mean.
@@GojosBackHand Attempting to retroactively change a license agreement that another product was made under and enforce it on the product using that older license is illegal. Furthermore, tracking installs is an illegal action by Unity in and of itself. Downloading a unity game is not making a contract with Unity. There are literally thousands of small developers that release Unity projects that are then freely shared among people on the web with zero EULA or TOS agreements made at ANY point in the process.
Unity is still the most mind-boggling decision I've seen. They had SUCH a good thing going for them.
reminds me of the breaking bad "We Had A Good Thing" meme
Yeah, I mean, I get that a corporation is greedy and wants to extract as much profit from their resources as possible, but this is so detached from reality it's baffling.
This is like if Google started demanding website owners to pay 20c every time someone uses Google to get to that site. No site could be found with google anymore.
They shoulda just offered devs a premium subscription for access to prototype features. Then devs would have had an incentive to participate so they could be at the cutting edge of gaming.
I still point the finger to that delusional CEO, who already had a very shitty record to begin with, and look who also seems to get away with all of this? Him again, letting the company take the full front of the mess.
It's the same reason Blizzard put that term for custom maps, Acti-Blizz didn't want to see another DOTA slip their hand but in the stupidest way possible. The main target isn't quite indies but rather games like Genshin Impact, FGO, and COD Mobile but given they care little about the collateral damage their decision makes speaks volume.
Given how the industry is currently behaving you’ll never run out of content for these kinds of videos 😅
For real the people in charge of video game companies are just greedy don't care about the players and don't care about their own employees and I hope it always comes back around & bites them the ass.
I think we are closer to another gaming crash than people think. The same things that happened in 1982-3 are happening now. Low effort "AAA" games that are getting worse and worse, increasing prices, greed and corruption.
@@amemnon7859 Good
Biggest misconception is people think Embracer Group is a video game company. They are not. They are an investment firm that buys companies which run autonomously of one another and the profits is what brings the investors. Having a portfolio of 40 companies insures success because when 10 of the studios are struggling you have 30 more to take up the slack.
Embracer does not run the studios nor do they manage the studios which makes buying and selling studios seamless.
You are right but that “take up the slack” is poor logic and makes no sense in business in terms of insuring success like you said.
I’m a business owner myself. If I have 40 companies and 10 are failing and 30 are carrying the financial load, my business will fail even worse by putting me in a bigger hole if a few of those 30 companies start to fail or just slow down. It’s simple anti-fragility 101.
@@BabyKobeeee It has nothing to do with companies failing. Investment groups are known to shutter the dead weight. But these groups put their eggs in 100s of investments to to reduce the risk to the investors. So the whole point of these groups is to grow. So if the group had their investments in only 2 companies. If 1 were to fail their best hope is to break even. Whereas the groups spread the wealth to 100 companies and 10 are floundering. The fund still increased in value.
@@BabyKobeeeeand I’m a multimillionaire
@@PhinneusPruneThe only flaw with this argument is this is assuming every company is the same in terms of value. That's really the determining factor.
For instance if I own let's say Apple plus like an some clothing stores, a restaurant, maybe a souvenir shop, etc. If my 10 or 20 other stores fail but Apple is thriving, its not the biggest deal. However, if vice versa, I'm probably screwed because the operating costs of Apple and to cover the losses are gonna take more than those other places and it hurts.
I'm not saying this is the case, but the fact that Embracer is already dropping studios like flies is probably indicative of them biting off more than they could chew even if they do have some heavy hitters in revenue.
@@midwestyle that's what investment firms do, they invest in a lot of thing simultaneously, and they figure out what to do with "dead weigh" afterwards. They can even stockpile a lot of assets into one fund, which from outside looks good and make ppl invest in it. You gotta understand they are not investing thier own money into those companies they make other ppl do it for them. From outside it looks like they own shitloads of diffent IP's and I bet some of those componies own proprietary game engines and things like that, a lot of those Dev's still making games etc.
Plus shutting down studios doesnt really say much.
I foresee unity being on this list
Same, i just got here
Unity really tried to fix the microtransactions/gacha games from being half assed and rushed and all the fortnite kids protested to make sure they can keep doing it 😂 if only gamers protested the same over 20 dollar skins and 70 dollar unfinished games as they did with the same companies having to pay a extra 20 cent fee
I expected that and Overwatch and yep they were both here lol. Although, I was wrong about what the Overwatch one was going to be.
Yeap 8:53
Such a wise use of your clairvoyance lol
Can you imagine if Adobe charged every time someone downloaded a pdf?
If they could get away with it? Yes.
I actually can imagine this lol. I’m sure a lot of non tech savvy boomers have already paid for acrobat.
you think boomers are ethe only technomorons? Have you seen the tiktok generation attempt to use an actual program that isn't on a phone?
It's bad enough that Adobe sells all of their products as subscriptions.
It's like being charged for insulin, something people need to live.
Oh wait...
Live service games seem to have rubbed too many people the wrong way at this point. I'm really hoping that people get so fed up with so many bad games, that just being labelled as a certain thing hurts the games to the point that we go back to a great gaming era. This year wasn't terrible in games. Lots of good RPGs came out and a lot of promising projects were announced. Like Dragon's Dogma 2 and Crimson Desert. Even WWE seemed to have cleaned up their act with games with the last two installments, and now they finally have a competitor starting up. Might take a while for AEW to be a real rival to WWE games, but once they're there, it should help keep both games operating at a better level. Souls games are breaking through since Elden Ring. Honestly, I don't know if it were just me, but the last two years felt like a shift in gaming. A good and much needed one.
Yeah, live service shouldn't be implemented the way it is.
I think multiplayer games should always have the option of hosting your own local dedicated servers so people can still play them after official servers are down and that should be an industry standard
AEW Fight Forever was meant for those of us who grew up with No Mercy and WWF Wrestlemania 2000, but those games where fun, and this one lacked so many things that I cannot fathom how it took so long for development
Activision asf:
The pandemic mate, thats what happened. Every studio and their momma had enough time to finished and Polish ther games. Thats way for the past two years we have seen a big amount of excellent games.
@@parkout95 Thats so wrong, many games in the first 5-6 months of this year were disasters in terms of optimization and last 2 years? Brother people were blaming pandemic for disastrous launches. Good games had come along with bad games, it always does. Pandemic would be a reason for bad launches, not the otherway around.
Thank you, Falcon. This further reinforces my love for single-player campaigns from the 90's and early 2000's.
Half life 😊
Honestly, single player games are still in a pretty good spot. As long as you don't get too involved in live service games, single player is still going strong.
But... but... you would be 10s if you did not play single player games!!!
@@360VideoDesign Doctorrr Freeeeeemannn.....
to be fair to striking distance, Callisto didn’t fail because they went triple A, it failed because Glen cared more about his “cutting edge gore engine” than he cared about “making a good game”
Callisto Protocol is the only game where I've actually used accessability options and had it improve the experience, tbh. Once you turned QTEs to auto complete, the game was an enjoyable weekend game, even if it still wasn't anything to write home about.
callisto protocol.. more like leftrightdodge trololol against dumb generic zombies in cramped prison rooms.
And also because they released way too close to the Dead Space remake.
Glad you have put the Embracer debacle on the first position. It is a scary thing and it surely happens in so many other areas besides video games. There needs to be some way to start putting these disgusting investments "scams" under some legal and public scrutiny given that if affects so many employees across the world, they're livelihood, their mental health, their families, etc. All absolute pawns and just reduced to numbers for these disgustingly rich people and groups to play around without any consequences.
Embracer made a major mistake, I will admit that, but they had received 2 billion from the Saudi government BEFORE this deal. So they had the capital, as well as dozens, upon dozens of studios to support. The Saudi group that pulled a Nintendo was what screwed Embracer over.
But I would like to point out that the Crystal Dynamics studio that was closed down was their MOBILE division, not the actual Crystal Dynamics. People really tend to overlook details at times, which can be annoying. Why was Volition shut down? I mean their last games was Agents of Mayhem and that stupid Saints Row disaster.
It does suck that hundreds of employees lost their jobs, but blaming Embracer is like blaming the missing link for modern human problems.
@@ArcaneSorceror their mistake was stricking a deal wit saudits and the crown prince, who killed that journalist, paid musk to give him info on arab spring activists while he burns twitter down, etc.
@@ArcaneSorcerorEmbracer has shut down more studios than just those and there have been considerable layoffs at more studios as well. I absolutely do blame Embracer. And I don't think Volition would have shut down without them. Embracer had too many studios to manage so just opted to close down studios and hit them with layoffs as they're so deep in the hole. If Volition had more free agency they could have at least had the chance to work through their troubles.
The fact that ur ok w a game studio taking money from a government tells me more than enough lol
@@GDKF0238Actually I found the move more moronic, ESPECIALLY a government with a history of Human Rights Abuses.
I'd love to see an opposite to this series, like the rise of video game companies. I've been rather fascinated with how Electronic Arts' rise was hugely important because of one of their big-wigs was really good at negotiating with other major companies of the '90s and it saved the video game market from being monopolized by Nintendo. Something like that, the details are foggy, I just remember thinking it was such a cool success story.
Yeah, but see you said words that don't get the clicks. People don't want to hear about a good EA, they only want the hate that gets recycled from over and over.
@@cloudcity4194I have to disagree. I want to remember all the good things, not just the bad one
@@cloudcity4194 There are clickbait buzzwords for positive things too.
Today's Atari was once known as Infogrames, S. A. They scored the Atari name off of Hasbro, believe it or not, while the arcade division pressed on for a while as the Atari Games Corporation (they were technically not affiliated with them) until their purchase by Midway.
THANK YOU for placing the confused and out of touch devs from Diablo in the video. Not a lot of people show how they acted after questions where asked. Great video.
When it comes to the video game crash, is the thing nobody talks about, Atari's decision to make more games than they had sold consoles, they had 3 different titles (E.T. being one of them) sitting on store shelves and in warehouses that outnumbered the consoles sitting in people's homes. I guess nobody said "Hey Boss, we made 3 million copies of a crappy game, but we've only sold 1.5 million consoles"🙅♀
The E.T. thing was an incredible mess of incompetency. They had one guy make the game in, I think 3 months. And expected people would love a game made under those conditions, just because of the name on the box.
@@SakuraAvalon you'd be surprised how many games people loved back then were made by 1 guy in a few months. They just handed the wrong guy the wrong game on a short amount of time.
Another issue with the Unity debacle is not only are some games FTP, but some of us have multiple devices where we install games (desktop, laptop, Steam Deck, ROG Ally, etc).
For me personally the Unity thing was my Number 1...that announcement was super outrageous.
Also, I hoped the current shitstorm with CA and Sega, for Hyena and the Total War Series was included...maybe in Part 4 (;
What shitstorm?
Appreciated falcon. I will never forget th FIVE red ringed systems I went through back in the day.
I got it 1 time after grinding out the 53k killed infected achievement for left 4 dead. Most convenient time to happen to because I was burnt out lmao
👍🏼
I'm sure in a few months there will be a part 4.
SO... about "Skull & Bones"...
Came to the comments for this
What complete disaster that game was. No one talks about it anymore. lol
It was discussed in a broad sense for the GaaS section, and even shown as a clip, but Anthem was the first thing that came to mind. Because it was in a bit of development hell, bad management and bad choices, going back and forth causing what could have been an amazing game to flop, then the bad decision to just abandons it. I come here all the time talking about it, because Anthem is one of my favorite games ever. I still play it occasionally because I enjoy the moment to moment gameplay, but it hurts see so many places it had so much potential. Even the fact it was a GaaS wasnt the end all be all, could have been good even with that, but when you make sure it has an MTX model at launch but its missing lots of content and corners, its a recipe for failure. Still waiting for someone else to attempt an Anthem. Anthem meets Armored Core is what we need. give me the open world and individual suits of Anthem, but give me missions to make money to gradually upgrade my suit over time. take out the RNG. Would make for a good long term progression game.
the worst part about Anthem was they apparently were near as damn done with this big overhaul update that would have fixed a lot of shit, but then EA just did what EA does and pulled funding and shut down the updates development because the game wasn't making money, ignoring the fact that had that update come out, then the game *would* have made them money. fuckin capitalism
Anthem: Next getting canceled still stings, could have been a juggernaut in the MORPG space with a just a year of improvements
Warframe is doing for years what Anthem tried to do. Yet people seem to go out of their way to not talk about it. Best believe Bioware knows and watched closely while hoping people stay quiet about it.
It's pretty often I hear/see the lament: "There's no original IPs anymore." And it's usually in the disgruntled mindset of "gaming is dead, nothing is good anymore. It's all just sequels and remakes." Well, Number 8 is a huge testament as to why companies take the safe route with remakes and sequels. Apparently market research shows that people stick to what's familiar and any new IP attempt, (even from a veteran developer/publishers at times) is quite a gamble. Calisto Protocol...uh, moving on. Immortals of Aveum had a mostly positive reception and yet that wasn't reflected sales wise unfortunately.
Most of those people wouldnt even try a different type of food, let alone play a JRPG or a insert X here.
Cant exactly rank their opinion high when they probably havent even played the best of the last 5 years.
Y’all rlly bootlicking out here in the Gameranx comments
@@GDKF0238 Just out curiosity, how many times have you posted this exact same comment?
@@GDKF0238Yet you are licking our boots.. ha
Modern gamers are the biggest group of toxic crybabies I have ever seen. Sure, there's a lot wrong with the industry but gamers will whine about everything.
The 360 debacle is truly astonishing. I had the 360 Elite and I had to get it replaced eight times over the three years of the extended warranty for the red ring. The last replacement of the warranty, thankfully, lasted for several years until I switched to PC gaming.
i actually voided my warranty on my 20 gb white model before my red ring came along because i had to fix a disk tray issue.thankfully when i did get the red ring , there was a little chinese shop in my area that would take your red ringed console and give you a refurbished one they did for 90 bucks. and that one still works for me to this day.
@@Tannerj50
Personally, I think the biggest problem that the video games industry is facing right now is the fact that video games got way too big way too fast period so game companies are coming out with bigger and better games every single year, but it's costing more and more money to make them and a lot more time and so they're not making enough money to keep the sustainable cycle of development going.
Ita not costing more money to make these games. Their just making excuse for putting out a shitty product.
@@GojosBackHandyes it is costing more to make games, that’s literally objectively true and researchable…
Apologies for long post. TL/DR: Developing games is cheaper than ever, marketing isn't.
A big part of games costing more and more to develop is just because the producers think that bigger budget makes a better-selling game, which is not inherently true. Or it is, but only kinda.
Toby Fox' _Undertale_ sold over a million units in 6 months with a budget of about $50k, in kickstarter backing, for a 1-person dev team.
Ubisoft's _Far Cry 3,_ released 3 years prior, sold about 10 times that across it's entire lifespan, and I guarantee that the dev team for that game was much bigger than just 10. The chances are, the budget was something between $100 million and $150 million (though I'll admit I haven't found the actual number anywhere).
There's nothing stopping big publishers making smaller games that are fun, full of character, and captivating. It would be insane to assume they wouldn't have the technical know-how. The problem is, you can't make _that_ game by just throwing money at it. And they're much more difficult to market and to create hype for, to boot.
But imagine if Toby Fox had had not only his vision of the game, but also access to an army of artists, programmers, testers and whatnot. That's kind of what Swen Vincke and Larian had with Baldur's Gate 3. And boy, do the big publishers hate them for it.
There is the minor hickup though. Despite its success, BG3 hasn't really sold all that well, in absolute terms, despite how big it seems to be at the moment. Despite the budget, perhaps due to its niche genre, BG3 has "only" sold something like 5.2 million units.
_Far Cry 5_ sold around 25 million units, after it released in 2018. That's more along the numbers the big publishers are after, and I don't believe those are achievable without massive marketing budgets, which are _always_ part of the budget but _never_ make the actual game any better.
Unless the company is attempting to better their public image or garner good faith in customers, investing in making the game better than the bare minimum isn't really worth it. It's not that game development has become more expensive, it's that marketing budgets for big games have. If making games really was too expensive, there wouldn't be any indie devs. They'd just never have the resources needed. Yet we have more than ever.
@@TheRawrnstuff whether it is development costs or marketing it does not change the fact that one failed game can bankrupt an entire company. just this year alone we have lost several well respected AAA studios.
games may be cheaper to develop than ever due to technology getting better, but you also have to factor in inflation. employee salaries cost considerably more than they did in 2015 when undertale came out. i guarantee the staff on these dev teams make more than minimum wage, i imagine they probably paid more than 50k just paying employees to work on farcry 3. As far as undertale is concerned, 50k budget for an indy pixel graphics game from a single person developer is not equal to a AAA studio working on next gen quality graphics with large dev teams. and thats still not factoring in production costs for physical copies, distribution and the cost for shelf space in stores. Undertale btw did NOT initially have a physical release. it wasn't until after it was hyped up by streamers that it went viral enough for a physical release.
I'm sorry pal but you are comparing apples to oranges. games may be cheaper to make but the size and scale of modern AAA games makes that a moot point games take atleast twice as long to develop because they are bigger and better so the games have to make considerably more money to make up for increased development times also the fact that the more complex a game it is the more bug testing and revising need to be done. that is why most of the newer games are shipping unfinished or even downright broken. why btw also severely hurts the companies bottom line, people skipping buying or refunds. just look at cyberpunk 2077.
@@scwintz101 "it does not change the fact that one failed game can bankrupt an entire company."
I don't know how you think I was claiming the opposite. That's what budgets and market research is for. If your product is likely to sell 1 million, maybe don't invest so much it needs 2 million units sold to cover the cost.
"50k budget for an indy pixel graphics game from a single person developer is not equal to a AAA studio working on next gen quality graphics with large dev teams"
I wasn't saying it is. I was saying that games can be made without bloating up the budget. Toby Fox didn't invest millions on Undertale hoping it would be worth it, he invested within his means, and focused on his vision and what he could make with the budget he had. Big publishers _could_ operate like that, but for them it's - in a way - reversed. They want 25 million sales. The game is just something that needs to be done to make that. And it's getting too hard for them to "guarantee" 25 million, so raising the sales price means fewer sales are needed - 20 mil instead of 25 mil, for example.
"games take atleast twice as long to develop because they are bigger and better"
Bigger games are more expensive, and better games are probably more expensive, but that doesn't mean the opposite is true. An expensive game might be barren of any of the features that make the game fun. Developing a long stealth section where the player can do nothing but wait, or having a bunch of questlines that boil down to "go there and grind monsters" make the game technically bigger, but not necessarily better.
The Unity runtime pricing hasn't gone away, it's just been kicked into the long grass. In a world of every increasing game sizes it has the potential to come back, in the end forcing platforms like Steam and Microsoft to have to charge the end user (i.e. gamers) a download management fee, if we want to reinstall a game that we want to go back to but have had to uninstall due to space management on the hard drive.
I think if we can learn anything, grudges are easy to get and hard to remove. Especially when your company doesnt "sell" a thing that isnt booze to the people persay.
I’d LOVE to see a company try that. The hell it would be lol
Great now I got a hankering for videos from when Steam and bug thug esda tried to make paided mods on steam.
I swear like 50 to 80% donations are more then 1% profit from paided Mods? Friggin lol
Unity tried pulling a Wizards f the Coast...
Worked just about as well.
I'm seeing a pattern on these horrible decisions that tank companies: Lie or treat your customers like an ATM and you will piss everyone off.
My random take for all of the layoffs after bad sales for those new trying to be AAA game studios is a sign that they just had too many people as a new studio to start with. If you're brand new, no games under your belt, I don't care how many years of experience you have; be patient, take your time, and deliver a game that has the passion of everyone in the studio in it. Don't just pump out a game that should work because it has worked. Seems almost like there are just too many hands working on some of these games and it gets a little jumbled in production.
I wish Falcon had some kind of live podcast in AM time where together with Jake reported news and commented early. Honestly would love this. You guys are so made for this!
Something similar to Good Mythical Morning?
@@erutanevoli not familiar.. 🤔 will look
Always love Falcon’s videos. This tho, is especially great. What a well put together slice of history of the industry surrounding video games, both past and present
Why don't you just marry him
Also there was a “wrap your console in a towel and bake it on 350° for 10 min” or some 💩😂! Lol the good ol’ days
Immortals of Aveun was also released at a bad time;, there's been so many good games released recently and highly anticipated games releasing this month
I love no. 1. It does a perfect job of highlighting how business ventures detached from any sense of love or human value simply leads back to a barren emptiness.
Can't remember if it was brought up in either of the first two vids, but Microsoft's attempt at DRM for the Xbox One has definitely gotta be up there in terms of boneheaded moves that backfired.
Like others have said, Unity deserve a spot for being such duplicitous scumbags.
They're in this video
@@bulkvanderhuge9006 well deserved
Don't they deserve some royalties, tho
@@blueninjanoname7338 Why? THey make enough money from their ENGINE. THey don't deserve royalties for a game that wasn't their IP. That's just being a leech.
Should Gibson Guitars get royalties for all the songs every played and recorded on one of their guitars?
@@bulkvanderhuge9006 Maybe, would the game be the same if not made on the engine? Would it have been possible?
Honestly, I didn't even know Babylon's Fall existed before this video 😂
Good to hear from Falcon again. I feel like it's been a while since I've seen you do a video. I hope all is well. Jake, I love your stuff, too. Great content. Keep it up.
I hope (but don't necessarily expect) that game companies would learn the right lesson from the failures of Immortals of Aveum and The Callisto Protocol. It will be sad if many will decide that "Nah. New IPs = immediately bad." As someone who actually adores The Callisto Protocol for its simple premise, atmosphere, and a lot of its combat-focused features, I also know a lot of the reasons as to why it failed. From the scuffed PC launch to the admittedly weird/experimental melee system and especially the overtly-linear structure of the game that honestly felt suffocating to go through at times, it wasn't that it was a new IP that made it a failure. It was simply bad design and a misplaced focus on graphics instead of gameplay first and foremost. Heck. I'd even say many people actually wanted to dive into a new game that feels like a spiritual successor to Dead Space. I do think having alternatives to major IPs is a good thing when done right. It's why I love The Evil Within and am hopeful for the survival-horror approach being marketed in Alan Wake II and even somewhat excited for the Alone in the Dark reboot. Not everything in the survival-horror pool has to be just Resident Evil after all. Good competition is healthy. Just look at what the Souls-like genre has spawned along with the boomer-shooter scene in the indie side of things.
Hi! You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for putting out videos for us subscribers every day. I watch them every lunch time as a break from my stressful job in healthcare.
It would be so interesting if you could do a meet the team video or something. Your process is so interesting and fast paced, I’d love to know which talented people help create this great quality content, so I can thank them in my subconscious to haha if that makes sense.
I think esports and AAA games have done more harm to gaming than good.
It's crazy annoying when some scrub pro gamer gets raked with a particular thing so they cry about it. Getting devs to modify the game to fit their exact playstyle regardless of how it affects the rest of the community.
cant wait for the assasins creed mirage review! the game actually has the old style of assassinating back, but still includes the style of some stronger enemies as well. pretty interesting for a game people thought they wouldn’t like. that’s why you give games a chance 😊
The unity situation seems like developers getting a taste of the micro transactions gamers have had to deal with from them lol.
Yeah,it sucks doesn't it, developers?!😂
The difference is Developers LITERALLY make a living off of the games they sell. Gamers don't. Fuck Streamers.
@@HerowebcomicsOftentimes the microtransactions are pushed by the publisher, who pulls all the strings.
They don't wanna charge devs they wanna charge platforms/client launchers.
@@NoMoreLies365 Oh!
Ok!
20:17 man, I was lucky. I bought a 360 Elite cause I had an HDTV at the time and it was the only Xbox that had an HDMI port. I never once got the RROD, or the YLOD on the PS3.
As a note on the Diablo 4 section, the patch in question was a combination of nerfing AFK power levelling and bringing down some of the power level in preparation for the season 1 mechanic being added that'd ramp up damage, along with a nerf to an overused legendary aspect that boosted armour.
So there were reasons other than spite, but the timing wasn't great for a nerf.
The other thing with the viewership on twitch, it doesn't matter. D3 viewership always dropped off after the first few weeks or month or so of a new season because there's not a lot to watch after that because it's just the grind by then, and since the grind for incremental improvements doesn't get viewers, streamers don't do it and they move off to other games until the next season starts.
Obviously. In a seasonal model, that's actually what you'd expect. D4 viewership will likely go up again when Season 2 starts, and from the sounds of it, the annoucements for S2 have also been reasonably well received. I think this is more a general change in how people treat games than any actual issues. You see the same with Blizzard's other big franchise. WoW players and viewers go up when a new patch releases and then shrink back down. I kinda doubt they're particularly concerned about this.
Immortals also released too close to the highly anticipated Starfield, Armored Core 6, Baldur’s Gate 3, and Mortal Kombat 1. It would’ve been preventable had they delay it away from that timeline. The marketing wasn’t doing the game any justice either
2:00 call of duty did exactly the same thing with warzone 2.0. Same company, Activision/blizzard. Doing the opposite of what the players asked for, trolling the players effectively. I honestly think it is something either about activism within the company in regard to pay or workplace misconduct. Or more interestingly, about reducing the popularity/influence of their titles in hope of deflating the perceived market value of the publishing company to allow regulatory approval of the Microsoft acquisition.
Like using AI to monitor voice chats to apply rules and issue punishments to only select groups of people?
At this point, I'm willing to believe it. It really does feel like they make the wrong decision intentionally sometimes, but I also don't know if it's that deep. I think they might just be the biggest group of dumbasses to ever exist. Thinking back to the "frat boy" culture.
Can't wait to see Concord featuring on this list
The issue with unity is its CEO. The man has sold $400 million in stock since they went public. He did the same stuff when he was at EA. He has history of doing and suggesting bad shit crazy ideas. He is the reason FIFA had loot box; he once suggested that during a board meeting that they should Charge players a $1 to reload their guns in Online Multiplayer Shooters.. I am not surprise by unity announcement because you know if John Riccitiello (CEO) is at the helm you know the user base is going to get screwed somehow.
I heard Unity and thought of AC Unity 😂 guess I was out of the loop.
Thanks Falcon for making me feel dumb about gaming news lol
Right on time, thanks Gameranx!
This could be a weekly segment with no shortage of content ever.
Immortals of Aveum is a great game. They problem was the release date. They were up against BG3 and Starfield, the two of the most anticipated games of the decade so far. If it had been released earlier in or later on the year it probably would've gone better.
it looks so bad, its finger blasting the game
@@Vimkrit so cod?
It's finger cod and it runs like shit
This game might have done better if they released it earlier, but it would need to be an entire generation or two earlier for the image quality to be acceptable. Even on PS5 and Xbox Series X this game looks bad, the studio doomed itself by having unrealistic ambitions that it couldn't deliver on.
@@SkulletI hate people who talk like graphics are the only thing that matters in a videogame. The game doesn't even look bad at all, you're unironically delusional for even suggesting that it belongs to the ps3 and 360 era of graphics
The UNITY disaster is one of the worse and, quite frankly, BAFFLING messes I’ve ever seen in all of Gaming Companies. I still get headaches just thinking about it….
You can probably make this a yearly thing forever , easy
When the video showed previous videos dating 4 years back. The quality and consistency of this channel is amazing
👍🏼
I was actually going to buy Diablo IV because I actually was really impressed with the beta in terms of the art direction, and I even liked the Rogue gameplay of quickly switching from blades to a bow, but quickly after it came out, Blizzard started to roll back the curtain on how barebones the mmo experience of the game actually was and it only really seemed to push for those microtransactions. I think I want to at least play the campaign through once, but definitely one of those wait for a sale titles for me...
Prerelease, I was locked and loaded ready to buy, but wanted to wait to make sure there were no complaints. Instead I played an indie (dysmantle ) and couldn't be happier.
Same here. Was hyped but decided to wait a couple months. Showed their true colors and decided to spend my cash elsewhere. Coincidentally, TH-cam's algorithm recommended a video about Monster Hunter World. It's an older game but decided to check it out. The bundle was on sale, bought it and now I'm addicted. Thank you Blizzard for saving my money.
New drinking game: Everytime falcon says “to be frank” take a drink. Everytime Jake says “pinch of salt” take a drink.
Skull and Bones could've been the greatest adventure/action game of all time, with all the ideas and implementations already done before, with only needing a reskin and not much more. But corporate business mismanagement (and abusing gov policy) got in the way so much for so long. It really makes you wonder about the missed potential, especially when you have games like Starfield having a modder fix the UI literally DAY ONE of release.
Right ? The world needs a gritty open world pirate game. Something like rdr2 meets sea of thieves but with pirates !
If you're doing part 4 you might want to take a look at the Creative Assembly situation. The really short version: Neglecting the one product that actually makes their money, pissing off it's fanbase and dumping it into games with low chance of success.
CA released a DLC for Total War: Warhammer 3 that cost 150% more (10€ to 25€) than the previous lord pack for the same amount of content and the price hike had no warning. When the fanbase was upset CA released a statement that the "costs were up" (that's literally all they explained) and hinted that if the players won't buy it they'll drop support. TWWH3 has had issues from the launch and clearly wasn't getting the support to warrant such a price hike. Issues like one of the previous DLC lords not having his preferred units available for recruitment for months it took for CA to put up a patch while a modder fixed this on stream in 5 minutes. As the result the playerbase boycotted the DLC and it sold a lot less copies and the playercount at release was significantly lower than the previous DLCs.
So the fans did some digging what CA was up to. It turned out CA was trying to create a new hero shooter called Hyenas that was eating all the money. Of course this led to a lot of bad PR and Hyenas got actually cancelled. Some sources claim it ate as much as much as 100 million but I can't verify that.
Then there's the Total War: Pharaoh. CA used to have this Saga brand of titles for games that weren't as comprehensive as the mainline games but were easier to develop and sold for cheaper. Pharaoh is very much a Saga game but since the Saga games weren't very popular CA dropped the Saga from the name and is trying to sell it at full price. Total War: Troy did the same and a lot of the reason why it got as much attention as it did was that Epic gave away a lot of copies. At the moment Pharaoh doesn't look like it's going to become much of a success once it launches tomorrow. But since it is just a Saga game it didn't need the full investment and can make the money back easier.
So CA is now in a situation where they have no new products coming up with high chance of success and they pissed off their money maker audience. The situation is not unrecoverable but CA really needs to tread carefully here. At least they've started putting out patches more frequently for TWWH3.
Callisto Protocol's mistake was being released around the same time as the Dead Space remake which was the series it copped most of its vibes from.
its mistake was being boring and unfinished
I thought the mistake was Glen Schofield thinking he could go it alone and be more successful?
@@PhaRoaH87 while encouraging 15 hour workdays lol
I suppose that didn’t help, but I think it was the lackluster combat that barely even made ANY sense. When you fight more than 1 enemy with that “dodge” mechanic you quickly see that it’s half assed. I got halfway through it before getting tired of it.
The issue is, the game was smol, short and boring as.
This series is like those infomercials where the host has done a run down of (allegedly) great features then looks right into the camera and says "but wait, there's more"
Thank you! Another truly excellent video narrated by our favorite game bird. It's important for gamers to learn about the recent and distant past. I too hope that employees that lost their job in the Embracer Group deal land on their feet. I wonder what happens to all the IPs like Tomb Raider, etc. I assume they could get bought by other companies?
I'd love to see a video about '10 game company decisions that worked out surprisingly well', now :)
they won't do it... you don't get the clicks from positivity and it's too hard to verify positive stories when these negatives half-truths keep getting recycled.
Falcon is definitely the best thing of this channel.
We love Jake though
I love Falcon's delivery, doesn't mean I don't like Jake though!
Wasn't there a 3rd guy?
@@SpikeTheWolf back in the day, maybe. I'm not sure...
Jake's commentary is 100% more entertaining, authentic and transparent. Just a likeable dude. Falcon's commentary is repetitive, he talks in circles, takes low blows and complains a lot.
Man I loved Diablo 4. Put in easily over 100 plus hours. When that patch came out it literally killed my barbarian. My overall damage went down 60%. Played it once since patch and never touched it again. Was so pissed.
John Riccitiello should be ostracized from the gaming community and made an example of. No one should hire him if they are looking for someone to help direct game development. His name should be held up as one of the most incompetent, out of touch bosses to ever disgrace the gaming space. He doesn't have good ideas. He floats predatory practices to see what he can get away with, he has sexual misconduct allegations against him, he has no respect for the consumers, he has no respect for his employees, he's the embodiment of everything wrong with the industry. The whole industry should treat him like he's radioactive.
Unity attempting what they wanted to do will go down as 1 of THE MOST BONEHEADED moves in recent memory . I've only heard of the Embracer fiasco thanks to you guys . But if there's anything good to come of it , there's ALOT of very talented people looking for gaming related work, and that is never a bad thing in my books . Yes, it sucks that it went down like it did , but if you're half as good as you think you are in the gaming world, work will find you .
Larian Studios should be on there. They were supposed to make a game that was highly praised by other greedy developers for their microtransactions and instead decided not to. Instead they made a good game and now players love it. What a backslash
The Overwatch League was one of those pet projects of Bobby Kotick.
He wanted his own e-sports league.
Probably best way to do the video, you cover all the bases even beyond just top teams as teams
I absolutely use Falcon (the hero) as my caffeine hit of humour - pretty much every single day. Thank you Falcon!
16:03 "You know what, it ain't gonna be a Nintendo Playstation, it's gonna be a Sony one" 😹 Line delivery was perfect
glad you guys made an update of this series.
Thank you for talking about old systems and games
Listening to Falcon talk about this Unity debacle. A part of my brain is saying "What if this was the original plan." I mean the way they said they weren't going to have the same monetary plan Epic has sounds like a thing they said to discourage Dev's from using Unreal and then drop this bomb on em.
My grandpa had one of the 500 test 360s, he worked for Microsoft in Redmond as a software engineer and me and my uncle got to come play games and try out new stuff like when they first started trying out online games on the original Xbox
Wow! Theres some MAJOR MAJOR industry bombs in this one. Great vid!
I think the worst part with Imortals of Avum is that by all accounts its a fine game, but it was a new ip from an unknown studio literally sandwiched between two goty contenders from established studios and ip in Armored Core 6 and Baldurs Gate 3. Not to mention Starfield was right around the corner as well. In other words when you launch a game is just as important as how you launch a game.
The thing with Callisto Protocol is that it is actually a good game. The problem it had was when it released. With the Deadspace releasing just over a month later why would anyone buy the new IP that may or may not be as good as Deadspace and is in many ways a clone, when you only have a short time to wait for the real deal?
I will admit I did not buy it due to having enough games on my playlist, lack of money and never really playing Deadspace, but as it was added to PS+ this month I gave it a try and am really enjoying it. I don't think moving to a AAA title was what backfired, it was all down to the timing. Had it released much earlier or delayed the release, it might have had more of a chance. People knew Deadspace was coming, and did not bother with CP.
9:34
Woah, you played _Ara Fell_ as well? It's a pretty obscure game, but a good one IMHO.
Most gaming companies are run by zombies who are simply not gamers. The more you try and push your microtransactions in our face, the less likely you are to get us to pay. If I load up a game and am instantly met with like 4 pages of BUY THIS, BUY THAT, they've created a bad impression immediately when all I wanted to do was play. If I arrive at the item shop naturally, I'm more likely to check it out because it's not invasive, especially if the game is good enough to keep me playing long enough to do so. Basic psychology! These days, companies are that desperate shady salesman who bothers you on the street or door to door begging for money while your just trying to go about your day. If I want to buy something, I'll go to the store.
Would it be possible to drop the links to the previous two installments of this video series as a pinned comment or answer to this one ? I can't find the second part and this would make it so much easier to be able to go back and watch them.
The real reason why I think Unity back pedal sooo hard was because they got a call from Nintendo's lawyer 15min after they posted the changes, those lawyers are searching for problems and are ready to destroy anyone that moves wierd.
Right after I read the title I immediately thought "well, bet Unity's in them" and hoo boy was I right 🤣
A little random, but I remember when I was supervising a pizza store back in 18, I saw Overwatch League come on the tv, which always played ESPN.
I was pretty deep into OW with my girl at that time and my roommate. It was dope as hell to watch during my shift. 😅
A new one to add probably to a part 4 is Project Wingman and its advertising of it being a PSVR2 full game only for customers to find out today that only 6 missions are playable in VR.
Gameranx' been waiting for unity to make this list
I should watching the prequels of this but ah well I'll watch this first please keep em coming
Imagine being that one person that was still playing babylons fall and seeing that article saying there was one person still playing...then realizing why there were no other players!
Concerning the Skull & Bones game, hasn't there been an announcement of a Black Flag remake? Lol, seems to me they're using all the budget & assets wasted for S&B to develop the BF remake.
I've never been this early to a Gameranx video! Is where all the cool cats hang out?
19:42 I went through 6 or 7 Xbox 360's, I lost count after returning the 5th or 6th one... finally by the time I returned my final one, the next gen console was set to come out and it lasted long enough for that to release.. I'm still haunted by the red rings..
You should link the other 2 videos in the description.
I still loved my 360, only had one rrod and played so many hours on that system. My PS3 was an expensive Blu-ray player, and the power supply went out. Too bad I got rid of it as they are going for $500 or so now (backwards compatible version) I did miss a few gems that I later played on PS4.
👍🏼
on the open beta for skull and bones right now. They are not making their money back
On the live service topic it reminds me of the mmo boom after Wow came out. For awhile everyone was making mmo’s thinking it would be a license or print money when in actually you’re setting yourself up to compete with games that have a multi year content lead on you.
The Embracer one is savage... It shows how a single decision of a bunch of stupid people could lead to A LOT of people losing their jobs as colateral damage
Skull and bones was a disappointment as a game. You take all of the things people loved about Blakc Flag out of the game, make it a garbage live-service model, and overall just make yet another laughing stock. It was marketed as a AAAA game, but in the end it was just a shell of a development hell project that should have been scrapped
11:08 I loved it when Falcon did that imitating voice thingy
Embracer is busily doing the same thing in the boardgame industry. They’ve bought at least twenty different publishers, and are now in the process of closing them down and firing everyone.
yeah ... can we get a part 4? past two weeks have fueled this series even more.