• MufinMcFlufin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    1
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    46 minutes ago

    Planning on not buying it, that being said I was likely never going to even if this controversy didn’t happen. I’m apparently part of 3% of Subnautica players on steam who really didn’t care for the game. Gave it a decent chance (7 hours playtime) and talked with several people who adore the game but found many aspects of the game to be overrated, poorly designed, or frustrating. Just about the only thing I can remember honestly enjoying about the game was the aesthetic, which even then was held back by some sometimes downright bad graphics.

  • kieron115@startrek.website
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    9 hours ago

    Subnautica is one of those games that’s incredible hard to recreate. Once they started trying to explain every little thing about the aliens I completely lost interest. You may be able to bottle lightning, but you certainly can’t do it twice.

  • Konraddo@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    13
    ·
    10 hours ago

    Honestly, I do not plan to buy it after Below Zero. Now that they did all the evil stuff I guess my decision is well justified.

  • TheBeege@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    65
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    15 hours ago

    Just gonna copy paste my comment on a related post…

    Similar shit happened when they were PUBG Corporation. Fuck these lying assholes. Player Unknown was a smart, capable dude, and they exiled him to a remote office because he got pissed at the CEO for over-monetizing things in a way that cost them players.

    When they released the battle pass while the game was retail, all of the non-Korean employees nearly revolted. It wasn’t smart, and it was a money grab on the players. When the team lead of market research told the product manager that the feature was a bad idea and would lose them all their Western players, the product manager got him demoted and moved to another team.

    When the numbers didn’t look good, the data analysts were freaking out because they couldn’t deliver bad news up the chain of command, even if it was accurate.

    When they acquired Mad Glory, they promised that the dev team would still be contracted to other game companies to build APIs and tools for them, keeping the game industry tooling ecosystem healthy (think op.gg). When PUBG Corporation acquired them, the company canceled their contract with Bethesda for the API they were in the middle of building and forbade them from working with other companies.

    Fuck Bluehole. Fuck PUBG Corporation. Fuck Krafton. Fuck game studios in Korea. Don’t play Korean games. Kpop and cosmetics and whatever are chill. Don’t play Korean games. Korean game companies are fucking cancer.

    Don’t buy Subnautica 2. The Subnautica franchise died when Krafton became the publisher.

    • L0rdMathias@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      16
      ·
      8 hours ago

      Friendly reminder that Korea invented and perfected micro-transactions. MapleStory has done more damage to both worldwide gaming and Korean game devs than anything else could ever hope to.

      • Valorie12@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        4 hours ago

        Which is very sad because MapleStory was such a great game, at one time. I still play it (private servers) often, 20 years later. The game had such creative passion in it before Nexon took over and monetized the shit out of it.

    • vxx@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      32
      ·
      edit-2
      11 hours ago

      Kpop is extremely exploitative to the artists, much worse than game development.

      We’re talking physical and sexual abuse levels here.

      Not chill at all.

    • wellheh@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      27
      ·
      14 hours ago

      Probably would not add kpop to the list of chill. That industry is rife with abuse like slave contracts.

  • fluxan@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    11
    ·
    15 hours ago

    Natural Selection and then Natural Selection 2 - no games or communities like it. Before there time both of them and very much under appreciated. Felt like NS2 never really found it’s rhythm but Unknown World kept it going longer than most games.

    • TheBeesKnees@lemmy.sdf.org
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      3 hours ago

      Let me preface by saying NS/NS2 are my all-time favorite games

      NS2 had a terrible launch.* It was unstable, terrible performance, limited to no tutorials, and no match matching system. The game has an intense learning curve, and players who had thousands of hours from NS1 / Early Access. It’s also a game where cooperative play was imperative, so the matches really stink for everyone when teams are unbalanced / one guy curbstomps the other team.

      It did eventually address those things, but much of it came too late. I so desperately want NS3 to bring it new life… but that doesn’t ever seem to be coming. I want more games where I get to be the alien/creature/monster!

      My desperation hit an all-time high when I started making a game in Godot… ;-;

      *To be fair, they also needed to launch ASAP because they needed the money to stay afoat

    • Ricaz@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      11 hours ago

      The original NS was so fucking good, man. I lived in that game for several years. The competitive scene was awesome.

  • merc@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    88
    ·
    23 hours ago

    Pop it in your calendars? Maybe I’m using calendars wrong, but mine aren’t filled with things I should avoid doing. But, I’m willing to learn. What date should I put “Don’t Buy Subnautica 2” on?

  • ZeroOne@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    7
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    edit-2
    12 hours ago

    Why can’t the OG devs just opensource the code out of spite. Would be a big middle-finger

  • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    15
    ·
    18 hours ago

    I remember Flayra from Natural Selection, a half-life mod twenty years ago. I remember him making appeals for investors/donations to keep Unknown Worlds afloat (or maybe just launch it as a company. I recall a video he posted where he showed us his tiny apartment and the milk in his fridge.)

    Then Subnautica came out years later and I thought ‘Well I’ll be damned.’

      • ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        2
        ·
        8 hours ago

        A bit, yeah. Same username then as today. I was with NSArmsLab and BAD Clan mostly those days.

        Weird to think that was 20+ years ago.

      • nuko147@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        29
        arrow-down
        6
        ·
        1 day ago

        Although Kerbal space program 2 had major issues from the dev team, only for the publisher to pull the plug because of how bad the progress was, and leave the game in permanent early access.

        • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          58
          ·
          1 day ago

          Uh, its more like a new publisher bought the IP, functionally fired almost all of the original dev team, and then hired a bunch of other people who had no idea how their insanely modified version of Unity worked…

          And then the idiot in charge just started spamming out extremely grand and difficult to implement new core functionalities… with a team of mostly newbies who had no idea how anything worked.

          So, basically, they started out where KSP started out… and would very obviously thus need years and years and years to get it out of Early Access / Alpha state… but it needed to make money NOW, and it didn’t, so everyone got laid off (other than the idiot in charge), and the game was functionally abandoned, but not totally abandoned, because MY IP MINE NO YOU CANT HAVE IT!!!

          Or… maybe not? With regard to the IP rights?

          Nobody seems to know who actually owns the KSP IP at this point.

          https://techdriveplay.com/2025/01/03/kerbal-space-program-2-a-tale-of-corporate-neglect-and-failure/

          • EldritchFeminity@lemmy.blahaj.zone
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            6
            ·
            11 hours ago

            One of the original goals for KSP2 was the use of a new engine to get rid of the technical debt from the first game that caused issues like the Kraken…but then the publisher forced them to use the KSP engine because “it would speed up development.”

            It was doomed from the beginning.

            • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              edit-2
              7 hours ago

              Yep.

              Having worked in software dev and db management professionally, and having been modding (as in making mods) all kinds of games for even longer… yep, I knew it was completely fucked almost immedeately, as soon as it was:

              Throw out most of the old dev team

              We are gonna rebuild the engine/game from the ground up

              Add in vastly complex features and capabilities at the same time

              On a horrendously unrealistic timeframe.

              Normally, any two of those is extreme danger zone.

          • ByteJunk@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            18
            ·
            edit-2
            1 day ago

            I never understood the fixation on IPs. For a kick ass universe with amazing lore etc, ok sure.

            I mean I love Jeb and the gang as much as the next guy, but they’re not core to my enjoyment of KSP1. The mechanics were.

            • AwesomeLowlander@sh.itjust.works
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              6
              ·
              23 hours ago

              Name recognition sells stuff. Somebody who loved KSP 1 will probably give KSP 3 a go, at least to a greater probability than an unrelated game in the same genre.

              • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                link
                fedilink
                English
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                21 hours ago

                Dean Hall and RocketWorkz of uh DayZ fame/infamy… are working on Kitten Space Agency… I dunno, maybe they could pull it off?

                Dean’s track record is really hit and miss imo, but hey, at least they actually give a damn and try, often with pretty bold / niche concepts.

            • sp3ctr4l@lemmy.dbzer0.com
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              7
              ·
              1 day ago

              lol, RIP Jebs 1 - 48395.

              But uh yeah, the… the lore is basically:

              We made some cute little dudes and dudettes that are… possibly animated, sapient fungi? Or something?

              Anyway they are sm0l and live in sm0l solar system.

              And they have a space program.

              And most of the characters are just obvious cutesy knock offs of famous humans in spaceflight.

              Woo!

              lol

          • cynar@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            9
            ·
            1 day ago

            It was even worse than that.

            They were basically given the KSP1 codebase and told to rewrite it to be better. However, KSP1 was still being developed, and they didn’t want to demotivate the KSP1 team. Therefore they were banned from even telling them it existed, let alone ask for help or advice with the existing codebase.

    • kautau@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      80
      ·
      edit-2
      1 day ago

      It’s a canon event for any game company that achieves moderate success gets acquired by investors

      Very much not exclusive to the game industry

        • kautau@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          5
          ·
          edit-2
          1 day ago

          Makes sense, wasn’t untrue and I wasn’t criticizing, just wanted to make sure everyone remembers that the problem goes up the chain due to capitalism.

          Various companies/games were mentioned in the comments, but I think a good example is Hello Games. Clearly fumbled their game launch and were over ambitious with No Man’s Sky.

          But it’s gotten an incredible amount of things that were promised, and many things that weren’t, all as free updates. Sure, they’re still making money, that’s the point, but instead of Micro-transactions, overpriced DLC, fucking over the devs, shutting things down, they just keep rolling. I’m sure they’ve gotten offers of acquisition that were probably very lucrative, but they didn’t take them, and have continued their slow roll of making gamers happy.

      • TabbsTheBat@pawb.social
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        25
        ·
        1 day ago

        Individual devs seem to generally manage better I think :3. It’s once the companies expand is that stuff starts going awry

        • wolframhydroxide@sh.itjust.works
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          3 hours ago

          I dunno, dwarf fortress seems to be doing alright for itself so far. Tarn and Zach really needed some more help and some graphic design backup. I don’t agree with the total abandonment of the keybindings system in favor of mouse clicks, but I understand that it was necessary to make the game’s learning curve less precipitous.

        • brucethemoose@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          9
          ·
          edit-2
          1 day ago

          Coffee Stain’s another good example on the bigger end.

          It does seem like there’s a danger zone behind a certain size threshold. It makes me worry for Warhorse (the KCD2 dev), which plans to expand beyond 250.

      • pory@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        ·
        1 day ago

        Didn’t sell out to a company or publisher with shareholder profit motives. Truly independent (not “indie” as slang for low budget) development teams don’t follow this pattern unless they sell their IP and studio outright.

    • Duamerthrax@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      4
      ·
      1 day ago

      I think Croteam has been able to have moderate success over the years, but being based in Eastern Europe might make them insulated from issues. Devolver only recently bought them, but they seem to be one of the few good publishers. I at least didn’t see their name on the Video Games Europe member list that’s opposed to SKGs.

    • burntbacon@discuss.tchncs.de
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      1 day ago

      It would make sense for it to be canon in the subnautica universe. I think they were pretty much the epitome of authors with an anvil with the references to economics and governing.

  • Signtist@bookwyr.me
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    136
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    1 day ago

    They did all this because they know that the vast majority of the playerbase will never hear about this, and many of those that do will either forget, or simply not care enough to boycott the game. We’re in an age of apathy across the board, with so much bad press that any given scandal just fades into the background noise.

        • Enkrod@feddit.org
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          12 hours ago

          Accurate but also not. PewDiePie came out in favour and PirateSoftware lied about it. But I think Thor lying created a huge burst of coverage about how he’s wrong and really created lots of noise about it.