Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: DrMcCoyThe problem with Embracer is that they're not in the business of making games, making art. They're in the business of making money. They don't care how. They don't care the games apart from them being their current vehicle of making money.

That's every game company that is (or is owned by) a company on the stock market. They are happy about an inferior product as long as it improves the bottom line.

This describes most publicly traded corporations. Their lifeblood is money. They don't care how they acquire it nor do they care about the non-financial costs incurred while doing so.

And also most private companies, there is nothing in making it public that makes a company more or less greedy.

Well, not more greedy exactly . . . but more reliably greedy, and often more shortsightedly greedy. Activist shareholders tend to want returns NOW, this quarter. There's less room for personal or institutional style or for long range plans. Valve probably couldn't operate the way it does if it went public.
But it's certainly true that many private firms are just as bad. Some of the most destructive, short-term-oriented companies are the so-called "private equity" firms.

Share holders only have a say if they can muster up a majority of the votes. So the risk is actually much higher that you get one greedy new person at a private company than you can gather enough greedy share holders to make a difference in how the company is run.

The man issue is that many companies goes public to use the shares for things (like Embracer that uses their shares to buy game studios) which means that they have an incentive to keep the share price high. But if you don't do that and instead use it for what it was intended for (aka to share the risk) then there are no such incentive.

Aka in the end it's the people that is greedy so we all loose by default :)

Well, in theory perhaps, but I've definitely noticed a shift in corporate behaviour that has fairly closely tracked the "shareholder value" revolution, and which involves a whole lot of share buybacks replacing a whole lot of R&D and other longer term strategies.

Which happens because people at the C level in the company are having personal incentives to do so since the company have used their shares as bonuses to management. All of this is possible with private companies as well, however since there are no market to determine the share price there are no reason to do various stuff to inflate the share price so yes there are ofc far more opportunities for a public company to do things like this.

On the other hand a private company have far more power over decisions (since we moved from a form of democracy to pure dictatorship) which in turn increases the risks there if/when greedy people are put into a position of power.

Which is why I ended it with the problem actually being people and not necessary the company structure although some structures might concentrate the greed of individuals.

Talking about Embracer in particular I think this is less greed and more pure survival. They did miss a massive investment that where supposed to finance the next cycle of development and to add on top of that the Russian invasion of Ukraine bit Embracer in the ass with Saber:s Russian legacy forcing them to divest a profitable part of the company.

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Quoting: Purple Library Guy

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: DrMcCoyThe problem with Embracer is that they're not in the business of making games, making art. They're in the business of making money. They don't care how. They don't care the games apart from them being their current vehicle of making money.

That's every game company that is (or is owned by) a company on the stock market. They are happy about an inferior product as long as it improves the bottom line.

This describes most publicly traded corporations. Their lifeblood is money. They don't care how they acquire it nor do they care about the non-financial costs incurred while doing so.

And also most private companies, there is nothing in making it public that makes a company more or less greedy.

Well, not more greedy exactly . . . but more reliably greedy, and often more shortsightedly greedy. Activist shareholders tend to want returns NOW, this quarter. There's less room for personal or institutional style or for long range plans. Valve probably couldn't operate the way it does if it went public.
But it's certainly true that many private firms are just as bad. Some of the most destructive, short-term-oriented companies are the so-called "private equity" firms.

Share holders only have a say if they can muster up a majority of the votes. So the risk is actually much higher that you get one greedy new person at a private company than you can gather enough greedy share holders to make a difference in how the company is run.

The man issue is that many companies goes public to use the shares for things (like Embracer that uses their shares to buy game studios) which means that they have an incentive to keep the share price high. But if you don't do that and instead use it for what it was intended for (aka to share the risk) then there are no such incentive.

Aka in the end it's the people that is greedy so we all loose by default :)

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Quoting: Caldathras

Quoting: Guest

Quoting: DrMcCoyThe problem with Embracer is that they're not in the business of making games, making art. They're in the business of making money. They don't care how. They don't care the games apart from them being their current vehicle of making money.

That's every game company that is (or is owned by) a company on the stock market. They are happy about an inferior product as long as it improves the bottom line.

This describes most publicly traded corporations. Their lifeblood is money. They don't care how they acquire it nor do they care about the non-financial costs incurred while doing so.

And also most private companies, there is nothing in making it public that makes a company more or less greedy.

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Quoting: JarmerWhoa, this is a blast from the past! I think I've had this on my wishlist for ... actually I can't even remember, 4 years? More? I used to have this high on my anticipation radar, since the demo was great and the entire setting was just fantastic, but I guess it somehow got stuck in dev hell if it's still EA after all this time.

I will still keep it on my wishlist, and I hope they can get closer to a release.

It's not been stuck in dev hell, it's simply that they are a small team and they don't want to be too big so they have deliberately kept it small. Updates have been constantly coming and the plans for the entire game is already defined.

Roadmap

Welcome.

This is the roadmap for the final phase of the Death Trash Early Access.

We have avoided communicating concrete dates in the past. Working as a small team on a complicated game has been notoriously difficult, especially in regards to timely estimations. The Early Access took longer than we initially anticipated. For that we are sorry.

But during the Early Access we have improved the game and, equally important, our tools, workflows and knowledge. We are more confident now about handling the rest of the game and what time we'll need for that.

Note: These dates might still change. If one of the milestones takes longer than anticipated, all the later dates will be influenced by that, too, of course. And at the end of the day we won't call it final (1.0) if we are not happy with the state of the game and will instead put more work in. But the important thing here is, I hope, to see and to know that the end is actually in sight.

Milestones

Steam Input implementation
Current target: soon on the beta branch

The Perished City
Current target: mid-2024 on the beta branch
New locations and quests.

Improving item economy
Current target: fall 2024
This is about the range of items available in the game, inventory size, item balancing etc.

Northern Wasteland
Current target: end of 2024
New locations and quests.

Improving existing locations and gameplay
Current target: spring to mid 2025
This is in general about adding more depth to the game, both to the narrative parts as well as to the gameplay.

The Machine and the Watcher
Current target: mid- to late 2025
Final locations and quests.

Full release
Current target: mid- to late 2025

Post release
We will continue to support the game, of course. And as this game is very dear to us, this will probably happen for a long time. We haven't decided yet if the next project after this will be more directly connected to Death Trash or be a different take.

Console versions
Current target: end of 2025
We have no final decision on whether we follow through with publishing these ourselves or partnering up for that. Xbox, Playstation and Nintendo Switch versions are playable already but need more work.

Localization
Current target: unknown
We still don't know how much budget we'll have for additional languages. Production-wise it might make sense to have the localization added later than the 1.0 release so they can be done from a finished game instead of a still changing one. (If we had more experience we might try to have it all ready at once for the 1.0 release, but since our experience and resources are limited, we might rather approach this step by step.)

Level Editor
Current target: unknown
Mainly intended for users to create their own standalone adventures with the Death Trash gameplay and art assets. We might extend the functionality later on.

Extended mind item gameplay
Current target: might not happen
We have more gameplay ideas for Death Trash. But, realistically, we can't tackle all of them and have to shelve some of them for later. Enhancing the gameplay around the mind items might be one of these cases. We will revisit these ideas in the future.

Thank you

Thank you so much for your feedback and support so far. Death Trash has already become a much better game during Early Access and we couldn't have done that without you.

- Stephan

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Quoting: poiuzYour timeline does not work out. How could Canonical release Unity as a result of user backlash when it was released before GNOME 3 was released? Mate on the other hand was forked as a direct result of the GNOME 3 release.

Canonical was somewhat invested in GNOME development at the time and the design plans for what became GNOME Shell was announced already back in 2008 at the GNOME User Experience Hackfest in Boston and pre releases of GNOME Shell was relased in 2009.

Also the Unity released in 2010 was a pure shell on top of GNOME meant to be used on netbooks and wasn't planned to replace GNOME on the regular Ubuntu until the backlash of GNOME 3 so they brought it back and changed it for Ubuntu 11.04 in 2011.

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: F.Ultra

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

supporting externally downloaded .deb files

It still baffles me that a supposedly user-friendly distribution required you to use apt in the terminal to install .deb files until now.

Note that this is for the App Center that they introduced in 23.10, their previous app did support installing external .deb files from the GUI just fine.

I'm only speaking from experience; the last time I needed to try Ubuntu for the sake of documentation was 23.04 and I could not for the life of me figure out how to install a .deb file. When I double-clicked it, it would open up the software store and try to install the older one in Ubuntu's repositories. Maddening.

Strange, in 23.04 they used the GNOME Software Center and I routinely clicked on .debs to install them externally (though have to be said that the .debs that I installed externally didn't also exist in the repos).

Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

Quoting: scaine

Quoting: pleasereadthemanualLike any GNOME purist, I completely disagree with the premise. GNOME is great even without extensions and I don't use any.

I'm sure that's true now, (for you and many others, even though I still disagree) but back in 2010, the original Shell beta was baffling and largely unusable unless you followed blogs that described the philosophy behind it.

I've heard stories. Not having a "shutdown" button was the one I remember, but I can't find sources for it.

Please, if you can find anything about dumb designs for the original GNOME 3, I'd love to see it.

I think GNOME has the best interface, hands down, but they need to catch up to KDE Plasma in terms of Wayland support, they need better multi-monitor support, and why can't they just get along with everyone else?

So I use both. And soon, COSMIC, hopefully.

Quoting: Purple Library GuyI think some felt that they were acting like it was intended to be one DE to rule them all, to "Unify" the Linux experience, and weren't enthused about that perceived attitude.

There's no pleasing some people. And Linux users are the hardest to please. Cynical by nature; pedantic by vocation.

Not sure how correct any of Linus's rant are here (I never used Gnome 3.x myself), but the Internet was not kind to Gnome 3 when it came out:

Linus Torvalds finds GNOME 3.4 to be a "total user experience design failure" [External Link]

I only dislike the latest version of the GNOME Linux desktop, Linus Torvalds, Linux's primary inventor, hates it.

And that was for 3.4 what was the fixed version, imagine just how much was written when 3.0 came. It's the whole reason why MATE exists and for Canonical that up to then had been THE Gnome desktop they saw no other path forward than to create Unity, it was less of a NIH and more of a major user backlash.

Linus Torvalds would like to see a GNOME fork [External Link]
A shiny new ornament for your Linux lawn: Ars reviews GNOME 3.0 [External Link]
GNOME 3: Shocking changes for Linux lovers [External Link]

Linus came around in the end though: Linus Torvalds switches back to Gnome 3.x desktop [External Link]

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Quoting: pleasereadthemanual

supporting externally downloaded .deb files

It still baffles me that a supposedly user-friendly distribution required you to use apt in the terminal to install .deb files until now.

Note that this is for the App Center that they introduced in 23.10, their previous app did support installing external .deb files from the GUI just fine.

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Quoting: Cato-the-youngerHow do people not understand that filing ridiculous lawsuits means that nobody takes them seriously. And the fact that people are able to file these lawsuits means nobody takes the legal system seriously anymore. Certainly why I dont take legal systems where this is allowed seriously, a view them as a joke

Edit: everyone knows these people are just trying to use the courts to make money off of valve. Companies who engage in patent trolling or litigation trolling should be forced to pay.

That is how the legal system works basically everywhere. The filing clerk does not make any judgment over the quality of the case at all, instead the defendant (if they feel that the case have zero merit) will ask the court to dismiss the case and then list the reasons to do so. Once this is done a judge will look it over and might decide to throw the case out without a trial if the reasons listed are valid and the plaintiffs have not successfully argued against them.

And that is how you _want_ the system to work, making the filing clerk the arbiter on what can and what cannot be filed is IMHO a dangerous road to walk down.

Also if the case is seen as being frivolous then the judge both in the US and the UK can force the plaintiffs to pay a penalty for it.

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Quoting: stephenseiber420

Quoting: damarrinOh, that is lovely. I tried playing LiS2, but bounced right off it not far in. A return of the protagonist from the first one is very welcome.

making the little brother the primary antagonist was extremely stupid. and i dont mean he was the big bad guy no the little brother was the cause of alot of the elder brothers problems throughout the game. i also played lis3 and i didnt like 2 or 3. i here before the storm was bad too. so i think the studio is just "going" back to what worked. but dont understand why life is strange 1 was so good. i think they are gonna botch it too

Before the Storm and True Colors (which I assume you mean by lis3) was made by Deck Nine (American studio) and not by Don't nod (French studio) who made Lis1. Deck Nine is also the studio that is making Double Exposure.

Quoting: jensOh very nice, I will certainly keep this in mind. I could relate much better with her character than with Chloe from the Prequel (or Sequel, don’t remember). So much that I’m embarrassed to say that I only finished the first game in the series.

Chloe was the protagonist in the prequel (Before the Storm) and was Max companion in Lis1.

Quoting: Linas

Quoting: stephenseiber420

Quoting: damarrinI tried playing LiS2, but bounced right off it not far in.

making the little brother the primary antagonist was extremely stupid.

I completely disagree, LiS2 is a great game. The little brother is not an antagonist. The whole point of the game is that you, the big brother, shape the world views of the little brother. What you tell him and what you have him do throughout the game matters, and plays a big role in the finale, instead of being a binary choice at the very end, like it was in LiS1.

Yeah the main antagonist in Lis2 was life (or rather society) itself. Can also be why so many was turned off by it when you play the big brother that is basically FFL and many might not find that entertaining to play.

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Quoting: Linux_Rocks

Quoting: dpanterBut, how? Where are they getting the money from? Who keeps pumping money into this walking corpse?

Maybe they just make enough money from game sales and the like? I buy those Recharged games on the Switch, and I've bought some of their other stuff too. Along with one of those Bluetooth Atari 2600 style controllers. If I didn't already just use my Xbox Series controllers as my PC controllers, then I'd probably have bought their regular VCS controller for my PC.

They might be weird with their decisions at times, and also just seem like they throw everything at the wall to see what sticks. But I actually like a good lot of what they put out game-wise.

Quoting: basedKnowing their history, this made me lmao, buying Coleco next?

That could actually be a good thing to get some of the old Coleco games out in some form again. I wouldn't be against them buying those rights either.

If Intellivision and Colecovision games started popping up on that VCS, it'd be good for folks who bought one.

They have had a net loss every single quarter since march 2020 (about €-9M last year with a total sales of €10M).

As I understand it from their latest financial report they are basically running on loans, aka they have sold €30M in bonds which they somehow have to pay back in 2026.

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