Community MetaSteam | March 2024 - Can we find Moominvalley in the Forbidden West?

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PC-tan

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Alexandros

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This. Ubisoft must be happy with their strategy or they would have changed it already. They have a huge audience for AC and Siege on Connect, and their games are probably selling well on EGS with Epic's coupons.
This would assume that Ubisoft leadership is actually capable of making good business decisions, which I very much doubt.
 

lashman

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Sep 5, 2018
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just wanted to drag Arc's post in here :p


In an interview at last week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco, the developers behind indie sensations Slay the Spire and Darkest Dungeon said that the deal some small developers have come to rely on for funding in recent years—like Epic Game Store exclusives and Xbox Game Pass—are no longer what they once were.

"I talked to at least five small teams, like 35 [members] and under, during GDC, and they're like: Cuts, cuts, cuts, funding canceled, talks that were going on for a year, canceled," said Casey Yano, the co-founder of Slay the Spire studio Mega Crit. "It sounds like it's shit. We're definitely very privileged to be able to self-fund. [Otherwise] I'd be very, very, very scared right now."


Slay the Spire launched to slow sales in Steam early access before eventually becoming a deckbuilding juggernaut. Darkest Dungeon was likewise a Steam early access success; both games are available on PC Game Pass, though DD director Chris Bourassa said that Microsoft's deals for getting games on Game Pass have "come down in scope" since the subscription service began.

"Way down," Yano added.

"So has Epic," Bourassa said. "The Gold Rush is over. I come from the Northwest Territories. The town I'm from was built on gold, and then they found diamonds further north. Maybe another paradigm shift is waiting for us, but I definitely think the scale of the deals I'm hearing about is significantly dimishese from the big swinging days. Certainly we got our Epic [deal] at the right time."

Darkest Dungeon developer Red Hook Studios made the somewhat controversial choice to launch the sequel in early access as an Epic exclusive. While those exclusives haven't been popular with players, they've allowed some indie developers to "break even" on their games even before release, a safety net that's hard to pass up when a game's success can make or break a small studio.
 

Arc

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Li Kao

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Kyougar

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just wanted to drag Arc's post in here :p
"So has Epic," Bourassa said. "The Gold Rush is over. I come from the Northwest Territories. The town I'm from was built on gold, and then they found diamonds further north. Maybe another paradigm shift is waiting for us, but I definitely think the scale of the deals I'm hearing about is significantly dimishese from the big swinging days. Certainly we got our Epic [deal] at the right time."
Fucking insane.
Instead of managing your studio in a somewhat stable and efficient way, you just wait for the next Diamond rush while the gold rush crashed and burned?
 

Kyougar

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How does a future GamePass without moneyhats even work?
Just Microsoft titles?

I mean I didn't use the service because I mostly play forever games, but there was one thought or another to try it out for a specific game.
In the end, there weren't enough games on the service to make me a customer, and if only Microsoft games are on there, it is even less incentive.
 

yuraya

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How does a future GamePass without moneyhats even work?
Just Microsoft titles?

I mean I didn't use the service because I mostly play forever games, but there was one thought or another to try it out for a specific game.
In the end, there weren't enough games on the service to make me a customer, and if only Microsoft games are on there, it is even less incentive.
Honestly surprising if they cut off indies going forward.

You'd think indies are something you can still afford to fill up the GP library with as they are nowhere near as expensive as everything else.

But yea they spent 80 billion on studios over the past several years. They spent a lot of future moneyhat budget with that. If they can get 3-4 first party titles per year they are probably happy with that.

But it won't be enough for gamepass longterm. If they don't support it with more than that you are better off just buying the first party title full or discounted price as its much cheaper than 15$ per month to rent games year round. They will run into the same problem the Uplay subscription did.
 
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Arc

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How does a future GamePass without moneyhats even work?
Just Microsoft titles?

I mean I didn't use the service because I mostly play forever games, but there was one thought or another to try it out for a specific game.
In the end, there weren't enough games on the service to make me a customer, and if only Microsoft games are on there, it is even less incentive.
First party titles day one mixed with older back catalogue games. There will be fewer instances of AAA third party games showing up day 1 on the service (i.e. Persona, Payday 3, etc).
 

yuraya

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Also I forgot about Call of Duty.

Microsoft is probably expecting that franchise to carry Gamepass for many months of the year.

But with CoD its not gonna be a Day 1 game on GP but probably like after month 3 or something. But still that game is always selling throughout the year so it should be a safe subscription driver for them as there is not much competition.
 

Kyougar

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First party titles day one mixed with older back catalogue games. There will be fewer instances of AAA third party games showing up day 1 on the service (i.e. Persona, Payday 3, etc).
And if I don't care about Microsoft games?
This isn't Netflix or HBO where one can just start the service and relax with a new show or continue with the old one.
Gamers don't just play whats in front of them, unless they have never gamed before. They have likes and dislikes, favorite genres or developers, etc.
Microsoft could never output enough games in enough genres to make it viable without high-profile current games. At least if they want GP to stay relevant.
 

STHX

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This isn't Netflix or HBO where one can just start the service and relax with a new show or continue with the old one.
Gamers don't just play whats in front of them, unless they have never gamed before. They have likes and dislikes, favorite genres or developers, etc.
And that's exactly why Gamepass (and arguably every gaming subscription service) has no chance of growing beyond the current point. Gaming simply doesn't work the same way as movies/series and music do. Gaming requires too much time investment, as well as varying degrees of skill levels. No company in the world can do it. Stadia couldn't do it, Game Pass and PSN+ aren't doing it, and whatever is coming in the future won't be able to do it. And no amount of microsoft money-like will ever be able to change this, no matter on how many platforms it is available.
 
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Derrick01

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I'm just glad for once in the gaming community's lives we prevented a worse future from happening by rejecting subs, at least to the point where they're now seen as not the path forward. Now if only we could go back and reject overwatch and lootboxes, team fortress 2 and its hats, horse armor etc we might actually have a half decent industry right now. Certainly a more respectable one.
 

spindoctor

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I'm just glad for once in the gaming community's lives we prevented a worse future from happening by rejecting subs, at least to the point where they're now seen as not the path forward. Now if only we could go back and reject overwatch and lootboxes, team fortress 2 and its hats, horse armor etc we might actually have a half decent industry right now. Certainly a more respectable one.
Don't you play genshin impact :steam_pig_crylaughing:
 

PC-tan

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I saw a "Doujin" dev asking about sales figures on Steam from Adult games. I did a quick search and it it possible to sell over 1 million copies on Steam and some RPGM adult games have easily sold over 50k copies on Steam a few months after release.

Some of that data was from before the private shopping cart.


There is money to be made, which I guess is why you also see very low "asset" (asset flip?/cookie cutter?) adult games on Steam that are the exact same as others. They don't even have a story and is just 1 simple game mode.

I still remember hearing about Subverse getting over $2 million in funding, the first real "AA" adult game. The game itself is rather meh, but it has VA and actual story cutscenes given the studios previous experience of making animated adult videos. Which is funny actually since those scenes that they make for the game are not lewd and show competence.

Meanwhile you have other games that are just money pits forever gaining money from paterons to only later be released on Steam and end up selling very well. One such game sold over 1 million units on steam and now has VA.

That whole side of things is just crazy if you look into it. Even within that space there is a lot of infighting and I even remember hearing years ago there was this one big upcoming game, but was scrapped because one of the people working on the game wasn't paid and was holding all the game assets hostage.

It's a rabbit whole.

As far as patreon, one of the highest grossing adult games is made by this one guy that isn't even into the genre and has a vanilla type of game/simply more tame then others and He is not sure why people like his game. But it pays the bills for his family.
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Seeing anyone at all saying anything in favor of nichegamer is something else. Didn't they basically just steal Sals game post from Gematsu and claim them as their own? That's been my impression of them but I'm still not 100% sure if that was true or not? Did it happen a lot or did only 1 writer from NG do it a lot?
 
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kio

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Just giving a little spotlight to Atom RPG's devs new game on kickstarter. They decided to go low-fantasy medieval this time. Looks decent enough although still rough but they'll be doing EA so there's still a lot of time to fix things.

 

「Echo」

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Nov 1, 2018
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Mt. Whatever
I also got my Steam deck. And I am dead because I stayed up all night tweaking stuff with it, learning the ins and outs, setting it up, and playing games on it.

I love it. The OLED is amazing. Tinkering via plug-ins is amazing. It feels good in the hands, And I've got a thousand games for it already. Feels good. Haven't even gotten around to emulation yet.
 

Li Kao

It’s a strange world. Let’s keep it that way.
Jan 28, 2019
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Damn, I mean I'm trying really hard to be understanding there but it's though. So the demo of Knights in Tight Spaces has a bug. Tutorial text isn't showing. Talk about a big one. But hey, let's soldier on, what could possibly happen ? Well the second tutorial fight has invisible enemies.
Uninstalled. It's not me, it's you.

Oh and despite my better judgement I kinda wanted to retry Octopath 1 on Deck. Agonized several hours about the indiegala 35 euros price, added to cart and... it was a joke we has no stock. Yeah, t's hard to have a stock message displayed on a fucking game page. If GG.deals is right (big if) the offer has just been active for two months. Too short to fix, I guess.

This is one of those days.
 
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bobnowhere

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Sep 20, 2018
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Pretty sure I'm near the end of Troubleshooter but I'm stuck on a mission. Don't really want to grind but might have to. It's a training mission with Giselle and one other on a tower and the rest of the crew charge you. The crew isn't too much of an issue, Giselle can one-shot most of them but all the adds overwhelm me before time is up.
 

Cacher

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Damn, I mean I'm trying really hard to be understanding there but it's though. So the demo of Knights in Tight Spaces has a bug. Tutorial text isn't showing. Talk about a big one. But hey, let's soldier on, what could possibly happen ? Well the second tutorial fight has invisible enemies.
Uninstalled. It's not me, it's you.
Sorry to hear this. I also saw the bug report on the diacussion board and it was really weird because I went through the levels without encountering any of them. :weary-face:
 
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QFNS

Plays too many card games
Nov 18, 2018
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I saw credits on Infinite Wealth. 120+ hours. Got all the drunk links and Kiryu stuff. What a game.
Dondoko Island is hilarious but ultimately a short part of the game that I only went back to when I needed a cash injection. Eventually the battles were worth more.

Overall amazing time. People should play it and luxuriate in it. There's no rush, there's so much to do.
 

yuraya

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Russian Steam but with Escape from Tarkov...

It won't be enough tho.

Putin will need to declare that Counter Strike and DOTA belong to the Russian Empire. And Valve has no legal right to the servers.


[Hidden content]
Would be a killer Deck bundle if Valhalla was a Steam key. But no chance it will be. Disappointing because Valhalla actually runs fine on Deck based on benchmarks.

Still tho that would be one of the best choice bundles. I would seriously try all of those games and that is something I haven't done for a choice bundle in years. Noita is one I almost pulled the trigger on in several of the last steam sales.
 
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Blu

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Mar 12, 2019
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Chrono Ark finally has a 1.0 release date. Apr 26
There will also be a price increase ( $19.99 -> $24.99 ) after the Deckbuilders Festival ends ( April 1st ). It's currently on sale for $12.99.


With the release there will be a discount on 1.0 launch and a DLC released which I'm assuming will be the swimsuit DLC they teased a while back


There's also some free Deckbuilders Fest events items for your profile that I didn't notice previously.

 
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PC-tan

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Sony fans don't seem that happy that HZD2 didn't do that well and it has a lower player count and are saying that Sony is waisting time and money and porting stuff to PC that is not live service.


It's a waiting game. And sales take time.


Also this is the price that they have to pay if they want those big shiny AAA games that they like so much. They money has to come from somewhere. Despite everything Spiderman 2 didn't break even didn't it?



AAA games are still selling very well on Steam but those are day and date releases.
 

Paul

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Sony fans don't seem that happy that HZD2 didn't do that well
Sony fans (PS fanboys) are in fact very happy whenever Sony games do not sell well on PC because they want their precious exclusives to stay available only to them.

But I think that ship has sailed. And HFW sold pretty well actually. Plus as you say, on PC good games have long tails.
 
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