“If we expect all games to attract players indefinitely, Buckley says, ‘we’re just going to get more of these really soulless live service games that come out and get shut down nine months later, 12 months later, because they’re not making enough money.’”
We need more developers talking like this.
I think generally the majority of developers do think like this. They’re normally the ones passionate about good games and see fads and trends for what they are. Unfortunately it is not usually these developers in control of major decisions or greenlighting projects at [large] games studios. Even less so at publishers.
Unfortunately it does serve the stakeholders to push whales to play your game “day in day out”.
This youtube video where the clash of clans devs discuss their predatory tactics should be mandatory viewing for any gamer playing modern games https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNjI03CGkb4
Am I the only one who has only played single player?
No you are not. I exclusively play single player
I play FromSoft games that are very mildly multiplayer, when you want to and if you so choose. Other than that, single player only.
I would like to state, while its not said it’s implied, the statement “palworld is dead” is not correct anyway, Palworld is currently ranked 34th in players active on it at the moment on steam at 37,000 players playing. Obviously it declined from initial release because the game doesn’t have much replayability. Similar to ark, once you have played it once, you played it a billion times, aside from the order you catch your pals, there isn’t any difference between runs, and unlike ark, there is no incentive to log on daily to verify you wern’t raided, pals aren’t starving etc. It’s a game you play every once and awhile with your friends then ignore it for months. If anyone in their company expected infinite growth from a game with this kind of style, thats kind of on them.
I agree with all of this; but if they did want to put more into it and make it into a franchise… I absolutely wouldn’t say no.
Just make Pokemon but without all the shitty pretense.
I have to say i never understood the grind.
While all this is true, I feel like perhaps people are missing the point of what all this stemmed from to begin with.
Didn’t anyone back in the day play a game with a large online playerbase to slowly see that playerbase dwindle? It took longer back then, of course.
Do people really complain that there’s not enough Quake 2 multiplayer servers anymore? You know?
Isn’t this an unfortunate consequence of the normal lifespan of a game coupled with the fact that so many games come out and are competing for people’s realistically limited time and money?
Back when my example, Quake 2, came out, there simply weren’t as many games in the same genre competing for your attention in the same time span.
No, it doesn’t serve to focus on the “dead game” thing, but at the same time… it’s a real thing that really happens, and if you blow it with your playerbase early, that “dead game” time can come fast and fuck all your hard work. It can also make the true believers who backed you feel betrayed since they have no one to play the game with.
It’s not healthy at all, but neither is the games marketplace/working conditions/etc etc etc. It feels like it’s a consequence of how the industry works and the sheer number of games coming out and it’s not necessarily something people purposefully chose to focus on other than wanting to spend money on games other players would actually be playing in a multiplayer game. People have limited money and time and don’t want to waste it. What’s wrong with that?
soulless live service games that come out and get shut down nine months later, 12 months later, because they’re not making enough money.’
What if, shocker, they’re actually not making enough money to be viable and pay their workers a living wage? They should just keep being slavedrivers for their workers for the sake of gamers? I don’t get it.
If their financials are fine, keep going, but if the financials aren’t actually working out, what’s the real issue with shutting it down?
You can still play Quake 2 regardless of player count, and the same goes for Palworld. If you want to play with other people, invite them. A live service game, barring a few exceptions that I can probably count on my fingers, ceases to exist if there aren’t enough players to populate servers and drive recurring revenue. And the thing about that is that player decline is inevitable. The issue with shutting it down is that no one can play that game anymore.
So don’t buy a game that doesn’t come with a server you can host yourself if they ever shut down.
Honestly, that’s on the people buying those shitty games. They exist because people buy them. Sorry.
Shit like Valheim exists, shit like Project Zomboid exists, it’s not like they don’t continue to make new games in the style of Quake 2 where you can play them indefinitely, even if they’ve stopped being supported.
That’s exactly what I do. But the article is about how, even though Palworld isn’t one of those games, there’s an unhealthy expectation that every game is. And to be fair to the consumer, it’s so, so hard to find out if the game you’re buying will survive a server shutdown. Often times I have to ask the devs in Steam forums for an answer to the question, because that kind of thing isn’t clearly listed on the store page.
People (as in the People) run the market, and they are fucking morons. People also run the government, which is why there’s no legislation preventing the dark patterns and other predatory bullshit that game publishers push nowadays.
The obvious solution is to fire them all and replace them with AI.
This is all nonsense.
There are no server costs you have to absorb and do predatory bullshit to pay for if you let the community host their own servers and form their own communities. The second you take a penny from a player for anything locked behind access to your servers, you should be obligated to provide those servers for a minimum of a decade and you should be required to refund any purchase of any amount made within a period of multiple years before you end support.
Locking the game people are paying for behind access to your servers absolutely comes with extremely strong obligations to every single person playing your game.
I want to play Blacklight Retribution right now. There’s no other game like it. The community was great. It’s gone now. Fuck your attitude palworld devs!
Hello, fellow Blacklight Retribution player. It’s funny the name popped up again after I just found it again yesterday while scrolling through my Steam library. I played the shit out of that game before it went bad.
Can’t tell you how much I just wanna helodeck.
Oh, yes. Though I actually prefer the larger maps, Helodeck was such an iconic map and I can’t count the number of memorable stuff that happened on that map. Metro was another one that was so chaotic that it felt amazing to play.
I really liked the large kinda fragmented maps where people were practically playing completely different games in the corners of the map they know best.
It’s “set realistic playercount expectations”, not “we should shut our games’ servers down earlier”
Oh. Well that’s fine.
No, fuck this dude. You don’t get to release an EARLY ACCESS game and then tell people they should worry less about the pace it’s being developed at. If you can’t finish your product in a reasonable amount of time, either hire more staff, make (and advertise) a smaller experience, or don’t start taking money for your product until it’s complete.
Released in January 2024, has had 16 Steam version patches and 18 Xbox version patches.
What, exactly, is your problem?
Fell for the rage bait I’m assuming
