By the way, I was not kidding: every big game you know is using social media actors to boost the algorithm.

It also works with negative reception, you can spend $10-20K and ruin the release of your competitor. And if the overall "feel around the game" is bad, it's very hard to recover.

In early days it wasn't even that hard to do: about 17 years ago we completely destroyed the competitor with just three people reporting nonexistent bugs in all new releases of the company. Our screenshots and descriptions were absolutely believable, their whole marketing team was paralyzed. They just got into social media, opened a forum, and were mostly talking to three of us sitting from 50 different accounts.

We stopped not because of the efficiency, we just got tired. And since it was such a crazy time back then, we also told them about it some months later. They laughed and said "dang, it was brilliant".

The guy made a neural rendering out of reshade. Looks odd as expected but can bring some funky results. Would I ever play like this? Nope!

Currently works at 0.5-2 FPS

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fc-k4gf8Cso
#AI@GameDEV

Are you ready for Dad Space?

Via Dr. Sono

Several analytical agencies suggested that marathon revenue is just about $55M, compared to the budget of over $250M (before marketing and support).

Most of the people are playing on Steam, there was a small boost about 2 weeks after the release when people got curious and bought more premium upgrades. But since then the revenue plummeted.

Analytics noted that despite the support from PlayStation, the game is simply too hard for consoles. It makes people leave much earlier (at about 16 hours for active players on PS5, compared to 28 hours on PC).

#Bungie@GameDEV
#PlayStation@GameDEV

Did it happen? 😧

#meme@GameDEV
#Legal@GameDEV

Via ElBolMe

Unity said they're making more money now so the best shortcut to grow even further is to sell and close some of their key assets to "simplify the business".

Supersonic (game publisher) will be sold out and IronSource ad network will be fully closed. They will continue to serve the basic Unity ads.

#Unity@GameDEV
#Business@GameDEV

Here are some pricing changes from PlayStation: the hardware gets significantly more expensive! About 50$/€ more for Portal, ~100 for PS5s, and even more for PS5 Pro.

For USA:
- PS5 $549 -> $649
- PS5 Digital $499 -> $599
- PS5 Pro $749 -> $899
- PS Portal $199 -> $249

#PlayStation@GameDEV
#Hardware@GameDEV

Since Nacon publishing has no more money and so are its studios, the company just secretly placed Spiders (Greedfall, Steelrising) on sale. If you're interested, here's the lot where you can buy the studio.

Nacon previously acquired Spiders in 2019 after the success of the original Greedfall. Now they forced the team to "make another game to raise their own price before sale". Something is in early development but sources say that the team is rather broken with all that, not inspired by the new chance.

In addition, according to Origami, Nacon Tech (motion capture studio) is also going to be sold. And all physical releases of Nacon games are canceled in North America.

#Nacon@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV
#Business@GameDEV

If you were curious about financial issues of literally every game and IT company out there: they all gambled on AI and got wrecked by it this specific quarter.

Microsoft is currently aiming for the worst quarter since 2008 and these results are not even caused by the war. And it's not the end of this downfall. NVIDIA is also in decline (as we mentioned before).

The craziest part is that even AI-fans among investors are selling Microsoft shares. They believe that the whole SaaS market will be pointless if AI Microsoft bet on will get more advanced. So Microsoft is ruining it's real business by betting on the virtual one.

#AI@GameDEV
#Finance@GameDEV

🔥 Noice

https://itch.io/jam/gdevelop-big-game-jam-9
#GDevelop@GameDEV
#NoCode@GameDEV
#GameJam@GameDEV

A cute animation Lynte_ made for Cvnka_

#PixelArt@GameDEV
#Animation@GameDEV

Not a fan of this channel in general, but this one is a good overview of what, when, and how went wrong:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xpI_v2S-jPY
#Fortnite@GameDEV
#EpicGames@GameDEV

The cozy game from The Stanley Parable author got positive reviews but failed commercially:

Ivy Road will be closed next week due to lack of funding for the next game. They will release the last update before the closure.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1299460/Wanderstop/
#IndieGames@GameDEV

I mean, I haven't heard of this game at all: zero reviews in my feed! Just found out was set to Ignored on Steam (I kinda thought it's a cute-slop-farm genre and I have a bunch of those already).

How much was it in production that it didn't work financially?