this post was submitted on 24 Oct 2024
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Larian director of publishing Michael Douse, never one to be shy about speaking his mind, has spoken his mind about Ubisoft's decision to disband the Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown development team, saying it's the result of a "broken strategy" that prioritizes subscriptions over sales.

Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown is quite good. PC Gamer's Mollie Taylor felt it was dragged down by a very slow start, calling it "a slow burn to a fault" in an overall positive review, and it holds an enviable 86 aggregate score on Metacritic. Despite that, Ubisoft recently confirmed that the development team has been scattered to the four winds to work on "other projects that will benefit from their expertise."

This, Douse feels, is at least partially the outcome of Ubisoft's focus on subscriptions over conventional game sales—the whole "feeling comfortable with not owning your game" thing espoused by Ubisoft director of subscriptions Philippe Tremblay earlier this year—and the decision to stop releasing games on Steam, which is far and away the biggest digital storefront for PC gaming.

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[–] [email protected] 147 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

I mean given the massive industry layoffs over the past few years developers are already pretty used to not having jobs.

I hate how developers are the ones attributed to game industry problems. Decisions like this almost never fall on the developers shoulders, specifically the ownership quote was from their subscription service director. You know... the guy whose job depends on you not wanting to own games.

[–] [email protected] 40 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (4 children)

Agreed, I’m always saddened by quotes like “well the devs should have” when it’s almost certainly “the execs should have.” Unless a studio is owned by its devs, or they make up some of its leadership, which are few and far between, the devs don’t have the say on the shitty things that happen to the product they’re working on, and often when the devs have more say you end up with like Kingdom Come Deliverance from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warhorse_Studios. One of my favorite games, was supported by the studio for long after it came out, and now they’re working on a promising sequel

[–] [email protected] 12 points 6 days ago

Fwiw the sequel is supposedly going to have Denuvo in it, which is pretty blatantly an executive meddling decision.

But personally, the phrase "the devs should" never bothers me. It's pretty transparently referring not to individual developers but to the priorities and decisions of the "developer": the company in charge of development, as distinct from, say, the publisher or the platform.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

As a huge KCD fan (donated to the Kickstarter!) I have very, very low hopes for KCD2.

It will have Denuvo. Warhorse is awesome, but they are already not great at optimization. KCD on launch was rough. Amazing, fun, but rough.

Adding Denuvo is just asking for exceptionally poor performance.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Worst part is, they got acquired the year after release, so even if KC:D 2 is good, their games in the more distant future are bound to be enshittified.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Even worse that acquisition links back to the Embracer Group. Hopefully KC:D 2 makes it out the door before Embracer full fucks up Warhorse.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

Seems they already did. KCD2 will have Denuvo.

Let's put CPU heavy malware on an already CPU taxing game from a dev team known for not having the best optimization. Wcgw?

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago (1 children)

In the past decade, game companies have been releasing devs after a game is finished. I have a few friends in the gaming industry, and it's brutal as a software engineer.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago

Yeah I'm really glad I didn't get on that track even though it had been a childhood dream

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Yeah, this is classic class warfare and the trajectory of these things has been moving away from developers having any say for a long time, the difference now is that business majors have finally found a killer app to convince society it is ok to destroy software development as a decent career... it is called AI and it doesn't actually matter if it works or not, the point is to convince people it is only natural and right to treat software devs like worthless commodified contract labor that is just around the corner from being entirely obsolete.

I find it darkly hilarious how confident so many people who work in the software industry are that they aren't about to have their future crushed by the rich. Again it really doesn't matter if AI lives up to the hype at all, if AI fails to deliver and a market crash happens all the better since society will readily accept that as proof there needed to be a market correction on out of control labor costs for development, consolidation will occur and the labor of software development will be indefinitely and likely permanently devalued.

This should be clear as day to programmers but people who program for a living tend to think understanding programming is a shortcut to understanding everything and it leads to hilariously naive views from otherwise apparently very intelligent people.

Make no mistake this is the beginning of an awful era for game developers and software development.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 6 days ago

My favorite thing is Ubisoft blaming something and then gaming companies going, "Uh no? That's just you."

[–] [email protected] 30 points 6 days ago

That's every publisher's wet dream. AI's almost ready, right?

god I wanna see them fail so badly.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago

lol ubisoft publishes a good game once in a blue moon and when they do they disband the team that does it. seriously these motherfuckers need to be jailed.

[–] JackbyDev 15 points 6 days ago (2 children)

It's all a distraction from the truth that you already don't own games.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 6 days ago (1 children)

GOG is a slight argument against that

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago (3 children)

It depends on your definition of ownership. If having perpetual access to a product is enough then yes. But we aren't allowed to, say, disassemble a game and use it's assets to make something of our own. As opposed to say a spoon. Nobody can tell me how I can and can't use my spoon.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 6 days ago (2 children)

It's not realistic to demand to own games in the same way as a spoon any time soon. It is, however, pretty reasonable to demand you own games like you'd own a book. You can chop up a book and use it to make a paper maché dog, but you can't chop up the words within to make a new derivative book (or just copy them as its to get another copy of the same book except for a single backup that you're not allowed to transfer to someone else unless you also give them the original). The important things you can do with a book but not a game under the current system, even with Gog, are things like selling it on or giving it away when you're done with it and lending it out like a library.

About a hundred years ago, book publishers tried using licence agreements in books to restrict them in similar ways to how games and other software are restricted today, but courts decided that was completely unreasonable, and put a stop to it. In the US, that's called the First Sale Doctrine, but it has other names elsewhere or didn't even need naming. All the arguments that applied to books apply equally well to software, so consumers should demand the same rights.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (2 children)

I know you didn't ask, but may I volunteer a car engine instead of a spoon. There's still IP involved in a car engine, but nobody is going to tell me I cant put my VW engine in Honda and sell it.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

You can make mods for many games and many people do.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago (5 children)

Yes, but you can't use their assets to make other games or products.

You can add whatever you want to Skyrim, but you can't add Skrim to whatever you like.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago

Flash news: you dont own your steam games and you're use to it. This "Ubisoft is the bad guy" but we all lick steam and others capitalist business's ass is getting ridiculous. Steam has 78 employees lol. Dont buy ubi's games and stop crying.

[–] catch22 3 points 6 days ago

This is to bad, I really enjoyed this game one of the better platformers to come out in a long time.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (6 children)

Gamers be like "We don't mind not owning our games as long as we don't own them through the monopoly that we like, ok?"

[–] [email protected] 17 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (5 children)

If you're talking about Steam, while it provides its own DRM system, games can be published on there without any DRM whatsoever, so you can do whatever you want with the downloaded files and then play the game without Steam.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 6 days ago

And baldur's gate 3 is one such game, it only runs the steam service (which includes a check that you actually can play the game either through ownership or family sharing) when steam is actually running so you can join multiplayer properly.

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[–] lowleveldata 13 points 6 days ago (3 children)

Ya I trust Steam more than Ubisoft. I feel like that's pretty reasonable?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Sure that's reasonable at the moment. And while it seems Gaben would never sell out, he is going to die at some point. What's going to happen to steam / valve after that?

[–] [email protected] 6 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

Lets fight the battles we've got, man.

The inner-circle at Valve might be tighter than we assume. The next three or four in line might be just as aligned with Gabe. There's a chance they aren't, but Gabe made it this far with the people he's working with, I'd say he probably picks people he trusts.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I hope you're right. I'm future proofing anyway by preferring DRM-free stores when possible.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Valve has a good track record, and you’ve never owned a game in your life. They’ve always been a license, with few exceptions. Even physical media.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

The difference being that I can resell a physical media, even at a profit if there's enough demand for it, and to most people that's the definition of ownership.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (1 children)

Defining ownership as "can I sell this" is ridiculous

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (3 children)

If you can't dispose of it by selling it to someone else, your don't own it. Notice how even DRM free games are just the purchase of a license and the distributor can revoke your right to use that license? Yeah, do you don't own DRM free games either.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 6 days ago (2 children)

Indeed but being able to dispose of something by selling it does not automatically means you owned it

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