Raphael Colantonio (Arkane Co-Founder) "Why is no-one talking about the elephant in the room? Cough cough (Gamepass)"
Guess who made their games 80 dollars though? None of it is optional for first party either (this developer complaining was from such a studio, creator of Dishonored and Prey). Their sister studio was shut in the previous round of layoffs.
playbignbox
Member
I'm not going to tell my wife "hey honey, I'm going to spend 10x more on games this year because I need to save the industry from GamePass".
I prefer to give companies like MS the opportunity, if applicable, to resolve their problems of mismanagement or unsustainable models.
playbignbox
Member
Wow, Microsoft is forcing Microsoft to put Microsoft games on Microsoft's service!
Just kidding, but Microsoft owns the studios. There's no one 'forcing' anyone, it's all the same company. Saying that it's forcing itself to put its own games on Game Pass is like complaining that Netflix is forcing its movies to be included in the catalog. It's their decision, the risk is theirs, the loss (or profit) is theirs too. If the model doesn't work, it's them who will have to deal with it, not the studios individually.
Poppinfresh
Member
Did you read my full comment?
First-party studios are owned by MS, which also owns Gamepass. They aren't being "forced" to put their games on Gamepass.
Astray
Member
If your boss is telling you to put your game on a sub service, accept pennies instead of tens of dollars and fuck up your bonuses (an action no sane employee will ever take willingly), then it's safe and accurate to say that they're forcing you to do it.
ChorizoPicozo
Member
It seems at this point that Game Pass is actually more damaging to the industry than piracy. Let that Sink In
Poppinfresh
Member
Not boss, owner.
They (Microsoft) own the company and they want the games produced by the company they own to be put on the service that they also own.
Raphael Colantonio should have been fired by Microsoft the second he made those comments to the public.
The minute he sold his company to MS and cashed their check he lost the right to complain about anything Microsoft does with THEIR company.
Last edited:
Astray
Member
No it's literally their boss doing this.
Unless you're telling me Phil Spencer or Matt Booty owns Microsoft.
Poppinfresh
Member
You clearly don't seem to understand why a company would want the games it produces from the studios it owns to be on the service it also owns.
Instead you've decided to split hairs and argue meaningless semantics, which does absolutely nothing but make you look like you have no idea what you are talking about.
Sinfulgore
Member
I agree. These major publishers need to downsize their studios massively and stop allowing developers to spend 4+ years on projects that go nowhere.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Truly spoken like a SmashJT follower.
What a bizarre argument. First party studios aren't 'forced' to put games anywhere, it's part of their employment and contract to put games out where their parent company tells them, this is also weird cause some (see above quoted) often claim that games are now made with GP in mind, so by that logic it should be built into their development pipelines too. Third parties are also not forced to agree to GP terms under duress, they willingly choose these deals often in lieu of monetary assistance either pre-release for development or marketing at release etc.
On that note, Raphael was awfully quiet about this when Weird West launched on GP. He even penned an article on the Xbox website celebrating it. Should have voiced some concerns back then too.
Last edited:
calico
Member
Maybe not worse than totally unopposed piracy would be, but I think MS succeeding in what it set out to achieve with GP would be worse for gaming and for the industry than piracy in its current form is.
Baemono
Member
Eh, I can imagine people making CoD feeling they're being forced to put their latest cash cow to a 1$ subscription service after 20 years of having loads of people paying full price day one for it.
mrMUR_96
Member
Lmao, touch a nerve did I? Believe it or not, devs work for their money too, it usually helps if they have money to pay their staff. You clearly have room temperature iq if you cannot see how gamepass releasing everything day 1 is not sustainable to support the budgets of current games. Gamepass acting as more of a backlog library is clearly more suitable for the health of the industry. As someone else pointed out, it's the same as movie studios releasing their movies first to cinemas and then to streaming/retail after, which is exactly the same model that Playstation Plus, EA and Ubisoft follow. If Gamepass becomes the dominant model, it will just end up like netflix which just releases mostly slop designed for maximum revenue efficiency and milking of ip instead of actual well crafted original content. How can you not correlate the two? Why are you talking about devs pushing crappy woke shit it in as if I'm a fan of that, it's crap and I hate that shit too. The entire point is to have a discussion. I love GP, but if you cannot see the wider picture of the industry here and how this will affect development in the future, then that's on you.
mrMUR_96
Member
GP growing, leads to lower sales on other platforms. If GP grows to become dominant, they are entirely reliant on what target "plays" or whatever metric MSFT set and the revenue they agree to pay the devs. Microsoft paying each and every dev a decent cut is not sustainable even for megacorp microsoft. This disincentivises risk and originality in developers projects, leading to crappy games. I love GP, but I think it's only sensible that games are not launching day 1 on it. People who are hyped for specific games or whatever will buy that at retail, and then like a year later or whatever it will come go GP, Ps plus etc and the subscribers on that can play it then. I think it seems that perhaps we're making slightly different arguments here. I'm a big fan of GP and have an active sub with it, I'm just looking at the bigger picture here in how it's affecting the industry as a whole depending on how releases on it are managed.
Last edited:
mrMUR_96
Member
I definitely agree about management problems at studios, it's massively obvious this generation. Sony in particular has fcked it up this gen and had an appalling 1st party release schedule, only insomniac have put out actual next-gen games and even some of their projects have been clearly rushed (SM2). ND are mia and just milking remasters, the rest have just made boring safe cross gen games.
I think it's incredibly selfish to say devs should just accept crunch though, wtf is that. Devs clearly should be passionate, and these 1st class studios should only accept the best devs,
but no, I completely disagree about just accepting crunch, how is that fair at all. Devs have families, hobbies and an actual life to live too lmao, they're not just robots.
Extended hours are to be expected as games hit certain targets, but this should be planned for properly by management and their hours should be fair and fairly compensated.
This goes for all industries, not just gaming. Everyone is entitled to a fair work/life balance.
MandingoMcThickens
Member
You started your response to me by calling my stance selfish and small minded, and are surprised at the reply? Yeah, not reading the rest of your post, which is no doubt some of the creamiest shit on this forum right now. Again, fuck right off, nerd.
EDIT: Against my better judgement, read it anyway, and here you are going on and on about room temperature IQ and wanting to have a discussion. Do you know how discussions work, you dumb fuck?
Last edited:
Poppinfresh
Member
"Crunch" is part of multiple industries, not just game development.
It's a known factor before you go to work in any of those jobs.
No one is forcing anyone to be a game developer, but if you choose that career, you should be ready, willing, and able to crunch. If not, find another career path.
Poppinfresh
Member
Then there's zero reason for most people to use the service.
I subscribe to GP specifically for the Day 1 releases. I don't subscribe to PS Plus because it doesn't offer Day 1 releases.
Quite often, I will try a game on Game Pass Day 1 and if I like it, will immediately buy the game for full price on either Steam or PlayStation (depending on the game) so I'm not stuck in the Game Pass ecosystem, which isn't really mod-friendly on PC.
mrMUR_96
Member
Instead of actually discussing my points, you instead ask me if I understand how discussions work and call me a nerd on a video game forum you are also posting on.
mrMUR_96
Member
I think crunch is probably inevitable, but it's clear the gaming industry has a management problem, so it just so often devolves into pushing an unsustainable amount of pressure onto developers leading to them burning out so often, it needs to be managed properly.
MandingoMcThickens
Member
Continue deflecting, you're doing great!
You're splitting hairs here. If as an individual within a studio you experience a studio takeover it doesn't mean you agree to the business model that the company buying you out is implementing. Sure you can decide to disagree with their model and stay and nobody would be forcing you to stay or you can even decide to leave and still disagree as this Arkane founder has done. In the end if you stay you're being forced to do something by your higher ups though. Not sure why you're disputing that. You even had leaked emails of the anger felt by Pete Hines for being TOLD to adopt a specific strategy from higher ups.What a bizarre argument. First party studios aren't 'forced' to put games anywhere, it's part of their employment and contract to put games out where their parent company tells them, this is also weird cause some (see above quoted) often claim that games are now made with GP in mind, so by that logic it should be built into their development pipelines too. Third parties are also not forced to agree to GP terms under duress, they willingly choose these deals often in lieu of monetary assistance either pre-release for development or marketing at release etc.
On that note, Raphael was awfully quiet about this when Weird West launched on GP. He even penned an article on the Xbox website celebrating it. Should have voiced some concerns back then too.
A war he now seems to have won internally.
Last edited:
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
We're all splitting hairs here.
The fact is that for any number of devs that have said GP isn't viable, you can find a similar number saying they love the model.
Raphael was free to express his displeasure in 2022 as well, only years after his game released and finished its tenure on the service does he speak up about how it's not been working out for 8 years.
Nobody else is being pedantic to the level of defining what "forced" means in the context of first party studios having to do something though. All first party studios have a mandate (ie are forced) to adopt a gamepass strategy.
Because he set up a new studio, got GP funding from MS and saw that it just dried up after. He saw first hand that it was not beneficial in the long-run. Especially post ABK where third party indie funding is generally low now. Those who've said they "love the model" are usually those who were on the gravy train at some point or currently are. They're at the whim of MS though.
Last edited:
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
i mean ... ok ?
The GP funding likely helped him fund development, provide initial marketing and a venue to release the game. Why would it need to keep funding the game year(s) after the fact, that makes no sense.
And, yes, of course everyone is at the whim of the publisher / platform holder. Sony isn't going to continuously advertise 3, 4 year old games on their dashboards unless it's a part of a big sale or something, either.
It's still a nonsensical talking point, those first party developers will release the game where their publisher requires them to. Again, that's not 'forced', that's a simple part of their employment contract.
Forced would be if MS starts putting games on the service against a publishers will, like if Baldurs Gate 3 went on Game Pass without Larian approving it. That's what 'forced' means, it's not splitting hair, it's a simple definition of what the term means.
So it's probably better to find a different term, 'forced' isn't appropriate here.
Advertising is a little different to your income being entirely dependent on MS. Especially as the audience has been conditioned to wait for gamepass rather than buying games. This is the harm he is talking about.
How the hell could MS the publisher do something against MS's will? The heads of some bought publishers are forced to adopt MS' will. They cannot adopt a different strategy. Forced is entirely appropriate and was easily understood yet we're splitting hairs about it.
Last edited:
Poppinfresh
Member
The "forced" part of this goes out the window the minute they cashed Microsoft's check for the studio purchase.
They are no longer "bought publishers," they are Microsoft.
Just because Microsoft lets a studio it purchases keep it's name for marketing purposes doesn't make it any less "Microsoft."
"They" being who? The shareholders? Doesn't mean studio heads need to agree. I even gave you an example where one was angry for being told to adopt a strategy suggesting he had no choice.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Using Raphael's example, his game released on 3 platforms at the same time so his income was in no way entirely dependent on MS or Game Pass.
And the conditioned part is just unsubstantiated stuff, if that were the case, the software sales on the platform would have completely dried up, which we know for a fact is not the case.
First party follows what their publisher mandates, there is no 'forced', that is part of their standard employment. This applies to any first party studio on any platform.
This shouldn't be that hard.
Last edited:
Poppinfresh
Member
It's like talking to a brick wall...
Studio heads are no longer studio heads in this example. They are Microsoft employees who answer to both Microsoft executives and Microsoft shareholders.
If they weren't OK with this arrangement, then they shouldn't have sold their company to Microsoft, or they should have bailed when the company was sold.
As Microsoft employees, if they are unhappy with something Microsoft is telling them to do, they can quit. No one is forcing anything.
They mostly have dried up especially indie and smaller games. I don't know what you're referring to when you say "we know for a fact".
Yes it's not that hard at all. You're just being pedantic. Read what you have an issue with:
ie: They're forcing you to do it because they have the authority to being your boss. What's the difference between "boss forces you to" and "standard employment mandates it"? Nobody is saying you can't leave the studio. Nobody is saying shareholders didn't accept the money. Those are entirely different arguments.
Last edited:
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
...... bro what ?
"If your boss is telling you yo put your game on a sub service .... then it's safe and accurate to say that they're forcing you to do it"
Next time your boss assigns you something, tell them they're forcing you to do it and see how that goes
We're just saying anything now to try and make Game Pass be the big bad boogeyman.
Last edited:
StreetsofBeige
Member
If waiting for GP is that bad for sales, then every game maker shouldnt put their games on Steam either.
Whereas a lot of console games have frontloaded sales, Steam sales are often very smoothed out as PC gamers are conditioned to wait for Steam/GOG -70% off deals and then buy tons of backlog games for dirt cheap. I do myself best I can. Game makers seem to have no problem selling on Steam, and there is no GP/PS sub fee given out to hold them over. So for sub plan games, at least they get a juicy fixed fee, and also sell it too at the same time as not everyone is even on gaming sub plans. I think the last public data was Sony said there were 45M PS subbers across their 100M+ user base. Xbox was around 25M across 50M. So both platforms are ballpark only 40-50% on sub plans. There's still 50-60% who will buy games outright.
As for Raphael's Weird West being dumped on sub plans right away, it goes to show he and Devolver have no confidence in the game. The traditional thing to do for games (most games are not even on sub plans to begin with) is to sell first, then put it on sub plans to make up last bits of revenue when copies sold dry up. MS first party games being day one is their own choice as a corporate strategy perk. Third party games dont have to follow them.
As I mentioned, most games arent even on sub plan, and even more so as day one. So it's on Raphael and Devolver why they dumped it on sub plans so fast. Copies sold of course will dry up. But they got the sub plan fees off MS and Sony. So they should be happy with the deal as they agreed to it.
Last edited:
Poppinfresh
Member
People also seem to be missing the point that none of this was a surprise.
It's not like a Microsoft executive walked into someone's office one day and said, "Your game is going on Game Pass" out of the blue.
Game Pass has been Microsoft's strategy for a long time now. If you sold your studio to Microsoft, you did so knowing that whatever that studio produced would be connected to Game Pass in some fashion.
It's not like a Microsoft executive walked into someone's office one day and said, "Your game is going on Game Pass" out of the blue.
Game Pass has been Microsoft's strategy for a long time now. If you sold your studio to Microsoft, you did so knowing that whatever that studio produced would be connected to Game Pass in some fashion.
What sort of dumb strawman argument is that? Obviously the boss can force you to do something....... bro what ?
Next time your boss assigns you something, tell them they're forcing you to do it and see how that goes
Answer the simple question. What is the difference between:
"The boss is forcing me to" and "standard employment mandates me to"
Why are you being so pedantic about this nonsense? That's the question.
adamsapple
Or is it just one of Phil's balls in my throat?
Funny enough, as soon as the game's GP tenure ended, it landed on PS+ the very next month or so, if I recall correctly.
Devolver was extremely happy taking in sub-money from both Sony and MS without hesitation.
Zacfoldor
Member
If you mean don't interfere with your gameplay then of course. We would never do that. How would we do that? How COULD we even do that?
If you mean don't spread FUD when discussing the service, then that's not something we are doing. The FUD you see is actually truth, some opinions...if it looks like FUD to you, you may be financially or mentally invested.
We've been warning about this for years and now that the chickens are finally coming home to roost, you want to blame us. We did not hate on gamepass because we hate Xbox. We hate on gamepass because we can see how this service negatively impacts the industry. If this being discussed upsets gamepass users(though I'm not sure why), that is a function of their own minds. We are blameless. Nothing we say will take gamepass away from you, but you must understand how odd it sounds asking us to stop talking about it.
Last edited:
StreetsofBeige
Member
Ya. They probably realized some MS/Sony sub fees were going to be better than selling the game. So they took the offer. It's like investing. You can park it into a guaranteed boring payout of 3% in a locked in fund. Or risk it yourself hoping to make big bucks in the stock market. You can also lose money doing worse than 3%. They took the 3% option.
If the fees were good, I'd take it too. Looking at SteamDB, the game had 2,000-4,000 in the first month, then it crash and burned rest of year with ballpark numbers of a couple hundred here and there CCU. That's it. Then lately of course 3 years later it's down to 50-100 CCU.
I hope this Raphael dude isnt doing 20/20 hindsight. Where he analyzes the numbers and notices if he and Devolver didnt do sub plan deals, they would had made more money from straight up purchases. So that's why he calls it out now. Too bad bud. You guys took the deal.
I guarantee you sore losers like this want to cherry pick. If the game sells crap, they keep the sub plan fee. If the game ends up still selling like crazy, the platform holder cancels the deal and gives them 70% cuts like normal.
Last edited:
Starbuck2907
Member
Box office profits are dead. Streaming film companies are doing fine unless they are producing crap content.
ChorizoPicozo
Member
They have always been rough
Not necessarily. In fact, many of the most popular Netflix shows are garbage, and I'm not even talking about the mainstream ones, but the reality TV stuff. I also think Apple TV+ isn't making any money, even though it's considered one of the most prestigious platforms, alongside HBO, which is also having a rough time financially and creatively (remember that Nolan left WB because of streaming)