Wargaming just released World of Tanks Heat, a hero-shooter but you're a tank. Good part: it's at least getting some traction (they were running a marketing campaign for half a year to collect wishlists).

And almost the same as with their recently failed robot game Steel Hunters, the reviews are negative. Because both games were packed with content 2-3 years before the release and then it was cut out before the release to make "updates" out of it.

That's not how you make a modern Live-Service game, unfortunately. The most passionate fans, the advocates and ambassadors mock Wargaming for it. They spread the word, but a bad one.

And the game crashes a lot (server connection issues, the client fails with and without visible errors, etc).

#Wargaming@GameDEV
#Multiplayer@GameDEV

On a scale from Concord to 10, players assume it will live for about 3-4 months...

World of Tanks Heat peaked at 4K CCU. But it was done with a huge effort and price tag (months-long marketing to gather wishlists). And they still only have 12116 followers with just 15K viewers on Twitch. You can make an AI visual novel with greater numbers.

War Thunder, for example, seats at 60-70K daily. World of Tanks is at 8-9K, and World of Warships is at ~50K but there's something wrong with the charts (they are flat = botted or something). But there are still way more sales in WoWS over, for example, Marathon, so the game is active.

Which means, WoWS is their flagship and will most likely remain so indefinitely.

#meme@GameDEV

Unfortunately, NVIDIA retired their Control Panel. The relic app that makes AMD and Intel users laugh, will no longer be updated after the release of Driver 610.47 (came out today, May 26). Users will be able to install it separately and user without updates.

Now the unified NVIDIA App takes its place. But it still doesn't have all the features from the original panel. Yes, 2.5 years later a lot is still missing.

#NVIDIA@GameDEV

The most controversial move: tell people how to configure NVIDIA apps... and still tell them to enable the overlay. It's often responsible for performance drops.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j08cAZGMhTM
#NVIDIA@GameDEV
#Hardware@GameDEV

So, about two weeks ago I played around with my RAM timings and left them at 16-18-18-38 (at 3200MT) and games started to work worse than with my previous 16-18-18-40. Some extra stutters appeared even in old games. Not the end of the world, but a noticeable downgrade no less.

A sane person would roll-back but I went further to 16-16-16-34 (same 3200 and same voltage) and it works flawlessly now with nearly no stutters even in Unreal Engine games. So it's much better than it was before.

Moral of the story: I hate how easy you can mess up with performance and how fix is always one move away.

#Hardware@GameDEV

Kurzgesagt published an indie game:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/2719750/Star_Birds/
#IndieGames@GameDEV

Sony gave up on Destruction Allstars — their yet another failed Live-Service game... it has been delisted and the servers will go offline.

#PlayStation@GameDEV
#Multiplayer@GameDEV

Since many of you never heard of it, here's the review from the only real player:

- Set to be released for $70 (WTF)
- Refunded, delayed, turned into PS+
- Then released for $20/40
- No content, no updates, etc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtPHeavV6p4

It's time to go to The Witcher 3 Steam page and drop them a negative review for dropping Windows 10 support...

https://support.cdprojektred.com/en/witcher-3/pc/sp-technical/issue/2973/upcoming-changes-to-minimum-requirements-for-the-witcher-3-wild-hunt

#CDPR@GameDEV
#TheWitcher@GameDEV

Cursed! (I WARNED YA)

#WTF@GameDEV
#PlayStation@GameDEV

Oh, there's the overview by IGN:
(Not from the Cuphead fella)

The video is sponsored and basically "read what PR team sent to us". But it's always interesting to see how the company sees and positions itself.

IMO, tanks are not trendy to be played by casual audience and tank-fans are passionate about stats, real-world references, and simulation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6uVA6Gpo4nk
#Wargaming@GameDEV
#Journalism@GameDEV

The new movie by Spielberg that looks like every previous movie by Spielberg, so: what do you think?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFz8czbdPdU
#Movies@GameDEV

OMG, look at this 🥰

#Cats@GameDEV
#Aww@GameDEV

No Man's Sky - The Swarm Update Trailer

Best game ever

It was not a joke by the way, they will offer a free week! (I'll play Battlefield 1 instead)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2UFxzejNNg

Mina the Hollower, made by the developers of Shovel Knight (Yacht Club Games) is apparently a banger!

#PixelArt@GameDEV
#IndieGames@GameDEV

Steam Deck OLED is available again but the price is much higher due to memory shortages... a 2018 CPU architecture and 2021 GPU limited to 15W. That's not ~€920 of goodies.

#Handhelds@GameDEV
#Valve@GameDEV