Why This Game is Ditching Microtransactions 

Hey CM from Airship Syndicate here, thanks for covering the news! Its been a big shift and uncharted waters but we hope its the right move. We would be happy to come on the show to talk about the whole story if yall would be interested. Thanks again for keeping an eye on us

There's a lot of context lacking. The publisher was in charge of multiplayer and they had awful connection problems at launch, they then dropped the devs by kicking everyone from the slack team without telling the devs first, and then they closed their publishing brand. The game also had awful design for an RPG to accommodate the MMO-lite elements. So I see everything the devs did as a win.

By that same logic, you would buy a laptop that is missing features (wifi not working, bluetooth not working) and in 5 years, all these features get fixed. No thanks. I want a working product from day one.

There are so many live service games a customer can play and support. The problem isn't money, its time and there's only so much time a player (esp. working players) have time in a day to give a fuck in a market full of live service games. Glad devs are recognizing this issue. I see more complete games coming back soon.

Agreed. If there is no different response from the consumer for doign the right thing and the wrong thing then they will not ever do the right thing. We have to recognize good stuff if it happens so it happens more.

4:15 have they never heard of any of the animal tests where they teach the animals something.. then bring in new untrained animals.. and over time replace the entire group. but the new group now still follows what they been tought by the once who actually got taught that thing. and in the case of big ass Publishers, its such a big company the bad ideas really wont get rooted out with normal replacements.

4:13 I've always had this sentiment my whole life. Because even when I was young, I noticed that people would always rather look for someone or something to be angry at rather than be content that things are atleast improving.

I wonder what Linus is eating

Does Linus only eat on wan, He's always chewing on it

If we don't celebrate when companies do good things, then they will stop doing anything good. Especially when good things are not financially beneficial for them.

I thought Anno was from Sunflowers?

WHAT IS HE EATING

Releasing a broken game that because of pushed out due to government contracts and refusing to praise it for having continued support. Does matter. Anyone who says different is wrong.

Microtransactions are bad enough, but since I have the willpower to easily ignore them, I am more frustrated by the need for all of these F2P SINGLE-PLAYER games requiring you to always be online. It's ridiculous.

It's strange. Im a huge fan of Airship Syndicate they make good games. This game wayfinder i felt was always out of their wheelhouse. Then DE, being the publisher, gave me even more cause for concerns. The studio was way too small for an MMO and DE even with the success of Warframe, which is sweating bullets trying to diversify their portfolio. Then DE pulled the plug and left, them high and dry. If they can't afford an MMO and this is the best way to manage it, then what has to be has to be. As for the 120$ EA purchases, i feel for those guys thats a huge almost rug pull.

This is exactly what you want to happen. The alternative is that the game just dies. Many live service games died that way. This is what we want.

do you guys really not know warframe? i tend to forget that there are endless amounts of games out there. i was hurt hearing yall talk about DE and not mention my game.

It is sad, but unfortunately the gaming community is extremely toxic. Going back to Cyberpunk example rabid fans were sending death threats and shi**ing on CDPR for delaying release and then shi**ing on them and sending death threats when they released it in poor condition. The commenter who suggested we should be forever mad at CDPR for the abysmal release state of the game is delusional if they think they and other gamers would have patiently waiting for another two years for the game to get to its current state before releasing. Letsc admit: they still would have been extremely mad at them, but for a different reason: not releasing on time. I'm not saying CDPR should get a free pass on that, they did screw up, but the problem with the toxic community is that you can never please them, they will be mad one way or another.

Maybe the devs should consider giving a free key to those that paid the super high founder's edition, or if the game really is "that different" - maybe re-release it as a "Remastered" or "Deluxe" edition or even as a new game entirely? I brought the founder's edition of Save The World. Epic have royally screwed it up and its barely supported.... its on life-supported. But I'd be deluded if I thought Epic would give refunds on it ! Its not gone in the direction everyone wished it was going. Epic has simply crapped all over it and now its just a "playground" for BR devs to test crappy mechanics before they're put into their golden child - Battle Royal. People like me paid good money for Save The World, and yet Battle Royal - a free game is all they care about because of the player numbers.

i dont like the trends in modern gaming so i just dont buy as many games as i used to. dont they like customers?

As a positive note on Bethesda they have really cultivated a great elder scrolls online community and kept the game going there is so much content. That said they drastically shifted the value of some in game items by increasing there rng by several thousand times which can be said was need as the items increased are needed for end game equipment and certain achievements which are tied to some cosmetics and housing in game. However they probably should have rolled it out slower as those players who previously were holding those items sometimes over years lost lots of in game currency investment.

The "once they screw up or do a bad thing, they're crap forever" mentality is ultimately self-destructive. Because it won't stop companies from screwing up, it'll just take away any incentive for them to try and make it better. So, if you have that mindset, the only message that you're conveying to companies is "ignore my opinion, because I'm not going to be your customer anyway". They'll just cater to the people that don't care (and there are *plenty* of people that don't care!) and you'll get less and less of what you want over time. Instead, we need to reward companies when they step up and do the right thing after screwing up. We need to turn around and re-buy the game we refunded, update our reviews, and recommend it to our friends. Financially reward companies for addressing consumer complaints and they'll be much more inclined to do it again next time.

wow

I played Cyberpunk when it sucked, and now the fixed the game I haven't had time to even play it again so boooooo

The people that still hate CDPR 100% got disowned by their parents for getting poor marks in an exam!

Линус решил нaeбнyть дошика, в прямом эфире.

Nah CDPR thing, they get no praise... you don't get a pat on the back for fixing what should have NEVER been broken to begin with while also selling damn near LIES about the game as a whole... stop with this level of crap... thanks.

Last gen console cyberpunk ports are still unpatched, I'm still unhappy about cyberpunk, glitches were fun when the game was working

CDPR has built incredible respect and good will as far as I’m concerned. Owning mistakes, learning from them, and having the courage and persistence to make good, is a virtue that I wish got more acclaim.

I agree that people shouldn't be angry forever, but it's clear that these things KEEP happening time and again. When Microsoft does one good thing and then 10 bad, would you be optimistic?

E

C

40 views in 2 minutes? Bro fell off...

hey linus, hows about don't be ignorant and eat on camera!!!!!! not very " professional "......

So the Publisher ditches the game, and the developers want to save the game and due to server costs, have to transition it to Single Player rather than an MMO, and to thank the developers for not letting the game get shut down, the fans review bomb it! *Seems fair!*

From my point of view, this is a good thing. The people who paid the high price should look at the publisher for refunds, since they collected that money. But as far as the game going single player with a single purchase goes, Its a win in my book.

Being upset at Digital Extremes makes sense. But looks like Airship is trying to save the game. And by transitioning to a single player game means you dont have to worry about it shutting down. This is why i dont buy games without offline components.

I was on the refund train until they said that the publisher is gone. Well they never getting there money back because the $150 transaction made to the publisher. And the developers do not have the capital to do anything about it. Publishers are money banks, developers siphon on it to make something that will make money later. Heck for all we know the publisher had outstanding bills to pay to the developer and settled for just giving up the rights. It is then even amazing the developer continues the development.

OK, so... if it's this or another dead game, I'd say it's always this. even if it's rereleasing as payed product now, it's much better for game preservation.

Anno 1800 is literally the only thing keeping me from deleting my uplay account, but it becomes an unfair fight and the call of the seven seas is stronger than ever.

Worse part is their publisher probably ran off with the majority of the initial sales before it was distributed back to the studio. (Speculation) So these devs would be paying out of their own pockets to refund everyone.

We can hate Activision, Ubisoft, EA until major overhauls at least.

I'd much rather a game go down this path, then to be killed completely like The Crew

As someone who has no investment in this game I see it as at least a good thing that the game is still around rather than ceasing to exist or being a dead game. The creators are trying to save the game they’ve made, so blame the publisher.

Don't be mistaken, this was a result of the Publisher backing out by dissolving the Publisher side of their company. The company also ran off with the Pre-Order money and the Developers have no way to refund these Pre-Orders. However the Publisher company hasn't had any backlash to refund this money nor has Steam taken any action to refund these Pre-Orders and the Developers have taken the full brunt of this. The Publisher company didn't go bankrupt or shutdown, they literally decided not to Publish games anymore and ran with the money, it's still an operating company.

It's just good to try and see certain things objectively. When a passion project becomes a reality and works wonderfully as a product, there is nothing wrong with giving that a thumbs up. It tells the market what works and what doesn't.

If Cyberpunk hadn't been allowing for refunds initially, yes, you could and should absolutely continue to punish them in word of mouth even though they've overcome their initial sloppy development. They did though so that thought is moot.

About the Cyberpunk issue, I don't think they deserve praise, but also not hate. If you're at a restaurant and they bring you a plate with literal human feces on it, that you didn't order ofc, it's justified to be mad. When another server comes along, takes the plate away, explains their server had a breakdown and did something to get fired, and they will bring your food now and the chef will make it a bigger portion as compensation... That's not worth of praise. It's doing the bare minimum. I mean, is worth a pat on the back and thank you, but are you seriously going to praise the restaurant because it fixed the issue they caused? Fixing the game later only means they used the launch money to finance the second half, or post launch, production. Let's not forget they were also blocking refunds when shit hit the fan. It's not about hating companies forever, but companies shouldn't be allowed to be crap and then get praised for cleaning up after themselves. F off with "engoodening" stories. Also, cyberpunk still is not good. It still is a mediocre game that is sightly better than the initial release, still plagued all major issues from the release and still does not deliver what had been promised during marketing.

i actually wanted to get into this game but eh idk one time buy MMORPG not backed by a mega corp seems like it will fail

Great vid

your missing a huge point of the backlash. The publisher pretty much did a switch and bait. Dropping the studio all together. The studio had no monetary gains from the previous transactions meaning they cant issue the refunds people want. Thats completely on the publisher. The sudden change left the developer powerless and unable to really fix the situation. They had to buy out the rights to continue developing Wayfinder and further progress it. This goes so much deeper then what your reporting on the surface of the situation.

If they didn't mess up in the first place no one would praise them for "not releasing a broken mess". It's not something exceptionally good it's just the baseline expectation, it does not deserve praise under any circumstances. They have met the baseline expectation, good, but not praiseworthy.

by the way yes! Cyberpunk was a huge redemption :) always love this game. But yeah linus... we can't hate all the companies, even tho they been making huge mistakes! but hey we gotta keep fighting. Not by hating them forever, but showing! what we don't want. yeah I hate blizzard forever tho

I disagree about the CP2077 discussion. It's not a matter of being angry forever at a company, it's about the message that you send to the industry. And by praising CDPR for this, the message is clear "Ah, don't worry guys, you can release your game unfinished and barely playable, as long as you've got a strong enough marketing campaign behind we'll still buy it in bulk and give you more money in hope that maybe you fix it. Oh and if you do the bare minimum and indeed fix it, we'll see you as a great company". I don't think that's a coincidence that we've never got as much unfinished big games as we do post CP2077's release.

CP77 had sales because the story and world design itself are very good, despite the game being broken on release. It wasn't the best RPG ever made, but was solid story game. As for wayfinder, better for the game being offline and have a solid story than another generic mmo.

Fixing your mess shouldn’t be a point of praise. Improvements made after fixing your mess should be. I don’t follow Cyberpunk very closely, but from what I’ve heard, CDPR has made improvements on top of fixing their mess.

The stupid banner ad plastered on the stream is a little annoying

No, we should hate all the companies who give out a broken, unfinished project or else they won't change and keep on doing it. I'll give out praise one they give out a WORKING product, which is such a baseline of doing things correctly. CDPR, EA, Blizzard, Hello Games, etc. will never get my money. Ubisoft usually does the opposite and brings out working games and then makes them broken at EoL.

The premise for this game is actually super interesting. Just added it to my wishlist. Definitely would grab it if it's ever on sale once it relaunches. I can also foresee single player only being a positive for them since that'll open upon steam workshop to add to the built-in customization options.

@3:20 the word is "Tegridy" as in "Tegridy Farms and CD Projekt Red both have Tegridy"

Good that the game will continue to exist in some form-those players giving negative reviews for the game changing probably wouldn’t have liked it if the servers came down in a few months with no form of preservation instead. I’m not privy to the balance sheet, obviously, but it seems likely that was realistically the other option

Really grosses me out people think CDPR are anything but theives. They defrauded everyone who bought the game on last gen consoles and NEVER fixed it

I have been playing Cyberpunk 2077 since the first day! Always loved it; just love it more now!

What's with the matching hoodies?

3:40 so it's ok for you to have games launch absolutely broken? it's been more than a decade for this practice and this won't make it stop. next fallout gon be great though!

so 4 years later and the game is playable? I bet there's still a lot missing. every big title since gta5 when do people stop with this shit?

Two things can be true at once, yes Cyberpunk 2077 never should have released in the state it did, and yes, Cyberpunk 2077 is a great game since the healthy feed of updates. My question to LMG, how do we as consumers convince these major publishers that this practices of release it now and fix it later is getting old? We try not to blame the devs because they do not possess the power to fight against publisher shareholders, everyone in the industry is talking about this business practice but no one is doing anything about it! Also, I agree we can hate Blizzard for forever!

all cdpr games come out exceptionally incomplete, very broken and overall totally fucked, they're ALL scams then.................... years later........................they finally fix 95% of the problems and its "a great game AND you can play it without constant crashing" Arrowhead is identical! look how awful magicka was FOR YEARS, same for helldivers 2

EA is dead? Aren't they making billions on FIFA in Europe every year???

CD Projekt Red is the owner of GoG. CD Projecket Red did not start as a game dev studio, but as a game archive and distribution service as a way to combat software piracy.

The critique on Cyberpunk was about the product, not the company. They delivered over 3 years later the product they described and promised years before it even came out. Why would you praise them for that? I want to see you praise a car salesman when he sells you a complete car, lying to you, because it comes without interior, which he ships to you in waves for over 2 years. And they never compensated players for anything. F'in Witcher 3 had free Mini DLCs - where are they as compensation for the f'ed up release of Cyberpunk? Or a special discount for the AddOn for everyone who bought the game pre 1.2? They did NOTHING to deserve this. I praise the No Mans Sky developers. They didnt stop when the product was complete - they kept and are keeping cooking that thing for YEARS now and nobody had to pay for ANYTHING since then. THAT deserves praise and forgiveness imo, but not Cyberpunk.

When it comes to those who bought the founders pack, the game dev will have seen almost nothing of that money, the publishers are the ones that took the money and ran, not the devs. it should be on steam to repay that, and then steam should go after the whatever left of the publisher to recoup it. They should not have to deal with the refunds in a situation that was beyond their control.

You arent cut out for this business if you dont want to be angry and spiteful Linus. To the majority of people games are supposed to be an escape from that anger that sweeps over us in every category consistently and constantly in this modern joke of life.

Xbox flat out told us that they would stick by their studios and give them creative freedom and that's exactly what everyone wanted to hear right after the bought apl these studios. Then they killed off the studios that made great games that we loved. That deserves a lot of long lasting hate to because its the only way they will learn and it shows other companies that this is not ok.

People are mad because wayfinder was supposed to be like Warframe. A free to play live service game with lots to do and isn't p2w and overall is great. And now it's just another game. I hope it ends up good but now it's just a game. Live service just means the game gets content updates. Warframe is great but the reason it's been great for over a decade now is every time you go back to it there is new things to do.

You can hate blizzard forever, yes we can and yes we will.

"Why would we stay mad at game publishers for releasing Cyberpunk and No mans sky almost unplayable and filled with lies as it's good now?" Because I don't want this to be the norm? I don't want it to be expected of us to just buy the game no matter the state of it on promises it might be good later, that sounds like a certain scam irl.

ditching Microtransactions it's the best thing you can do! for real... sick of online only BS. or *free* to play. but they should have done this before.... 150$

lets talk the old news of rust originally a zombies radiation game now a raiding style builder games change sometimes not in the ways we want.

sure u should praise good choices but if they do something bad remember it do not forget it and make sure they don't do it again by not buyingb thair stuff again. we need to not just quickly forget when a bad thing like the blitz chung incident or stuff like that comes about. That's y we r getting bad shit now a days in terms of games, we quickly forget something bad that happens that's immoral because shinny new things from them appear. we need to fight back and be smart not brainless people who just instantly forget what happens because of some new thing. we have the power to have grate gammes again but we need to fight for it

Ubisoft took The Crew. Still feel robbed. Besides that, whenever they have a bad launch, they stick to their guns and "fix" it, in the long run maybe, but they do. Look at Unity. Look at Ghost Recon Breakpoint. Both games were quite broken in the beginning. But now are kind of ok. That being said, ANYTHING coming out of Ubisoft, you need to look at it with a damn microscope. Too many burns already. And I know it's not the developers fault. Developers are just like us, gamers at heart. But the CEO's, those CEO's that like to cut costs by squeezing their devs and cutting work/life balance expenses, and then telling an entire floor of programers to develop a live service game because that's what's GREEN (5th Element reference) and he wants to chase the live service dragon, regardless of the studio's experience being primarily related to developing first/third person shooter - open world games. Now it needs a live service, and micro-transactions galore. Those guys that only have the bottom line and their stockholders so far up their arse, the stock options are coming out of their mouths when they speak on the hands of said shareholders. The CEO's breath smells like hand lotion. Literally, those guys. Faaªaack those guys. They actually say "Don't hate the player, hate the game". This time, they're wrong. The real problem is the CEO's choices are bringing the entire industry down and they're payed millions to do so. Layoffs everywhere. Studios with excellent reputations, and successful product being launched. Look at what happened with PlayStation London Studio. Even at Rockstar, a company with a literal money machine, they're trimming a little fat. Around 600 there, from about 20K people who have lost their jobs within the last 18 months. You can bet some of those jobs will be replaced by AI. And this from an industry making more money than Hollywood. Now, that's a dumpster fire. #JustSayin

By the way, if you are talking about refunds when game is changed - what do you think about Kerbal Space Program 2 situation? We were promised multiplayer and colonies, and it seems they first fired the network developer and colony developer, and now entire studio is shutting down. Steam refuses refunds.

You should talk about how dumb the gaming community has become. Currently a lot of gamers are promoting a free to play game called Arena Breakout Infinite. While it is obviously pay to win pretty much everyone is denying it is pay to win just because Tarkov made a bad move. They're calling it not pay to win because if they do this they have to admit they have been sucked in by a free to play game with pay to win mechanics. It is sad to see the gaming community sink lower and lower every single year.

There is a term "brand damage" and if we want next generation of big publishers to be better we need to be unforgiving for some issues. There are more old, AA and indie games than I will ever have time to finish anyway. EA killed dead space, mass effect and dragon age, so I'm just not going to buy ME remasters and DS remake. Origin account - deleted. Ubisoft run into the ground AC and Far Cry, talking about multi cultural team while having all the issues of the gender and power inequalities in the book. So, Uplay - deleted. Same with battlenet.

I'll be mad at Activision/Blizzard until they restore my hacked account. I lost it in 2021 after linking my Activision and Blizzard accounts, because the Activision half didn't use the 2fa I'd already setup. I went through all the support tasks to try and get it back for 6 months before giving up and washing my hands of it, and abandoning the thousands I'd invested into digital content on that account on PC. January of this year I bought a PS5 and tried playing call of duty again, not thinking to check which account my PSN account was linked to I bought the game, and paid for in game content (probably about $200 invested), only to find out it was linked to my original account. I'm now locked out of that too after trying for several months to recover it again this year. The worst part of this is that I've followed all their support directions, but they are replying ONLY to the fake email on the hacked account, not to my email or new emails they've forced me to create new support accounts under. (Their recovery process requires a fresh Activision account to submit the request within 2 weeks of creation, but their responses come more than 2 weeks later) Then closing the ticket because the fake email never replies.

Shout out to those involved in cyberpunk 2077! Yeah launch sucked hard, but clearly they've been "doing the needful" and continually improving it. I haven't bought the game, dunno if I will, but they legit deserve credit for all the hard work and the executives deciding to actually pay back into getting it properly good!

😂 I was shocked that Anno 1800 was Ubisoft (I bought it without checking), I thought "Wait. Ubisoft publishes real games still?". Also About Cyberpunk 🤔 People forget that most CDPR games launch broken. 😂 CDPR are bad at scoping their games property (Witcher 3 is good, but does anybody remember how many times they soft rebooted it or postponed it? 😂 Go watch old announcements ans you'll see).

YES! We should be angry forever on companies that shows no will to reform like EA. Because the passionate people that work there, they are overcome and overruled by the company culture! EA has had 16 years to change their ways and have YET to succeed, I am not going to forgive them, you do bad acts for 16 years, I am not going to treat you nicely EVER, my human life span is too short, I am not waiting around 50 years for that change. They have to prove it, not just once, not twice, not even 3 times to change the opinion.

But the first time I think they're just wrong because they want to bring some positivity. But seriously if a game is released so horribly and then they fix it that's cool but it's under the guise of them releasing something horrible. Screw that

"Team of Theseus" is a dangerous argument; why buy a game when everyone that has worked on it has already been laid off and will not receive a penny of your payment? It's very tricky to make good generalizable arguments for paying third-parties/intermediaries for copies of information.

Might be late for this one. But still: find yourself a man who eats you like Linus eats them noodles. Damn he likes those noodles 😂 Please don’t shadow ban me. It’s only a joke.

whats going on with LMG Clips ? i used to watch 4 a week, now i havent seen any that interest me in a month. did they change the way they make titles and thumbnails?

This video made a great point but was incredibly bad at getting it across

This just in: Gamers struggle to comprehend the concept of nuance.

okay, so would you rather the game just no longer existed? because if they had not made it offline, that is what would have happened...

Turns out making MMOs is very fucking hard, surely that mistake hasn't been made like a million times for the past 20 years Edit: Oh, their publisher fucking just dipped on them, cool

DE pulls development power from warframe to develop the game, then ditches it, so now both games suffer.

We can also hate Ubisoft forever

its so cute when chicks match outfits