Games

Factorio did it right, IMO. V2.0 as a free update to the base game, launch a paid expansion at the same time.

Wube is pretty much the only developer I have faith in to consistently do things right.

I agree, but Subnautica was more about exploration than just survival. Sure, you could keep expanding the world to add new environments, but eventually that gets out of hand. For a Subnautica type game, making new ones makes sense, especially to address tech debt as well and start fresh.

Subnautica isn't just a survival game, but a story driven game as well, and given how janky their engine was, it's not a surprise that they'd want to overhaul it from the ground up.

“We wanted a fresh new debacle instead!”

"Whenever I have a problem I throw a molatov cocktail and it and bam! Different problem."

• Jason Mendoza

Survival games benefit more than most genres from iteration

Subnautica is as much of a survival game as Minecraft is. The only 'survival' happens in the first 5-10 minutes of the game and never again.

Shit, I'll take sequels over as-a-service any day. Let continuing revenue be the result of making new things and games being good.

...what did happen* to ksp2? I remember ms acquired them then... ?

I genuinely don't know what about your comment is supposed to be mocking.

You're just describing the situation presented in purposefully more confusing language than the article.

They've also bought up a ton of quality studios. I'm half expecting Krafton to go bankrupt due to incompetence and end up pulling an Embracer and take everyone else down with them.

If they end up torpedoing Hi-Fi Rush 2, I may start a riot.

Well first, this deal was part of that sale. That'd be like someone's boss pocketing a tip and telling the waitress "you don't deserve this tip you already got paid" or a salesman "you get something hourly, why would you need this commission?"

They worked for it, after the sale, because it was in their contract.

That said, the company didn't even say it was a mess. They said that they needed something like, one more biome, one more leviathan, a few bits and bobs like that. Requirements that they added on later in development, that those three guys say aren't needed.

I really wanna hear from the other devs, the ones under the 3. Theirs is the opinion I'd trust in this mess. But I'm leaning towards corporate fuckery, personally.

When two parties sign a contract then they have to act in good faith. Preventing the other party from fulfilling their obligations to avoid a payout or invoke a penalty is not good faith. And that's why the sea witch Ursula's contract with the mermaid Ariel would not have held up in court.

Maybe the game would make more money during it's life span if released later but that's irrelevant when there's a contract about how much money the game should make before a certain cut off date.

Yeah, the three fired heads owned 90% of the shares, so they got $225M from the initial sale, and were due to get another $225M from the bonuses. That's why Krafton still paid out $25M in bonuses after the uproar.

I have to imagine that Subnautica is a difficult act to follow because underwater assets are weird. There's a lot of models and AI for first person shooters, but first person swimmers?

For those who needed some news catching up also:

https://www.ign.com/articles/take-two-shutters-kerbal-space-program-2-studio-amid-layoffs

The publisher, Take Two, laid off the entire staff of KSP2. This pissed off many fans, who had paid full price for Early Access to an unfinishee game that now didn't have a Dev team.

https://www.polygon.com/news/475635/private-division-sold/

Then T2 sold off the studio to this other company. And staffing up for Dev work when none if the original creators are around: 1. Sucks and is miserable work and 2. Almost never works out to produce a quality product.

So yeah, instead of that debacle, they opted for the Disco Elysium 2 debacle where the publishers steal the IP from the original creators and then fail to ever deliver anything with it. I love this debacle because you get a shitty publisher with a disappointing game AND embittered developers who will probably leave game making or go on to make less involved projects. It's great they can both financially ruin an industry with bad practices while also tearing out the soul of the medium.