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Teanautica
Do you enjoy some gaming drama? What am I asking, who doesn’t? Pull up a chair and let’s spill it.
First, set the stage. Subnautica was a much-beloved underwater indie breakout hit created by Unknown Worlds. The follow-up semi-sequel, Below Zero… not so much. Nevertheless, the actual sequel Subnautica 2 is the second-most wishlisted game on Steam, trailing Hollow Knight: Silksong. Krafton buys Unknown Worlds in 2021. Subnautica 2 was revealed to be in development since April 2022, had a cinematic video released October 2024, and reports it would have an Early Access release sometime in 2025. In April of this year, there was even a few gameplay trailers.
And then a shoe dropped: Krafton, the company that purchased Unknown Worlds for $500m had fired the entire executive leadership, and delayed the game until 2026. Why? “It wasn’t ready.”
Charlie Cleveland, now-former head of Unknown Worlds, said it was ready for Early Access. Which, okay, just a leadership spat, right? But then came the juice: a Bloomberg report that highlighted special “earn-in” terms of the Unknown Worlds buyout. Specifically, if Unknown Worlds was able to meet certain sales targets by the end of 2025, they would get a $250m bonus. All of a sudden, it became obvious that Krafton sacked the leadership team and delayed Subnautica 2 just to avoid the payout.
…or was it?
Krafton resurfaced to hang all the dirty laundry out to dry:
[…] Specifically, in addition to the initial $500 million purchase price, we allocated approximately 90% of the up to $250 million earn-out compensation to the three former executives, with the expectation that they would demonstrate leadership and active involvement in the development of Subnautica 2.
However, regrettably, the former leadership abandoned the responsibilities entrusted to them. Subnautica 2 was originally planned for an Early Access launch in early 2024, but the timeline has since been significantly delayed. KRAFTON made multiple requests to Charlie and Max to resume their roles as Game Director and Technical Director, respectively, but both declined to do so. In particular, following the failure of Moonbreaker, KRAFTON asked Charlie to devote himself to the development of Subnautica 2. However, instead of participating in the game development, he chose to focus on a personal film project.
KRAFTON believes that the absence of core leadership has resulted in repeated confusion in direction and significant delays in the overall project schedule. The current Early Access version also falls short in terms of content volume. We are deeply disappointed by the former leadership’s conduct, and above all, we feel a profound sense of betrayal by their failure to honor the trust placed in them by our fans.
Incidentally, there’s an additional paragraph down towards the end that says Krafton “reaffirm our commitment to provide the rewards [the remaining devs] were promised.” It remains to be seen whether that is indeed $25m, whether it is still dependent on the same targets, and so on. Now that everything is in the open, I think it will be harder for the working devs to be screwed, but we’ll see.
As you can imagine, Reddit and a lot of the internet is awash in hot takes. Most of which are bad.
“Krafton is clearly lying!” “Obvious corporate fuckery.” “They are just trying to get out from paying $250m.” “Krafton is using weasel words and won’t be paying the other devs money either.”
I sympathize with these notions. At least, I did until I found out that Charlie Cleveland really was taking the piss. Krafton’s statement of “chose to focus on a personal film project” comically undersells it:
That’s from Charlie’s website. Also from his website, in the About section:
I’m Charlie Cleveland and I’ve been designing video games for over 25 years. I founded Unknown Worlds and built games like Natural Selection, Natural Selection 2, Subnautica and Moonbreaker. I absolutely love making games but wanted to try something new.
At the end of 2023, I left San Francisco after almost 20 years and moved to Los Angeles to reset my life. Instead of taking it easy, I now find myself working on multiple film projects. It’s amazing how fast it’s all happening – being right in the thick of things makes it so much easier to meet like-minded people!
What else should have been taking place at the end of 2023? Maybe… working on your fucking game?
Don’t want to trust Krafton’s motives? Fine, don’t. But let’s not pretend ole Cleveland Steamer over here was doing anything other than quiet quitting and waiting for his cut of $225m off the backs of devs who were otherwise floundering.
The leaked presentation slides claim that between Q2 2023 and Q2 2025, Unknown Worlds removed two biomes, one Leviathan type, multiple creatures and tools, one vehicle (Trident), character customization features, the custom game mode, and six hours’ worth of story content. While many of those elements were merely delayed rather than completely cut, their omissions have scaled down the early access build significantly, “making it necessary to reassess the feasibility of the planned launch,” one of the leaked slides reads.
The three fired founders are suing, of course, so perhaps we’ll get more salacious details in discovery. Or maybe it will just be settled out of court. Whatever the case, what I do think is abundantly clear and not nearly communicated enough is this: the founders of Unknown Worlds very clearly fucked off and were waiting for a second paycheck they did not earn. Did Krafton suddenly fire them to prevent Subnautica 2 from entering (a premature) Early Access and thus likely getting enough revenue to trigger a $250m payout? Yeah. Clearly, yes. But was that wrong? No, clearly no.
Charlie elsewhere claims they always shared the profits and would have shared the $225m payout with the actual employees building Subnautica 2 and rah rah rah. That’s a cute sentiment, and I’d almost believe it if he hadn’t abandoned the team. “Subnautica has been my life’s work and I would never willingly abandon it or the amazing team that has poured their hearts into it.” So… were ya working on Subnautica 2 or were ya not, homeslice? Attended the meetings? Signed off on the ever-reducing Early Access scope? Got any receipts, my friend? Or just mad you’re in the Find Out phase?
I’m about as anti-corporate as it comes – feel free to read any of the 1500+ posts from over a decade to confirm. But what I have realized time and time again, is two things:
- M. Night Shymalan
- The corporate call is coming from inside the corporate house
Don’t take Charlie’s side just because you really liked Subnautica. It’s a beautiful flower in a sea of shit and should be celebrated. The same dev team went on to make Below Zero, and Charlie fucked off to make Moonbreaker. They are not gods, they are not heroes, and chances are none of them have any idea how or why the games they made were any good in the first place. Some games are simply products of their time and would have not have been as successful had they come earlier or later. If they really had the secret sauce, every game would be better than the last. And that is rare.
Also, after you get bought out for $500m with another $250m queued up in a couple of years, if you cared maybe you can sit your ass behind a desk for a minute to ensure your team gets the cut. Or, you know… don’t, and then quit out of principle and go make your AI-seeded Christmas movie. Pick a lane.
Anyway, little ranty at the end there, but it’s Drama with the capital D. You’re welcome.
(AI)Moral Hazard
There are a lot of strong feelings out there regarding the use of AI to generate artwork or other assets for videogames. Regardless of where you fall on the “training” aspect of AI, it seems clear that a game developer opting for AI art is taking away an employment possibility for a human artists.
One possibility I had not previously imagined though, is when a paid human artist themselves (allegedly) uses AI to generate the art:
Released as part of [Project Zomboid] build 42, these new images for the survival game seemingly contain some visual anomalies that may be attributable to AI generation tools. In the picture of the person using the radio, for example, the handle of the radio is misaligned with its main casing, the wire on the headphones seems to merge into the character’s hair, and there is an odd number of lines on the stand-up microphone – on one side of the microphone there are five indentations, but on the other side, which ought to be symmetrical, there are six.
It is worth noting that this is all forum speculation – AI has not been proven, although it certainly seems suspicious. Moreover, the “AAA concept artist” commissioned is not some rando, but the very one that did the still-used cover art of Project Zomboid from back in 2011. So this particular controversy is literally the worst of all possible worlds: game developer did the right thing by hiring a professional artist with proven track record for thousands of dollars, and received either AI-assisted artwork (bad), or non-AI artwork with human error that is now assumed to be because of AI (worse).
All of which is a complete distraction to another otherwise commendable game update (worst).
“Either way, they are gone for now – likely forever, as frankly after two years of hard work from our entire team in getting build 42 done, it would break my heart if discussion as to whether we’d used AI on a few loading screens that were produced externally to the company pretty recently was to completely overshadow all that effort and passion and hard work the team put into getting B42 out there.”
Truly, it is an unenviable time to be an artist. AI technology is only going to improve, and as it does, you will be increasingly competing against both “Prompt Engineers” and anonymous internet sleuths hunting for clues to “expose” you for Reddit karma. Eventually, AI-generated content will be so prevalent that none of it will matter; I could imagine ads that are dynamically drawn in, say, anime-style because it noticed you had CrunchyRoll open in another tab, or with the realistic likeness of a TV star from your most-watched Netflix show.
Right now, utilizing AI as a business is a sign of being cheap and invites controversy. Perhaps it remains so, presuming the ad-based hellscape imagined above. But at a certain point, AI will probably figure out symmetry and how many Rs are in strawberry and we will likely be none the wiser.
Or we will just assume everything is AI-generated and it won’t matter. Same difference.
Nothing is Forever
ARK is no stranger to controversy, but the latest debacle is especially cruel.
ARK 2, which stars Vin Diesel for some reason, is set to radically change the formula from 1st-person survival game to 3rd-person Soulslike, presumably with you dodge-rolling away from a T. Rex’s jaws. So there’s already some angst from longtime fans (including myself). Like most of Wildcard’s products though, ARK 2 is getting delayed… this time all the way into late 2024.
Enter a tweet from the devs that they are working on a UE5 engine upgrade to the original game, to be released to everyone for free!
…oops, just kidding. The UE5 upgrade will cost you $50, but hey, you’ll get ARK 2 for free. For whenever that gets released. In the meantime, enjoy the original game upgrade… until they release UE5 versions of the expansions, at which point you’ll have to buy them again.
Also, the official servers for the “old” ARK are shutting down.
Wildcard is doing some damage control, with them acknowledging the general shittiness of the situation. The new deal is that, yeah, the ARK UE5 upgrade is going to cost $60, but it’ll come with the upgraded expansions too. But now ARK 2 will be a separate purchase. Which is sort of what you’d expect for this situation, although it still seems like something is getting taken away.
Which, in terms of official servers, it is.
Now, everything I have ever heard of in regards to the official servers is that they’re a shitshow. Alpha clans raiding noob shacks for fun, murdering dino tames that take people literal, concurrent hours to achieve for no reason, and trolls building posts everywhere on PvE servers to prevent others from building a base anywhere useful. This is the same game where you could literally be drugged, kidnapped and held indefinitely in a cage.
In my few hundred hours of playing, I never joined an official server for more than a few minutes. My escapades were safely sequestered on a private server, where I effectively eliminated the time it takes to tame a dino, because fuck that. However. Wildcard got famous and (presumably) made a lot of money on the backs of players using their established rulesets on official servers. And now that will be over in a few months. Not because the server is shutting down per se, but because they want more money for an upgrade that is probably being done to save the sequel with a cash infusion. Sort of like how Wildcard sold paid DLC of the original game while it was still in Early Access to pay for the lawsuit threatening to bankrupt the company.
As MMO players, I think we all understand that none of our digital lives are forever. Granted, EverQuest seems to still be going strong, and WoW Classic is more profitable than Blizzard certainly ever expected. Nevertheless, I still sympathize with ARK players who are seeing their digital lives evaporate. The servers are apparently able to be exported to private servers, but that is cold comfort to the psychopaths players who roleplayed murder-hobos ARK socially.
Nuked Frog
Remember last month when we were wondering about whether Bethesda’s latest monetization strategies were a boiling frog scenario? Well, they just tossed the frog in the microwave and nuked it:
PRIVATE WORLDS, SCRAPBOXES & MORE COME TO FALLOUT 76 WITH FALLOUT 1ST
Ever since Fallout 76 launched, we have consistently worked to improve and evolve the experience based on your feedback. That’s why we’re excited to launch Fallout 1st, a premium membership that offers something players have been asking for since before launch: private worlds for you and select friends. In addition to this huge feature, Fallout 1st also includes a host of exclusive items and membership bonuses, all of which you can find detailed below. And the best part? Fallout 1st is available right now.
Yep, Fallout 76 now has a $13/month (or $100/year) subscription option.
A bargain at… none of the price
Reddit is understandably losing its shit.
That last post is a great tip, BTW
The subscription itself unlocks Private Worlds, e.g. your own personal game world that up to seven other friends can join, infinite Scrap storage, a tent to act as a mobile second base, a monthly stipend of Atoms (premium currency), and some lookalike NCR armor from New Vegas. And emotes or something.
While it came as a shock to most everyone, Bethesda did “prime the pump” last week though, when they flat-out said they’ll be selling utility in the Cash Shop going forward:
Our approach to [Atom Shop] items at launch was to keep them purely cosmetic. But after looking at all the data, it became clear that to consistently deliver content that keeps Fallout 76 fresh and exciting for all, we needed to rethink our approach to the Atomic Shop.
While we had many ideas on what to add to the Atomic Shop, one of the ways was the direct result of the community’s feedback. We heard from many of you who wanted items with some real utility. Starting in April, we began adding items such as Repair Kits, Scrap Kits, the Collectron Station, and a working Refrigerator. These have since become the most popular category in the Atomic Shop. We’re also still working on all the previously announced items and new cosmetic categories.
[…]
Of course, players can also buy Atoms, and we’re careful with everything we add to not upset the game’s balance. Our main objective is to avoid a situation where players can spend money to gain a competitive advantage or make the game worse for other players. Even more so, we want systems that allow players who do choose to buy Atoms to make the game better for others, not just themselves. With these principles in mind, we make careful decisions about the items we offer to keep it fair for everyone.
That was the same News post that stated the much-anticipated Wastelanders update – which will see the introduction of actual NPCs – was delayed into Q1 of next year to, and I quote with heavy emphasis, “make sure the work we’re doing hits our quality bar, and yours.” Er, yeah. Sure.
The tragedy is that I can see where Bethesda was coming from.
Private servers and the eventual modding piece that goes with it has indeed been one of the most requested features since before the game even launched. Now it’s here. Considering that Fallout 76 basically runs off of Amazon Web Services (AWS), it was never going to be a “use your own hardware to host” scenario. Which means a subscription. So they made one. And if you already have a subscription offering, why not throw in a few additional features to try and entice the people who don’t care about private servers? Hence all the ancillary stuff like the Tent, infinite Scrap box, etc.
Where the dick meets the car door though is the timing.
Imagine if Wastelanders was coming out next week. A huge, sprawling NPC horde that changed damn near every inch of the game world with new quests, factions, and activities. Imagine that it was… at least passably decent. In the midst of all this positive press, imagine Bethesda rolling out this subscription, letting you have your private Fallout experience with no one killing the NPCs or starting quests before you get there. Some of the outrage would still be there – Bethesda has claimed Stash space is limited for server stability reasons, but the Scrap Box can also exist in public servers – but Wastelanders itself could be pointed to as being “free DLC” as promised.
Alas, it was delayed and the suits decided to roll out Fallout 1st anyway.
To be clear, I have no interest in defending Bethesda per se. This subscription was rolled out despite the Wastelanders delay because whatever dipshit suit in charge didn’t want to lose the holiday cash. Hell, the subscription was rolled out despite the “private” servers themselves being already-looted empty servers, with no control over who on your friend list can join. Oh, and the Scrap box is eating scrap too, I guess?
To an extent, none of this matters. Not because “it’s Fallout 76,” but because whales in gaming are not an endangered species and each dollar they spend on shit like this is a vote you never get to make with a boycott. People were calling bullshit on these lines from Bethesda:
We heard from many of you who wanted items with some real utility. Starting in April, we began adding items such as Repair Kits, Scrap Kits, the Collection Station, and a working Refrigerator. These have since become the most popular category in the Atomic Shop.
…but are you really sure that it’s bullshit? Does it really surprise you that utility items were added and that people buy them by the thousands? Shit, a while back I was logging into Guild Wars 2 every day for a month hoping that Character Slots would go on sale in the Utility tab of the cash shop. I barely even play GW2! That was just for Character Slots too, and not any of their actual Utility items like daily resource nodes, special zones with crafting stations, and so on. Fallout 76 is no GW2 or Elder Scrolls Online though, so the hubris is especially galling despite the methods being identical.
My prediction? The subscription details will eventually change, private servers will actually be private, and mods will change how the whole system works on a fundamental level. People who still don’t like survival games will continue to not play Fallout 76 anyway, and yet they will still buy Starfield and Elder Scrolls 6 on release because self-control across a population that is 72% overweight/obese is clearly not a strong suit. And really, why wouldn’t you play games that give 40-400+ hours of fun just because another team in the studio keeps slamming their dick in a car door?
Then again, maybe I have just been reheated one times too many.
Internalization
To recap: Blizzard banned blitzchung on Tuesday for 1 year and took away his prize money.
Late in the day on Friday, Blizzard reverses course… a little bit. Basically, J. Allen Brack releases a non-apology hitting on Core Values and mission statements like it was co-authored by a guy desperately applying to the last open position in Human Resources. The brass tacks are that Blitzchung gets his prize money and he and the shoutcasters are only banned for six months.
Blizzard also very much wants you to know that while “the process wasn’t adequate, and we reacted too quickly,” that this speedy, inadequately processed response was not due to China:
The specific views expressed by blitzchung were NOT a factor in the decision we made. I want to be clear: our relationships in China had no influence on our decision.
We have these rules to keep the focus on the game and on the tournament to the benefit of a global audience, and that was the only consideration in the actions we took.
If this had been the opposing viewpoint delivered in the same divisive and deliberate way, we would have felt and acted the same.
That’s certainly in line with the Official Blizzard-China social media account of the incident back on Thursday (translated by IGN):
“We express our strong indignation [or resentment] and condemnation of the events that occurred in the Hearthstone Asia Pacific competition last weekend and absolutely oppose the dissemination of personal political ideas during any events [or games]. The players involved will be banned, and the commentators involved will be immediately terminated from any official business. Also, we will protect [or safeguard] our national dignity [or honor].”
Oh, wait, no it’s not.
The broader context of the drama is also instructive. Specifically, the General Manager for the Houston Rockets tweeted a pro-Hong Kong message that threatened to upend billions of dollars in NBA deals and merchandise in China. That tweet went out on October 4th, and the Chinese backlash – including banning broadcasts of Rockets’ games – started on October 6th.
The NBA sent out this tweet on October 7th:
“While Daryl has made it clear that his tweet does not represent the Rockets or the NBA, the values of the league support individuals educating themselves and sharing their views on matters important to them,” NBA said in a statement, adding: “We have great respect for the history and culture of China and hope that sports and the NBA can be used as a unifying force to bridge cultural divides and bring people together.”
Then on October 8th, after considerable domestic backlash, the NBA basically said “just kidding, we’re totes in favor of free speech.” To which China responded by immediately halting all NBA preseason broadcasts and issuing this statement:
“We express our strong dissatisfaction and opposition to Silver’s stated support of Morey’s right to free speech. We believe any remarks that challenge national sovereignty and social stability do not belong to the category of free speech,” the network said. “We will also immediately examine all other cooperation and exchanges with the NBA.”
Then, October 9th, all official Chinese partners with the NBA suspended ties.
…only to reverse course on October 10th, per the New York Times. The speculation is China started to realize how visible its hand up the asses of these puppets had become, and started to worry maybe things were becoming a bit too counter-productive. Indeed, China’s insane overreaction certainly has brought Hong Kong protests and China’s ethnic cleansing of Muslims into greater awareness, if only for a little while.
So, to summarize:
- Oct 4th: Pro-Hong Kong tweet by Rockets’ General Manager
- Oct 6th: Chinese backlash | blitzchung’s pro-Hong Kong interview statement
- Oct 7th: NBA apologizes to China
- Oct 8th: NBA takes it back, China angry | Blizzard apologizes to China, bans blitzchung
- Oct 9th: China suspends relationship with NBA
- Oct 10th: China unsuspends relationship with NBA
- Oct 11th: Blizzard lessens ban on blitzchung
Funny how that all works out.
In fairness to Blizzard, it is possible that everything is just a big coincidence. I doubt it was Brack himself who decided on the punishment – whomever made the call did already have a set of rules in black & white to follow, including the bit about zeroing out prize money. Beyond the bullshit, Blizzard also has a vested interest in not having the winner’s interview becoming a political podium. Imagine a parade of “Make America Great Again” and “Black Lives Matter” and “But Her Emails!” After seeing the wide-ranging backlash, it’s also entirely plausible to need a few days to properly vet a review and response.
However.
The deeper concern here is how much American companies and institutions may have internalized Chinese (government) values along the way. It is one thing for China to threaten to shut down access if a punishment is not meted out. It is a far more pernicious thing if the NBA and Blizzard preemptively overreacted on behalf of China, in anticipation of the belt. Their behavior this time has been very visible. What is less visible is when they change rules, company culture, and otherwise align themselves in subtle ways such that it becomes impossible to offend China in the first place.
No amount of free speech will overcome self-censorship, the Great Firewall in your mind.
…And Then Blizzard Lost It
These are interesting times we live in. And ones that seem to, on occasion, move very quickly.
The context, for posterity’s sake, is Blizzard confiscating the prize money from a recent Hearthstone event winner and banning him for a year due to a pro-Hong Kong Live interview statement. No, really. Here’s a link to the official Blizzard blog post, for however long that stays up:
Upon further review we have found the action has violated the 2019 Hearthstone Grandmasters Official Competition Rules section 6.1 (o) and is individual behavior which does not represent Blizzard or Hearthstone Esports. 6.1 (o) is found below.
2019 HEARTHSTONE® GRANDMASTERS OFFICIAL COMPETITION RULES v1.4 p.12, Section 6.1 (o)
Engaging in any act that, in Blizzard’s sole discretion, brings you into public disrepute, offends a portion or group of the public, or otherwise damages Blizzard image will result in removal from Grandmasters and reduction of the player’s prize total to $0 USD, in addition to other remedies which may be provided for under the Handbook and Blizzard’s Website Terms.
The Hearthstone and WoW subreddits have since erupted into a roiling boil.
At least two prominent bloggers on my roll have said they will be canceling their subscriptions. If posts on Reddit can be believed, there are thousands of others doing likewise. Not a particularly good bit of PR right as patch 8.3 previews are making the rounds and Blizzcon is less than a month away.
Of course, none of it is likely to matter. Blizzard made a completely rational business decision.
Tencent owning a 5% stake in Activision Blizzard is almost wholly irrelevant in the broader truth that China is an insanely large market for games. Like $31 billion and growing to $41.5 billion in five years kind of big. By 2023 there will be more PC gamers in China than the entire population of the US. The latest news is that the US pulled ahead this year in terms of market size, but that is attributed to the fact that China freezed approval of new game licenses for almost a year and put restrictions on screen time for children. Even with zero investment from Tencent, losing access to that “second place” market would be a significant setback for any gaming company.
Don’t get me wrong, I consider China to be one of the most repressive, authoritarian regimes on the planet. But… up to this point, that didn’t seem to matter to anyone. It could be that this was just a particularly egregious example that shocked people into wakefulness, similar to certain phone calls to Ukraine. And that’s fine! Whatever it takes to get people to pay attention to the fact that corporations are not your friend, and that if it were profitable, these men and women board members would have a fiduciary obligation to their shareholders to destabilize the United States and/or any other country.
Canceling your subscription and deleting Blizzard games is one way to protest. I hope you don’t close Battle.net and boot up League of Legends (100% Tencent owned), anything on the Epic Games launcher (48.4% owned), PUBG (11.5%), Path of Exile (80%), Clash of Clans/Royale (84.3%), or any of the other games on the list though. Perhaps that is unfair, as I don’t think the Path of Exiles devs have banned pro-Hong Kong players for interviews. On the other hand, I don’t think these other companies were forced to let go of the tiger’s tail just yet. Nevermind any non-Tencent companies that would be willing to walk the same road for access to hundreds of millions of Chinese customers.
Incidentally, the makers of Gods Unchained (another digital card game) came out with this statement:
.@Blizzard_Ent just banned @blitzchungHS and stripped his Hearthstone winnings because they care about money more than freedom. We will pay for ALL his lost winnings and a ticket to our $500k tournament: no player should be punished for their beliefs. #freegaming
Cool, huh? I suppose it’s a bit easier to stand up to China when you build your card game around one-time printings of cards, including Mythic-rarity ones of which only four are printed per year, one of which just sold for $62,000:
A bargain at twice the price!
Ultimately, I do hope that Blizzard reverses course. I hope that all the negative PR and boycotting is effective enough at providing change. I hope that American companies will stop bending over backwards to appeal to oppressive regimes.
I had also hoped in the last election that people who would have literally died without Preexisting Conditions protections would not have voted for politicians expressly running to remove said protections, but here we are. This is the world in which we inhabit… until it bursts into flames.
Slow-Burn
There is a slow-burning dumpster fire in the Guild Wars 2 subreddit, and it seems to have been set by ArenaNet.
For those just coming onto the crime scene, the stage is set thus: GW2 appears to be in decline. Revenue is down. ArenaNet lost ~35% of its staff in February of this year. While there has been semi-regular Living Story updates, the last full expansion was released almost two full years ago. So when there was an announcement countdown livestream event on Twitch, the dedicated fans were hopeful. Maybe there would be a new expansion? Or new elite specs? Or some WvW/PvP love?
Nope.
It was not a complete nothingburger, but it was clearly not at all anything that a worried fan might take solace in. Living Stories are now “Living Sagas,” there are some new Masteries coming, and… 10m starter raids called Strikes? When you lose a third of your entire workforce six months ago and leave an awkward silence to the question of whether your company can even handle another expansion, people start using phrases like “maintenance mode.”
The Content Marketing Manager response over this holiday weekend has consisted of… throwing around lit garbage.
Hey friends, this industry can be a weird one to work in and this year has been an especially roller-coaster-y one for lots of companies. A couple of important things to remember: (1/5)
If you’re abusing your fellow human beings because you’re mad about your game, that’s not “passion”. You’ve lost perspective and crossed a line. It doesn’t matter why you think a game has wronged you–attacking devs or your fellow community members has no excuse. Ever. (2/5)
“Be professional” is not code for “I am allowed to heap every vile treatment I can think of onto your head, and you are required to thank me for it, ask for more, and always treat me with the utmost deference. If I even THINK you aren’t, there will be hell to pay”. (3/5)
If you have to resort to hyperbole, snark, fact omission, mild truth-stretching, creepy comparisons to Hitler, or metaphors about “It’s like if you paid the bill but they turned off your heat in winter” to explain your fury, perhaps the situation is not as dire as you say. (4/5)
Save the “But you have to understand” devs deserve abuse. I’ve been working in this industry for 10 years and playing in it since I was a little girl. I’ve been Mad At A Game. I never *once* exhibited the vile behavior I see daily. It can be done. (5/5)
This has been received by the GW2 Reddit community… poorly. Even though she later clarified that she totally wasn’t talking about reaction to the ArenaNet event – that rant was apparently just apropos of nothing – it became somewhat emblematic of developer communication these days. Specifically, react and pontificate on the toxicity of your game’s community instead of addressing the root causes of ire.
I mean, what does this Content Marketing Manager expect to occur as a result of her posts? Has there been a single successful chastisement in the history of the internet? Even if it worked the end result would still be Reddit threads filled with polite questions and criticism and radio silence from the company that absolutely wants you to continue giving them money but won’t give you a hint that it’s secretly cratering and can’t possibly swing an expansion anymore. Which, okay, business is going to business here – why tell players the $5 (character-specific!) bag slot they’re about to buy will never contain new items when you can say nothing and keep the money?
Nobody wants to upgrade to a 1st-class cabin on the Titanic. At least, not after it hits an iceberg. And make no mistake, Guild Wars 2 has hit an iceberg. Probably a few. The remaining crew yelling at the panicking passengers is the exact opposite of constructive. Something useful would be informing them that additional lifeboats (expansion) are being constructed as we speak. Here are some life jackets (elite specs). There’s a nice band playing over on Deck 7 (WvW stuff). You know, anything to make the transition a more pleasant experience when it is literally your job to do so.
We’ll have to see how ArenaNet management react when they swing back into the office today. This tweet-storm is not on the same level as the Jessica Price fiasco a year ago, but it’s in the same neighborhood of dumb. Why people keep insisting on driving that route, I have no idea.
Well, That Was Quick
Welp, Bethesda will be sending out canvas bags eventually:
We are finalizing manufacturing plans for replacement canvas bags for the Fallout 76: Power Armor Edition. If you purchased the CE, please visit https://beth.games/2QDropM and submit a ticket by Jan. 31, 2019. We’ll arrange to send you a replacement as soon as the bags are ready.
There is an interesting paragraph in the VentureBeat article of the same news:
In multiple messages to consumers, Bethesda explained that it made the change due to cost and a shortage of canvas material. Cotton, which makes up most canvas, is the subject of import taxes in the trade war between the United States and China. It’s possible those tariffs, which went into effect in July, pushed up the per-unit cost of the canvas bags.
As VentureBeat notes in the very next paragraph, and everyone in /r/fallout notes half a dozen times each thread, this doesn’t mean Bethesda didn’t fuck up. As with most things, it’s not so much about the crime, but about the cover-up. Canvas too expensive? Fine. Alert the buyers, give them the opportunity for a refund, continue on with life. Not enough canvas can be sourced before the release date? Sounds fishy, but keep in mind that the Power Armor edition was shipped late even with the nylon replacement, which indicates that this probably wasn’t the nefarious plan from the start. In any case, alert the buyers that they will get nylon now, and that canvas bags will be coming later.
What you shouldn’t do is what Bethesda did. Which was this:
Because, absent any further communication, what it appears to be is that some suits at Bethesda chose nylon because it was cheaper, didn’t tell anyone because they didn’t care/thought no one would notice, thought $5 in cash shop currency would suffice to shut people up, and then got real scared when they realized that although my Big Mac might not look like the picture, McDonalds can actually get sued if the beef patties were replaced with chicken.
If I were them, I’d ask Todd Howard to put out a short mea culpa regarding the communication failure, and then move on with life. Otherwise, we’re on to the next two panels:
Or maybe Bethesda does nothing more. The meme will last longer, but again, everyone will be buying Elder Scrolls 6 regardless of whatever happens with Fallout 76. I was browsing some of the reaction to the canvas bag replacements, and someone leveled this “threat“:
Oh man, it did cost them a shit ton. I sure as hell won’t support them monetarily anytime soon, and I hope many people won’t as well.
Do what you want cause a pirate is free
You are a pirate!
That moment when people desperately want to boycott your games but they just can’t stop themselves from playing them. Viva la revolución! Or something.
CanvasGate
In today’s Two Minutes of Hate, we’re once again getting very angry on other peoples’ behalf for something we find them stupid for buying in the first place:
In short, the $200 Power Armor edition of Fallout 76 is advertised as containing, among other things, a canvas bag. But the bag that arrived was actually nylon instead. When someone wrote into Bethesda support to complain, they were greeted with the meme-worthy:
We’re sorry that you aren’t happy with the bag. The bag shown in the media was a prototype and too expensive to make.
We aren’t planning on doing anything about it.
An actual Bethesda PR went on to clarify:
Thanks for tagging us in this post. We’re not sure if you’ve seen this make the rounds on various areas of the internet, yet, but we’ve made an official statement about this issue and included it below:
“The Bethesda Store’s Support member is a temporary contract employee and not directly employed by Bethesda or Bethesda Game Studios. We apologize to the customer who took the time to reach out. The support response was incorrect and not in accordance with our conduct policy. Unfortunately, due to unavailability of materials, we had to switch to a nylon carrying case in the Fallout 76: Power Armor Edition. We hope this doesn’t prevent anyone from enjoying what we feel is one of our best collector’s editions.”
Many people are hammering on this response as well, for essentially restating the first message while throwing the other employee under the bus. After all, is there much of a difference between “unavailability of materials” and “too expensive to make”?
Well… yeah, actually. Enough canvas might not have been available in order to reach the distribution date, whereas enough nylon would have been. Sometimes you can throw money at a problem and make it go away, and sometimes you can’t. Or maybe it truly was a $1 vs $5 decision and they scrapped the plans for canvas based on that alone.
Speaking of $5, Bethesda put a little extra squirt of acetone on the PR fire by offering 500 Atoms to anyone who purchased the Collector’s Edition of the game. It’s difficult to imagine this amount not having been selected due to $5 being the actual value of the canvas bag in question. In any case, the gesture itself only inflamed the nonplayerbase further, who then took to the streets of /r/fallout to advise others to not accept the Atoms, lest they forgo their potential class-action lawsuit payouts.
I was originally planning on making a joke about how my food never looks like the pictures on the menu, but this older article on false advertisements is making me think people might have a case. The ad says canvas, it wasn’t canvas, case closed. I’m no expert in bird law though.
That said, I get it. If I were a nonplayer of Fallout 76, I’d be bored enough to be outraged too. As an actual player of a game that has become a punchline however… well, shit. It’s tough defending an otherwise fantastic game (IMO) that’s going to get better with each patch when the company behind it can’t seem to stop embodying (hilarious in the abstract) metaphors of their own products. “We were promised canvas, but the game we got was nylon.” Shit literally writes itself.
Ultimately, Bethesda will be fine. “I’m not going to buy Elder Scrolls 6 at release based on Fallout 76!” “Bethesda’s reputation is ruined forever!” Yeah you are, and no it’s not. Skyrim sold 30 million copies since 2011. Fallout 4, which was widely panned before and after release, sold 12 million copies the first day. This doesn’t mean that Fallout 76 is safe from being dropped, but as controversies go, this will be forgotten (and forgiven) the moment we get another 5-second video clip of some mountains overlaid with monks singing. Or by Christmas. Either/or.
I just hope that, you know, there continues to be Fallout 76 patches until then.
In An Age 
AIrtists
Jul 23
Posted by Azuriel
There’s some fresh Blizzard drama over a Diablo Immortal + Hearthstone colab artwork:
The top comment (1700+ upvotes) is currently:
I’m all for piling onto Blizzard at this moment, precisely because what they are currently doing in, for example, Hearthstone is especially egregious. It’s not just the pets, though. The dev team had been advocating for reducing the power level of sets for a while – ostensively to fight power creep – but after like the third flop set in a row, their efforts are beginning to become indistinguishable from incompetence. The Starcraft miniset has been nerfed like 2-3 times now, but people are still playing cards from there because they’re more powerful than the crap we got today. First week of the expansion, and the updated Quest decks all had winrates of less than 30%.
Having said that, it isn’t all that clear that the AI artwork is actually Blizzard’s fault.
Last year, there was another AI art controversy with Hearthstone regarding the pixel hero portraits. While there was no official announcement, all signs pointed towards the artist themselves being the one to submit the AI-generated product rather than Blizzard actively “commissioning” such a thing. And remember, even the small indie devs from Project Zomboid got burned when they hired the same person that made their original splash screen and said artist turned around to submit AI-smeared work.
This sort of thing used to sound insane to me. Why would an artist use a tool that specifically rips off artists and makes their very own future work less valuable? Is there no sense of self-preservation?
On the other hand, that Hearthstone hero portrait “artist” almost got paid if it weren’t for those pesky Reddit kids. Considering that Microsoft is now requiring its employees to use AI in their jobs, perhaps the artists were just ahead of the curve. In my own meatspace job, AI tools are being made available and training being required if only to styme certain employees from blindly pasting sensitive, personal data into ChatGPT or Grammarly. Because of course they do.
Regardless, I am interested in seeing how it goes down and what eventually wins. AI does, obviously. But do people stop caring about AI-generated product art because so many examples eventually flood the zone that it becomes impossible to keep up? Will it be a simple generational change, with Gen Alpha (etc) being OK with it? Or will AI advance enough that we can no longer spot the little mistakes?
All three are going to happen, but I wonder which will happen first.
Posted in Commentary, Hearthstone
4 Comments
Tags: AI, Art, Blizzard, Controversy, Hearthstone, Microsoft