I do not support this publisher.

[MAJEPHTIC]

First, I was excited to see that Gigantic is back and *instantly* purchased it.

In the meantime, I saw the first new blog post for Torchlight 3 in YEARS and got excited to see news.

If you've never played Torchlight 3:

Torchlight 1 and 2 are beloved and really good games. Torchlight 3 however was a sad attempt to turn the series into a free2play mobile game on PC, because mobile games were the big money back then. When they realized that it wouldn't work with their audience, they paddled back and tried to change it into a buy-to-play game that resembled a Torchlight game, mid development.

The result was very mediocre and a financial failure. It suffered from a lot of bugs, received a single update to fix the most urgent ones and then instantly got abandoned in a somewhat buggy state. I mean complete abandonment, no more updates, no more communication. It was left to this day at the store at an insultingly high price for this abandoned, buggy mess.

It still had potential, but instead, they chose to release Torchlight Infinite, a soulless microtransaction free2play hell that had nothing to do with the games that defined the Torchlight series. It was clear that the original developers were long gone and had been replaced with a bunch of guys only in to hunt the next big money printing scheme. The IP had been sold multiple times I believe, from one bunch of finance bros to the next.

And now they dared to post this:

https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/1030210/view/4194614193540935385

In case they change it:
========================================
"We are now Arc Games"

"We're very excited to announce that we are now Arc Games!
We're the same team of passionate gamers that brought you many beloved franchises including the Remnant series, Have a Nice Death, Star Trek Online and Neverwinter. And we can’t wait to bring you even more exciting titles like Gigantic: Rampage Edition, Hyper Light Breaker, and more soon-to-be announced games for 2025 and beyond!

Follow us @ArcGames and check out the #iiishowcase April 10th, 10am PDT for a new Hyper Light Breaker trailer!

Follow us on Social Media:
Facebook.com/ArcGames
Youtube.com/@ArcGames "
========================================

They posted this on the game's page and didn't even mention Torchlight at all!
Just a copy-pasted message to slap on their new property, like a dog pissing on its territory.

Arc Games is just another bunch of finance bros who purchase games to squeeze some bucks out of their fans in hope of some profit. Completely disconnected from the people they sell these games to.

Why do I write this here? Because Gigantic is just another game they gobbled up and squeezed back into the store to make some profit. They don't care about the game or its fans. It's all about milking an old fanbase for the second time.

Worse: Their terms of service. They say they can change them up at any time and it is your responsibility to check them regularly for changes. I am pretty sure that this is illegal here in the EU. Terms of service like these have brought the Unity engine disaster that threatened a lot of developers by retroactively changing the monetization scheme.

All in all, I do not trust these guys and have blocked them in my Steam store.

I'm honestly sorry for the fans of Gigantic, because I think that Arc Games - or to whatever they will rebrand themselves next - will not support the game in any way. They will take the money and simply leave this game on the store to passively make some profit for them. As soon as the money dries up, they will shut down the servers again. If you put your hopes into this carcass of a game, you just set yourself up for more disappointment and pain.

I have refunded the game as soon as I saw the Arc Games logo and looked at the ToS they force people to accept.

[Athena]

Ok

[Jera]

everyone who smart enough know that. only they who want to feel nostalgic will buy this. this game just fan service not live service game.

[Sharkinbear]

Ok

[Inuakurei]

I know, but I don't care. Its not like they're asking for $40. I spend more than $15 on lunch.

[Schiller]

ok

[Creature of Nature]

Wasn't the original Gigantic released by a different publisher?

[MAJEPHTIC]

Thanks for the insight, but I'm just so fed up with beloved games being traded back and forth between investors for another go at milking them. I no longer want to feed this system when I notice it, instead I try to support indie devs like Egosoft that love what they do and support their games for years.

I also tend to more and more get tired of online-only games. It hurt like hell when Gearbox shut down Battleborn. When a game needs servers to even be playable solo, we no longer own anything. Servers just get shut down at any point in time and the game you love, games you experience in your youth or that help you through tough times, it just gets taken away remotely, forever.
Until another bunch of greedy investors might purchase it to profit from your nostalgia.

It's about damn time for laws that force game publishers to patch in real offline playability when the online components get shut down.

[Penta]

Originally posted by JKGames:

As for Gigantic, the re-release of Gigantic is a Gearbox project, not a Perfect World Project, which is why the credits in the game are associated with Gearbox Publishing.

But this is only because Perfect World became Gearbox Publishing - which now became Arc Games. Gigantic was owned by former Perfect World - not Gearbox.

[MAJEPHTIC]

Originally posted by JKGames:

As for the future, my understanding is that Gigantic is generally being offered as a finished game with the potential of getting further content if the re-release is successful enough. Otherwise, it's just a matter of maintaining it.

Torchlight 3 was also declared "finished" after a single update and was left with annoying bugs. These "finished games" will only be maintained with minimal effort for the most urgent issues that may render them unplayable. Not because they care about your experience or opinion, but so that nobody can claim the product is completely broken and should no longer be sold.

Don't expect any love, care, passion, responsibility for their products or loyalty from this kind of publisher. They are only committed to open your wallet.

[MAJEPHTIC]

There will surely be people who get their value out of the game, enjoying what's there. And that's completely fine, I don't want to judge or tell anyone what to do with their money. I just think that a warning is justified for those who have high hopes for ongoing support.

[Sharkinbear]

Originally posted by MAJEPHTIC:

There will surely be people who get their value out of the game, enjoying what's there. And that's completely fine, I don't want to judge or tell anyone what to do with their money. I just think that a warning is justified for those who have high hopes for ongoing support.

It's perfectly fine to warn people. But a cursory glance at the devs for torchlight infinite shows that they are not attached to Gigantic at all. They are now under one publisher but one has nothing to do with another. Same way that this games success or failure has anything to do with Remnant: from the ashes 1 and 2.

[Rua ForMula]

the game wont have players in about a month or so. the game failed before when it was free so it's obvious it wont last long, they just wanna get a quick buck is all.

[Sauvagess]

Originally posted by Randolpher:

the game failed before when it was free so it's obvious it wont last long, they just wanna get a quick buck is all.

Tell me you don't know the history of Gigantic without telling me you don't know.

[CapoFantasma97]

Originally posted by Sauvagess:

Originally posted by Randolpher:

the game failed before when it was free so it's obvious it wont last long, they just wanna get a quick buck is all.

Tell me you don't know the history of Gigantic without telling me you don't know.

I'll tell you then.

Motiga studio had a very rocky and lengthy development of Gigantic, laid off many developers just to get the game released; the game had all kinds of issues relating to matchmaking, gameplay, stability etc, and despite being free2play, it didn't have what it takes to succeed. Bad marketing didn't help either.

The developer studio shut down and the game ceased development 6 months after release.
The publishers owning the IP got acquired by Embracer group, which in turn got eventually acquired by Gearbox Entertainment. These corporations love to buy companies in bad waters, they're extra cheap and profitable.

Fastforward years later.

The publisher decides it may be worth to give a shot again; to me it seems a fairly safe bet, the game is already done even if with very old tech (Unreal Engine 3! Ancient even back then, they started working on it while it was being already replaced by UE4).
Also it seems that other companies are doing a decent profit with the same strategy, re-releasing old games with a dedicated fanbase with the least possible effort and budget.

So they give the game to Abstraction Games, a barely relevant company that works as a fill-in for hire to some triple A studios, and has experience in re-releasing or adapting games. These guys never made a single game of their own.

Abstraction Games took the old code and assets of Gigantic, finished some characters that got canceled alongside the game development, slapped a few bugfixes, broke some other things at the same time, put some servers online and the publisher put a free2play game into a paid re-release.

Before you might get your hopes up too much: there are no indications whether they want to give the game as service model another try. In fact, it makes perfect sense to put a pricetag of 20€ if you only want to sell the hype and not update it anymore.

[Nero]

I love Remnant 1 and 2, so I'm happy to have Gigantic under same publisher. :)