Games are becoming like streaming subscriptions.. 1 year pass, 2 year pass….

[Bobby]

What happened to the standard DLC/ Deluxe Edition that we used to have.
‘Buy once’ or ‘separately’. Your choice. It still is at an astronomical expense in a way, but it’s not biased towards the player anymore.
Now it’s like Snowrunner/MudRunner where you buy a season, but you know another season will be released and another…..ad nauseam. Till it’s like 5 year passes at the price of a game *each*….

Why has this got a 1 year pass and no doubt another year pass coming -why else would you call it a ‘1 year pass’, if more are not planned… it’s turned into Amazon Prime vid/Netflix/sky and PSN/XBox
Homeworld was never more than a ‘story’ that you played enjoyed then dabbled.
I don’t mind expansion packs.
But the player now feels like “they’re damned if they do and damned if they don’t.”

Now it’s like a cash cow. ‘Here’s some skins, another ship, more weapons and skins. Only if you buy the 1st year pass for a cheap blah’ Otherwise it’s 15.99 each thereafter.

I’ve no plans in buying this but this is up for debate. What has happened -apart from the obvious hard layoffs and steam making $780,000+ per employee in 2018 with its 30% cut, more than any other company out there: Microsoft,Apple,Facebook.
The industry is going down the pan trying to make money, keep jobs anyway they can think of…while the rich belch money -steam.
I myself always advocate quality over quantity. But this is just getting silly.

What do you guys think?

[BnryZombie]

Yep passing on this. As soon as I see LDC on launch day I'm done. Time to head to the bay to play this instead of paying for just a sliver of the game.

[REhorror]

Games becoming a service, GAAS.
It's cancer.

[Polysorbate]

Game budgets are bloated to hell. Last time I explained some of the specific reasons why I got a warning for being disrespectful (to the developers, I assume). Nobody who wants to keep their job is willing to talk about this stuff, you have to learn about it from leaks and retirees.

It boils down to something like, for every additional developer on a project there's another full salary you need to pay but an exponential downward trend with each additional employee in how much productivity they'll add to a project. Eventually you've got hundreds or thousands of employees and more time's being spent trying to coordinate work than actually producing content. The productivity sweet spot tends to be somewhere between 4 and 20 employees but to produce a modern "AAA" game in under a decade you need like 200-1000 employees, each of whom is barely contributing anything. Tools also haven't kept up with the demands we place on them.

Then there's the problem I got warned for mentioning. Watch this video from a retired game dev and read between the lines: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMVQ30c7TcA

Games don't need to cost as much as they do, dev teams don't need to be as big as they are, and Steam of all things isn't at fault for this problem. In the big Insomniac leak there's evidence they were desperately trying to pitch to Sony, "we could make 3 really good games in less time for the price of one cinematic game".

The whole industry has gone pants-on-head chasing short-term profits. They'd rather make 9 flops like Kill The Justice League if it means a chance they might also produce 1 huge earner. CEOs are walking into a casino and saying "put it all on black" knowing if they crash the company they'll still get a golden parachute. Don Mattrick basically killed the Xbox brand and then immediately got hired at Zynga. Phil Harrison blew 70 billion buying a bunch of studios and almost immediately began firing hundreds of people and closing entire studios.

The ship is headed into an iceberg and the captain's saying, "but what if there's gold inside?!"

[Alacod]

This looks like a wait a year or two purchase to me. Unless you are really into rts, this one can get the deep sale treatment.

[REhorror]

Originally posted by Polysorbate:

Game budgets are bloated to hell. Last time I explained some of the reasons why I got a warning for being disrespectful (to the developers, I assume).

In the big Insomniac leak for example, there's evidence they were desperately trying to pitch to Sony, "we could make 3 really good games in less time for the price of one cinematic game".

Games don't need to cost as much as they do, dev teams don't need to be as big as they are, and Steam of all things isn't at fault for this problem.

The whole industry has gone pants-on-head chasing short-term profits. Microsoft blew 70 billion buying a bunch of studios and they're now gradually closing them all down. The ship is headed into an iceberg and nobody's at the wheel.

This is true, back then games were a 2-3 years kind deal, expac was like 6 months - 1 year.
There was a time when we even have yearly games, but now games take like 4-6 years to make, expansion 2-3 years despite dev size growing from 20 to 200 or even 500 devs.

It's just crazy. It's bloated and slow.

[Zakalwe]

Originally posted by Bobby:

Why has this got a 1 year pass and no doubt another year pass coming -why else would you call it a ‘1 year pass’, if more are not planned… it’s turned into Amazon Prime vid/Netflix/sky and PSN/XBox
What do you guys think?

Great comparison. We see it all the time in games like Stellaris etc, but here it feels like they've created all the content already and they're just holding it back for cash. Compare it to the incredible passion projects like Gate of Hell, and you see how soulless these companies really are.

[Bobby]

Yeah it’s gone all ‘YouTube influencer’ trying to make a quick kill in a day and then retire, rather than look at long term goals and success and even a reputation. Nobody seems to care about that anymore…. 😞
If it’s not that, even the big names of the past; Microprose are asking for Early Access with B-17: The Mighty Eighth, like, WOW! They don’t want to plow money into anything without - effectively- the gamer buying into season passes/EA *before* anything is even made. They *made* B-17 and Wayward made ‘The Mighty Eighth’, but now Microprose buy it and Reduxe it. It’s not even a NEW game, just better visuals (maybe) yet they want you to pay for it and it ‘may or may not be completed/finished’…as per the EA spiel..

Btw, here’s the House of Steam making more money per employee than Microsoft,Apple and Facebook[www.gamesradar.com] heavily redacted of course…