Noooooo you can't make a microtransactions free game and finished too 😭😭😭

Uhh.. today's AAA studios have THOUSANDS of employees, hundreds of millions of dollars in budgets, and huge IPs on which to draw. Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Assassin's Creed, Diablo, Warcraft, Mass Effect, Dragon Age... these studios have VASTLY larger resources than Larian. Like, an order of magnitude larger. This is gaslighting and whining. I'm not having it. Do better, AAA devs. Do a lot better.

That's why their games suck. Smaller teams and budgets make better products.
- Well I wouldn’t say that exactly. GTA 5 had a huge budget and a huge team and it’s objectively a better product if you compare the two (which is only to say they’re both great games but the bigger budget game has and does more).
  It’s a matter of the motivations of the developers and their financial backers. If your goal is to make an ok game that maximizes profit focused mechanics, most of these AAA developers are hitting the mark perfectly. If your focus is to make a good game like it seemed to be with the BG devs, they absolutely hit the mark and are being rewarded for it.
  This is just a reminder to an industry that is trying to tell us that pay to win mechanics are the standard that they do not in fact get to dictate what those standards are. We do. If a game is shit people will abandon it even if you poured millions into that product. The recent battlefield game is a prime example of this. Even something as guaranteed as a new battlefield game isn’t enough to overcome a shitty leadership team emphasizing the wrong things. The community bailed on their product and they’ll never get them back. All those millions in guaranteed revenue are gone forever.
Not AAA devs, they're doing what they can. The problem is with the AAA CEOs
- 💯
- When I read 'AAA devs' in this context I see it as 'AAA game development companies' not programers and artists working in them.
The Divinity games are some of my favorites ever made. It makes me giddy that BG3 is doing so well to embarrass big companies 😂
- This is partly why I ponied up full price.
  I want more games from Larian.
They're scared. There's no excuse anymore. And people have become aware of it.
Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Assassin’s Creed, Diablo, Warcraft, Mass Effect, Dragon Age… these studios have VASTLY larger resources than Larian.
I wouldn't be surprised if the team that worked on Skyrim was significantly smaller than the Larian team that worked on BG3.
- Perhaps? But Skyrim is also 12 years old. Whatever team is working in Elder Scrolls 6 is certainly not smaller than Larian's.
- Skyrim had under 100 employees.
IMO the most important distinction is a game that puts play experience first vs profit.

I want shorter games, with worse graphics, made by people who get paid more to do less.
Honestly that's an excellent summary.
Don't get me wrong BG3 is probably one of the best games I've ever played and I eventually want BG4 or whatever expansion/spin-off/sequel they want to make. However I waited 23 years between BG2 and BG3, I don't want to wait that long again, but I can wait.
But to your point I want good games. I don't need 100+ hour adventures. In general I don't want 100+ hour adventures. Those should be rare. I want games that I can finish (at a casual pace) in a weekend or two.
Portal 1? Braid? Both are short puzzle games that are absolutely fantastic.
Stanley Parable? Gone Home? Excellent story games. You can beat them in about as much time as it takes to watch a movie.
- It's disappointing that AAA studios don't recognize this. I don't want a bloated game that takes 300 hours to experience most of it. I don't want a giant map. I want a good game. I want a small map filled with life, not a large one with soulless procedurally generated dungeons.
- I'm just putting it out there that I have finished almost 3 different playthroughs and I would 300% purchase DLC.
  If the initial game is a full game and satisfactorily so, I would gladly fork over more money for additional content.
  DLC is not inherently bad. It's just the way most companies have done it is.
What's particularly notable about this well above average gaming year is that the clearly top two games so far aren't using state-of-the-art graphics.
Given how messy PC gaming has been lately, with a recent history of GPU shortages followed by an underwhelming new generation and some very poor game optimization, I wouldn't mind seeing a trend of game development slowing down on graphics tech for a bit.
- We have to go back!
  But also legitimately. Like remember how good games would get near the end of a console's lifecycle? Then a new console generation would drop and the games would look sharp, but also a bit wonky, until enough years has past, and thennn... another new console generation would drop, and the constraints would disappear again. Always too soon, I thought - just as the games were getting truly good again!
- Educate a pleeb here, I've been out of the gaming loop. What's the notable exceptions of great games this year and what two that are not state-of-the-art graphics do you mean?
I don't think demanding quality games is inherently at odds with wanting studios to not abuse their workers. What we really should support is broad labor protections and labor unions for developers. Because clearly the AAA studios don't need the excuse of high demand for features from gamers in order to abuse their people since they have been doing that for years while churning out trash titles.

Why are they getting so much attention for it?

Nintendo does the same with BoTW and ToTK. Long dev cycles that releases a functional game without micro-transactions.

FromSoft does the same with most of their games. Where people actually beg them to release DLCs.

But no... it's Larion they seem to go after.

Nintendo is huge. FromSoft has their own cult. But Larion? What's can they blame there? Nothing. Most big studios that bitch about this is larger than Larion. Maybe because they are more scared that if Larion can do it. There's no excuse anymore.

Most of the Sony exclusives are the same. God of War, Spiderman, Ghost of Tsushima.
Just solid AAA single player games, no nickel and dime bullshit.
Every F2P model is predatory as fuck, and relies on taking advantage of whales over a prolonged period.
- Dota 2 did it really well, it was and still is an amazing game, and you couldn't pay to get any gameplay advantage.
  I sank a lot of money into it just to support such system.
I think it's due to the little guy making a huge wave that other people don't feel they're "allowed" to make. These other devs work on "AAA" companies working on big name titles from studios everyone has heard of so. But now a small, indie studio comes along with a grand slam and they don't like it kind of makes them look bad by comparison. Showing you can release a big complex game without it being an absolute buggy mess, doesn't need microtransactions, doesn't need to sell millions of copies to be considered a success, and isn't just a copy paste of the previous game with a handful of modifications made to slap a new "FOR SALE" label on it...
- But now a small, indie studio comes along with a grand slam and they don’t like it kind of makes them look bad by comparison.
  Larian is similar in size, if not significantly larger, than Bethesda when they made Skyrim.
- "AAA" in price tag only.
  (Content may vary. Please purchase premium battle pass to see more details.)
- You're not referring to Larion as a small indie studio right? They are not a small indie studio.
I think the "problem" for those people is that the game broke out of its bubble. nintendo, from soft and also larion up until now all had their own bubble of fans. Larion broke that mold and even people who have nothing to do with the genre celebrate it.
- Critical mass has been achieved.
I personally think this is because gaming journalism isn't real journalism. They don't actually care, they just want clicks and perceived relevancy when people repost their tweets to reddit
- "They don’t actually care, they just want clicks and perceived relevancy when people repost their tweets to reddit"
  Kinda sounds like real media to me then lol they all suck if they're major corporate media.
- A lot of journalists do care, but they also have a job to do and a boss that tells them which articles to write.
  Like I don't care about whatever business my company is competing in, but I'll keep working for them because they pay me.
I agree with you, thing is: Nintendo produces Nintendo exclusives, so it doesn't affect the gaming space as much as other games might
There was plenty of distaste for Elden Ring when it came out -- devs at Ubisoft I believe ridiculed how the UI wasn't informative and such.
I think AAA studios are terrified because they're seeing just how much consumers value quality over quantity and MTX bullshit. Games that should be in self contained bubbles are now hitting mainstream and becoming absurdly popular.
- Lmao Ubisoft of all folks should shut the fuck up about UI, they are literally the source of the meme about cluttered and overly complicated UI. If Ubisoft is complaining about a UI I have to automatically assume it is a good UI.
  Also, if AAA developers have been paying attention for the last decade, they would know that consumers have valued quality and shown disdain for MTX since MTX started becoming pervasive. MTX overall can generate a lot of revenue, but it isnt sustainable, hence why there is always some sort of FOMO characteristic included with the MTX system, making things limited time and constantly shovelling low effort "new content" to fill out the MTX system.
- They've been working for almost a generation now on changing the mindset of gamers as to what they should expect from a game, and here comes a really good game from a little known studio doing exactly what games used to expect before the mind changing was attempted.
The lesson here is you can trust most big Japanese publishers/developers and it's the opposite for American/European ones. Christ, Death Stranding was almost ruined by all the "subtle" product placements they put
- Kojima got away with his product placement in mgs3 because nobody in the west knew calorie mate was a real product lol.

Would it be so bad if games didn't have insane budgets? Most of my favorite games from the past decade are from small studios operating on pizza and hope.

BG3 did have a pretty huge budget though. I would totally be fine if games took notes from BG3 but reduced scope a lot. Bioware used to make games similar to BG, but they stopped and now make garbage. The idea other studios can't make similar games is wrong. They can't make games this big usually though without publishers telling them they need to include microtransactions and other bullshit.
- BioWare didn’t just make games similar to Baldur’s Gate, they created Baldur’s Gate.
Lower budgets would probably be better. High budgets mean high risk, developers and publishers try to minimize that risk and you get bland games that try to cater to too many tastes. Movies suffer from the same problem. They get budgets in the hundreds of millions and you wonder what they spent it all for.
- High budgets are killing the film industry. In the case of gaming, it plays a factor, but greed is probably the main issue. Most big budget AAA games in the past made large amounts of money even if they didn’t have universal appeal. Because companies realised that they could make large amounts of money off loot boxes, microtransactions, cash shops and battle passes, they started trying to funnel players into games, mainly so that players would buy things. That’s one of the main reasons the AAA industry is getting worse: games need to appeal to as many as possible, while coming out as fast as possible, all so that players will buy the overpriced in-game items endlessly shoved in players’ faces.
Yep. The final fantsay series was a bunch of lads in an attic. Now those lads are legends.. with a fantasic legacy. Yet I'm still waiting for ES5 and GTA 6..
from small studios operating on pizza and hope.
And that's how it started.
You could give studios unlimited budgets and they'd still complain they don't have enough time / money to get things right. The rhetoric is that "games are just so complex nowadays" and that justifies their 4/5/6 year development periods.
I'm not seeing the complexity that warrants that type of long development period. The visual fidelity on some games is impressive, but is it actually worth that 5 year dev time?

Imagine whining about how people prefer to play good games that work on launch.

From what I gather, there is a real fear in develper spaces that executives will take the wrong lessons from BG3. They will want the same scope, choice, narrative, & mechanics but through crunch, shutting down smaller projects, & homogenized visual & narrative focus. IE all the shiny bits without the time, work culture, & creativity that came with creating BE3. It isn't developers just being pissy this is their way of trying to stop their idiot boss from ruining their current project or making massive projects without enough time or staff.
- That's because these executives don't care about learning. They want examples that they can use to rationalize their shitty decisions.
- So the answer is for the ones who make nice things because of a nice system they have to just stop because the other crabs can't get out of the bucket. Maybe their beef should be with their idiot boss, not with the guys who do the work.
  Whatever happened to companies learning from other's successes instead of trying to keep others down?
- It isn’t developers just being pissy this is their way of trying to stop their idiot boss from ruining their current project or making massive projects without enough time or staff.
  Unions.
Also releasing on PC first is practically unheard of. It's usually the afterthought platform if it gets a release at all.
Yeah, to the OP in the posted tweet... I did put a lot of thought into it. If a game that's just $60 can do this, then all new games are measured against it. Go compete. If your business model is outdated, convince your investors to change or be downgraded to B tier game dev.
Don't come me, the consumer, complaining about your poor ability to hedge business markets. You saw BG3 in early access for 3 years, you knew it was coming.

Complaining about it having funding.... AAA.... lol. Thats the fucking point of AAA. Big fucking budget.

- I read this in stereotyped Italian fuckin Mario voice.
  AAA stands for “Abig Afuckin’ Abuget”

Yeah, don't expect funding for AAA games!

Wait...

To the contrary, they had to pay to have the IP

Meanwhile:

Jan 2022: "Heres xenoblade 3, an absolutely gigantic single player game, no microtransactions, pushes the console to it's absolute limit, Monolithsoft at the top of their fucking game. Announced today, out in september."

April 2022: "Lol, it's now out in july. Enjoy.".

Baldurs gate is fucking sweet, but let's not act like it's a unique occurance in AAA gaming.

This isn't a pissing contest and no one is acting like this is unique. We saw the same excitement for the last 2 Zelda games, God of War, Spiderman, Elden Ring etc. (post more examples, I don't pay as much attention to the industry anymore so I'm sure I've missed a bunch). Let's celebrate them if that's what you'd like to see more of. They're all awesome and they all add to the evidence that there is a large population that still want to experience games this way.
Xenoblade 3 is a Nintendo exclusive. Baldur's Gate is unique to me because a game like this hasn't clicked with me since Dragon Age Origins.
psych
That waifu/husbando enslavement game was AAA??
- No, that was 2. That mechanic and plot point doesn't exist in 3. 3 has very little, if any, fanservice, most due to its dark subject matter (infinite war, limited lifespans)
  And yes, AAA. It cost multiple millions, hundreds of staff working on it, hundreds of hours of VA including notable UK talent (Jenna Coleman, etc), a fully orchestral soundtrack by Yasunori Mitsuda recorded in multiple countries, and the game itself pushes the switch to breaking point. It absolutely counts and is considered by Nintendo as one.
  There's loads of other examples of decent single player experiences without bullshit, this one just came to mind first. And I hope Baldurs Gate's success brings more like these

AAA companies: Makes bad game and releases apology promising to make good games now

Also AAA companies: We are not capable of making good games, stop expecting to much.

Remember fellow gamers, you hold the power of the purse, you get the final vote with your wallet.

If some studio head or developer manager tries to tell you that you have to accept micro transactions and such, just say no thank you, and move on.

There are plenty of other games from other good studios out there for you to give your hard-earned money to.

- Dont say no thank you, give them the middle finger
  You could also do both, for that slightly comedic type of reply. Keep them guessing.

New expectations? Lol. These were always the expectations!

That's what I don't get. These are expectations that I've had for years. The indie space has kinda proven that creativity will take a game a hell of a lot farther than cash ever will. With few exceptions I simply don't buy AAA games anymore because honestly I just don't expect the same level of effort will be put into making them.

How does it go?

I want smaller games, with lower quality graphics. Made by happier developers who are paid more to work less. And I'm not kidding!

I mean we can have large games with detailed graphics and have employees treated well. We just need to accept 10+ year timelines for releases on big games which I'm ok with as long as we get quality results and the team is treated well.
I follow star citizen though so I could be the weird one here lol
- And then you need someone to foot the bill for all that. Preferrably ahead of time.
  That's kinda how lucky Star Citizen got, but that's not a business model you can replicate a second time.
- Dreaming of riding an army of unicorns to battle.
Does this include Hollow Knight? Because I want more of that. I can't wait for Silksong!
- Hollow Knight is the definition of "Rockstar-level nonsense for scope"
  I can't believe the large majority of it was made by two people. I have 70 hours in that game and still have a couple things I haven't beaten yet.
  Also cannot wait for Silksong!

Here’s my thing: I don’t necessarily care what sort of game you make, I just want it to be feature-complete and technically solid (I.e. mostly bug-free). Whether that’s a small indie game or a massive AAA game, those two things should be true.

I think what most people find frustrating is that the in-game store is the most well developed part of most AAA releases nowadays, which often ship riddled with bugs.

BG3 has still been riddled with bugs for me and since it doesn't have MTX or a store or anything, it feels kinda worse. At least I know why the crap riddled with MTX is rife with issues; what is BG3's excuse?
I probably wouldn't mind the bugs so much if the whole game was shit. But the game is fucking awesome. I just want to play it without being frustrated by technical issues. 😩
I'm hoping that by the time the PS5 version launches, it'll be much smoother.
- I actually agree with you. People praise BG3 as if it were the most perfect 10/10 video game in existence. Its far from it. It is riddled with bugs reaching from minor to game breaking. The best example is the very first few seconds of the game. The first thing the players are likely to interact with is the tadpole pool after awekening on the ship. ::: spoiler Minor spoiler It explodes, knocking you back and causing damage. :::
  \ As someone who made a few characters and played the intro section a lot, the animation is often times bugged and confusing. And thats the first interaction a player has with the game.
  \ A few seconds later you stand in front of a door. Usually the door opens and you can go through. But sometimes the opening animation doesn't play. This happened on my very first time playing and I couldn't figure out where to go, because my first instinct wasn't to clip through the closed door. Things like this are absolutely unacceptable in the tutorial area.
  Even though they already have full controller support it is very clear why the console release is delayed. The console player base is expected to be a lot more casual and unless they iron out all the confusing bugs they run the risk of people being frustrated and dropping the game.
  And then there are other major things.
  Why is there no native option for 3rd person WASD movement even though it is fully implemented for controllers?
  Why does only the controller get a search area function but the keyboard doesn't?
  Why is there no camera sensitivity for controllers?
  Why are there no deadzone settings for controller joysticks?
  Why is there a 1 second delay on movement when using a controller?
  Why can't I set the text size below 64px when using a controller?
  Why in a game that has been in early access for so long and a world full of magic can't we change our characters appearance post creation? (I know it's announced but why just now?)
  Why do we not have advanced difficulty settings? (I'd love the enemies to be smart like "tactitian" but not be unhittable bullet sponges.)
  Why is every adult character so goddamn hot in this game? I need my blood in my brain.
  Why can we select a player voice, if the player isn't voiced beyond some minor quips?
  Why isn't there a random name generator for your character?
  Why can't I shift + click multiple items or containers to queue them up for pickup or search?
  Why do container windows open on top of each other or other inventory windows?
  Why can't I rename containers in my inventory?
  Why can't I filter out or hide wares in my inventory?
  Why can't I sort or filter items during trading or in the party view?
  Why do containers always open in a 5x2 grid instead of trying to fit all the items without scrolling?
  Why can I skip the rolling animation but not the success-continue animation?
  etc.
  
  \ I know I'm nitpicking here, but for a game that is as highly praised as this, I expect it also to nail all those minor things that other games have already figured out already (some of which were even their own older titles). Especially because it was Early Access and they had a lot of user feedback. I see it times and times again that studios apparently throw out all their previous knowledge of videogames and seemingly start from scratch on every title, making small stupid mistakes that could have been easily avoided. It's like the research process for video mechanics and UI never consists of actually looking at other games.
  So for me, it's a very pretty game, its a beautifully sounding game and even a very fun game. But nowhere near a 10/10. It's a 7/10 game. Fix the bugs to bump it up to 8/10 implement some QoL for 9/10 and release modding tools so the community can make it a 10/10.
- Stupid question, but have you been letting Steam do game updates?
  Unless you've changed the default settings, you have to let Steam do updates while not playing any games through Steam. By default it won't do any updates in the background.
- Ah, the contrarian.
  If you let other people ruin something for you, that's on you, not them. Especially if they "ruin" it by celebrating and enjoying it.
- "I won't try this game because it's too highly reviewed!" What a weird hill to die on.
  D4 seemed to have been great at launch, but the seasons and battle pass stuff ruin it for me (though you can like it if you want, I don't care). I don't like the idea of a game being on a timer and asking me to play the way they want me to play it. This is what BG3 does right. It's a game with many options and many ways to play. It never tells you how you should and you also don't need to pay extra for other crap. You get a complete experience from start to finish with no timers and nothing extra asked of you.
- …what?
- Jesse, what the hell are you talking about?
- You know, you'll go through life a lot happier if you stop restricting yourself from experiencing something just because it's a popular thing.
- Huh? The game literally lets you play any way you want.
- I’m a huge diablo fan. D4 fucking stinks and I went back to d2 res and picked up POE. Poe is 10/10 and exactly what I need to scratch this rng itch.
- I feel you on the deepthroating shit. It's a great game, no doubt about it. But some of these articles act like it's the second coming of Christ, and if I am to be entirely honest... It's not quite as good as the original games. It's lacking a lot of depth in the story telling (it's almost entirely voiced so there's more brevity in any given conversation than the pages upon pages of text even a random nobody can give you in BG2), but makes up for it with mechanical depth.
  I agree it's a big deal for a major release to not have MTX or a season pass or other bullshit, and that should definitely be applauded. But some of the things I've seen said about the game are out right fraudulent. Like an article the other day saying it is the most polished AAA game in over a decade, which is absurd. The game is plagued with issues and the polish is literally the one thing I can not give it praises for. It even feels amateur in a lot of ways. Like it has many little issues I would not expect from a seasoned developer, and many bugs ranging from minor inconveniences to full blown game breaking stuff like scripts firing wrong leading to an outcome you didn't choose to take or characters becoming comoletely broken being unable to move or be interacted with.
  Story is great. It actually feels like a remix of the first Baldur's Gate story. Characters are some of the best I've seen in a long time. The combat is super fun, especially when you try to do weird random shit just to see if it works; cuz 90% of the time it does. There is a depth to the changes you can have on the world at large that are extremely cool and haven't been done on such a scale before in all the RPGs I've played over the years...
  Although that last part is where the previous talk about bugs really starts to drag the experience down. There have been so many points in my two playthroughs of the game where I took one path, but got the dialogue and changes to the world of another path. Like currently, my party keeps talking about one of the companions killing another. But they didn't; I stopped that from happening. So now this character is standing around in the background while other characters talk about her death. And that's not even the worst one I've encountered.

Cry some more, corpos.

I think that one (HUGE) part of BG3's success is that it was in Early Access for, what, 2-3 years? During which it grew a dedicated modding scene, received a metric fuck-ton of feedback, and regularly dropped large content patches. This wasn't an average dev cycle, and I think it shows. In some ways, the Dev. Feedback and interactivity reminded me a lot of the way Warframe does dev interactions.

Yeah, I agree with that similarity to Warframe's level of developer interaction.
Sure, in the past they've been slower to respond to feedback about problems, and often times old things have fallen out of relevance because something else just outright does the same thing, and more, but better.
But as it is now, DE really seems to be prioritizing listening to feedback, almost exponentially so, and as an example, bringing things up to par with what they should be at the current level of the game, a concept that much more rarely got the implementation it deserved in years before.
- And warframe has been rewarded with a practically methusalian lifespan for a game in its genre, I hope we see the same for baldurs gate 3 with a similar level of ongoing support and improvement.

Wizards of the coast paid $0 to fund this game, that's why it says Larian in the publisher field on Steam and not WoTC or Hasbro.

Although they probably got some good sweet Nvidia dollars.

Exactly. Every new game doesn't have to be an instant classic that breaks new ground. But they should be functional, playable, and have enough polish to be considered finished. That doesn't necessarily mean bug free, but we all know what a finished game looks like, and what one doesn't.
The worst one I've ever personally played was the Lego Hobbit game. My wife and I used to line up kamikaze shots and play Lego games, figuring a child and a drunk adult were about the same level. The game stops when Smaug flies out of the mountain. Roll credits. I guess the last movie did so poorly that they never bothered making the rest of the game.
- For ages, AAA games were classed as such by brand recognition, not by quality. Inevitably, they devolved into being just a platform to sell microtransactions. The shareholders want their dividents and the CEO needs a new yacht with coke and hookers.
  It's too easy to exploit the dopamine rush playing the new, official installment of a well-known series. Even if it's terrible, the customers get their joy by ranting about how trash the game is and how they hope the next one will be better. BG3 being an actual game does not change anything and will not reset expectations.
- That's sad because TT's games were quite good, I think they hit their apex at Lego Marvel Superheroes 1. Awesome open world, a ton of characters, and lots of exploration in addition to the normal level quests.

The one thing that Shawn forgot to say is "Larian's boardrooms aren't filled with people who don't play video games!!"

It's mostly owned by Sven, who is obviously very passionate about video games, storytelling, and tactical rpgs.

It is exactly what I except going forward because, as that moron mentioned this is a fucking AAA game, not a Indy game.

AAA games developers absolutely have those resources and even more, so yes, they should have all of that.

Well Shawn. How about this is the new standard for AAA games and if you can't reach it than you are a AA studio at most.

Even more ironic. Larian started BG3 6 years ago, or when they were still arguably AA studio.
We should make sure to label games exactly like this. Beta at release? Depending on microtransactions? -> It's an AA game at most, no matter the production costs.

Maybe we need to update the nomenclature. Software with loot boxes, pay to win mechanics, predatory gameplay loops, and storefront-first design should now be called “casinos”. They should have disclaimers about gambling and addiction in their load screen, have age restrictions, and should be forced to institute limits on what can be spent in a certain time frame. Feature-complete software with zero storefronts of any kind would be allowed to brand themselves as “games”.

Better idea: just make that shit illegal.
- That’ll happen when pigs fly.
  Hell, when customers actually learn to have some self respect for themselves.
Oohh. I like this. I've been bothered by the rise of gambling in different packaging in the world over the last decade. We really should be acknowledging that gambling is different from gaming, separating them meaningfully. Are toy department shelves still full of child gambling reandom toy bullshit too? I haven't had reason or opportunity to pay attention to that for a few years.
- I’m not sure about toys, but watching my son grow up with app stores has made me very aware of how so called “games” have been monetizing our children makes me want some real legislation and restrictions on what is legal to market to children. The “idle” category of games is just egregious. They’re a flimsy and thin veneer of game painted over a bank machine. AAA is not much better - they just have more complicated routes take your money.

Who the f is Shawn, wtf is evolve? Why is every shitty game dev crying that other people make good games, without shame? Oh that's right, based on their releases, they have no shame.

He didn't have anyone's attention and he craves attention and now he has lots of attention, so I guess everything is coming up Milhouse as far as Shawn is concerned.

"what funding?"is a dumb question. all companies have funding. especially software. very few companies legit started in a basement and progressed to international status relying purely on profit and loss sheets.

It is not when replying to the comment. There was no funding for being a dnd game. They are simply lying for their point.
Just as an FYI, the user who posted "what funding?" Works for Larian; director of publishing.
you are ignorant.. you don't understand what he's talking about.. they are both talking about VC funding.. that means Venture Capital, which you did not know.. for some reason you are here being ignorant and loud about something you do not understand..
- Larian recieved debt funding to found in 2009, late stage VC in 2011 (presumably to offset loan repayments), recieved ongoing support from Arkafund VC and has crowd funded every year 2013–2019. Tencent bought 3006 shares for 30% stake in either 2020 or '21 (not sure exact date).

Those developers trying to shit on Larian need to cry and seethe more. Terribly incompetent people who can't create good games themselves, why not trying taking notes instead?

Keep up the great work Larian.

The devs are mostly not the problem with the state of AAA games today, it's the people telling them what to do in order to maximise profits.
Same as with most problems we face as a species, really.
- But I was told every individual ruthlessly and insatiably acting solely out of greed for personal gain — regardless of ethics, morality, or empathy — was the greatest, most efficient, bestest, freedomest thing to have ever existed?
  Why would corporate sociopaths lie? What could they po$$ibly have to gain?
Those developers trying to shit on Larian need to cry and seethe more.
I can't find developers doing this. Seems like a mostly made up concern by overly sensitive people looking to be angry about something.
- The picture in the OP is PR for a publishing company. There are many other accounts of people who work in the industry who are angry/jealous of Larian. You're probably just not looking in the right places.
This is the bad take management wants you to have.
- Who in management exactly? As far as I know Larian is not responsible for the tweets aside from just making a good game.

Hear that Gamefreak, owner of the highest-grossing media franchise of all times?

They learned their lesson though. They don't need to put on any effort and people will still buy it.
- I know and I fucking hate it. I was one of the fanboys defending them even through the first SwSh trailers, but the more they showed stuff the more it was clear it wasn’t the franchise I used to love anymore.

Who are these people? Seems like some randos if you ask me.

People have been saying this game is exciting because of the lack of mtx, but it seems to me that any big rpg gets a lot of attention. Eldan Ring got similar praise last year. Bioware was making these kinds of games fairly consistently about a decade ago and then stopped to make shit like Anthem. It's a design decision not a budget problem.

Microtransactions come with specific challenges. Specifically, you have to give the players a reason to pay them, and that's usually done by making the game purpously worse for those who don't pay.
- Or the other trend these days, Wich is to remove content from the base game and sell it as dlc or just money-gate it even if it's on the base disk/release.
- I don't necessarily believe this to be universal. I've played plenty of games with cosmetic mtx that I can absolutely play without the desire or need to spend money.

Tencent owns 30% of Larian iirc, so most likely from them

Owned, unless you have proof they still do.
- Love seeing you edit your comment and correct yourself/validate the other user's statement. Breathe of fresh air from the toxic doubling-down 99% of the time on reddit.
Time to kneel down and pray to our future Chinese Overlords, for they are everywhere and everything.
- nah their demographics are doomed
Interesting I didn't know that, how long have they owned 30%?
This post is a bit reminiscent of r/gamercirclejerk but at least your comment taught me something new and salvaged it
- Not sure, at least since 2020 https://twitter.com/GamerTrader1/status/1431899588324175873

Why are people pretending baulders gate is the only high selling game with no microtransactions as of late? Off the top of my head Elden Ring and Tears of the Kingdom both released in the last year or so, no microtransactions or dlc as of now.

They’re not. Most of the videos and articles I’ve read specifically mention Elden Ring and TotK as other examples.

this "dev" are really dumb.

you mean they got the D&D license for free?

"what funding?" Bro you're kidding right?

They made a D&D video game. The most popular and successful board game ever made. They had BUCKETS of funding from wizards of the Coast for this. They also had a massive studio with more than 400 people working on it.

James Stephanie Sterling did a fantastic video about Baldur's Gate 3. Essentially, everything came together in just the right way for this game to be made. It's not responsible to call this the new standard in the same world where we vilify overwork and 'crunch-time', but that's not to say you shouldn't expect more from game developers. You absolutely should. But you should do so reasonably.

Other triple A devs have massive funding, a giant staff and other unlimited resources and they still can't make a game devoid of microtransactions or bugs. Are you stunned?
They had BUCKETS of funding from wizards of the Coast for this. They also had a massive studio with more than 400 people working on it.
They had the IP; they did not receive a single cent from WotC. They funded the game with money from their previous games, and in fact, they paid WotC for the IP.
I hear tell that the “bro” is on the dev team, so he may know a thing or two.
I'm pretty sure EA and Activision-Blizzard have similar or bigger budgets for their AAA games and they either make shit or microtransactions-filled games.
2K is huge and they always make NBA2K decent/good but full of terrible microtransactions
Nintendo is huge and look at Pokemon Scarlet and Violet.
Reportedly, Wizards of the coast made around 1.3billion in revenue, while EA made around 7billion, and Activision-Blizzard made around 1.5billion.
I'm no financial expert so maybe I'm mistaken in some figure, but the bottom line is WotC is not the only big (and growing) company, so this are nothing but excuses.
- Ok, but what does that have to do with addressing the dude who claims the game had no funding implying it had a small budget when it didn't?
  He's not saying anything about the MTX or lack thereof; he's calling out the idiot saying BG3 had no funding.

Just ignore the day 1 DLC.

What day 1 DLC? The Deluxe edition cosmetic stuff?
- That's called a micro transaction, yes.
You consider DLC a microtransaction?
Edit: Maybe I'm just too old, but I thought microtransactions were something you get prompted to purchase while playing the game. Is that no longer the case?
- Microtransactions are 'small' purchases made in a game (or via some kind of store that allows you to buy stuff to be used inside of a game).
  DLC is any additional downloadable content that is not included with the game (so something like a day 1 patch wouldn't be considered DLC, I'd say).
  All microtransations are DLC, but not all DLC are microtransactions, generally (before someone comes along with some kind of physical microtransaction or something I guess)
  I personally just view microtransations as anything that isn't 'playable content'. So buying a mount from an in-game store would be a microtransaction, while buying an expansion wouldn't be. Map packs kind of blur the line in this instance, because one could argue that they're essentially 'world cosmetics', but its a hard and fast rule and not something I'd try to enforce as a law, ya know?
It's the soundtrack and some DSO2 cosmetics that everyone who bought the game during early access got for free. They're selling it to everyone else for $10.
Technically it's DLC, not MTX as MTX almost always entails individual purchases of items, usually in-game. It's more of a Collector's Edition than anything. That no one seems to care about, even the people who detest predatory practices.
- There are items with in game power in that bundle.

What funding?

Uh... Didn't WOTC commission and pay for the game? I read that they went to Larian, not the other way around.

Not correct Larian reached out to WOTC coast first to try get the licence after Divinity Original Sin but were turned down because they felt that they were too new. Was only after DOS2 that they got the license.
- New? They’ve been around since the 90s. Original Sin was like the 5th or 6th Divinity game.

If devs actually think all 800k active players + the ones who pirated it all play DND, then they have another guess coming. Most of them probably have never touched a Handbook

I find it sad that if you make a decent game now you are praised. It's not that good. That's just how low the bar is now.

And they're staring to have Battle Passes have multiple tiers of cost such as in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 and NBA 2K24. What's next? Multiple battle passes at once like in the free to play Monster Legends? In $69.99 priced games? Where the battle passes cost at least $19.99 per month?

Is it actually mediocre tho?