It sounds like that’s what happened, but through the proper channels. They hired a known CnC community/modding site admin as the dev.
I’d imagine he pitched that this was an easy way to reduce maintenance costs while fostering massive good will and making the amount of long tail sales over time higher.
If you’ve tried the Crash Bandicoot N-Sane trilogy, there are a few sequels of differing quality on PS2. I don’t think any of them are particularly bad, but none are as good as the original PS1 trilogy (or the N-Sane remakes).
I get that this is mildlyinfuriating, but a single instance of maybe an inch of misalignment in an install like that is damn impressive.
I’m not saying Bluesky sucks, but this is childish.
Bluesky was started by the same guy who started Twitter, and is only federated in concept.
It was never meant to be “Twitter but better”. It was always meant to be “How can we make the most money off fleeing twitter users?”. There’s a lot of overlap between the money making and being better, but it’s incidental to the real goal. Any claims otherwise are pure marketing.
My only real counter to that is Project Zomboid. It’s a complete game. It’s in EA due to them wanting to add many more gameplay systems to the existing complete sandbox. They have a roadmap somewhere. They don’t release major updates without multiple ones being added.
Last major update (41, a few years ago) was drivable cars (and all the spawning systems, loot, and map changes to make them fully fleshed out) and multiplayer. I’m sure there was more, but those were the standout things.
The new major update (42, available through a public opt-in beta branch right now) is a complete overhaul to gunplay, liquid management/mixing, crafting systems, lighting engine, and the addition of NPC animals with a full husbandry system. And that’s only the highlights. It will stay in beta as they get better data for balancing the new features and the absurdly increased player count surfaces bugs they didn’t find through internal testing. Once it’s balanced and stable (maybe a year), they’ll push this update to the main branch where it will continue to get minor bug fixes as things crop up (usually bugs surfaced by the modding community by the time it hits stable).
Then they’ll keep crunching away on work on human NPCs and simulating story stuff with loot generation, which I believe will be the next major update in a few years.
Each intermediate release is a complete game, it just doesn’t have the full set of features on the roadmap. It still is the best zombie survival sim on the market as is.
But it is absolutely a unicorn of early access.
Everyone keeps labelling GabeN as the only one holding VALVe to standards, but by his own admission he’s more of the equivalent of a board member now, not deeply involved in the day to day anymore. I think the only ones that truly know his level of involvement would be people at VALVe.
What I’m getting at is that I have the same concerns about what will happen after he passes, but I don’t think he’s the only person standing in the way of VALVe going full corporate.
The examples I’ve seen are a year+ with no updates. Not definitive, but I highly doubt they’re doing this for the cases you’re talking about.
GOD HAND- the granddaddy of Platinum Games’s combo based “beat em ups”, made by Clover Studios before they went bankrupt and reopened as Platinum. So think Devil May Cry and Bayonetta but hand to hand 🎵"or fist to fist. Kick your nuts or twist your wrist. God power keeps my pimp hand strong so trust me or you won’t last very long."🎵 Yeah, it also has quite possibly the best theme song ever too.
Zone of the Enders the Second Runner drops you into the midpoint of a fairly generic mecha anime plot, but as overseen by Hideo Kojima. It has a lot of “Dynasty Warriors” style “tear through hundreds of fodder with ease” gameplay, but also a very fast paced “attack/dodge/parry” system for fights against beefier enemies that ends up as this fast paced sort of rock paper scissors as you have to adapt to use the right technique to counter the enemy. You fly and can manuever very fast, attacks can come from any angle, and it’s just flat out fun to control. There is a PC port/remaster of questionable quality (and no steam deck support), and a xbox 360 port of good quality, but it’s mostly just uprezzed graphics that you’ll get by emulation anyway.