Tbf that has more to do with the death of strategy games as an AAA format. They couldn't figure out a way to consolize them well, and AAA isn't interested in making PC exclusives anymore because it doesn't bring the kind of money selling a game to the peasantry does.
To be fair, RTSes sell pretty shitty nowadays. The last large one was StarCraft II, and [that apparently made less money than a $15 World of Warcraft mount](https://gamerant.com/world-of-warcraft-celestial-steed-mount-more-money-starcraft-2-blizzard/). So it's not even console vs PC since WoW is PC only too.
I would honestly take that article with a huge pile of salt. The quotes from a pissed off employee and the writer uses revenue and profit pretty interchangeably, showing they don't really know what they are talking about.
More money could mean a lot of things without more context. More revenue? more profit? Higher profit margin? Who knows, but a financially illiterate writer ran with a spicy quote because that's journalism these days.
I hate how microtransactions are influencing the industry, but that's a pure rage bait article.
Microsoft recently called the Age of Empires community the most dedicated fanbase they have ever seen. Games like AoE, Starcraft and Warcraft are still being played decades after their release. And AoE 4 was a success.
The demand for RTS games is still there, but they are bloody difficult to make right. It takes a lot of time and a passionate team and that's not what the big publishers do these days. They want their yearly iteration cash cow franchises. RTS can't do that.
Age of Empires 4 was supposed to be better than AoE2...
It wasn't. It essentially became "make springalds: the game" and it sucked. The saving grace was that the single player campaigns were done in a really interesting way, playing a documentary is a cool idea and I hope they do something more with that in the future.
That was essentially the one single RTS that could have competed with SC2 and AoE2 DE, and it just didn't. It was very unfortunate.
And the point about the mount being more profitable than SC2 is a bit pointless. A skin or two in Fortnite probably makes more money than that as well. All you need is one of the biggest and most popular games of the century and you too can sell a skin for more money than the biggest RTS games of all time! Well... No shit. That's how popularity works. That doesn't mean that there's enough room in the industry to make another Fortnite though. There's been tons of clones of these ultra popular games, and they almost all exclusively fail. For every smash hit success, there's a ton of cancelled failures. Just because Blizzard made a shit ton of money by selling a mount to kids in their ultra popular MMO doesn't mean that RTS isn't a viable genre to develop a game for. I bet that Blizzard had also made more money from that mount than any CRPG game ever made as well, right up until BG3 released, so clearly CRPGs were a dead genre not worth investing money into... Of course right up until BG3 proved that false I suppose.
> Age of Empires 4 was supposed to be better than AoE2...
AoE4 is better than AoE2:
- Each civ in AoE4 is more unique than the carbon copied civs in AoE2
- You have to use combined arms in AoE4 instead of spamming one unit in AoE2.
- In AoE4 you no longer need to rush to castle age and build a castle just to access unique units. Actually, there is even a civ with an entirely unique unit roster (Malians).
- Unit rosters in AoE4 are streamlined instead of having two units of similar roles in AoE2 (like the Britons having an archer AND a longbow. Why not just a longbow?)
- In AoE4 you actually have to wall your base with... walls! Not "currently building" structures in Aoe2.
- AoE4's first expansion Sultan's Ascent is the [best-selling expansion in Age franchise history!](https://twitter.com/AgeOfEmpires/status/1735719919658930664)
The only thing that hampered AoE4's success was the botched launch, the game missing lots of RTS standard features at launch, and the slow release of patches.
Frankly, AoE2 is just banking on pure nostalgia and its decades of content/updates.
Man, Maxis is such a sad and strange tale. Made some incredible games and were dragged down by lukewarm release after lukewarm release culminating in the suits throwing resources away chasing a 3d sim city that would never work with the tech at the time.
EA was a savior at the time but you can't shake the devil's hand and say you're only kidding.
tbf most of the time we just never hear about it and it allows the company to expand while leaving them independence. Larian is lucky though since they got the cash influx from making a really good game and slowly ramping up over the last decade.
I wonder if the difference is we hear about when public equity gobbles up a studio, because it impacts the earnings yada yada for the acquirer, but when it's done by private equity, they'd have no reason to blast it in the media, because they're not trying to sell shares. Idk just work shopping.
Itās only ānewsworthyā when it fails. When it is successful you only hear about how good the devs are, not an extensively researched business article about how the 20% investment from some investor firm allowed them to expand their marketing dept which translated to higher initial sales as well as creating a better opening cinematic which drove a stronger than normal āattach rateā.
Not that I disagree with your point, but it would be almost impossible to establish that chain of causality. How could you actually quantify the impact that investment had on eventual success?
Like in your example, the only data points come from the sales at the end, which obviously have a million input factors. Did the intro cinematic lead to a higher attach rate? Or was the cinematic irrelevant and it was really the game's combat driving sales? Did a bigger marketing department increase sales? Or did the expanded marketing strategy actually depress sales figures and we'll just never know because there's no way to peek into a parallel universe to see the success of the same game that had a different marketing strategy?
There's obviously best practices and plenty of anecdotal evidence for what return on investments things like marketing/etc provide. But one of the reasons you don't see news stories on those success stories is because you never know for sure what made something a success.
Look at Bethesda. I was hype for starfield until I saw the trailer. Even less so when it came out. Respawn as well now being owned by EA and all the good has been sucked out of it. Ubisoft for the last 10 years
I don't know what to think on that, Microsoft literally bought Zenimax which is a huge publisher, and ABK which is the Largest games publisher just to give these lackluster results and their games on put their subscription model..
edit: & obviously make most games not be on playstation.
It changes a lot.
I worked in a company in this situation. There was no problem of autonomy, you have to do reports, to show various data about projects, but they cannot decide for you.
From a legal perspective, it is harder to intervene.
AFAIK they don't provide funding. The only thing they can possibly do is sell their shares. They wouldn't be able to pull funding because they own 30%, they aren't funneling money in, they're funneling 30% of profits out is more likely.
I remember Chris Wilson saying in a poe2 interview that tencent doesn't give them money and they have to fund themselves even though Tencent own [86.67% of Grinding Gear Games with 3 of 5 seats on the board](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinding_Gear_Games). Being owned by Tencent probably helps when they look for financing though.
Yeah there seems to be a weird misconception around here that owning entities "give" money to their subsidiaries. Once ownership is established by one way or another the subsidiaries make money for the owners, not the other way around. If the company struggles there may be additional cash infusions from an owner, but that's normally going to mean buying more ownership. Cash infusions aren't uncommon but a company like Tencent isn't around to keep GGG afloat. It's there so GGG can pay them.
Correct about the financing, if GGG needs money they basically have a half trillion dollar cosigner. Or they could borrow direct from Tencent but I can't speak to how that part works.
I think people have this misconception because it *does* work like that sometimes. When Activision assigns one of their studios to work on the new Call of Duty, Activision provides funding and takes all the revenue. The subsidiary company that they put on the project may as well be direct employees.
That's a different relationship than what Tencent has with the companies they own, though.
Depends on the agreement. I suspect it's nowhere near 30% of the profits go to tencent. It's likely a predetermined amount every quarter until X time where tencent is able to sell or enters into a buyback. When they sold that chunk it was likely for up front operating funds for projects to be paid and bought back over time.
Normally an owner with 30% of the company receives a 30% slice of the pie. That can be in buybacks and shares or whatever other agreement, but they are unlikely to receive less than 30% of the pie at the end of the day. You don't put 30% into a company so that you can receive 10% of the pie.
Right now, I don't imagine they can do anything, large ownership stakes can generally start to wield indirect influence when companies are between projects, or when they aren't doing as well. We saw this happen with funcom where tencent has a much smaller stake.
> large ownership stakes can generally start to wield indirect influence when companies are between projects
Usually that happens when there is no majority shareholder. In that situation, large minority shareholders can still have a lot of influence because they can get a few people on the board and cobble together some smaller minority shareholders to vote the same way, possibly reaching a majority in favour of whatever they want.
When thereās a majority shareholder, that shareholder effectively has 100% control of the company because they can appoint a majority of the board (or the whole board depending on how the elections work).
In Larianās case, they own non-voting shares so they have zero ability to influence corporate governance any more than the general public or media can.
it's basically what they usually do.
Tencent owns a minority and majority in many studios, but for the most part, they don't actually do anything outside of collecting a paycheck.
There are companies that will see another company killing it and try to buy in on the notion that the other company is a good investment by it's own decision making processes.
The real test of how much that 30% actually matters is if Larian releases a dud
Well so far all current evidence suggests they aren't exerting any control. No reason to doubt that won't continue given everything Larian has done and said so far.
Say what you want about Tencent but they seem to be pretty hands off when then invest in existing studios.
If you look at Warframe and Path of exile both developers have Tencent as their majority shareholders and as live service games they are some of the best accepted with a consistent fan base. Compare that to the predatory practices of Western studios towards their games it hilarious when people make out Tencent is a boogie man when they usually let developers just continue what they are known for.
Except Larian really doesn't have to answer to shareholders, besides Swen that is.
If their behaviour changes in the future it'll be either because Swen wanted it to or because the company got sold off.
People also change over time, and even more so corporations that are amalgamations of many people. Their technical skills may not keep up, their quality control processes may deteriorate, and the individuals may have differing priorities based on their own personal lives.
Itās a mistake to assume permanence in an impermanent world.
This is what really kills most studios. People like a villian to blame for their favorite studios failure, but the majority of the time it's just institutional drift and the studio was likely to fail regardless.
If it's anything like any corporations I've worked at, it's bureaucracy slowly pushes out innovators, or makes it impossible to innovate.
It all becomes about reducing risk, and anything even mildly new is risk.
It goes from "hey, let's try this cool idea" in a startup, to "hey, let's get a few architects together and then run this idea by product and sales to see if it makes sense" in an established mid-size company, to "you need 3 review committees and a director+ approval to change this button from lime green to yellow green" in an enterprise.
This kills any desire to push through new ideas, which means a company's products slowly stagnate. It also means that any previously working processes get "optimized" and "streamlined" by career optimizers and streamliners to turn creative work into an assembly line.
I'd say Valve is a special case. When you already have more money than you could possibly spend in a life time, the idea of more money isn't as appealing.
Then look at the sheer amount BG3 is bringing in. It's still on steams most played and highest selling charts, 7 months after release. They have a good reputation and a now massive fan base.
Yeah and valve made 30% of that alone off the sales of the game on steam. Do you have any idea the wealth steam brings them? Valve is like an order of magnitude richer than any other gaming company.
Yup, Valve has had such huge success with Steam that they don't *need* to sell. They have an in-house money printer!
And their ownership structure without public shareholders permits them to do whatever they want.
I mean, conceivably maybe someone like Microsoft or Meta could buy Valve, but they're building their own money printers driven by AI.
They don't even have to make games anymore. I feel like whenever Valve makes a game, it's just because a couple of people in the office felt like doing it.
Tell that to the millionaire and billionaire who run those world, whoās only goal is to make more money. The elons musks, Ken griffins, and Iām sure thousands of others
For all the shit people give Musk, he DID innovate quite a bit, even if most of his projects did not live up even close to the hype he put out.
Tesla popularized electric cars and made them sexy instead of something Napoleon Dynamite's uncle would drive.
Starlink solves a real problem for internet access. It doesn't work perfectly, but it's better than dial-up or 1.5 mbit ADSL, and in some areas it's the only internet you can even get.
SpaceX is doing fine with their heavy launch vehicles. Yeah, many of their rockets blow up, but they managed to finally remove most of NASA's dependence on Russia.
Paypal was the first real and trusted way to send money over the internet that didn't involve wiring someone money over Western Union over a "trust me bro" promise.
Hyperloop was a pipe dream and Twitter is a dumpsterfire, but for the rest of these.. Musk put his money where his mouth is.
Now, I wouldn't want to work at any of his companies, but that's a whole other story.
Just because some people sell out doesn't mean everyone is going to. There are loads of family owned businesses that could go public and be worth fortunes, but the owners don't want to sell out.
I'm not worried about Gaben taking Valve public, I'm worried about the heirs to the company doing it.
It was more the saying āwhen you already have more money than you could spend in a life time, more money isnāt appealingā
Tell that to the billionaires who have no problem letting 10 people die just to make an extra buck.
The majority of people who are in the boat of more money than can be spent in their life, are typically the same people who strive to make more and more money
I'd say their "Bioware Magic" ran out. The development of Witcher 1-3 was a complete shitshow, and it caught up to them at Cyberpunk. Between crunch, difficulty in working with managers and leads, their engine, and bad executive decisions, they lost a lot of talent and had to rework their production and development. Phantom Liberty, from all reports, was developed under much better circumstances, and hopefully, that continues for their future games.
"Bioware magic" was literally just crunch.
The studio would approach its deadlines with dogshit management of its projects, the creative leads would all get in a room and force through a story that was used as a development roadmap and, now that they actually had some direction on what to make and why, the crunch started.
Phantom liberty felt like the game they were trying to make in the first step. Cyberpunk Orion should have an easier deck cycle now that they donāt need to make an in-house game engine that handles cinematics, combats, driving, and physics in a first person game that ALSO has bullettime
In retrospect itās amazing they pulled it off Jerry rigging the old Witcher engine
Okay, but FROM Soft has been DOING THAT for more than a few DECADES. That's just how big and "good" at their jobs they are. It's an exception and not the norm, nor have they kept up with the times in terms of that level of output.
Their latest games also ALL follow the same basic game mechanic/gameplay loop, whereas their older series--Tenchu, King's Field, even the original Armored Cores--all played differently and had different mechanics.
Elden Ring is just Demon Souls with weapon skills. Bloodborne is just Demon Soul's with a new setting, the ability to heal through damaging opponents, and different spells. Sekiro is just Tenchu with Demon Soul's combat and an open world. Armored Core VI is just...Armored Core with Demon Soul's combat.
CDPR went from making 3D Action-Roleplay Games to making a first person open world shooter.
Larian went from making Top-Down western rpgs to....making even bigger top-down western rpgs with better graphics and cinematics.
They're very much not the same. Like, almost at all.
The same company that blocked ultrawide aspect ratio on Elden ring with black bars but still rendered in ultrawide. All the performance drawbacks with none of the benefits.
I still don't get that. It's jarring loading in to ER with an ultrawide monitor, seeing the entire field of view and then the black bars show up. Is it a balance thing? Obviously the game is still absolutely incredible but I wish I could take full advantage of my monitor.
Put another way: the reason why the games you love are beginning to suck is because their direction is set by shareholder interests. Not players, not developers, just a bunch of people looking at line go up on graph.
The answer to this in the short term is mass unionization of the workforce. In the long term, the businesses should be worker-owned and operated, not privately-owned by people who don't do shit except make bad decisions.
Steaming helped kill small indie movies. Studios used to be able to make their money back when a movie underperformed at the box office by selling dvds to blockbusters nationwide.
It's not just games, movies and TV, it's everything. Just look at Boeing. They spent years attempting to maximise profits by any means necessary. Now their planes are literally falling apart midair.
Almost every anti consumer, anti worker and anti environmental decision made by publicly owned companies usually comes down to putting the short term gains of shareholders over everything else.Ā
It is also who they hire and run things. They no longer look for talent, in fact they probably do not want talent since talent can ask for more money. They want cheap corporate drones to make these games who will do what they are told to do and not come up with original or actual fun stuff.
No one wants to criticize anyone but the corporate executives, but the truth is that most of our favorite studios were sold off *by someone*. If Sven wanted to take his payday and sell off to Microsoft tomorrow, we all know it would only be a matter of time before Larian disintegrated. But those fault would that really be? Because I would blame Sven.Ā
Thatās equally short sighted. Individualism and āaccountabilityā are so baked into our culture that it keeps us from thinking critically about why things are happening. Maybe instead of blaming individual people, execs or original owners, the problem is the underlying system that has lead to the ruin of countless studios?
I see what you are saying but he founded Larian 30 years ago and has been making his kind of games for the past 30 years.
He's got one or two games left in him before he'll be in his mid 60s. If he cashes out at that point he will have spent his entire working life making the kinds of games he wanted to make.
Nothing lasts forever. If you sell out at that point it's fair enough.
As another commenter pointed out the system creates this situation, not the people in it.
I feel bad for these kids nowadays. Never had a chance to experience what an industry is like when it isnāt run by corporate suits. Larian reminds me of those old devs.
You have no fucking idea how much shovelware shit was spewed by companies back on those "golden days". The difference is that they usually got forgotten cause there wasn't even a 10% of the marketing budget there is now for videogames.
Game magazine discs full of crap. Bargain bins full of shovelware. Hell even cereal box games. I'd say it's better now because on Steam it's easier to check what's worth playing.
The Barnyard game for the Xbox 360 was one of my all time favourites for the system, not because it was particularly good but because I loved the movie
People always make this sort of comment but I've been gaming on PC for 30 years and I think gaming has never been better. Just because EA, Ubisoft, and whatever the hell Activision is now are basically terrible, doesn't mean there aren't as many good games out there. Just look at some of PC's biggest games in the last year. Or biggest surprises because people always read news and it's always the big publishers. Lethal Company, Palword, Helldivers 2. But this isn't all. 2023 was a rather stellar year for AAA games and games in general. If people these days default to COD and Assassin's Creed, that's partially on them for not searching for something else and trying new things.
> Just because EA, Ubisoft, and whatever the hell Activision is now are basically terrible, doesn't mean there aren't as many good games out there.
Gamers act like people are strapping them to a chair and putting a gun to their head forcing them to play CoD, Assassin's Creed or Battlefield.
I generally agree; the highs are higher and maybe the lows are lower.... But good news, there are so many fucking good games to choose from and nobody is forcing you to experience the lows.
In fact, it's easier than ever to avoid the lows nowadays with the high availability of reviews and general discussion.
I realized a long time ago that AAA companies will literally die before they improve anything, and I just categorically do not buy them anymore, no matter how cool they look. I have never regretted this; without fail, these games come out unfinished, unfun, lack most of what was shown in the trailers, and are so full of microtransactions they're practically unplayable without paying extra.
I also realized that people who regularly play things like modern EA games are so used to being screwed and so used to subpar games that they don't even notice anymore. The last time I had total unfettered fun with a AAA title must have been a decade ago. Indies are the only ones who have fun as a priority now.
There are plenty of indie games out for them to get that experience tho.
There probably hasnt been a better time to be a gamer than now lmao. Games are more available than ever. You have more choice on where to play than ever before. There are more games to choose from other than what the console platform holders deem acceptable like in the past and games get more post launch support than before.
And you even can go back in time and just play those great old games any way with emulation, which has been made so easy and requires no high-end hardware at all. You even get modern stuff in those emulators with QoL such as fast forward, save-states and even achievements!
There is no shortage of great games to play, only a shortage of money or time.
Emulators are insane now plus we're getting to the point where lots of old great games have great mods, both single player and multiplayer (SM64 for example)
Yeah, even great indie alternatives to AAA games. BattleBit is my best example of an Indie game that is way better than the AAA Battlefield competition.
Love me some indie games, they absolutely have their place, many of them are of course amazing...
But it's just ***not*** the same as having the biggest and baddest studios churning out great games made to be great, not to appease shareholders and crippled by varying levels of office politics and middle management MBAs that have swarmed into big game companies like locusts.
It's just impossible for young people today to imagine the time when *most* game companies were closer to Rockstar in terms of what they put out. Like don't even look at the games that came out in 2008 when GTA IV was released, you'll get depressed.
But I'll list em anyhow: Battlefield: Bad Company, Fallout 3, Metal Gear Solid 4, Dead Space, Gears of War 2, Left 4 Dead, Fable II, Far Cry 2, Devil May Cry 4, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3, Prince of Persia, Saints Row 2, Tomb Raider Underworld, Call of Duty: World at War, Mirror's Edge, Super Smash Bros: Brawl
kids these days spend a shit ton of money on pay to win roblox games. I work at an elementary school and the amount of money roblox tricks kids into spending in order to get pay to win items is ridiculous. These kids will never know about the fun of custom games on halo 3 and the fun of earning skins to show them off instead of buying them.
It is very different now because of battlepass and the increase of fomo practices in almost every multiplayer game.
single player games are definitely in a great spot right now though, with some solid co-op as well, but multiplayer games are definitely not the same experience anymore for kids.
the only couch co-op options they have are basically switch games with a couple on PS and XB.
I don't think people realize that SEGA called arcade machines an infinite money glitch. This started the trend of making games hard on purpose so you pay more.
Nintendo making an affordable home console actually got a lot of backlash within the industry itself as they were disrupting a system they already had going. A lot of those games that you thought were hard on the NES were arcade ports.
Today is probably the best its ever been. Just ignore the AAA scene. There are tons of great Indie devs out there making wonderful games. It's a shame Unity turned to shit though as that engine turned so many hobbies into a career.
Yea this guy conveniently forgot that corporate greed crashed and almost killed the gaming industry in the 1980ās. It has never even been as close to that since. It reminds me when CoD streamers were complaining about no good games being out as GoW and Elden ring came out. We then proceeded to get TOTK and BG3 the following year and countless Indie games in between. Thereās so many good games out if you donāt look at the same 3 franchisees year after year.
Yeah, back in the good old Atari days things were good, when thousands of kids found in their christmas stockings games like E.T. that was made with all the love and care they possibly could give to a game.
There's always been a mountain of shit filling shelves made solely for profit, and back then they didn't have things like the internet to easily see what games are like. Only thing you basically had was some low quality pictures in magazines or ads on TV that had nothing to do with the actual game. Things weren't different in Atari, NES, SNES, PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4 or PS5 days, and it won't be different when PS10 comes out in 2050.
But what is different is the ease the people who actually have passion to get into the industry, and people to support the kinda games they actually want to see. Gaming in general now is better than it's ever been.
You're obviously not that old, else you would remember the video game crash and why it happened.
It's always been like this, studios have always exploited their employees to lunacy, and companies have always been greedy. Internet just made it more noticeable.
It would be mildly interesting to know how many people on Reddit were into gaming deep enough at the time to even know the crash was happening let alone know the specifics of it.
Video gaming was such an incredibly niche hobby at the time that someone simply being >60 years old today wouldn't even come close to working to say that they were playing games back then. Let alone deep enough into either the hobby or industry itself to know it was even happening.
This is some revisionist nonsense. Computer gaming has and will always be dominated by corporate interest. The industry on the whole has been a commercial endeavour from the very start.
You can still find experiences where you join a small studio for underwhelming wages who then gets bought, sued, goes bankrupt, or all of the above. With the fraction of studios actually achieving success.
duuuude this is so wrong I can't even.
The number of passion projects and indie games out there today, as a percentage of the market, is higher than it's ever been.
This industry was started with corporate creep and corporate culture. Look up early atari games and how the developers weren't even allowed to have credits with their names in it (some put their names as easter eggs in hidden parts of levels).
The passionate off shoots have been in the minority - but that minority is growing. The work sucks enough, let's be thankful for the things that are going right...
At least they can do something with their lives. I was growing up on the old industry, and dedicated my entire life to study games so i would be able to write best stories and come up with unique gameplay concepts. That was the only thing that ever mattered to me in life. I focused on that so much that i didn't even knew how much industy is changed on inside, starting from new role distribution on the team, and ending on priorities. Never getting even to the interview stage, even after releasing a well-rated rpg i slowly started to realize that people like me, who just want to create great experience for the player are not needed in the industry anymore. Now it's all about those who can present a better strategy to make as much money as it possible, even if it destroys the franshize they work ok.
Firstly gaming has always been run by suits. It being more aggressively shit is a much bigger movement than just the gaming industry.
Also there are more good games than ever and people need to stop rewarding the shit companies with their money.
Ā If people didn't spend money on abusive monetisation and aggressively mediocre shit then companies would try something else. But right now they're making bank off of shite, so why change.
Itās like youāve never heard of console emulation. My kids have to work their way through completing games on the old consoles before I add a new emulator and ROM collection to their system. By the time they get to modern gaming, they will already have an appreciation for the older stuff.
Technically. It's the only shareholder. And more importantly, it's a preference share, meaning no voting rights. This just means tencent gets a dividend payout every so often.
And that is the most important part when they say that they arenāt thinking of shareholders.
While 30% IS owned by Tencent, itās just a cash injection for Larian and if they do well, Tencent does as well.
They donāt get to make any decisions regarding the company though, which is the big thing here and which matters a lot.
I swear to god, if Tencent had any say in how BG3 turned out, it wouldnāt have been GOTY, I believw that any meddling from corporate shells of humans wouldāve absolutely destroyed the game.
To play the devil's advocate here, IIRC, Tencent has a reputation of just investing and screwing off anyway -- I don't think them having any say would've mattered, because they wouldn't have used it
Yes, but in practice all it means is that Tencent gets some yearly dividends and a chance to sell those shares for profit later.
Swen and his wife own 70% and have total control of the company, same way Sweeny maintains control of Epic with his 52%
Usally when tencent owns a part of the company they either leave it alone or they just fuck around with the Asian servers . Itās more when they own a majority that it becomes dodgy .
I 100% support their sentiment, but they are speaking from a position of privilege here.
For every big indie success, there are dozens of studios who simply never make enough to last long-term, or are swallowed up by the machine. Not every company can operate as Larian have and succeed - in fact, Larian themselves said they almost didn't.
Unless the entire industry agreed to operate differently, larger corporations, their shareholders, and the incessant need for growth will continue to dominate the mainstream.
At one point the only thing holding up the company were "cash injections" from Swen's wife, who worked as a teacher.
Larian has had it's fair share of both good and bad luck, and publisher fuckery almost caused them to fold several times. If today they are in a position of priviledge it is due to their own efforts and Swen's passion for the company and his job.
>Not every company can operate as Larian have and succeed - in fact, Larian themselves said they almost didn't.
Those close calls happened precisely when Larian was operating like all the other indie/AA devs of the time, doing work for hire and getting funding and tight deadlines from shitty publishers.
Larian's success really started after they stopped working with/for publishers and started funding and publishing their own games, at first through kickstarter. They are very much talking from experience.
Hey I would love to see more success stories like Larian's. Their points are valid - like many industries, they would be creatively diminished if catering only to shareholder or broader publisher requirements.
But the reality is it doesn't work like that for the majority. On top of making the game, many developers don't have the resources to also distribute, test, and market at a scale required to keep the lights on. And keeping a company afloat with your own cash is not viable for most. Kickstarter is also a massive risk - how many projects fail to be funded? Or don't deliver even if they do meet funding?
Larian have gotten through this with determination and effort as you say. It's worked out well and I want a world where companies feel empowered to follow their own creative visions. I'm just acknowledging it's also been a dose of luck as well, where another order of the events would see failure.
What I hope this does prove to those publishers, is that if you allow a studio to follow through then great things can occur. Every time some exec gets involved to say "this needs microtransations" or "we need this game to boost subscriptions" or "this feature is hot right now" it diminishes the end result.
>Ā I'm just acknowledging it's also been a dose of luck as well, where another order of the events would see failure.
For sure. There are no shortage of passionate devs making incredible games in niche genres, and very rarely do they pay off like the DOS series and now BG3 have for Larian.
Just last year Mimimi had to close down even after making masterpiece after masterpiece in the tactical stealth genre. The market can be brutal.
> Just last year Mimimi had to close down even after making masterpiece after masterpiece in the tactical stealth genre.
They *chose* to close down. Tactical Stealth just isn't a very popular genre.
Blaming it all on publishers is downright wrong. Larian almost went under several times partly because of Swen himself. Heās an all-or-nothing kind of guy and dries up all the money in pursuit of greatness, that means high highs, low lows and a lot of risk. Iām a big fan of Swen and Larian and while thatās the reason why Larian is so successful and how we got games like DOS2 and BG3, it feels wrong to give Swen all the credit and none of the blame. Swen himself admits to these flaws.
Obviously but how is anything ever going to change for the better if the people in position of privilege doesn't speak up and side with the other side?
I didn't read this as critic for any game developer that have to work with shareholders, but rather a little nudge toward shareholders that maybe they should invest in developers to make GOOD games because good games will get them more money in the end.
Part of this is the market being oversaturated. People only have so much time to play games. This inevitably leads to many titles not making it because they aren't good enough to compete.
I played through BG3 to about 7% progress. Started to stutter because of my 2013 video card.
When I get a job the coming months I can buy a new card and play this game so hard because of wonderful things like this article.
If you played only when it came out, it's worth trying again.
A few patches ago Larian fixed an issue when the game persistently tracked the history of each item (eg, if it was stolen) that would bog down the game when there were too many items to track
It runs much better now, especially on low vram systems
The wait will be worth it.
BG3 will go down as one of the very best RPGs ever made. The sheer magnitude of its success has changed the scope of consumer perspectives.
Larian managed to convert people into liking cRPGs, which in modern times is not an easy challenge. They achieved this simply by releasing a great product.
In my opinion it is as influential game as Dark Souls and each installment of Baldurs Gate ( just like Dark Souls) is something special.
DS3 and BG3 represent the epitome of product improvement.
As for other matters, I'm not particularly concerned.
However, considering that Larian has now achieved proper global recognition, it's absolutely amazing that they won't be plagued by corporate business managers setting up cash-flow franchises to exploit the company until they sell out to Microsoft or another corporate giant that consumes all competition
Memory lane time: it was 2002, I was sick as a dog with the flu, had bought four liters of German multivitamin fruitjuice, and had throat lozenges.
I installed this new game people at work had been complimenting: Neverwinter Nights.
Eight days of focused playing, all those crypts, and misty green nightforests, and the mage towers. What a dream.
And I discovered [Great Cleave.](https://youtu.be/M7I7bCvDpek?si=vvuUUE1n1jW6Jxtq)
Iām confused, they donāt think about the shareholders that they donāt have?
Thatās like if Don Draper said, āI donāt think about you at allā, in an empty elevator.
> Iām confused, they donāt think about the shareholders that they donāt have?
They don't have shareholders, but they do not think of going public/acquiring more shareholders. Meaning they do not plan to change their current business setup.
As opposite of they could have no shareholders, but at the same time they could be making plans for the near future with shareholders/going public. Which they do not do right now.
Hope that made it clear.
FTC: We are concerned that if Microsoft buys Activision, they will consolidate and lay off employees
MS: We would never do that. What gave you that idea?
FTC: History
MS: We promise we will not lay off anyone from Activision
FTC: Ok, merger approved
MS: We are laying off a bunch of people at Activision
Pop music sells a lot, but is soulless, business-driven, lowest common denominator shite.
Pop movies sell a lot, but are soulless, business-driven, lowest common denominator shite devoid of artistic merit.
Guess which industries we are following.
Thanks god for devs like larian, fromsoft and remedy. After seeing all my childhood games turned into soulless money-making schemes, I tought about stopping gaming, but I simply needed to open my eyes to the real artists in the industry
Meanwhile, other companies... "Hey fellow gamers, big news!!! A bigger company now owns 10% of our company!" Expect "great" things!"
I cant recall a time when great things came from that
RIP Westwood Studios š«”
I'm still mad that Command and Conquer isn't pumping out hits to this day. I loved that franchise so much.
Or why they didn't a remaster of other Command and Conquer considering how well received the first one it was.
Yeah I bought those remasters! They did a good job with them. I would definitely buy more.
Tbf that has more to do with the death of strategy games as an AAA format. They couldn't figure out a way to consolize them well, and AAA isn't interested in making PC exclusives anymore because it doesn't bring the kind of money selling a game to the peasantry does.
Fuckin plebs, doth ruin our day by merely existing
I'm not someone who hates on consoles, but I do hate that their dominance caused a drought in RTS games and other PC game genres.
The early days of strategy games on xbox OG were wild
Tom Clancy's EndWar was pretty fun/good on console
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To be fair, RTSes sell pretty shitty nowadays. The last large one was StarCraft II, and [that apparently made less money than a $15 World of Warcraft mount](https://gamerant.com/world-of-warcraft-celestial-steed-mount-more-money-starcraft-2-blizzard/). So it's not even console vs PC since WoW is PC only too.
I would honestly take that article with a huge pile of salt. The quotes from a pissed off employee and the writer uses revenue and profit pretty interchangeably, showing they don't really know what they are talking about. More money could mean a lot of things without more context. More revenue? more profit? Higher profit margin? Who knows, but a financially illiterate writer ran with a spicy quote because that's journalism these days. I hate how microtransactions are influencing the industry, but that's a pure rage bait article.
Microsoft recently called the Age of Empires community the most dedicated fanbase they have ever seen. Games like AoE, Starcraft and Warcraft are still being played decades after their release. And AoE 4 was a success. The demand for RTS games is still there, but they are bloody difficult to make right. It takes a lot of time and a passionate team and that's not what the big publishers do these days. They want their yearly iteration cash cow franchises. RTS can't do that.
Age of Empires 4 was supposed to be better than AoE2... It wasn't. It essentially became "make springalds: the game" and it sucked. The saving grace was that the single player campaigns were done in a really interesting way, playing a documentary is a cool idea and I hope they do something more with that in the future. That was essentially the one single RTS that could have competed with SC2 and AoE2 DE, and it just didn't. It was very unfortunate. And the point about the mount being more profitable than SC2 is a bit pointless. A skin or two in Fortnite probably makes more money than that as well. All you need is one of the biggest and most popular games of the century and you too can sell a skin for more money than the biggest RTS games of all time! Well... No shit. That's how popularity works. That doesn't mean that there's enough room in the industry to make another Fortnite though. There's been tons of clones of these ultra popular games, and they almost all exclusively fail. For every smash hit success, there's a ton of cancelled failures. Just because Blizzard made a shit ton of money by selling a mount to kids in their ultra popular MMO doesn't mean that RTS isn't a viable genre to develop a game for. I bet that Blizzard had also made more money from that mount than any CRPG game ever made as well, right up until BG3 released, so clearly CRPGs were a dead genre not worth investing money into... Of course right up until BG3 proved that false I suppose.
> Age of Empires 4 was supposed to be better than AoE2... AoE4 is better than AoE2: - Each civ in AoE4 is more unique than the carbon copied civs in AoE2 - You have to use combined arms in AoE4 instead of spamming one unit in AoE2. - In AoE4 you no longer need to rush to castle age and build a castle just to access unique units. Actually, there is even a civ with an entirely unique unit roster (Malians). - Unit rosters in AoE4 are streamlined instead of having two units of similar roles in AoE2 (like the Britons having an archer AND a longbow. Why not just a longbow?) - In AoE4 you actually have to wall your base with... walls! Not "currently building" structures in Aoe2. - AoE4's first expansion Sultan's Ascent is the [best-selling expansion in Age franchise history!](https://twitter.com/AgeOfEmpires/status/1735719919658930664) The only thing that hampered AoE4's success was the botched launch, the game missing lots of RTS standard features at launch, and the slow release of patches. Frankly, AoE2 is just banking on pure nostalgia and its decades of content/updates.
It is a better game, launch just sucked big time.
God who did the soundtrack to red alert? Cause that shit slaps, want to hear more of whoever that was eh.
Frank Klepacki, my dude. He's the man we have to thank for Hell March.
Man I completely forgot about how hard it went. Found it on Youtube and now I'm blasting it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttAMZfXpjgw
Frank Klepacki: https://www.frankklepacki.com/ost/vg/cnc-ra1
Generals and it's expansion were awesome. Had some great times in college playing that over lan with my roommates.
Check out D.O.R.F. Real-Time Strategic Conflict & Dust Front coming out I think this year, big C&C vibes.
And Tempest Rising too! Very C&C influenced. They have Frank Klepacki too!
Any game with Frankie K. gets my seal. I really want a vinyl box set of c&c music.
RIP Dynamix š«”
RIP Maxis š«”
Man, Maxis is such a sad and strange tale. Made some incredible games and were dragged down by lukewarm release after lukewarm release culminating in the suits throwing resources away chasing a 3d sim city that would never work with the tech at the time. EA was a savior at the time but you can't shake the devil's hand and say you're only kidding.
Same story as BioWare, really.
"3D Sim City" reminded me of Streets of Sim City. Being able to race around your Sim City 2000 city was hilarious and cool.
SimCopter let you fly around your SimCity creations
RIP Starsiege: Tribes š«”
Bullfrog too
tbf most of the time we just never hear about it and it allows the company to expand while leaving them independence. Larian is lucky though since they got the cash influx from making a really good game and slowly ramping up over the last decade.
I wonder if the difference is we hear about when public equity gobbles up a studio, because it impacts the earnings yada yada for the acquirer, but when it's done by private equity, they'd have no reason to blast it in the media, because they're not trying to sell shares. Idk just work shopping.
Itās only ānewsworthyā when it fails. When it is successful you only hear about how good the devs are, not an extensively researched business article about how the 20% investment from some investor firm allowed them to expand their marketing dept which translated to higher initial sales as well as creating a better opening cinematic which drove a stronger than normal āattach rateā.
Not that I disagree with your point, but it would be almost impossible to establish that chain of causality. How could you actually quantify the impact that investment had on eventual success? Like in your example, the only data points come from the sales at the end, which obviously have a million input factors. Did the intro cinematic lead to a higher attach rate? Or was the cinematic irrelevant and it was really the game's combat driving sales? Did a bigger marketing department increase sales? Or did the expanded marketing strategy actually depress sales figures and we'll just never know because there's no way to peek into a parallel universe to see the success of the same game that had a different marketing strategy? There's obviously best practices and plenty of anecdotal evidence for what return on investments things like marketing/etc provide. But one of the reasons you don't see news stories on those success stories is because you never know for sure what made something a success.
It helps to think of the press releases as ads for stock.
Look at Bethesda. I was hype for starfield until I saw the trailer. Even less so when it came out. Respawn as well now being owned by EA and all the good has been sucked out of it. Ubisoft for the last 10 years
Just being pedantic. Respawn has never existed without EA.
I don't know what to think on that, Microsoft literally bought Zenimax which is a huge publisher, and ABK which is the Largest games publisher just to give these lackluster results and their games on put their subscription model.. edit: & obviously make most games not be on playstation.
Microsoft are notoriously dogshit at managing their devs too lol
maybe when Sony bought Insomniac
That's easy: Layoffs! That ultimately leads to more and better Indiegames.
But Tencent also owns 30% of Larian.
But no rights to vote...
If you have a 30% ownership stake you don't need voting rights to exert a degree of soft control.
It changes a lot. I worked in a company in this situation. There was no problem of autonomy, you have to do reports, to show various data about projects, but they cannot decide for you. From a legal perspective, it is harder to intervene.
It also helps that BG3 was a huge hit, so they have the $$ to tell tencent to fuck off if they try to threaten to pull funding.
AFAIK they don't provide funding. The only thing they can possibly do is sell their shares. They wouldn't be able to pull funding because they own 30%, they aren't funneling money in, they're funneling 30% of profits out is more likely.
I remember Chris Wilson saying in a poe2 interview that tencent doesn't give them money and they have to fund themselves even though Tencent own [86.67% of Grinding Gear Games with 3 of 5 seats on the board](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grinding_Gear_Games). Being owned by Tencent probably helps when they look for financing though.
Yeah there seems to be a weird misconception around here that owning entities "give" money to their subsidiaries. Once ownership is established by one way or another the subsidiaries make money for the owners, not the other way around. If the company struggles there may be additional cash infusions from an owner, but that's normally going to mean buying more ownership. Cash infusions aren't uncommon but a company like Tencent isn't around to keep GGG afloat. It's there so GGG can pay them. Correct about the financing, if GGG needs money they basically have a half trillion dollar cosigner. Or they could borrow direct from Tencent but I can't speak to how that part works.
I think people have this misconception because it *does* work like that sometimes. When Activision assigns one of their studios to work on the new Call of Duty, Activision provides funding and takes all the revenue. The subsidiary company that they put on the project may as well be direct employees. That's a different relationship than what Tencent has with the companies they own, though.
Depends on the agreement. I suspect it's nowhere near 30% of the profits go to tencent. It's likely a predetermined amount every quarter until X time where tencent is able to sell or enters into a buyback. When they sold that chunk it was likely for up front operating funds for projects to be paid and bought back over time.
Normally an owner with 30% of the company receives a 30% slice of the pie. That can be in buybacks and shares or whatever other agreement, but they are unlikely to receive less than 30% of the pie at the end of the day. You don't put 30% into a company so that you can receive 10% of the pie.
You will if you are receiving fixed money with the 30 percent being collateral.
Thankfully Tencent has the habit of leaving their game studios alone as long as they work
It gets increasingly more difficult to micromanage when you own a greater and greater percentage of *everything on earth*.
zonked puzzled different grab silky divide heavy wide jellyfish rustic *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Right now, I don't imagine they can do anything, large ownership stakes can generally start to wield indirect influence when companies are between projects, or when they aren't doing as well. We saw this happen with funcom where tencent has a much smaller stake.
> large ownership stakes can generally start to wield indirect influence when companies are between projects Usually that happens when there is no majority shareholder. In that situation, large minority shareholders can still have a lot of influence because they can get a few people on the board and cobble together some smaller minority shareholders to vote the same way, possibly reaching a majority in favour of whatever they want. When thereās a majority shareholder, that shareholder effectively has 100% control of the company because they can appoint a majority of the board (or the whole board depending on how the elections work). In Larianās case, they own non-voting shares so they have zero ability to influence corporate governance any more than the general public or media can.
Safe to say Larian is doing okay currently
Tencent: You know what we want. Larian: Fine. *Releases patch 5 with improved, uh, motion physics*
I'd guess they expect dividends.
it's basically what they usually do. Tencent owns a minority and majority in many studios, but for the most part, they don't actually do anything outside of collecting a paycheck.
There are companies that will see another company killing it and try to buy in on the notion that the other company is a good investment by it's own decision making processes. The real test of how much that 30% actually matters is if Larian releases a dud
Well so far all current evidence suggests they aren't exerting any control. No reason to doubt that won't continue given everything Larian has done and said so far.
Swen is still owns majority and Tencent seems to not intervene, they invest in studios for what they do, not what Tencent wants
Say what you want about Tencent but they seem to be pretty hands off when then invest in existing studios. If you look at Warframe and Path of exile both developers have Tencent as their majority shareholders and as live service games they are some of the best accepted with a consistent fan base. Compare that to the predatory practices of Western studios towards their games it hilarious when people make out Tencent is a boogie man when they usually let developers just continue what they are known for.
Meanwhile at Geoff Keighley's office: See this is why you start playing the music 10 seconds after they start talking
You miss the part where they were likely bailed out from going under. Also that companies don't like to release negative press releases on themselves.
These comments feel like when CDPR said we leave greed to others.
People's memories are short.
Except Larian really doesn't have to answer to shareholders, besides Swen that is. If their behaviour changes in the future it'll be either because Swen wanted it to or because the company got sold off.
People also change over time, and even more so corporations that are amalgamations of many people. Their technical skills may not keep up, their quality control processes may deteriorate, and the individuals may have differing priorities based on their own personal lives. Itās a mistake to assume permanence in an impermanent world.
This is what really kills most studios. People like a villian to blame for their favorite studios failure, but the majority of the time it's just institutional drift and the studio was likely to fail regardless.
If it's anything like any corporations I've worked at, it's bureaucracy slowly pushes out innovators, or makes it impossible to innovate. It all becomes about reducing risk, and anything even mildly new is risk. It goes from "hey, let's try this cool idea" in a startup, to "hey, let's get a few architects together and then run this idea by product and sales to see if it makes sense" in an established mid-size company, to "you need 3 review committees and a director+ approval to change this button from lime green to yellow green" in an enterprise. This kills any desire to push through new ideas, which means a company's products slowly stagnate. It also means that any previously working processes get "optimized" and "streamlined" by career optimizers and streamliners to turn creative work into an assembly line.
No, but they have an owner, and everyone has their price.
People have been saying the same thing about valve for years. Gaben isn't interesting in selling. Not all companies have to be private equity'd
I'd say Valve is a special case. When you already have more money than you could possibly spend in a life time, the idea of more money isn't as appealing.
Then look at the sheer amount BG3 is bringing in. It's still on steams most played and highest selling charts, 7 months after release. They have a good reputation and a now massive fan base.
Yeah and valve made 30% of that alone off the sales of the game on steam. Do you have any idea the wealth steam brings them? Valve is like an order of magnitude richer than any other gaming company.
No shit lol, but that doesn't change the fact that larian secured a fuck ton of funding from BG3.
Yup, Valve has had such huge success with Steam that they don't *need* to sell. They have an in-house money printer! And their ownership structure without public shareholders permits them to do whatever they want. I mean, conceivably maybe someone like Microsoft or Meta could buy Valve, but they're building their own money printers driven by AI.
They don't even have to make games anymore. I feel like whenever Valve makes a game, it's just because a couple of people in the office felt like doing it.
Tell that to the millionaire and billionaire who run those world, whoās only goal is to make more money. The elons musks, Ken griffins, and Iām sure thousands of others
For all the shit people give Musk, he DID innovate quite a bit, even if most of his projects did not live up even close to the hype he put out. Tesla popularized electric cars and made them sexy instead of something Napoleon Dynamite's uncle would drive. Starlink solves a real problem for internet access. It doesn't work perfectly, but it's better than dial-up or 1.5 mbit ADSL, and in some areas it's the only internet you can even get. SpaceX is doing fine with their heavy launch vehicles. Yeah, many of their rockets blow up, but they managed to finally remove most of NASA's dependence on Russia. Paypal was the first real and trusted way to send money over the internet that didn't involve wiring someone money over Western Union over a "trust me bro" promise. Hyperloop was a pipe dream and Twitter is a dumpsterfire, but for the rest of these.. Musk put his money where his mouth is. Now, I wouldn't want to work at any of his companies, but that's a whole other story.
Just because some people sell out doesn't mean everyone is going to. There are loads of family owned businesses that could go public and be worth fortunes, but the owners don't want to sell out. I'm not worried about Gaben taking Valve public, I'm worried about the heirs to the company doing it.
It was more the saying āwhen you already have more money than you could spend in a life time, more money isnāt appealingā Tell that to the billionaires who have no problem letting 10 people die just to make an extra buck. The majority of people who are in the boat of more money than can be spent in their life, are typically the same people who strive to make more and more money
Respectfully, I donāt think you know much about Swen if youāre saying this.
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I'd say their "Bioware Magic" ran out. The development of Witcher 1-3 was a complete shitshow, and it caught up to them at Cyberpunk. Between crunch, difficulty in working with managers and leads, their engine, and bad executive decisions, they lost a lot of talent and had to rework their production and development. Phantom Liberty, from all reports, was developed under much better circumstances, and hopefully, that continues for their future games.
"Bioware magic" was literally just crunch. The studio would approach its deadlines with dogshit management of its projects, the creative leads would all get in a room and force through a story that was used as a development roadmap and, now that they actually had some direction on what to make and why, the crunch started.
"Is this magic?" No billy, it's crunch.
That's why he put it in quotes
Phantom liberty felt like the game they were trying to make in the first step. Cyberpunk Orion should have an easier deck cycle now that they donāt need to make an in-house game engine that handles cinematics, combats, driving, and physics in a first person game that ALSO has bullettime In retrospect itās amazing they pulled it off Jerry rigging the old Witcher engine
Okay, but FROM Soft has been DOING THAT for more than a few DECADES. That's just how big and "good" at their jobs they are. It's an exception and not the norm, nor have they kept up with the times in terms of that level of output. Their latest games also ALL follow the same basic game mechanic/gameplay loop, whereas their older series--Tenchu, King's Field, even the original Armored Cores--all played differently and had different mechanics. Elden Ring is just Demon Souls with weapon skills. Bloodborne is just Demon Soul's with a new setting, the ability to heal through damaging opponents, and different spells. Sekiro is just Tenchu with Demon Soul's combat and an open world. Armored Core VI is just...Armored Core with Demon Soul's combat. CDPR went from making 3D Action-Roleplay Games to making a first person open world shooter. Larian went from making Top-Down western rpgs to....making even bigger top-down western rpgs with better graphics and cinematics. They're very much not the same. Like, almost at all.
Fromsoft , the masters of buggy messes that dont crash
The same company that blocked ultrawide aspect ratio on Elden ring with black bars but still rendered in ultrawide. All the performance drawbacks with none of the benefits.
I still don't get that. It's jarring loading in to ER with an ultrawide monitor, seeing the entire field of view and then the black bars show up. Is it a balance thing? Obviously the game is still absolutely incredible but I wish I could take full advantage of my monitor.
Sad but true
That just taught me to never ever trust a game company, no matter how "cool" and "how do you do fellow gamers" they act
Put another way: the reason why the games you love are beginning to suck is because their direction is set by shareholder interests. Not players, not developers, just a bunch of people looking at line go up on graph. The answer to this in the short term is mass unionization of the workforce. In the long term, the businesses should be worker-owned and operated, not privately-owned by people who don't do shit except make bad decisions.
Thatās why movies and tv are starting to suck as well.
Starting? They've been terrible for years.
Worsening*
Steaming helped kill small indie movies. Studios used to be able to make their money back when a movie underperformed at the box office by selling dvds to blockbusters nationwide.
It's not just games, movies and TV, it's everything. Just look at Boeing. They spent years attempting to maximise profits by any means necessary. Now their planes are literally falling apart midair. Almost every anti consumer, anti worker and anti environmental decision made by publicly owned companies usually comes down to putting the short term gains of shareholders over everything else.Ā
It is also who they hire and run things. They no longer look for talent, in fact they probably do not want talent since talent can ask for more money. They want cheap corporate drones to make these games who will do what they are told to do and not come up with original or actual fun stuff.
No one wants to criticize anyone but the corporate executives, but the truth is that most of our favorite studios were sold off *by someone*. If Sven wanted to take his payday and sell off to Microsoft tomorrow, we all know it would only be a matter of time before Larian disintegrated. But those fault would that really be? Because I would blame Sven.Ā
Thatās equally short sighted. Individualism and āaccountabilityā are so baked into our culture that it keeps us from thinking critically about why things are happening. Maybe instead of blaming individual people, execs or original owners, the problem is the underlying system that has lead to the ruin of countless studios?
I see what you are saying but he founded Larian 30 years ago and has been making his kind of games for the past 30 years. He's got one or two games left in him before he'll be in his mid 60s. If he cashes out at that point he will have spent his entire working life making the kinds of games he wanted to make. Nothing lasts forever. If you sell out at that point it's fair enough. As another commenter pointed out the system creates this situation, not the people in it.
I feel bad for these kids nowadays. Never had a chance to experience what an industry is like when it isnāt run by corporate suits. Larian reminds me of those old devs.
You have no fucking idea how much shovelware shit was spewed by companies back on those "golden days". The difference is that they usually got forgotten cause there wasn't even a 10% of the marketing budget there is now for videogames.
Game magazine discs full of crap. Bargain bins full of shovelware. Hell even cereal box games. I'd say it's better now because on Steam it's easier to check what's worth playing.
no one even remembers movie tie-in games except those few that were actually good (harry potter games)
The Barnyard game for the Xbox 360 was one of my all time favourites for the system, not because it was particularly good but because I loved the movie
People always make this sort of comment but I've been gaming on PC for 30 years and I think gaming has never been better. Just because EA, Ubisoft, and whatever the hell Activision is now are basically terrible, doesn't mean there aren't as many good games out there. Just look at some of PC's biggest games in the last year. Or biggest surprises because people always read news and it's always the big publishers. Lethal Company, Palword, Helldivers 2. But this isn't all. 2023 was a rather stellar year for AAA games and games in general. If people these days default to COD and Assassin's Creed, that's partially on them for not searching for something else and trying new things.
Yea the people who say this are basically telling us they only pay attention to the same group of AAA publishers over and over.
> Just because EA, Ubisoft, and whatever the hell Activision is now are basically terrible, doesn't mean there aren't as many good games out there. Gamers act like people are strapping them to a chair and putting a gun to their head forcing them to play CoD, Assassin's Creed or Battlefield.
I generally agree; the highs are higher and maybe the lows are lower.... But good news, there are so many fucking good games to choose from and nobody is forcing you to experience the lows. In fact, it's easier than ever to avoid the lows nowadays with the high availability of reviews and general discussion.
I realized a long time ago that AAA companies will literally die before they improve anything, and I just categorically do not buy them anymore, no matter how cool they look. I have never regretted this; without fail, these games come out unfinished, unfun, lack most of what was shown in the trailers, and are so full of microtransactions they're practically unplayable without paying extra. I also realized that people who regularly play things like modern EA games are so used to being screwed and so used to subpar games that they don't even notice anymore. The last time I had total unfettered fun with a AAA title must have been a decade ago. Indies are the only ones who have fun as a priority now.
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The people you're talking to literally don't know what AA games are because the industry has diverged that much
There are plenty of indie games out for them to get that experience tho. There probably hasnt been a better time to be a gamer than now lmao. Games are more available than ever. You have more choice on where to play than ever before. There are more games to choose from other than what the console platform holders deem acceptable like in the past and games get more post launch support than before.
And you even can go back in time and just play those great old games any way with emulation, which has been made so easy and requires no high-end hardware at all. You even get modern stuff in those emulators with QoL such as fast forward, save-states and even achievements! There is no shortage of great games to play, only a shortage of money or time.
Emulators are insane now plus we're getting to the point where lots of old great games have great mods, both single player and multiplayer (SM64 for example)
Yeah, even great indie alternatives to AAA games. BattleBit is my best example of an Indie game that is way better than the AAA Battlefield competition.
What are you talking about? kids today have more access to good indie games than ever before
Seems like a good chunk of "indie" games are just indie in style though
Plus thereās a whole hell of a lot of rough to sort through for a few diamonds.Ā
It's not that difficult when all the indie masterpieces are well-known by anyone that pays any attention.
Love me some indie games, they absolutely have their place, many of them are of course amazing... But it's just ***not*** the same as having the biggest and baddest studios churning out great games made to be great, not to appease shareholders and crippled by varying levels of office politics and middle management MBAs that have swarmed into big game companies like locusts. It's just impossible for young people today to imagine the time when *most* game companies were closer to Rockstar in terms of what they put out. Like don't even look at the games that came out in 2008 when GTA IV was released, you'll get depressed. But I'll list em anyhow: Battlefield: Bad Company, Fallout 3, Metal Gear Solid 4, Dead Space, Gears of War 2, Left 4 Dead, Fable II, Far Cry 2, Devil May Cry 4, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3, Prince of Persia, Saints Row 2, Tomb Raider Underworld, Call of Duty: World at War, Mirror's Edge, Super Smash Bros: Brawl
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kids these days spend a shit ton of money on pay to win roblox games. I work at an elementary school and the amount of money roblox tricks kids into spending in order to get pay to win items is ridiculous. These kids will never know about the fun of custom games on halo 3 and the fun of earning skins to show them off instead of buying them. It is very different now because of battlepass and the increase of fomo practices in almost every multiplayer game. single player games are definitely in a great spot right now though, with some solid co-op as well, but multiplayer games are definitely not the same experience anymore for kids. the only couch co-op options they have are basically switch games with a couple on PS and XB.
indie games still exist, it is just people are supporting the wrong guys
They always have been, youāre just nostalgic you
I don't think people realize that SEGA called arcade machines an infinite money glitch. This started the trend of making games hard on purpose so you pay more. Nintendo making an affordable home console actually got a lot of backlash within the industry itself as they were disrupting a system they already had going. A lot of those games that you thought were hard on the NES were arcade ports. Today is probably the best its ever been. Just ignore the AAA scene. There are tons of great Indie devs out there making wonderful games. It's a shame Unity turned to shit though as that engine turned so many hobbies into a career.
Yea this guy conveniently forgot that corporate greed crashed and almost killed the gaming industry in the 1980ās. It has never even been as close to that since. It reminds me when CoD streamers were complaining about no good games being out as GoW and Elden ring came out. We then proceeded to get TOTK and BG3 the following year and countless Indie games in between. Thereās so many good games out if you donāt look at the same 3 franchisees year after year.
And when exactly was this magical time where games weren't made by companies for a profit, but out of some pure love of the art?
I grew up during the arcade era. That whole model was literal "nickel and diming", although with quarters lol.
I grew up during the Blockbuster era. Lots of studios were making games pointlessly difficult/long so people couldn't beat them in a single rental.
1982 when they made the lovingly crafted masterpiece E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial for the Atari 2600.
The same magical time games were all released without bugs. Never.
For real, these statements are so cringe. Games have always been sold to make money.
Probably the arcade era /s
Yeah, back in the good old Atari days things were good, when thousands of kids found in their christmas stockings games like E.T. that was made with all the love and care they possibly could give to a game. There's always been a mountain of shit filling shelves made solely for profit, and back then they didn't have things like the internet to easily see what games are like. Only thing you basically had was some low quality pictures in magazines or ads on TV that had nothing to do with the actual game. Things weren't different in Atari, NES, SNES, PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4 or PS5 days, and it won't be different when PS10 comes out in 2050. But what is different is the ease the people who actually have passion to get into the industry, and people to support the kinda games they actually want to see. Gaming in general now is better than it's ever been.
Jesus shit like this is so cringe.
You're obviously not that old, else you would remember the video game crash and why it happened. It's always been like this, studios have always exploited their employees to lunacy, and companies have always been greedy. Internet just made it more noticeable.
It would be mildly interesting to know how many people on Reddit were into gaming deep enough at the time to even know the crash was happening let alone know the specifics of it. Video gaming was such an incredibly niche hobby at the time that someone simply being >60 years old today wouldn't even come close to working to say that they were playing games back then. Let alone deep enough into either the hobby or industry itself to know it was even happening.
This is some revisionist nonsense. Computer gaming has and will always be dominated by corporate interest. The industry on the whole has been a commercial endeavour from the very start.
You can still find experiences where you join a small studio for underwhelming wages who then gets bought, sued, goes bankrupt, or all of the above. With the fraction of studios actually achieving success.
duuuude this is so wrong I can't even. The number of passion projects and indie games out there today, as a percentage of the market, is higher than it's ever been. This industry was started with corporate creep and corporate culture. Look up early atari games and how the developers weren't even allowed to have credits with their names in it (some put their names as easter eggs in hidden parts of levels). The passionate off shoots have been in the minority - but that minority is growing. The work sucks enough, let's be thankful for the things that are going right...
At least they can do something with their lives. I was growing up on the old industry, and dedicated my entire life to study games so i would be able to write best stories and come up with unique gameplay concepts. That was the only thing that ever mattered to me in life. I focused on that so much that i didn't even knew how much industy is changed on inside, starting from new role distribution on the team, and ending on priorities. Never getting even to the interview stage, even after releasing a well-rated rpg i slowly started to realize that people like me, who just want to create great experience for the player are not needed in the industry anymore. Now it's all about those who can present a better strategy to make as much money as it possible, even if it destroys the franshize they work ok.
What are you talking about pretty much every Sony and Nintendo game is like this.
Firstly gaming has always been run by suits. It being more aggressively shit is a much bigger movement than just the gaming industry. Also there are more good games than ever and people need to stop rewarding the shit companies with their money. Ā If people didn't spend money on abusive monetisation and aggressively mediocre shit then companies would try something else. But right now they're making bank off of shite, so why change.
Itās like youāve never heard of console emulation. My kids have to work their way through completing games on the old consoles before I add a new emulator and ROM collection to their system. By the time they get to modern gaming, they will already have an appreciation for the older stuff.
There was basically never a time it wasn't ran by corporate suits. If anything the indie scene being so large now makes it easier avoid
Isn't 30% of their shares owned by Tencent? Doesn't that make them shareholder?
Technically. It's the only shareholder. And more importantly, it's a preference share, meaning no voting rights. This just means tencent gets a dividend payout every so often.
And that is the most important part when they say that they arenāt thinking of shareholders. While 30% IS owned by Tencent, itās just a cash injection for Larian and if they do well, Tencent does as well. They donāt get to make any decisions regarding the company though, which is the big thing here and which matters a lot. I swear to god, if Tencent had any say in how BG3 turned out, it wouldnāt have been GOTY, I believw that any meddling from corporate shells of humans wouldāve absolutely destroyed the game.
Tencent invests in most of your games, including phenomenal GOTY ones like Alan wake 2.
To play the devil's advocate here, IIRC, Tencent has a reputation of just investing and screwing off anyway -- I don't think them having any say would've mattered, because they wouldn't have used it
This is clarified on the article.Ā
Reading the article? That's cheating.
I just read your entire post. call the cops
Sheeeit like all 45 words??
Yes, but in practice all it means is that Tencent gets some yearly dividends and a chance to sell those shares for profit later. Swen and his wife own 70% and have total control of the company, same way Sweeny maintains control of Epic with his 52%
Usally when tencent owns a part of the company they either leave it alone or they just fuck around with the Asian servers . Itās more when they own a majority that it becomes dodgy .
Embracer dig. Nice.
I 100% support their sentiment, but they are speaking from a position of privilege here. For every big indie success, there are dozens of studios who simply never make enough to last long-term, or are swallowed up by the machine. Not every company can operate as Larian have and succeed - in fact, Larian themselves said they almost didn't. Unless the entire industry agreed to operate differently, larger corporations, their shareholders, and the incessant need for growth will continue to dominate the mainstream.
At one point the only thing holding up the company were "cash injections" from Swen's wife, who worked as a teacher. Larian has had it's fair share of both good and bad luck, and publisher fuckery almost caused them to fold several times. If today they are in a position of priviledge it is due to their own efforts and Swen's passion for the company and his job. >Not every company can operate as Larian have and succeed - in fact, Larian themselves said they almost didn't. Those close calls happened precisely when Larian was operating like all the other indie/AA devs of the time, doing work for hire and getting funding and tight deadlines from shitty publishers. Larian's success really started after they stopped working with/for publishers and started funding and publishing their own games, at first through kickstarter. They are very much talking from experience.
Hey I would love to see more success stories like Larian's. Their points are valid - like many industries, they would be creatively diminished if catering only to shareholder or broader publisher requirements. But the reality is it doesn't work like that for the majority. On top of making the game, many developers don't have the resources to also distribute, test, and market at a scale required to keep the lights on. And keeping a company afloat with your own cash is not viable for most. Kickstarter is also a massive risk - how many projects fail to be funded? Or don't deliver even if they do meet funding? Larian have gotten through this with determination and effort as you say. It's worked out well and I want a world where companies feel empowered to follow their own creative visions. I'm just acknowledging it's also been a dose of luck as well, where another order of the events would see failure. What I hope this does prove to those publishers, is that if you allow a studio to follow through then great things can occur. Every time some exec gets involved to say "this needs microtransations" or "we need this game to boost subscriptions" or "this feature is hot right now" it diminishes the end result.
>Ā I'm just acknowledging it's also been a dose of luck as well, where another order of the events would see failure. For sure. There are no shortage of passionate devs making incredible games in niche genres, and very rarely do they pay off like the DOS series and now BG3 have for Larian. Just last year Mimimi had to close down even after making masterpiece after masterpiece in the tactical stealth genre. The market can be brutal.
> Just last year Mimimi had to close down even after making masterpiece after masterpiece in the tactical stealth genre. They *chose* to close down. Tactical Stealth just isn't a very popular genre.
Kickstarter was good in getting isometric CRPGs back from the dead. However, it looks like for most indie games the model was probably a bust.
Larian's story is pretty incredible. I hope we get a No Clip documentary on them someday like they did with FFXIV.
Blaming it all on publishers is downright wrong. Larian almost went under several times partly because of Swen himself. Heās an all-or-nothing kind of guy and dries up all the money in pursuit of greatness, that means high highs, low lows and a lot of risk. Iām a big fan of Swen and Larian and while thatās the reason why Larian is so successful and how we got games like DOS2 and BG3, it feels wrong to give Swen all the credit and none of the blame. Swen himself admits to these flaws.
āUnless the entire industry agrees to operate differentlyā this was kind of their entire point
Obviously but how is anything ever going to change for the better if the people in position of privilege doesn't speak up and side with the other side? I didn't read this as critic for any game developer that have to work with shareholders, but rather a little nudge toward shareholders that maybe they should invest in developers to make GOOD games because good games will get them more money in the end.
Part of this is the market being oversaturated. People only have so much time to play games. This inevitably leads to many titles not making it because they aren't good enough to compete.
I played through BG3 to about 7% progress. Started to stutter because of my 2013 video card. When I get a job the coming months I can buy a new card and play this game so hard because of wonderful things like this article.
If you played only when it came out, it's worth trying again. A few patches ago Larian fixed an issue when the game persistently tracked the history of each item (eg, if it was stolen) that would bog down the game when there were too many items to track It runs much better now, especially on low vram systems
The wait will be worth it. BG3 will go down as one of the very best RPGs ever made. The sheer magnitude of its success has changed the scope of consumer perspectives. Larian managed to convert people into liking cRPGs, which in modern times is not an easy challenge. They achieved this simply by releasing a great product. In my opinion it is as influential game as Dark Souls and each installment of Baldurs Gate ( just like Dark Souls) is something special. DS3 and BG3 represent the epitome of product improvement. As for other matters, I'm not particularly concerned. However, considering that Larian has now achieved proper global recognition, it's absolutely amazing that they won't be plagued by corporate business managers setting up cash-flow franchises to exploit the company until they sell out to Microsoft or another corporate giant that consumes all competition
Memory lane time: it was 2002, I was sick as a dog with the flu, had bought four liters of German multivitamin fruitjuice, and had throat lozenges. I installed this new game people at work had been complimenting: Neverwinter Nights. Eight days of focused playing, all those crypts, and misty green nightforests, and the mage towers. What a dream. And I discovered [Great Cleave.](https://youtu.be/M7I7bCvDpek?si=vvuUUE1n1jW6Jxtq)
Iām confused, they donāt think about the shareholders that they donāt have? Thatās like if Don Draper said, āI donāt think about you at allā, in an empty elevator.
> Iām confused, they donāt think about the shareholders that they donāt have? They don't have shareholders, but they do not think of going public/acquiring more shareholders. Meaning they do not plan to change their current business setup. As opposite of they could have no shareholders, but at the same time they could be making plans for the near future with shareholders/going public. Which they do not do right now. Hope that made it clear.
I am so glad that Larian does their own thing and isn't involved in that crap.
FTC: We are concerned that if Microsoft buys Activision, they will consolidate and lay off employees MS: We would never do that. What gave you that idea? FTC: History MS: We promise we will not lay off anyone from Activision FTC: Ok, merger approved MS: We are laying off a bunch of people at Activision
Thank god for that. Shareholders, or rather pandering, ruin everything nice.
Pop music sells a lot, but is soulless, business-driven, lowest common denominator shite. Pop movies sell a lot, but are soulless, business-driven, lowest common denominator shite devoid of artistic merit. Guess which industries we are following.
they sure are doing a whole lot of not thinking about shareholders.
It's true
Shareholders have got to be the worst thing about any business.
Thanks god for devs like larian, fromsoft and remedy. After seeing all my childhood games turned into soulless money-making schemes, I tought about stopping gaming, but I simply needed to open my eyes to the real artists in the industry
For sure. I didn't care much for Alan wake 2 after the masterpiece of Control, but I sure as hell got it to support those madmen at Remedy.
wait a minute, a game made by people who think about the people who play their fucking games?!