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Dustborn sees disastrous launch on Steam

balls of snow

Gold Member
Are you serious? They actually put that in?!

Edit: Missed the screenshot and video before. Wow, that's really quite dumb. I can't believe this is made by the same devs who gave us Heavy Rain, Detroit: Becomes Human, and Fahrenheit.

Mind, there's an issue with that screenshot. The text at the bottom should read:

"Person who identifies as male: That other person you were with, the full light spectrum absorbing individual, they dress like a Rider. Do they know anything?"

^ that covers all the bases, I think?

Nope QD is only publishing this. They are in their own self made hell with a star wars game.
 

Holammer

Member
That's sarcasm right? Because the game was financied by Norwegian tax payers.
Just an FYI, lots of countries in Europe (and EU itself) offer grants to "culture projects". Like theatre, song, literature and such, past few years game developers also got eligible for such funding. The Norwegian Film Institute which gave a grant to Dustborn also supported Flåklypa Grand Prix & Captain Sabertooth.

Not only Europe, there's the Canada Media Fund which helped funding Goodbye Volcano High (GASP!), but also Chariot, Dead by Daylight, The Messenger and a bunch of other games.

40DC4C58EA9E133852527671A81937DFA522EC04


Screenshot from Steamworld Dig 2.
 

Denton

Member
What’s the issue? Ministries of Cukture exist in multiple Europe countries and are regularly charged with fostering artistic and cultural development. Nothing to do with DEI or Marxism.
Just because it exists doesn't mean it should exist. It exists in my country too and it is a completely worthless god damn institution just existing so that incompetent "artists" can extract wealth from productive people against their will.
 

DonkeyPunchJr

World’s Biggest Weeb
Just because it exists doesn't mean it should exist. It exists in my country too and it is a completely worthless god damn institution just existing so that incompetent "artists" can extract wealth from productive people against their will.
How does this even work? Is it a government organization that gives out grants for various arts + entertainment projects?

I’d be pretty pissed if some government appointee was spending my tax dollars to fund some low quality propagandistic video game that literally nobody wants to play.

This is like the 2024 equivalent of “feces smeared on a picture of Jesus” art.
 

Cyberpunkd

Gold Member
Just because it exists doesn't mean it should exist. It exists in my country too and it is a completely worthless god damn institution just existing so that incompetent "artists" can extract wealth from productive people against their will.
lol, true. French state subventions for whatever cultural shit are insane. Vast majority of stupid books here would not be published if not for government support.
 

Alebrije

Member
How does this even work? Is it a government organization that gives out grants for various arts + entertainment projects?

I’d be pretty pissed if some government appointee was spending my tax dollars to fund some low quality propagandistic video game that literally nobody wants to play.

This is like the 2024 equivalent of “feces smeared on a picture of Jesus” art.
This is a very common practice on a Lot of countries and I agree this is Bad, goverments should no spend money to produce entertaiment. Here in México we have an entity that gives money to produce films...I can tell You that from every 10 movies just one is worth from a cultural/ indie point of view , the rest are romantic comedies. And usually the same directors /producers get the money from that entity and that smells corruption.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Left in the Dust is more like it.

What sane person would play this game, or associate themselves in real life with wacky people like this?

There's currently 52 people playing now as per SteamDB. A mahjong game from 2016 has the same CCU. And 83 max players is so low, it almost seems impossible any game can be that low on a Steam launch.

ykWgOll.jpeg


At 83 peak CCU, this is where the game sits.

n2rx1r3.jpeg
 
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zapiks44

Member
I've been thinking about this game's failure (as well as Concord's) and I've come to a realization.

Pretty much every game that people point to in order to disprove the saying "go woke go broke" is either part of a popular, pre-established game franchise (Like Baldur's Gate 3) or is a licensed game of a popular IP (like Insomniac's Spider-Man games). Those games already had a large built-in fanbase, and since most gamers don't closely follow gaming news, they would've bought it without knowing about whatever "woke" content it may have.

With Dustborn and Concord, however, it's different. Those are wholly original games, so they can't hide behind whatever popular IP they're part of. They had no built-in fanbase, so gamers could only judge those games on their own merits, and boy did they ever! Both games are some of the biggest failures ever in video game history. I'd even argue that Concord could become this generation's equivalent of Atari's E.T. game. For the first time, we got two games that wore wokeness on their sleeves and couldn't hide it behind an established franchise, and this is how gamers rewarded them.

Let's hope this proves once and for all to the industry that gamers don't want this.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Down to 37 players on Steam. Earlier today during off peak hours, the game bottomed out at 17 players.

17 people playing on steam now is so low, there's a good chance a single drug store down the street from your home has more people in it there compared to Dustborn - a new game that can be played from anywhere across the world.
 
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simpatico

Member
I've been thinking about this game's failure (as well as Concord's) and I've come to a realization.

Pretty much every game that people point to in order to disprove the saying "go woke go broke" is either part of a popular, pre-established game franchise (Like Baldur's Gate 3) or is a licensed game of a popular IP (like Insomniac's Spider-Man games). Those games already had a large built-in fanbase, and since most gamers don't closely follow gaming news, they would've bought it without knowing about whatever "woke" content it may have.

With Dustborn and Concord, however, it's different. Those are wholly original games, so they can't hide behind whatever popular IP they're part of. They had no built-in fanbase, so gamers could only judge those games on their own merits, and boy did they ever! Both games are some of the biggest failures ever in video game history. I'd even argue that Concord could become this generation's equivalent of Atari's E.T. game. For the first time, we got two games that wore wokeness on their sleeves and couldn't hide it behind an established franchise, and this is how gamers rewarded them.

Let's hope this proves once and for all to the industry that gamers don't want this.
They're going to tell themselves and their bosses that incel racists successfully review bombed it so well that it didn't sell. Zero bearing on how great the game is. The devs will believe it 100%. They delude themselves. The ones signing the checks however, might not.
 

bitbydeath

Member
Yeah OP, but the context you are not explaining with this slanderous thread is that this game is on the right side of history.

It's not popular nor profitable nor logical nor a wise business decision to be.... on the right side of history.

And future generations may ponder the dev's decisions and wonder what the fuck they were even doing, but they are... on the right side of history.
And those hypocrites say they vote left.
 

Oppoi

Member
Such a shame nobody will ever bother with a second playthrough. We shall never know it's full potential.
 

Killer8

Gold Member
Just an FYI, lots of countries in Europe (and EU itself) offer grants to "culture projects". Like theatre, song, literature and such, past few years game developers also got eligible for such funding. The Norwegian Film Institute which gave a grant to Dustborn also supported Flåklypa Grand Prix & Captain Sabertooth.

Not only Europe, there's the Canada Media Fund which helped funding Goodbye Volcano High (GASP!), but also Chariot, Dead by Daylight, The Messenger and a bunch of other games.

40DC4C58EA9E133852527671A81937DFA522EC04


Screenshot from Steamworld Dig 2.

We need a total shut down on all cultural funding. Let the market decide and stop wasting people's tax money.
 
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