Well its only been a few days, but I’ve been trying to dive into this and I’ve hit roadblock after roadblock. I think setting this up as well as the tools is well beyond my skill level.

Depending on what the law actually ends up being and how it actually effects me, the shorter road would be to move away from doing multiplayer games.

Though my games are considerably smaller than anything else mentioned in these threads, so I don’t think anyone will really mind haha.

Taking a cursory glance through the solutions that already exist for this (which are largely standalone MMO style servers):

You lose out on many network troubleshooting tools unreal has built-in, as well as some of Unreal’s play-in-editor testing tools. Its also common to add roughly 1.25-2x netcode development time as you’re going to be coding things in on the Unreal client side as well as the server side.

I can see why this is feasible but rare to see in the wild. I think anything you pitch to an exec with a note that it may add 6 months to a year of extra development time (and QA time) is going to cause people to start swinging.

Edit: This comes off as negative and I don’t mean it to be - A lot of companies do their own Unreal engine tweaks and I could see if a company built it up, they could have something solid and easily reworkable for future projects.

I’m not a smart nor good developer so maybe I’m looking at this wrong, but if you’re a game Dev and you’re using Unreal Engine or Unity, aren’t you already bound to whatever license they have?

I believe if you’re following say Unreal’s structure, you’re using their server/client netcode, and while you can release whatever you’ve made you can’t use or share any of Epic’s code. That would still require users to agree to Epic’s EULA to get the full engine to compile your server setup.

Add in server handling for VoIP, audio middleware like FMOD, proprietary stuff like Xbox/PS crossplay, Steam’s SDK, etc and I feel like that’s a tangled web.

I’m also very tired and am probably not fully registering here.

I don’t know why but this doesn’t really read like ‘oh I just found this game’ and seems more like a straight up ad to me.

I don’t know why, but I feel like Capcom is just going to offer more DLC instead.

Hmm. On second thought, maybe games were a mistake.

The only recent example I can think of is Death Stranding.

There’s definitely weird people making games on itch and sometimes in the depths of Steam.

By its very definition weird isn’t going to sell to mass market. That being said I do agree that we need more weird AAA or AA games.

They kept rebalancing to chase the hardcore PvPers wants who ended up leaving anyways, started getting pushy with their microtransactions/battle pass (that were added in an update), and they added their Funcom launcher in an update.

Above all of that is there are still some ugly persistent bugs that have been huge problems for years now, many involving thralls which are pretty much required for late game content.

I won’t say Funcom did the worst job or anything that far, but they definitely put me in a ‘wait and see’ state for at least the first few major patches, as that will show what direction they want to take the game and who they’re focusing on for feedback.

This is a funky opinion, but I’m holding off on it because of how they handled Conan Exiles.

This isn’t surprising. WotC had been salivating for another hit like BG3. I suspect whoever they talk into making BG4 isn’t going to be able to clear the bar that Larian has set.

Oof, but yeah.

In my mind, having “something” to show is better than nothing, even if that something is mediocre.

I know first hand that JRPGs are a hefty projects to make, but I’m a little surprised they opted for shutting it all down and not going for Early Access to continue funding, especially as the idea seemed popular.

I can only guess that means the game is still in a pretty bad state.

Jump Ship for sure.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2841820/Jump_Ship_Demo/

Definitely got some rough spots though.

Agent is a huge meme for my friend group for pretty much the exact same reasons Lol.

Its been awhile since I’ve played, but you should get a few Portcrystals around mid-game, and combined with the eternal ferrystone will help traveling around significantly.

I’ve been playing this ‘medieval’ mod(s) for RimWorld which basically limits you to medieval tech and has a lot more crafting spaces to make materials for things, like a loom to make cloth or drying racks to make straw or dried meat. Its neat but a little quirky and doesn’t seem well tuned in parts.

I’ve also been convincing people to try out PULSAR: The Lost Colony, which is like a first person Star Trek adventure co-op game. The game gets pretty close to doing cool stuff, and has great moments, but doesn’t quite nail it overall. That’s almost more frustrating to be honest.

These are all solid additions.

This is definitely one of the weirder missteps by From.

I’d like to know what the decision looked like internally, because I somewhat refuse to believe they just overlooked it.

This is going to become the new AAA normal, isn’t it.

Oh lmao nice

How many wishlists is that?

You can report the video.

But to be blunt, I wouldn’t really worry about it. Most people don’t pirate, and trying to chase pirates down isn’t exactly going to convert them to paying customers as they’re not the type to buy it anyways.

Do frequent smallish updates to add QoL options, bugfixes, etc. (As you should be anyways) This will make the store version superior and making pirated copies obsolete and require new versions to keep up. Obviously additional Steam features are valuable here too as you don’t quite get those in alternate versions.

I’ve demoed my games at conventions and had people tell me to my face that they’re going to pirate my game. I’d offer them a free key instead and one guy said he’d prefer to pirate it, so idk some people are just extra.

Hardware being changed up makes sense. Feels funky that MS would pull a bait and switch for a game project, but its hard to say if that was MS or Molyneux being funky since they both have a history.

Not in game dev lmao :'-(

There’s actually somewhat of a resurgence for retro-ish games even among new gamers.

General consumers are mostly keeping up with the latest releases or updates because that’s what their friends or streamers are talking about. High fidelity adds to that but I don’t know if that’s the big draw. Especially since things like Roblox, Minecraft, and Fortnite seem to be the juggernauts right now.

Its just harder to create new conversations around something like Ps2 games because all the talk around them has passed.

True, though people tend to replace laptops when they fall out of support or start having hardware issues, much less often to do an upgrade looking for more frames.

I still feel Microsoft has to bring something hot to really sway anyone over since they have a long history of competing in the mobile hardware space and fumbling it hard.

Well a Windows license is just that: Here is a code for the OS, have fun. They don’t care because most support will be from hardware vendors.

Microsoft hardware is a different beast. You need to have parts for replacement, its got to be compatible (and stay compatible) with whatever accessories are coming out, and its got to be better than its competitors on new game launches. That last part takes coordination and support with dev teams.

Don’t care isn’t a great option, unless Microsoft wants another Windows Phone or Zune or one of the many other failed hardware launches they’ve had.

So it’ll be the ROG Ally but ‘better’ because its less Windows than normal. Hmm.

The last part concerns me. Why am I buying into a platform that Microsoft couldn’t care less if it sells at all because they make their money from subscriptions?

People don’t want hardware that just gets abandoned when its not profitable enough, which Microsoft absolutely has a history of doing.

Seems like everyone was all over Avowed the week it was out, then I hardly heard it mentioned at all until now.

That being said, these seem like some nice QoL features but I don’t really see this persuading many people to hop in and buy it.

This feels weirdly too late. I can’t imagine that many people in 2027 who passed on a Switch 1/2, SteamDeck, supposed other upcoming handhelds, or the ROG Ally and are looking for a gaming handheld with money to burn.

Xbox has to really bring something hot to the table, and its certainly not whatever they’ve been doing with their hardware/games/IPs for the past 5 years.

For some reason it didn’t click to me until I saw the Steam page that this game is set in the same universe as Control.

• Fields of Mistria
• Roots of Pacha

Easy recommends if you liked Stardew Valley.

Weird recommends would be My time at Portia/Sandrock. They absolutely have combat, but have romance systems and a cuter aesthetic. Even the enemies are derpy/cute.

• A Hat in Time
• Trine
• Spiritfarer
• The lego games
• Knights and bikes
• Human fall flat
• Cassette beasts
• Chariot
• Octodad
• Monaco

I don’t remember these being particularly violent but maybe are worth a look:

• Pit people
• BattleBlock Theater

I also liked Moon Hunters and Children of Morta but those are harder.

Divinity Original Sin 1 is also good but definitely falls into the violent category. Its kind of goofy too so it could be worth considering. The second game + BG3 are significantly more violent and serious so are harder to recommend with that criteria.

Edit: hmm it seems the formatting is funky in Voyager, should be fixed now