I think you could do a LOT better for $10

Sounds kinda like Deathspank, which was awesome.

Arrowhead has less than 100 employees. Helldivers 1 sold much, much less than 2. It has an all-time peak of 6,744 players, and that was seven years ago.

These were the conditions going in. I’m sure they’re trying to scale up and meet the insane demand for bug fixes and content, but that ain’t done in two months. In most respects this is a small developer who hasn’t planned for this kind of popularity.

Dunkey’s promo vid had the dev say he wrote it himself.

Fuckin' STOP PREORDERING shite

MS has been doing that for over 20 years, no news there. The reason for acquiring is to deny acquisition to others, and to ensure MS’s ecosystems have software, I imagine.

Or maybe we just need to stop buying shit that’s just thinly veiled skinner boxes, and play games because they are fun again, not to get the best/coolest/most brag-worthy stuff in-game.

would focus on the essence of what made the original series great by making an, “arcadey, amazing-feeling, very accessible, competitive and fun game.” Project Gravity was also planned to be a live-service, free-to-play title

Yeaaaaaah, those two are probably not compatible.

Releasing a niche new IP from a well-regarded but lesser-known developer with little to no marketing in the extremely busy autumn and expecting success is... a bit weird. You gotta wonder what they were thinking.

Try to see it like a choose your own adventure instead of "gotta catch 'em all". I find it helps to have a soft rule against savescumming for myself - if I make a mistake, my character made that. The only times I let myself reload is if the outcome of what I did was unclear, and went entirely against what I thought it would do.

Jaysis. Just stop buying these exploitative and morally bankrupt games. No "at least on the X franchise". No "I won't pay any microtransactions". No "I won't preorder".

They will not change, nor get better as long as they're selling.

Just STOP buying this shite, everyone.

The Eurogamer forum was my place in the early noughties. The forum was suddenly shut down in late 2021, removing about 20 years of discussions.