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  • Ubisoft and EA are terminally rotten corporations. Not really fair to characterize game studios over what those are up to.

    • I'm not seeing how it's not fair to talk about what gaming studios do in terms of two of the largest.

      • They targeted game studios. Game studios.

      • Because these specific two are growing increasingly irrelevant to the medium and they’re outliers compared to other studios. They’ve both been infamous for years for their exceptionally scummy practice. They’re literally the worst.

        • Valhalla and Shadows are two of the best-selling Assassin's games even though they've been exactly equally as shit and tedious since Origin, so I'd put a [citation needed] on your "increasing irrelevancy".

          Also which big game studios don't suck? The list you give below has, the top 10 largest in order,

          • Sony (I guess defensible, idk),
          • Tencent (lol), Microsoft (lmao)
          • Nintendo (legal almost as predatory as Oracle)
          • NetEase (???)
          • EA, Epic, Take-Two (sincerely wishing prostate cancer to all three of those CEOs)
          • MiHoYo (literally one gacha game), and
          • ROBLOX CORPORATION.

          • Sony (I guess defensible, idk),

            their two highest profile failures as of now are Concord, a live service Overwatch clone that was shut down two weeks after launch, and Marathon, an upcoming (or possibly cancelled) Bungie live service Escape from Tarkov clone that doesn’t play well, isn’t anything like the original Marathon games, and infamously has already had several credible accusations of art plagiarism leveled against it. for the latter, I suspect we’ll see a second controversy surface over generative assets; the art that wasn’t plagiarized was starkly ugly and weirdly generic, and I don’t buy that it was that way stylistically.

            that shit like this is a normal part of doing business points at a gaming industry that’s rotting at the head, because as unpopular as live service games are, corporations like EA proved they can be very profitable if you tweak the right dopamine receptors to hook enough whales. it’d be nice if EA and Ubisoft were irrelevant now, but unfortunately the industry is still exactly the same exploitative piece of shit they helped make it into. myself and anyone who gives a fuck about quality can keep playing indie games all we want, but these corporations don’t care — they know that a mediocre live service with gambling mechanics will make many times more profit than any indie hit, so they target mediocrity. sometimes they miss and hit rock bottom instead, but who cares? the executives responsible will decimate the studio that developed the game with layoffs or eliminate it entirely, and because capitalism is a death cult that’ll be seen as a win.

            • My entire experience with Sony is that I loved Patapon on the PSP (I would sell my fucking soul to get it to play on a smartphone god) and I watch The Last of Us and that's it. None of their games exist as far as I'm concerned because I can't play them on PC. What, I'm going to play TLoU 2 without playing 1 or GoW 4 without playing 1-3? Go fuck yourselves.

              • What, I’m going to play TLoU 2 without playing 1 or GoW 4 without playing 1-3?

                Part I and Part II are both on Steam, so you can get the full Last of Us experience without a console, and GoW 2018 is a soft reboot, so playing the original trilogy isn't strictly necessary.

                As for GOW 1-3...there's no PC port, so you've got two options: sail the high seas and emulate them via PCSX2 and/or RPCS3, or get the games and a used PS3 off of eBay.

                And, given I've already mentioned emulation:

                My entire experience with Sony is that I loved Patapon on the PSP (I would sell my fucking soul to get it to play on a smartphone god)

                If you're looking for Patapon on your phone, the only course I know of is to grab PSP emulator PPSSPP and find the ISOs online. If you're fine playing them on your PC, a remaster of the first two games is coming to Steam on June 10th.

                (I am deep in the weeds on this shit, I'll admit)

                • If you’re fine playing them on your PC, a remaster of the first two games is coming to Steam on June 10th.

                  Oh my god this is the best news I've heard this year

              • pretty much same! I’ve heard good things about some of the games published under Sony, and their umbrella as a publisher still includes excellent studios whose previous games I have very good memories of. but… I just can’t swing the price for a PS5, it really doesn’t feel worth it just for a few games, and I’m not a huge fan of the hardware design. they also seem to have fumbled PSVR2, and I was a big fan of the indie VR scene and how accessible it was on the PSVR1. on top of everything else, I feel like I’ve gotten by far more mileage out of open platforms than I have from any modern console — so for me, just like you, most Sony releases are invisible unless they’re the ones that bomb

        • if only the industry could be rid of Ubisoft and EA, we could finally play our AAA live service gacha games in peace, without being exploited for money

          if only we could go back to the good old days, when the most prominent people in gaming were:

          • the out and proud fascist who runs Epic
          • the out and proud fascists who ran id
          • Todd Howard
          • fucking Peter Molyneux
          • it’s ok, a developer who’s existed since the Amiga days has made a good game!
          • I regret to inform you that the above-mentioned developer has willingly sold their entire studio to EA in exchange for a sack of money and now the sequel is a live service game with gambling mechanics
          • at least we’ll always have the Wing Commander guy. I wonder what he’s up to?

          • look Star Citizen will own

          • notice how Take Two didn't rate the wild response, and neither of the companies in the Aftermath article were EA or Ubisoft

          • Huh? I’m not saying the past was better, I’m saying the present is better. Stardew Valley is still #25 on the Steam top seller 100. Balatro, Factorio, Rimworld, Baldur’s Gate 3, Clair Obscur, all proper no ai/nft/blockchain grift products by decent studios in the top 100. The top 2 spots are free-to-plays with various monetization schemes: Counter-Strike 2 & Dota 2. Not my cup of tea, but nevertheless: they’re from Valve. Valve is not exactly known for embracing genAI. It’s simply not gaining traction in the gaming world at the same speed it’s creeping up into Ubisoft & EA.

        • Being the worst and the biggest studios aren't unrelated concepts, they're the biggest because they're the worst.

45 comments