Those French... The market will simply adapt. Publishers will create scarcity to drive up prices. And day 1 buyers will rush to finish the game in order to sell it before the prices lowers to much.

All in all I see more trouble than benefit for us gamers, with very expensive day 1 costs and a lot of license micromanagement. Not only for games but any digital good. Bad bad stuff.

Except for game quality. I'm just trying to imagine Borderlands 3 (just because it's the topic of the week) release in a world with second hand markets. No matter how much you try to manipulate the press and the metacritic score. People who can't play the game now will just sell it with the idea to rebuy it later when it's fixed at a lower price. And ofc in the immediate effect would be the game price plummeting and a financial disaster.

Nedless to say that releasing an untested and badly optimized game would quickly become a suicidal move and nobody would do it.

Anyway I think Valve (supported by all the other digital store owners) should be able to appeal to EU court. A fundamental difference like this in national regulatuon is highly disfunctional to the single market. The way I see it is that either that's the EU stance or is no member state stance. Mixed scenarios cannot reasonably exist.

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Quoting: eldakingI also had a shower thought recently that the big issue with recent games isn't spurious launchers, but spurious main menus. We already have launchers that allow us to select mods, load saves directly, change settings (even better, before loading the main software where those will apply so no restarting), and so on. Having an in-game main menu looks like a waste. (I was thinking particularly about what @Mal mentioned, that EU4 already needs to reopen the game to load saves)

That reminds me of the old worms 2 launcher. Which was in fact the game menu. It works. If the menu is in the launcher there are no useless buttons or clicks in the way.

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Btw my eu4 now doesn't start even by starting directly the game executable. It crashes soon after the loading screen. My plan has always been to rename the game executable like the launcher executable and live happily thereafter. But at Pdx they are always one step ahead... they fixed a lot of game backlog so the game runs better. But you can't benefit from it if you can't even start the game. :D

But there are also good news! The launcher actually works! Except when I start it from Steam ofc. Oddly enough there are no links to buy their other games. I was expecting "a buy everything we sell" a la Battle.net. Instead it's just an uglier and non functional version of the previous one. I'm confused by this move.

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Quoting: eldaking

Quoting: MalSo it is possible to skip the launcher? Very good news! I hate launchers. I can't understand why executives waste hundreds of manhours into "features" that detract value from their products.

Regarding the update, it's a small one. The big one will arrive later this year. Apparently at Paradox they started to listen and decided to make only a single DLC this year in order to focus on fixing the game. Much to my satisfaction.

In this case, the launcher will eventually allow for better mod management and mods across various stores (instead of being tied to the Steam workshop), among other things.

Being more cynical, it is easy to understand: while it creates some inconvenience for users, it is pretty valuable as a marketing tool.

You're not being cynical. All the features "packed" in the launcher (mods, dlc and such) could have been easily integrated in the main game GUI. Even more so for EU4 that already has to restart every time you change any kind of setting or option (and I really mean any kind, like switching to a different save game... and good for us that the linux version starts in mere seconds. Windows guys have to wait minutes every time!).

The only reason why some black suit decided that you have to click the game icon to launch a launcher which then requires you to click an icon of the game to actually launch the game instead of allowing you to do the obvious thing i.e. click the game icon to launch the actual game, is precisely to run ads of their others game in your face every time.

If they just showed some banner in the game loading screen or main menu instead of getting out of their way just to multiply the clicks needed for one single action I wouldn't care. But no! If you don't specialize in annoying the entitled gamer you won't make it to a publisher board room.

But yeah, launchers became the norm for publishers long ago. Paradox is just catching up. I'm just ranting for nothing. :) Maybe one day they will learn from mobiles experts not just the shit also the useful things like the art of designing effective GUIs. Or maybe not. It's just a click right?

At least the actual game continues getting better and better.

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So it is possible to skip the launcher? Very good news! I hate launchers. I can't understand why executives waste hundreds of manhours into "features" that detract value from their products.

Regarding the update, it's a small one. The big one will arrive later this year. Apparently at Paradox they started to listen and decided to make only a single DLC this year in order to focus on fixing the game. Much to my satisfaction.

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I really don't get the issue with early access games. The whole point of stuff like kickstarter, patreon, early access and so on is to give indies a way to develop and sell a game without selling their bodies and souls to publishers. There are countless innovative and revolutionary games that have been developed only thanks to early access like minecraft and factorio.
Where publishers would not take the risk, or would not give the money unless the developer ceded all the rights, stuff like early access comes in. It allows to connect gamers potentially interested in a kind of game with developers offering that kind of game. Bypassing the interests of the middleman, which are not how much a game is fun but how much return comes from the investment. Imagine for a second an EA funded Factorio where you have to wait 1 day to build another assembler and you have to buy lootboxes for a chance of obtaining a one of the 23 unique pieces needed to craft a new tech to research.

Guys, really, it would be nice if we lived in a world of infinite resources and money was not an issue. Every dev would be paid to do any game he wants and we would only buy them once ready and bug free. But it's not like that and there is no perfect solution. Early access involves risks ofc. But if we don't take them then publishers have to take them and not only they don't do it for free but they only do it at their conditions.

Regarding Hades I too I'm looking forward to it given how much I liked previous Supergiant games. And I don't blame them for taking Sweeney money during the early phase. They didn't lie to anyone to get money from Kickstarter and they didn't showed the middle finger to their long standing patreon supporters because suddenly Epic gave them shitton of money to not sell their game and they don't need patreons anymore. They did nothing wrong or unfair: they simply accepted to start the early access on EGS for one year. Just because they made a deal with the cancer of PC gaming it doesn't mean that it's a cancerous deal that hurts gamers and devs.

That being said... anyone has any idea if the game is good like the predecessors? Getting reliable feedback from EGS exclusives is... difficult.

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So Epic is adopting a defensive stance now after having made a fortune with that stuff. A little hypocritical given the timing and context but it's good news nonetheless. I wonder if the other big publishers will do the same.

For what concerns EA it's pretty clear that they not only won't step back but they intend to bring as much industry(es) as possible down with them. When US and GB legislators will finally catch up with them I bet the judiciary will strike them with extreme prejudice given that they ignored multiple government "friendly advice" to self restrict.

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Imho the value of an "open store" is strictly the value of a non censored store, a place where you freely decide what is good for yourself. I wouldn't count being able to cheat customer and other devs on release date as an "openness value".

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Not every contributor reads the score guidelines on ProtonDB and there is definitely a bias toward platinum there (games that works but with a hack, games that works but no cutscenes or no multiplayer, or occasional glitches/crash and such).

The platinum score is definitely a little bit inflated right now. Since now the development is going on so fast it can't be helped, but when proton leaves beta it would be useful to have a redacted list of scores so that reviewers filter out the noise.

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