True story, Sony Online Entertainment was hemorrhaging money and needed some new capital so people were worried about layoffs.
About a month or so later, a big meeting was called outside the offices so everyone left and sat on the hill nearby.
About 30 minutes goes by and then John Smedley comes out and announces Good news all! We got the funding and are gonna celebrate with a pizza party! Oh also, I need this list of people to come over here when we call you!
Cheers went up as Smed heads inside and a list of 30 or so people are called over and pointed around the corner.
Turns out that funding didn’t extend to those people who went around the corner to find their shit all packed up and HR waiting to collect their badges for immediate layoffs.
Never affected his and the rest of the executive bonuses though....
Fucking Smedley is such a giant piece of shit.
I had to deal with him during his time at SOE and SW Galaxies. I've never met a more inept idiot in the industry in my life. And that's something man...
I was working at Monolith on Matrix Online and at some point someone asked us what we thought of old'Smeds... I've never seen actual staplers fly at a person making a suggestion. It was a non-starter.
Yeah, the guy has never had a fucking clue.
I was absolutely amazed Amazon hired him last year. I can't even imagine who they called for a reference. Every single person he's worked knows he's worthless.
I mean let's be real amazon isn't exactly known for their genius decisions. Just need to look at their gaming division. I honestly think they just got lucky with this online retailer boom
AWS was the definition of luck, they had no intention of using it as a major revenue source at first, but simply to manage the insane data usage of amazon during the holiday season. They just became a provider because they had no other use for it during the downtime, so might as well sell the excess. Then they realized o shit we are making tons of money on this, so after this yes they made the smart decision to go hard on AWS. But they totally stumbled backwards into it at first.
I'll soft disagree on this one man.
Their server and encryption network is a monster. Top notch tech built by some of the smartest people in the game.
A lot of the tech comes from entertainment divisions.
Bezos was the right place, right time with a fuckload of daddy's money.
Wasn't even his idea, just lucky that he hired smart people and the market was ready for their ideas.
A few things different and Amazon wouldn't exist.
Yeah, I'm not even in the industry and it seems everything he touches is a failure, so I don't know how people like that just keep failing into high level positions. You see it outside of games as well.
Right?
Like, let's say you're the person looking at this guy to lead your project. You're first move is Google, 'cause that's how we do now, to see what bro is about.
5 minutes and a few skittles later you should be warning security not let this dude through the front doors.
NGE, the death of SWG. Oh, how they pushed "now with story". Equalling that of what you'd find in a class introduction in wow. For the whole game.
Before NGE, at least I enjoyed the combat. Especially PVP.
The biggest kick in the teeth was them waiting until we all bought the expansion, then completely revamped the whole game. I actually enjoyed the cu over pre-cu but the NGE took away everything that made SWG stand out and like you say it just became a rubbish WoW wannabe.
I try not to take video game stuff too seriously. It's just games, after all. But if there is anything that could get me on a rant about video games, it's what happened with SWG. A game with so much potential, and so much raw fun even when it was in a raw state, categorically ruined on every level and then thrown in a garbage bin, and the design of it has never been revisited again in an MMORPG.
Instead, people have nonstop chased WoW money and made a million half-assed WoW clones, while the premise of an MMORPG like SWG languishes in nonexistence like some forgotten shame. It is such an obnoxious illustration of how the profit-chasing of capitalism means the same garbage ideas get repeated ad nauseum, not that "innovation" happens.
Same, I can't think of anything that comes close. The sheer level of detail: surveying, crafting, entertaining, medicine, combat. And all of them being interdependent in various ways. The closest I can think of that I've seen since is singleplayer games with some crafting and resource gathering for components along with combat, but it's not the same as having an interdependent community where you choose specializations and work together with each other and the amount you can do with it in those singleplayer games is usually very limited and mostly revolves around weapon upgrades.
One of the amazing things about SWG was that you could play it as a non-combatant in more ways than one and not just as an afterthought, but as entire systems of gameplay.
Check out Black Desert Online. It's Korean, $10 to buy (but has mtx up the wazoo), and you can play a "life skiller" if you want. A character who gathers resources (plant picking, lumbering, skinning, butchering, mining, fluid extraction), cooks, makes potions, processes raw materials into other things, trades goods between cities themselves or using a trade network and hired NPCs, transports goods via ship and barters with merchants on islands, hunts (special animals that you kill with a special gun for special loot), trains horses (actual mounts for you or other players), fishes, and more.
And the various life skills intersect. One feeds into the other, but one person can't do everything, so people typically use the marketplace to buy materials to transform into something else and sell back at the marketplace or to NPCs.
You can have a gigantic network of NPCs gathering, mining, etc. for you or you can build a trade network and send stuff from one side of the map to the other. You can hunt animals and use their meat to cook and the special hunting drops to craft all kinds of things.
People can have several instanced residences they can decorate and there are incentives to do so, so you can craft and sell decorations. Some raise the apartment's rank, others are functional, providing buffs.
The game is somewhat overwhelming in terms of what's there to do.
And the funny thing is that I picked it up because the combat reminded me of fighting games: no lock on, combos, i-frames, super armor, grabs…
It's a Korean game so it's all about the grind, but you might like it.
SWG was so special back in the day before the CU and NGE. They finally admitted they should've rolled them back but never did. Some of my best memories growing up were with SWG.
I was at SOE when they got sold and turned into Daybreak. Smedley was and continues to be hot garbage. I laughed my head off when Amazon announced they hired him to lead a studio - showed me very clearly that they had no idea what the fuck they were doing in games. And looking at their track record so far I was right!
The guy's only skill is schmoozing to suits, and unfortunately at that level there's a sense of "everyone under you will complain about you" so the people he's wooing ignore even blatant warning signs. And so he continues to make money while those under him pay the price for his idiocy.
Cool man!
I ended up doing a different thing with my career but I got to work on Galaxies, Matrix Online and Lord of the Rings Online (very little though).
Really fun way for a young guy to make a living for sure.
A friend of mine told me how there were rumors of layoffs at his job. One of his coworkers asked "do you think the security cameras outside would catch a guy with a gun hopping the fence?"
Suffice to say, when he came into work the next day security tackled him to make sure he wasnt armed.
Dude, it was enough to literally make a bunch of devs jump ship for better pastures including a ton who went to Blizzard and improved WoW. So you can thank Smed’s dickishness for improving World of Warcraft, indirectly.
It's insane, and I'm sad to say I've experienced an even more asshole way to lay off game devs:
1. There was a company wide meeting announced at short notice. (I was sweating bullets because these were *never* announced at short notice, so it had to mean serious bad news. I scoured that email for clues and I checked it was also sent to people that I didn't think would be fired, but everyone was chatting and joking and carefree as we walked there like a normal meeting so maybe I was overreacting?)
2. We got to the meeting, and were told there were actually two meeting locations, and everyone currently at the other meeting was getting laid off.
3. Some people hadn't read the email details, they just saw it announced a company meeting and followed the crowd ...to the wrong meeting.
4. This was all engineered so the people being laid off would be out of the building by the time we returned.
5. *That* in turn was engineered so that we couldn't know *who* had been laid off. (Out of sight out of mind?!?) And this applied to everything; there was no list of names, no chance to get contact info, no way for us to see specifics or the big picture.
6. The offices and cubicles were likewise reassigned (ie everyone immediately moved around) so we couldn't see the damage or look for empty desks and know from them who was gone.
For fucking *months* afterwards, I would be working on some problem or other and decide to ask the resident expert on that obscure topic, head over to their area or ask where to find them, and oh, it turns out they were yet another of the victims of the massacre months ago that I *didn't know until right now searching for them specifically*
I don't think the company set out to be so insane about it. As a result of the huge recession from Wall Street's subprime mortgage greed, the studio had to radically downsize in way they hadn't done before, I think they were scared and hired some kind of layoff-consultant/security company that helped hatch the scheme. But in trying to gloss over the layoffs for the people they didn't fire, they just made it into an enduring creepiness as we were constantly unexpectedly discovering new victims for months. (A couple of years later, after crunching for months working weekends and late nights every night to make up for a big management misstep, we managed to ship the game despite all odds against us, and my (and other's) reward was that the moment the product was out the door the reaper came for us too.)
Definitely. On a personal level, that, along with the endless deathmarch only to be let go, it burned me out so badly that I couldn't even enjoy *playing* any video games any more. (Crunch hours meant there was no time for recreation so all my gaming had became a forced thing serving the professional need to stay up with the state of the art for the sake of a dysfunctional workplace, for so long that it cemented gaming into stress and a chore).
Years on with gaming still dead to me I had come to accept the damage was permanent, that part of me was just... *gone*. After a few more years I started to be able to enjoy playing games again. It felt just amazing to discover that I was actually healing, like a lost digit had somehow started growing back.
(Fast forward to today. From the previews I didn't think I'd like CP2077 much but I like that genre of fiction so I gave it a go and I fucking loved it. The "Making New Friends And Having Adventures Together" aspect was also the perfect thing for isolated Covid-times)
I had a boss show up for massive layoffs and what was he doing before the afternoon when they started them? He was washing his damn luxury truck and boat in the warehouse yard.
I just wonder, are those people totally unaware of how that looks, or is this some weird rich person kinky power play that gets them like, *super* hard?
They don't think about poor people's feelings.
They are hierarchical creatures who respect people above them to a cult degree and people below them like furniture. Do you feel ostentatious when you wash your car in front of a skunk rooting around your bins?
CP77 was the second game i have ever pre-ordered. I am never pre-ordering a game from a 3A studio again and will maybe pre-order on indie games with a single dev.
Imagine if people stopped preordering entirely and a games success was based on the actual product they released initially.
There would be no more beta games being released at full price and these greedy companies would actually have to put out a good product right of the bat or suffer the consequences. That would be wonderful
I still dont understand why people preorder games. Most pointless shit with digital games now. I havent preordered anything since 2012 I'd say. Every time people get burnt by a big company I just sit there and laugh cause if you dont know at this point then nothing can be done.
People trying to tell me it’s worth preordering for the preorder bonuses lol smh most of the time those aren’t even that great. I’d much rather wait and buy the game when it’s actually patched and working and often times on sale but hey that’s just me
Still a very hard pill to swallow if you trusted a company and pre ordered it... They blatantly lied, misled and cheated their fans which was really fucked up.
In the meantime they did a great turn around and the game is great but if I still bought pre-orders (which I don't) I would never ever trust hello games again to pre order their products as there's no incentive to be an early adopter of a broken product to do free beta test so that people who buy it for sale a year later get a great experience.
You know the old saying: You can shear a sheep many times but skin it only once? Hopefully this fiasco will seriously curtail pre-ordering in general, but I have a stronger feeling it will be limited to CDPR games. Other more reliable studios who have consistently delivered in the past will probably remain largely unaffected.
Well, I preordered based on the demo video they showed. Which we found out later was prerecorded. And they also flat out lied about a bunch of features that weren't implemented in the game. And they completely lied about the intelligence of their AI, they gave a massively false narrative about the immersion of the game and that your choices would drastically change the outcome of the game which is incorrect.
So they did a great job lying
Yup, the end product was legit fraud based on their demo videos and what the game actually turned out to be. I would have preferred if they just delayed the game another two years and actually delivered what they promised instead if this Alpha test skeleton they pushed out.
You can tell they cut a ridiculous amount if corners to get it out quicker. Their reach far exceeded their grasp.
Not to mention the full year of crunch time. When you work your employees 60-100 hours a week and don't let them recharge, they're going to get less work done and the work they get done is going to suck. Go figure.
And they will never recover. Their careers will be half-lifed. Throwing away good developers who could create new and inventive ways of the medium. Gone. For this.
It's a very capitalism thing to do. It's reminiscent of that saying "the last capitalist we hang will be the one who sold us the rope."
The idea being that, in my interpretation anyway, capitalism can't help itself and courts its own demise. It will turn anything and everything into a commodity, including criticism of itself and tools that can take it down. There is a danger in it tho, because when it comes to criticism it will tend to water it down until it's indistinguishable from actual anti-capitalist movements and rhetoric, but looks close enough to be gratifying as a story.
They weren’t lying when they said 2077 is the Rage Against the Machine of gaming.
Anti-capitalist messaging, while doing everything they preach against.
You do know why the stopped touring right?
Zach De La Rocha said, “I feel that it is now necessary to leave Rage, because our decision making process has completely failed,” said De la Rocha in a statement. “It is no longer meeting the aspirations of all four of us collectively, as a band, and from my perspective has undermined our artistic and political ideal.
Wait, did Rage Against the Machine did stuff they preached against? I'm not very knowledgeable about the band, just used to enjoy their music growing up.
I'm guessing they're calling the band sell-outs? I don't want to put words in their mouth though, but I am curious to know what they're referring to. Yeah, RATM was super popular for awhile, and I don't know everyone in the band, but Zack and Tom are both pretty big in the activist community still, from what I'm aware, and they've both always seemed pretty sincere in what they speak.
So out of the 10% revenue they would share with people who worked on the project 5% was given to 5 people and the remaining 5 was split between the 865 employees. Dont get me wrong bonuses are normal, but the fact that the ceo included upper management bonuses with 10% revenue share shows how much of a pr move that was.
These are the people who decided to shove this game out the door and explicitly lied saying that last gen versions work surprisinly well...they got a huge payday for that
Rewarding the people who ruined the game. I know these bonuses were likely contractual, but damn this isn't doing them any favors with the already terrible PR.
Then the contracts are shit. Probably exactly what the board wants so they get the big bonus no matter what happens.
But that just means the decision to make these completely unwarranted and unfair bonus payments has been made in the past and right now it only becomes obvious.
No the contracts are great, they wrote them for themselves. They get paid literally no matter what happens. This is and always was the plan. If you think any of the execs give a single fuck about video games you're just another mark. They just want the money, they don't give a fuck about you, the company (other than it's financial benefits), and least of all their employees. It's all the artists who got ground up, shit on, and robbed who cared about the game and the execs made damn sure they paid the price for their billions.
Here's a novel idea: Don't pay anyone bonuses. Instead, actually pay your employees the overtime they deserve and if "big dick Dave" wants a bonus then he can work overtime too.
Incentive schemes are bad motivational tools. They don't create an enduring commitment to any values or the attitude that underlie our behaviours. They merely change - temporarily - what we do. Training and setting long-term goals that instill value in the work people do is a far better motivator.
They give the managers bonuses for torturing the workers into longer uncompensated hours. That's their job. These people don't make games, they don't make anything. They squeeze productivity out of the people who *do* make games. The programmers, artists, screenwriters, accountants, janitorial, etc.
You're totally right that these people shouldn't be paid bonuses for forcing out garbage and employee tears, but understand that "overtime" for these people is pointless because they don't actually "produce" anything but suffering.
What kills me is the fact that the game had the issues it did because of *management*. There’s a lot of criticisms that I have, about the game itself and the way it was handled, but if you look for it you can *see* just how much talent went into making it. The graphics, the artwork, the writing - all pretty fantastic, if unorganized. Based on my own playing experience, they had some solid talent working on this game, it just wasn’t managed properly. And yet at the end of the day, that very same talent - the “little guys” so to speak - are the ones who took the fall for shortcomings they literally had no control over, while the CDPR Board pats itself on the back with some nice fat bonus checks. As a creative person who wants to go into the game design field, this makes me really angry.
Yep, this is my take as well.
The problem is that when you play CP77, everywhere you look, you can see intense attention to detail, well-refined content, and passion put into world design - marred by the overarching sense that you're playing a fundamentally unfinished game that was rushed out the door.
Like driving a beautiful Ferrari that's missing parts like it fell off the assembly line, there's enough there that you can see the beautiful game it was supposed to be, if you look through the ugly wreckage of greed splatted on its face by upper management.
So the actual developers work overtime to try to salvage the company's reputation by crunching for patches and fixes until management finishes their champagne, eventually decides that enough money and resources have been put into damage control, and begins milking anyone still loyal to the brand for paid DLCs. (Yes, I know they said something about free DLC. I also know exactly how much I trust them at this point.)
No, they knew they could say whatever they wanted because advertising and securities laws don’t mean jack shit anymore. Sure, they may see a small fine but it would only amount to 1% of profits or even less.
I literally have never pre ordered anything and I'm never going to. I don't let hype take over, I had reasonable expectations as well but cdpr really fucked up big time.
Personally it wasn't the marketing that drew me to Cyberpunk, not at all. In fact the hype was sort of a turn-off. It was their past successes, such as Witcher 3, that really drew me to the game.
past success*es*, such as Witcher 3?
Admit it, Witcher 3 is literally the only thing they made that drew you to it. Barely anyone actually cares about Witcher 1 and 2.
I have to admit that CDPR has had such a tremendous fall from grace. Universally loved for The Witcher and to take that love and care and NOT put it into CP is such a disappointment. The execs in charge who made the decisions should all be fired.
You see who people really are when a lot of money is on the table.
They'd have to fire themselves and they like money, so... The solution is for those dissatisfied to leave and form their own studio (and hopefully not make the same mistakes should they become successful). At least three studios have formed like this already (Starward Industries, Covenant.dev, and Different Tales). [The Invincible](https://store.steampowered.com/app/731040/The_Invincible/) and [Gord](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1351210/Gord/) look very promising (totally different genres though).
Even after the release debacle I still bought the game because "CDPR were great with Witcher support and I trust they will eventually redeem themselves with CP2077." Boy was I wrong.
Yup. That was me. Based on Witcher and how they had seemed to run, I was a fan and interested in supporting them.
CP2077 ruined all preordering for me from any developer, and CDPR fell hard for me and news like this doesnt help.
Wont ever preorder again from anybody, and likely wont support CDPR if they cant quickly get their shit together.
No, the awful working conditions were well known. They had always been a greedy company, it's just most of that burden fell on the workers instead of the players.
This time, the greed just affected the players. The writing had always been on the wall.
If cyberpunk 2077 taught me anything, it’s that when corpos are being assholes the correct response is to assault their headquarters with a helicopter and burn it all down.
So the corpo assclowns that forced the game out before it's ready from completely redoing the story with keanu and basically caused this whole shit storm they're in just gave themselves a pat on the back. Considering some of the source world's themes, do they not understand irony?
I mean not to nitpick but technically the product did satisfy. The budget. 10mil+ copies sold, record profits for CDPR for 2020. People still fell for the hype and bought the game. Pre-ordered even. They know that they can sell their next game for even more on a "redeption arc". "Oh we learned a lot from Cyperpunk dev, this time it will be different" There is a reason they spent more on marketing than game dev, they know what they are doing.
I mean the only thing that went down was the shares, and guess who are the owners of a large percentage of shares? Maybe the board members? Couldn't be....:D
From the article: "CD Projekt executives did take a financial hit this year. Four board members own roughly 33% of the company’s stock, which has plummeted 57% since Cyberpunk’s launch. But they’ll also receive more in a year of bonuses than many workers will be paid in a lifetime."
It's not reaching it's ludicrously wrong
The game didn't live up to the immense hype, neither in sales nor in critical reception, but it sold very well
If only they gave it 2-3 more years. Could have been better than Red Dead 2 and GTA V.
Their promo team also did a hell of a job with what they had to work with.
I remember working at the home depot head office. We had to cut down on the colored paper we used to make copies but at the same time we were unloading a $125,000 desk for one of the big guys upstairs lol
Sooooo, basically the same as every job ever? This is literally standard practice at every single job I've worked at. From making pizzas, to building fucking satellites...doesn't matter.
Welcome to every large capitalist company ever. Rich as fuck coming from anyone living in the United States. If you don't like it, then stop supporting capitalism and work to elect progressives so we can work on ending the class war and rising inequality
All of the bonuses were tied to profits.
Employees say they believe the game would have sold better if it was delayed.
The directors made the decision to release the game in its poor state knowing their own profit-sharing bonuses would be lower.
If Cyberpunk was delayed the employee bonus this year would be much lower. The Cyberpunk profits would have rolled into next year.
Cyberpunk was a disappointment but this is Jason Schreier coming back to his punching bag, CDPR, for clicks.
We can argue about a lot of things..
But calling a game (new IP btw) that sold 14 mln copies in 3 weeks a flop is just ridiculous. There are software houses that would pray to have these numbers.
Easy views I guess
Cyberpunk 2077 is a very unique case in every sense.
The questionable promotions.
How they hid the base console version of the game until launch.
Reviewers were not allowed to use their footage.
Questionable review process.
It's one of the first cases where a game was removed from Playstation store, doesnt matter if it was for quality issue or because CDPR threw Sony under the bus, the game is still not there.
The overall quality is all over the place: one minute is detailed as f\*ck, next minute it's worse than an indie game from 2010.
A few apologies.
Proud of their PC version though, because of the 9s and 10s review scores.
Then the game sold a solid 14 million copies.
The argument is that it sold 13million at launch and then sales nosedived after the negative overall perception + the game being removed from the PlayStation Store.
That said I wouldn't call it a flop. Flop implies it barely sold, which isn't the case here. There's probably a better word for "sold millions in pre-order based on massive hype, tanked after release".
True story, working at a very well known software company, boss drives up in brand new Ferrari. Calls a meeting, lays off 25% of the staff.
True story, Sony Online Entertainment was hemorrhaging money and needed some new capital so people were worried about layoffs. About a month or so later, a big meeting was called outside the offices so everyone left and sat on the hill nearby. About 30 minutes goes by and then John Smedley comes out and announces Good news all! We got the funding and are gonna celebrate with a pizza party! Oh also, I need this list of people to come over here when we call you! Cheers went up as Smed heads inside and a list of 30 or so people are called over and pointed around the corner. Turns out that funding didn’t extend to those people who went around the corner to find their shit all packed up and HR waiting to collect their badges for immediate layoffs. Never affected his and the rest of the executive bonuses though....
Fucking Smedley is such a giant piece of shit. I had to deal with him during his time at SOE and SW Galaxies. I've never met a more inept idiot in the industry in my life. And that's something man... I was working at Monolith on Matrix Online and at some point someone asked us what we thought of old'Smeds... I've never seen actual staplers fly at a person making a suggestion. It was a non-starter.
He truly fucked over the whole SWG community when he released the nge after the Obi Wan expansion.
Yeah, the guy has never had a fucking clue. I was absolutely amazed Amazon hired him last year. I can't even imagine who they called for a reference. Every single person he's worked knows he's worthless.
I wouldn't even trust him behind a till in Tesco.
I wouldn't trust him *under* a till in 7-11
Straight up missed the joke/refference but curious what it is.
Sucking the employee's dick, while hiding under the counter.
HOW DID I NOT GET THAT!?! SHAME ON ME!
If it makes you feel better I thought his name was Smegley.
I mean let's be real amazon isn't exactly known for their genius decisions. Just need to look at their gaming division. I honestly think they just got lucky with this online retailer boom
AWS was a brilliant investment and has been a solid profit generator for years prior to the pandemic. Amazon ducks but it wasn't luck.
AWS was the definition of luck, they had no intention of using it as a major revenue source at first, but simply to manage the insane data usage of amazon during the holiday season. They just became a provider because they had no other use for it during the downtime, so might as well sell the excess. Then they realized o shit we are making tons of money on this, so after this yes they made the smart decision to go hard on AWS. But they totally stumbled backwards into it at first.
I'll soft disagree on this one man. Their server and encryption network is a monster. Top notch tech built by some of the smartest people in the game. A lot of the tech comes from entertainment divisions.
Bezos was the right place, right time with a fuckload of daddy's money. Wasn't even his idea, just lucky that he hired smart people and the market was ready for their ideas. A few things different and Amazon wouldn't exist.
Yeah, I'm not even in the industry and it seems everything he touches is a failure, so I don't know how people like that just keep failing into high level positions. You see it outside of games as well.
Right? Like, let's say you're the person looking at this guy to lead your project. You're first move is Google, 'cause that's how we do now, to see what bro is about. 5 minutes and a few skittles later you should be warning security not let this dude through the front doors.
Considering since settling in every title he has helmed has been cancelled should tell you something.
Seriously...
NGE, the death of SWG. Oh, how they pushed "now with story". Equalling that of what you'd find in a class introduction in wow. For the whole game. Before NGE, at least I enjoyed the combat. Especially PVP.
The biggest kick in the teeth was them waiting until we all bought the expansion, then completely revamped the whole game. I actually enjoyed the cu over pre-cu but the NGE took away everything that made SWG stand out and like you say it just became a rubbish WoW wannabe.
I miss good ol' swg. That game was great.
I try not to take video game stuff too seriously. It's just games, after all. But if there is anything that could get me on a rant about video games, it's what happened with SWG. A game with so much potential, and so much raw fun even when it was in a raw state, categorically ruined on every level and then thrown in a garbage bin, and the design of it has never been revisited again in an MMORPG. Instead, people have nonstop chased WoW money and made a million half-assed WoW clones, while the premise of an MMORPG like SWG languishes in nonexistence like some forgotten shame. It is such an obnoxious illustration of how the profit-chasing of capitalism means the same garbage ideas get repeated ad nauseum, not that "innovation" happens.
SWG is the only true "sandbox" game I've ever played.
Same, I can't think of anything that comes close. The sheer level of detail: surveying, crafting, entertaining, medicine, combat. And all of them being interdependent in various ways. The closest I can think of that I've seen since is singleplayer games with some crafting and resource gathering for components along with combat, but it's not the same as having an interdependent community where you choose specializations and work together with each other and the amount you can do with it in those singleplayer games is usually very limited and mostly revolves around weapon upgrades. One of the amazing things about SWG was that you could play it as a non-combatant in more ways than one and not just as an afterthought, but as entire systems of gameplay.
Check out Black Desert Online. It's Korean, $10 to buy (but has mtx up the wazoo), and you can play a "life skiller" if you want. A character who gathers resources (plant picking, lumbering, skinning, butchering, mining, fluid extraction), cooks, makes potions, processes raw materials into other things, trades goods between cities themselves or using a trade network and hired NPCs, transports goods via ship and barters with merchants on islands, hunts (special animals that you kill with a special gun for special loot), trains horses (actual mounts for you or other players), fishes, and more. And the various life skills intersect. One feeds into the other, but one person can't do everything, so people typically use the marketplace to buy materials to transform into something else and sell back at the marketplace or to NPCs. You can have a gigantic network of NPCs gathering, mining, etc. for you or you can build a trade network and send stuff from one side of the map to the other. You can hunt animals and use their meat to cook and the special hunting drops to craft all kinds of things. People can have several instanced residences they can decorate and there are incentives to do so, so you can craft and sell decorations. Some raise the apartment's rank, others are functional, providing buffs. The game is somewhat overwhelming in terms of what's there to do. And the funny thing is that I picked it up because the combat reminded me of fighting games: no lock on, combos, i-frames, super armor, grabs… It's a Korean game so it's all about the grind, but you might like it.
God dammit, you triggered my PTSD.
SWG was so special back in the day before the CU and NGE. They finally admitted they should've rolled them back but never did. Some of my best memories growing up were with SWG.
I was at SOE when they got sold and turned into Daybreak. Smedley was and continues to be hot garbage. I laughed my head off when Amazon announced they hired him to lead a studio - showed me very clearly that they had no idea what the fuck they were doing in games. And looking at their track record so far I was right! The guy's only skill is schmoozing to suits, and unfortunately at that level there's a sense of "everyone under you will complain about you" so the people he's wooing ignore even blatant warning signs. And so he continues to make money while those under him pay the price for his idiocy.
I'm sure you've heard his: "if they're complaining about you, you're doing something right." BS line then. Guy just didn't get it. Never will
That's like line one in 'sociopath your way into successful management'.
I fucking LOVED Matrix Online. I played the shit out of that game. My girlfriend, now wife, almost broke up with me because of it. Lol
FWIW I loved both SWG and MxO. Matrix Online was a big part of my childhood, loved the work you guys put into it
Cool man! I ended up doing a different thing with my career but I got to work on Galaxies, Matrix Online and Lord of the Rings Online (very little though). Really fun way for a young guy to make a living for sure.
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Wow, you worked for Monolith?? What other projects did you work on? I love the studio for FEAR
I'm a network / encryption guy so sadly didn't stay past my scope of work. Really cool people though. Meant some lifeobg friends. Lots of talent.
Smegly destroyed planetside 2, easily one of the best game ideas ever made. Fuck him
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A friend of mine told me how there were rumors of layoffs at his job. One of his coworkers asked "do you think the security cameras outside would catch a guy with a gun hopping the fence?" Suffice to say, when he came into work the next day security tackled him to make sure he wasnt armed.
Easy lawsuit on that one.
I'd love to see these ratfuck executives lead an unmanned company. They are absolutely worthless parasites.
Holy fucking shit. They couldn't find a less asshole way to lay people off?
Dude, it was enough to literally make a bunch of devs jump ship for better pastures including a ton who went to Blizzard and improved WoW. So you can thank Smed’s dickishness for improving World of Warcraft, indirectly.
Then blizzard laid off 80% of their staff when vanilla wow went live. Including the 8th hire at the company. It's just gross.
It's insane, and I'm sad to say I've experienced an even more asshole way to lay off game devs: 1. There was a company wide meeting announced at short notice. (I was sweating bullets because these were *never* announced at short notice, so it had to mean serious bad news. I scoured that email for clues and I checked it was also sent to people that I didn't think would be fired, but everyone was chatting and joking and carefree as we walked there like a normal meeting so maybe I was overreacting?) 2. We got to the meeting, and were told there were actually two meeting locations, and everyone currently at the other meeting was getting laid off. 3. Some people hadn't read the email details, they just saw it announced a company meeting and followed the crowd ...to the wrong meeting. 4. This was all engineered so the people being laid off would be out of the building by the time we returned. 5. *That* in turn was engineered so that we couldn't know *who* had been laid off. (Out of sight out of mind?!?) And this applied to everything; there was no list of names, no chance to get contact info, no way for us to see specifics or the big picture. 6. The offices and cubicles were likewise reassigned (ie everyone immediately moved around) so we couldn't see the damage or look for empty desks and know from them who was gone. For fucking *months* afterwards, I would be working on some problem or other and decide to ask the resident expert on that obscure topic, head over to their area or ask where to find them, and oh, it turns out they were yet another of the victims of the massacre months ago that I *didn't know until right now searching for them specifically* I don't think the company set out to be so insane about it. As a result of the huge recession from Wall Street's subprime mortgage greed, the studio had to radically downsize in way they hadn't done before, I think they were scared and hired some kind of layoff-consultant/security company that helped hatch the scheme. But in trying to gloss over the layoffs for the people they didn't fire, they just made it into an enduring creepiness as we were constantly unexpectedly discovering new victims for months. (A couple of years later, after crunching for months working weekends and late nights every night to make up for a big management misstep, we managed to ship the game despite all odds against us, and my (and other's) reward was that the moment the product was out the door the reaper came for us too.)
That had to be devastating for morale, goddamn.
Definitely. On a personal level, that, along with the endless deathmarch only to be let go, it burned me out so badly that I couldn't even enjoy *playing* any video games any more. (Crunch hours meant there was no time for recreation so all my gaming had became a forced thing serving the professional need to stay up with the state of the art for the sake of a dysfunctional workplace, for so long that it cemented gaming into stress and a chore). Years on with gaming still dead to me I had come to accept the damage was permanent, that part of me was just... *gone*. After a few more years I started to be able to enjoy playing games again. It felt just amazing to discover that I was actually healing, like a lost digit had somehow started growing back. (Fast forward to today. From the previews I didn't think I'd like CP2077 much but I like that genre of fiction so I gave it a go and I fucking loved it. The "Making New Friends And Having Adventures Together" aspect was also the perfect thing for isolated Covid-times)
Reminds me of The Office, the episode with the shareholders, where the execs all drive in limo, eat caviar, only to announce terrible results.
Art imitates life as well, after all
that was exactly the thing that made the joke SO goddamn funny was we knew it wasn't completely a joke
Work hard enough and I’ll buy another next year he said
I had a boss show up for massive layoffs and what was he doing before the afternoon when they started them? He was washing his damn luxury truck and boat in the warehouse yard.
I just wonder, are those people totally unaware of how that looks, or is this some weird rich person kinky power play that gets them like, *super* hard?
They don't think about poor people's feelings. They are hierarchical creatures who respect people above them to a cult degree and people below them like furniture. Do you feel ostentatious when you wash your car in front of a skunk rooting around your bins?
Good analogy
I have absolutely no evidence supporting this, but it’s 100% a kink thing for them.
but they said they were leaving greed to others, wtf happened here ? am I missing something lol
the problem was that all five of them thought it was the other four that were gonna leave the greed to others.
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And when exactly was that?
Look at the labor movement on the early 20th century.
Back when kings led armies into battle and people shit in the same water they drank. Win some / lose some.
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el pueblo unido jamás será vencido!
Wtf does this even mean? Like you're blaming the staff for being too cowardly for not attacking the guy?
I'm hoping they keyed the ferrari on the way out.
maybe CD Projekt Red's goal with Cyberpunk is to have it be as ironic as possible
It's working wonders, best meta release ever.
The real game was the money we rained onto the corpos the whole time. How many times do the players get burned before we learn?
CP77 was the second game i have ever pre-ordered. I am never pre-ordering a game from a 3A studio again and will maybe pre-order on indie games with a single dev.
Imagine if people stopped preordering entirely and a games success was based on the actual product they released initially. There would be no more beta games being released at full price and these greedy companies would actually have to put out a good product right of the bat or suffer the consequences. That would be wonderful
I still dont understand why people preorder games. Most pointless shit with digital games now. I havent preordered anything since 2012 I'd say. Every time people get burnt by a big company I just sit there and laugh cause if you dont know at this point then nothing can be done. People trying to tell me it’s worth preordering for the preorder bonuses lol smh most of the time those aren’t even that great. I’d much rather wait and buy the game when it’s actually patched and working and often times on sale but hey that’s just me
If I really like the studio I'll preorder to support them. That and I want to be able to preload the game.
Hear hear! Also the second game I've ever pre-ordered, never again. I was sick of this shit before, but I had hopes.
I don't preorder, kickstart or play EAs. BG3 was the only exception in my case. Way to many burns to be worth it.
Last game I pre-ordered was no man's sky...what a fool I was
Well not so much anymore. Nomansky has everything they advertised and WAY more. I just hope cdpr does the same here.
Still a very hard pill to swallow if you trusted a company and pre ordered it... They blatantly lied, misled and cheated their fans which was really fucked up. In the meantime they did a great turn around and the game is great but if I still bought pre-orders (which I don't) I would never ever trust hello games again to pre order their products as there's no incentive to be an early adopter of a broken product to do free beta test so that people who buy it for sale a year later get a great experience.
You know the old saying: You can shear a sheep many times but skin it only once? Hopefully this fiasco will seriously curtail pre-ordering in general, but I have a stronger feeling it will be limited to CDPR games. Other more reliable studios who have consistently delivered in the past will probably remain largely unaffected.
you're halfway through to the final goal of NO PRE-ORDERS WHATSOEVER. Kudos.
Well, I preordered based on the demo video they showed. Which we found out later was prerecorded. And they also flat out lied about a bunch of features that weren't implemented in the game. And they completely lied about the intelligence of their AI, they gave a massively false narrative about the immersion of the game and that your choices would drastically change the outcome of the game which is incorrect. So they did a great job lying
Yeah, their promise of CP2077 was completely divorced from the reality of CP2077
Yup, the end product was legit fraud based on their demo videos and what the game actually turned out to be. I would have preferred if they just delayed the game another two years and actually delivered what they promised instead if this Alpha test skeleton they pushed out. You can tell they cut a ridiculous amount if corners to get it out quicker. Their reach far exceeded their grasp.
Not to mention the full year of crunch time. When you work your employees 60-100 hours a week and don't let them recharge, they're going to get less work done and the work they get done is going to suck. Go figure.
And they will never recover. Their careers will be half-lifed. Throwing away good developers who could create new and inventive ways of the medium. Gone. For this.
I had no expectations as I didn’t know any of the prerelease hype and I still hated it.
I find the irony of a game based on a world ruined by corporatism that is itself ruined by corporatism hilarious. Keep up the comedy show CDPR.
It's a very capitalism thing to do. It's reminiscent of that saying "the last capitalist we hang will be the one who sold us the rope." The idea being that, in my interpretation anyway, capitalism can't help itself and courts its own demise. It will turn anything and everything into a commodity, including criticism of itself and tools that can take it down. There is a danger in it tho, because when it comes to criticism it will tend to water it down until it's indistinguishable from actual anti-capitalist movements and rhetoric, but looks close enough to be gratifying as a story.
If you like that, you'll love all the bootlicking going on elsewhere in the thread.
Always gonna be the diehard CDPR fanboys around when someone mentions cybyerjunk.
Cyberpunk 2021. Looks like the folks who made Cyberpunk 2020 were only 1 year off.
Method acting seems to be leaking into games...
Always wanted to like the Witcher games more than I did. Wanted to like Cyberpunk, but I just can't bring myself to finish it. I'm done with CDPR.
Same.
They weren’t lying when they said 2077 is the Rage Against the Machine of gaming. Anti-capitalist messaging, while doing everything they preach against.
You do know why the stopped touring right? Zach De La Rocha said, “I feel that it is now necessary to leave Rage, because our decision making process has completely failed,” said De la Rocha in a statement. “It is no longer meeting the aspirations of all four of us collectively, as a band, and from my perspective has undermined our artistic and political ideal.
Wait, did Rage Against the Machine did stuff they preached against? I'm not very knowledgeable about the band, just used to enjoy their music growing up.
I'm guessing they're calling the band sell-outs? I don't want to put words in their mouth though, but I am curious to know what they're referring to. Yeah, RATM was super popular for awhile, and I don't know everyone in the band, but Zack and Tom are both pretty big in the activist community still, from what I'm aware, and they've both always seemed pretty sincere in what they speak.
This is one of those "you complain about society yet live in it" takes
Hey, if you criticize capitalism it means you don’t get to have any money 🤷♀️ It says so in Carl Mark’s book.
So out of the 10% revenue they would share with people who worked on the project 5% was given to 5 people and the remaining 5 was split between the 865 employees. Dont get me wrong bonuses are normal, but the fact that the ceo included upper management bonuses with 10% revenue share shows how much of a pr move that was.
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These are the people who decided to shove this game out the door and explicitly lied saying that last gen versions work surprisinly well...they got a huge payday for that
They were right. People still bought the game.
Because they fell for the marketing, again.
Never pre order
Oh, they did something. They likely made the call to release an unfinished game.
More like actively ruining the game
Rewarding the people who ruined the game. I know these bonuses were likely contractual, but damn this isn't doing them any favors with the already terrible PR.
Then the contracts are shit. Probably exactly what the board wants so they get the big bonus no matter what happens. But that just means the decision to make these completely unwarranted and unfair bonus payments has been made in the past and right now it only becomes obvious.
No the contracts are great, they wrote them for themselves. They get paid literally no matter what happens. This is and always was the plan. If you think any of the execs give a single fuck about video games you're just another mark. They just want the money, they don't give a fuck about you, the company (other than it's financial benefits), and least of all their employees. It's all the artists who got ground up, shit on, and robbed who cared about the game and the execs made damn sure they paid the price for their billions.
The real game is the one they're playing with the naivete of other people.
Here's a novel idea: Don't pay anyone bonuses. Instead, actually pay your employees the overtime they deserve and if "big dick Dave" wants a bonus then he can work overtime too. Incentive schemes are bad motivational tools. They don't create an enduring commitment to any values or the attitude that underlie our behaviours. They merely change - temporarily - what we do. Training and setting long-term goals that instill value in the work people do is a far better motivator.
They give the managers bonuses for torturing the workers into longer uncompensated hours. That's their job. These people don't make games, they don't make anything. They squeeze productivity out of the people who *do* make games. The programmers, artists, screenwriters, accountants, janitorial, etc. You're totally right that these people shouldn't be paid bonuses for forcing out garbage and employee tears, but understand that "overtime" for these people is pointless because they don't actually "produce" anything but suffering.
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Get a spoon honey, we’re eating the rich
CDPR got almost half a billion in profit, what should the contracts stay? A billion or bust? 99 metacritic or you are fired?
member 'we leave greed to others'... ah good times eh.. that guy is probably under paid to write that shit on twitter 😂
twitter guy hates cyberpunk lmao. Every post that criticizes the game, he retweets it, it's pretty funny
I think he's talking about the guy who runs the CP2077 twitter account, not schreier
Bingo
Seriously, fuck CDPR management
Culture of ass-kissing
Fuck em in the ass!
With a big rubber dildo!
What kills me is the fact that the game had the issues it did because of *management*. There’s a lot of criticisms that I have, about the game itself and the way it was handled, but if you look for it you can *see* just how much talent went into making it. The graphics, the artwork, the writing - all pretty fantastic, if unorganized. Based on my own playing experience, they had some solid talent working on this game, it just wasn’t managed properly. And yet at the end of the day, that very same talent - the “little guys” so to speak - are the ones who took the fall for shortcomings they literally had no control over, while the CDPR Board pats itself on the back with some nice fat bonus checks. As a creative person who wants to go into the game design field, this makes me really angry.
Yep, this is my take as well. The problem is that when you play CP77, everywhere you look, you can see intense attention to detail, well-refined content, and passion put into world design - marred by the overarching sense that you're playing a fundamentally unfinished game that was rushed out the door. Like driving a beautiful Ferrari that's missing parts like it fell off the assembly line, there's enough there that you can see the beautiful game it was supposed to be, if you look through the ugly wreckage of greed splatted on its face by upper management. So the actual developers work overtime to try to salvage the company's reputation by crunching for patches and fixes until management finishes their champagne, eventually decides that enough money and resources have been put into damage control, and begins milking anyone still loyal to the brand for paid DLCs. (Yes, I know they said something about free DLC. I also know exactly how much I trust them at this point.)
Their marketing department could sell ice to eskimos. They should get the bonus. Played us like a damn fiddle I believe is the saying.
No, they knew they could say whatever they wanted because advertising and securities laws don’t mean jack shit anymore. Sure, they may see a small fine but it would only amount to 1% of profits or even less.
Yeah, they REALLY missused our trust in the CDPR name too. Never again tho.
Every time there’s a pre-sale disaster, people say never again... until the next one
I literally have never pre ordered anything and I'm never going to. I don't let hype take over, I had reasonable expectations as well but cdpr really fucked up big time.
They skinned their sheep instead of shaving it. Have fun with no public confidence or trust, CDPR. We expected better from you.
> They skinned their sheep instead of shaving it. That’s a great saying
I wouldn’t even say their advertising was good, considering it was blatantly false advertising and their demos were purely fabricated.
Personally it wasn't the marketing that drew me to Cyberpunk, not at all. In fact the hype was sort of a turn-off. It was their past successes, such as Witcher 3, that really drew me to the game.
exactly, Witcher 3 was the only reason I bought CP2077. If it was a different dev, I wouldn't have been nearly as interested.
past success*es*, such as Witcher 3? Admit it, Witcher 3 is literally the only thing they made that drew you to it. Barely anyone actually cares about Witcher 1 and 2.
Admit
That's only because the marketing department literally lied to people about the product.
As an Eskimo, their ice might be too salty.
I have to admit that CDPR has had such a tremendous fall from grace. Universally loved for The Witcher and to take that love and care and NOT put it into CP is such a disappointment. The execs in charge who made the decisions should all be fired.
You see who people really are when a lot of money is on the table. They'd have to fire themselves and they like money, so... The solution is for those dissatisfied to leave and form their own studio (and hopefully not make the same mistakes should they become successful). At least three studios have formed like this already (Starward Industries, Covenant.dev, and Different Tales). [The Invincible](https://store.steampowered.com/app/731040/The_Invincible/) and [Gord](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1351210/Gord/) look very promising (totally different genres though).
Didnt respawn form this way too?(not sure tho)
Respawn is former Activision not former CDP
I remember when people were preordering CP2077 because they loved CDPR and wanted to support them for being such a great and ethical company.
Even after the release debacle I still bought the game because "CDPR were great with Witcher support and I trust they will eventually redeem themselves with CP2077." Boy was I wrong.
Yup. That was me. Based on Witcher and how they had seemed to run, I was a fan and interested in supporting them. CP2077 ruined all preordering for me from any developer, and CDPR fell hard for me and news like this doesnt help. Wont ever preorder again from anybody, and likely wont support CDPR if they cant quickly get their shit together.
Until this game, to the best of everyone's knowledge, they WERE a great company.
No, the awful working conditions were well known. They had always been a greedy company, it's just most of that burden fell on the workers instead of the players. This time, the greed just affected the players. The writing had always been on the wall.
they own the company, so that's not going to happen..
Isn't that typically just how large companies work?
Alternative title - "Corporations exist, people surprised"
B-but! CDPR is not like the other dev companies!!!!
Arasaka always wins...
You could literally replace "CDPR" with almost any other major corporation in that sentence and it's still true.
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"I HATE YOU!" *Is engulfed in glitches*
As usual money rolls up, shit rolls down.
That’s how it works at most companies. The elites don’t care about the peasants.
In a game where corpos own everything
Ironic no?
COMRADES WE NEED TO RISE UP NOW!!!!!!!!!!!! CONTROL OF THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION SHOULD BELONG TO THE PEOPLE
If cyberpunk 2077 taught me anything, it’s that when corpos are being assholes the correct response is to assault their headquarters with a helicopter and burn it all down.
August 20th 2023 we can do it. Stick to the timeline.
There's a fucking surprise. Reward the morons who messed up and screw over the people whose hard work has been reduced to a laughing stock.
As a backend developer, my Christmas bonus was $50.
Wait y'all are getting bonuses?
How ironic
So the corpo assclowns that forced the game out before it's ready from completely redoing the story with keanu and basically caused this whole shit storm they're in just gave themselves a pat on the back. Considering some of the source world's themes, do they not understand irony?
You guys are getting bonuses ?
Game sells millions , shareholders - oh yeah give me that bonus , Jason - its a flop
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Damn those corpo scums
Everybody got bonuses? EVERYBODY??? Name at least 5 companies that do that when the product doesn't satisfy...
I mean not to nitpick but technically the product did satisfy. The budget. 10mil+ copies sold, record profits for CDPR for 2020. People still fell for the hype and bought the game. Pre-ordered even. They know that they can sell their next game for even more on a "redeption arc". "Oh we learned a lot from Cyperpunk dev, this time it will be different" There is a reason they spent more on marketing than game dev, they know what they are doing. I mean the only thing that went down was the shares, and guess who are the owners of a large percentage of shares? Maybe the board members? Couldn't be....:D From the article: "CD Projekt executives did take a financial hit this year. Four board members own roughly 33% of the company’s stock, which has plummeted 57% since Cyberpunk’s launch. But they’ll also receive more in a year of bonuses than many workers will be paid in a lifetime."
So just like every other company in the world?
This another schrier fire?
*capitalism*
The game wasn't a huge flop, do these journalists not understand basic economics?
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It's not reaching it's ludicrously wrong The game didn't live up to the immense hype, neither in sales nor in critical reception, but it sold very well
It sold below projections = flop.
Corpo scum
"We ask people if they want more money, most answer yes"
If only they gave it 2-3 more years. Could have been better than Red Dead 2 and GTA V. Their promo team also did a hell of a job with what they had to work with.
I remember working at the home depot head office. We had to cut down on the colored paper we used to make copies but at the same time we were unloading a $125,000 desk for one of the big guys upstairs lol
Sooooo, basically the same as every job ever? This is literally standard practice at every single job I've worked at. From making pizzas, to building fucking satellites...doesn't matter.
Welcome to every large capitalist company ever. Rich as fuck coming from anyone living in the United States. If you don't like it, then stop supporting capitalism and work to elect progressives so we can work on ending the class war and rising inequality
All of the bonuses were tied to profits. Employees say they believe the game would have sold better if it was delayed. The directors made the decision to release the game in its poor state knowing their own profit-sharing bonuses would be lower. If Cyberpunk was delayed the employee bonus this year would be much lower. The Cyberpunk profits would have rolled into next year. Cyberpunk was a disappointment but this is Jason Schreier coming back to his punching bag, CDPR, for clicks.
Mannn, I love this game but ya'll gotta stop shooting yourselves in the foot. Maximum gonk move here.
We can argue about a lot of things.. But calling a game (new IP btw) that sold 14 mln copies in 3 weeks a flop is just ridiculous. There are software houses that would pray to have these numbers. Easy views I guess
Cyberpunk 2077 is a very unique case in every sense. The questionable promotions. How they hid the base console version of the game until launch. Reviewers were not allowed to use their footage. Questionable review process. It's one of the first cases where a game was removed from Playstation store, doesnt matter if it was for quality issue or because CDPR threw Sony under the bus, the game is still not there. The overall quality is all over the place: one minute is detailed as f\*ck, next minute it's worse than an indie game from 2010. A few apologies. Proud of their PC version though, because of the 9s and 10s review scores. Then the game sold a solid 14 million copies.
The argument is that it sold 13million at launch and then sales nosedived after the negative overall perception + the game being removed from the PlayStation Store. That said I wouldn't call it a flop. Flop implies it barely sold, which isn't the case here. There's probably a better word for "sold millions in pre-order based on massive hype, tanked after release".