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Game Developers News, Lessons, Books, Assets and many more. Godot, Unreal Engine, Unity, Blender. Our Website is https://gameunion.tv/en
Ubisoft is making a move: it's a mobile shooter in The Division universe!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhE68uZi1Bw
#MobileGames@GameDEV
#Ubisoft@GameDEV
#Multiplayer@GameDEV
PETA awarded Mewgenics with the custom certificate for ethical treatment of animals...
It was meant to be given to the character that takes cats away from the player. And her name is a parody to president and founder of PETA with whom Edmund fights for years over their criticism of games.
We're honoring Mewgenics' Tracy Newkirk with a Hero to Animals Award for her advocacy for the cats of Boon County. Tracy is the only ethical option for where to send your cats (we have nightmares about Baby Jack). She fearlessly educates players on speciesism and using the term "animal companion" instead of "pets."
#meme@GameDEV
By the way, I wrote this back in 2019: that's before Covid, before the war (you may need a translation, it was in Russian):
- Covid is not accounted for
- War in Ukraine isn't
- AI-boom isn't there too
All three multiply the issue
https://www.gameunion.tv/ru/obo-vsyom/chto-zhdet-igrovuyu-industriyu-vo-vremya-ekonomicheskogo-krizisa-89
Literally no one:
Bandai Namco: here's 1 hour of game music for your deep work or study focus!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ww6hP8pLZZc
#Music@GameDEV
#BandaiNambco@GameDEV
Warhorse fired their translator and replaced him with AI (Reddit). Previously Daniel Vavra defended AI and said it would be nice to replace actors with it "so they will not spend months on boring background lines, for example".
Reddit mods confirmed he was employed at Warhorse and it's not just a joke or bait.
#Warhorse@GameDEV
#RPG@GameDEV
#AI@GameDEV
The cozy game from The Stanley Parable author got positive reviews but failed commercially:
Ivy Road will be closed next week due to lack of funding for the next game. They will release the last update before the closure.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1299460/Wanderstop/
#IndieGames@GameDEV
A cute animation Lynte_ made for Cvnka_
#PixelArt@GameDEV
#Animation@GameDEV
If you were curious about financial issues of literally every game and IT company out there: they all gambled on AI and got wrecked by it this specific quarter.
Microsoft is currently aiming for the worst quarter since 2008 and these results are not even caused by the war. And it's not the end of this downfall. NVIDIA is also in decline (as we mentioned before).
The craziest part is that even AI-fans among investors are selling Microsoft shares. They believe that the whole SaaS market will be pointless if AI Microsoft bet on will get more advanced. So Microsoft is ruining it's real business by betting on the virtual one.
#AI@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV
Here are some pricing changes from PlayStation: the hardware gets significantly more expensive! About 50$/€ more for Portal, ~100 for PS5s, and even more for PS5 Pro.
For USA:
- PS5 $549 -> $649
- PS5 Digital $499 -> $599
- PS5 Pro $749 -> $899
- PS Portal $199 -> $249
#PlayStation@GameDEV
#Hardware@GameDEV
By the way, I was not kidding: every big game you know is using social media actors to boost the algorithm.
It also works with negative reception, you can spend $10-20K and ruin the release of your competitor. And if the overall "feel around the game" is bad, it's very hard to recover.
In early days it wasn't even that hard to do: about 17 years ago we completely destroyed the competitor with just three people reporting nonexistent bugs in all new releases of the company. Our screenshots and descriptions were absolutely believable, their whole marketing team was paralyzed. They just got into social media, opened a forum, and were mostly talking to three of us sitting from 50 different accounts.
We stopped not because of the efficiency, we just got tired. And since it was such a crazy time back then, we also told them about it some months later. They laughed and said "dang, it was brilliant".
Noice
It's like a parody on every movie about a couple stuck on an island, it's absolutely brutal, sarcastic, and you hate every character.
#Movies@GameDEV
Also, welcome to Highguard! 😎
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/2073850/view/519741583516500148?l=english
The what?!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2424420/Avatar_Legends_The_Fighting_Game/
#IndieGames@GameDEV
#Fighting@GameDEV
My mentality back then was something like this: this is the problem for future me! But I was 100% sure that this whole thing is nearly inevitable.
Covid and the war in Ukraine weren't on my list though. They delayed the outcome and made it all worse.
Just for the context: Daniel also defended DLSS5, he hopes it will replace even more people. So slop-shit-games will obviously play themselves or whatever. Warslope announced Slope Come: Deliverance III.
#AI@GameDEV
I mean, I haven't heard of this game at all: zero reviews in my feed! Just found out was set to Ignored on Steam (I kinda thought it's a cute-slop-farm genre and I have a bunch of those already).
How much was it in production that it didn't work financially?
Not a fan of this channel in general, but this one is a good overview of what, when, and how went wrong:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpI_v2S-jPY
#Fortnite@GameDEV
#EpicGames@GameDEV
🔥 Noice
https://itch.io/jam/gdevelop-big-game-jam-9
#GDevelop@GameDEV
#NoCode@GameDEV
#GameJam@GameDEV
Since Nacon publishing has no more money and so are its studios, the company just secretly placed Spiders (Greedfall, Steelrising) on sale. If you're interested, here's the lot where you can buy the studio.
Nacon previously acquired Spiders in 2019 after the success of the original Greedfall. Now they forced the team to "make another game to raise their own price before sale". Something is in early development but sources say that the team is rather broken with all that, not inspired by the new chance.
In addition, according to Origami, Nacon Tech (motion capture studio) is also going to be sold. And all physical releases of Nacon games are canceled in North America.
#Nacon@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV
#Business@GameDEV
Unity said they're making more money now so the best shortcut to grow even further is to sell and close some of their key assets to "simplify the business".
Supersonic (game publisher) will be sold out and IronSource ad network will be fully closed. They will continue to serve the basic Unity ads.
#Unity@GameDEV
#Business@GameDEV
Several analytical agencies suggested that marathon revenue is just about $55M, compared to the budget of over $250M (before marketing and support).
Most of the people are playing on Steam, there was a small boost about 2 weeks after the release when people got curious and bought more premium upgrades. But since then the revenue plummeted.
Analytics noted that despite the support from PlayStation, the game is simply too hard for consoles. It makes people leave much earlier (at about 16 hours for active players on PS5, compared to 28 hours on PC).
#Bungie@GameDEV
#PlayStation@GameDEV
The guy made a neural rendering out of reshade. Looks odd as expected but can bring some funky results. Would I ever play like this? Nope!
Currently works at 0.5-2 FPS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc-k4gf8Cso
#AI@GameDEV
Marathon is getting "content tasks" from bot farms to boost activity around the game. Most of the people are from India and SEA, where even a few $ per day is a good financial support.
Fact: it's not that uncommon but usually these boosting nets are active upon the release and to increase the organic and real activity. It's not a good solution if the game drops to 12K CCU on Steam. The game is currently at 77th position by last week revenue.
UPD: Most of the screenshots are from the release window of the game, so it's more or less in line with industry practices.
#Bungie@GameDEV
#PlayStation@GameDEV
Be careful, a relatively new scam: dozens if not hundreds of medium-size repos were infected by fake CVE warning, telling that Visual Studio Code is affected. These updates are often seen in the feed and via email notifications.
So you have to urgently download the fix (which is obviously a malware). They push to fear and urgency so a lot of people fell for it.
#Security@GameDEV
We have Android Apps support on Steam before Half-Life 3... that's for Steam Frame, not Android phones!
#MobileGames@GameDEV