Spyke

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Darkest Dungeon Developers: statement on the recent Unity changes

Transcript:

Much like Darkest Dungeon, game development is a dynamic and challenging effort where tough choices must be made using imperfect information. Making and releasing a game is an uncertain endeavor, with treasures never guaranteed. But that uncertainty should lie in the marketplace, not with fundamental business terms around which a project was built.

We believe Unity has made a grave misstep in introducing a poorly thought out fee mechanic and then compounded that threefold by making it apply to games that have already been released. We are sympathetic to the idea that companies must sometimes change how they operate, but these changes should be carefully planned, communicated, and enacted in such a way that partners may choose whether they wish to accept these new rules for their next projects.

We built Darkest Dungeon II using Unity, and a large part of our decision to do so was the relative cost certainty around the license and subscription model. We've spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on licenses, and far more than that in engaging Unity to help us with parts of development. It is hard for us to imagine building another game with Unity unless we know we are protected from the possibility of massive changes to how we pay for that technology being introduced at the whims of executive management.

Part of game development is knowing when a mechanic is not working and then having the courage to swallow your ego and undo the mistake. We call on Unity to recant this blunder.

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Anon checks out mobile gaming

This really upsets me and periodically bums me out. I used to like trawling through the top lists to see the various games that were on mobile. This is back in like 2011-2013. Typically monetization was either a free/premium version split, or an energy system. Now it's beyond 99% garbage with 99% of the last 1% being ports. The 1 of 1? Slice and Dice, that game rocks.

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Anon goes out with friends

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This is a good saying and sometimes true, but mental illness is usually a forever problem. I don't say that to disparage it either; depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, and internalized abuse fucking suck and it takes a while to tear down the self preservation instinct to the point where an ending can seem appealing, even if just for a moment.

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Anon caused 9/11

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And this is while most people who say the flag can't touch the ground ignore the other rules in the flag code (that doesn't apply to civilians) that state that the flag should not be flown on the same pole as another flag, and in the event that it is flown alongside another flag on a separate pole, both flags should be flown at the same height.

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What are some small things we should change about the human body?

Let's put a cap on how much excess energy the body can store as fat. Sure, some amount is fine and has a number of uses, but just let me poop some excess calories out. I'd only need more if I were to hibernate.

Thinking on it, I want to hibernate too, please.

While we're at it from animals, how about upping some of our regeneration? Teeth don't regrow? Naw, constant regen please. I get too big of a cut and I get a scar? Let's let everything regrow from being lost if you can survive without it. Also why doesn't the brain heal? Most important part of the body and each crack's there for life. Let me get my serotonin back already, slacker.

Also what's with this getting assigned a gender thing? You don't even get to know what it means before you have one! And then we build society as if this coin flip was the seed to the tree of life. Let people choose and switch naturally, please and thank you.

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Steam is 'an unsafe place for teens and young adults': US senator warns Gabe Newell of 'more intense scrutiny' from the government if Valve doesn't take action against extremist content

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This is hyperbole. A large amount of racists and bigots are into norse stuff? Maybe. Almost all people in the norse stuff are racists and bigots? High doubt, and shouldn't be allowed to be coopted anyway. Loki is one of the few ancient figures with some gender fluid markings as it is.

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Dusk: Unpopular opinion: I'd rather pay Valve 30% and put up with their de facto monopoly than help Epic work towards their own (very obviously desired) monopoly

There are so many companies that have all the pieces to make good competition to Steam but their greed gets in the way. Microsoft in particular should have been a shoe-in for it, but GFWL was an embarrassing failure, the WIndows store is rubbish and insists on a new file format that (at least in the past) caused all kinds of issues for games, and now their Game Pass service has no focus on a buying element. This is without going into both Amazon and Google tripping on the starting line when it comes to getting in the gaming space. A launcher that was tied in with Amazon's web store would be a really quick way to get a lot of people in naturally.

I really wish more people used GoG to where it could be a competitor. Unfortunately the game selection is much lower due to companies turning their noses up at no DRM. Also, I will admit that I tend to buy things on Steam in favor of GoG due to a lot of the features Steam has.

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Gamers Are Becoming Less Interested in Games With Deep Strategy, Study Finds

I don't see the methodology in here, so any influence I could guess is pure speculation. The mentioned lack of strategy games is a possible culprit. This would also prevent people from discovering an interest, as new eyes wouldn't be on the genre. I'm sure a lot of people discovered they like some RPGs via Baldur's Gate 3. One I might suggest exploring is that as gaming expanded in audience to different types of people, the new members would proportionately be less interested in deep strategy skewing the average interest as a whole. As a guess, a lot of people who have gotten into gaming via their phone are more interested in things that can be done while focusing on something else or something with a shorter run time than the typical strategy game.