Devs should not be "forced to run on a treadmill until their mental or physical health breaks", says publisher of Manor Lords, citing how gamers seem to be trained to expect endless content work now

Until they ditch the "live service" model, this will continues. How many big title games today are really sold in a complete no BS state where DLC actually means extra contents? No much I guess.

That stems from the revenue model, and not by gamers.

I’d almost love if games were released and getting no updates after that. But only if the games are released in a complete state.

I hate the fact that you shouldn’t play some games as soon as they are released, because you’d be playing the inferior version.

That needs to change.

There used to be an unspoken contract with game developers and gamers:

• "I'll release a finished game that you will never need to talk to me again if you don't want to, and you can play it on any offline computer that meets the minimum specs. You will pay $X one-time for this and expect $0 spent on this game ever again"
• "I may release an expansion pack for this game at some point in the future. It will usually cost 10% to 30% of what you paid for the original game. You are NOT required to buy this. If you like the original game the way it is, keep playing it that way. If you are a new player, you will have to buy the base game and then the expansion pack to play expansion pack content"
• "I may, in the future, release a stand-alone sequel to the game. This game will have the same themes as the original, but I will increase the quality of the graphics/length of story/sound. You will NOT be required to buy the original game or the expansion packs to play this game. You will pay full price for this finished game"

Somewhere that evolved into shipping unfinished games, subscription based games, battlepasses, endless DLC, loot boxes, and forced online connections for single player games.

The game studios broke the contract. If they want endless money, that comes with endless work.

The game is released, for a certain amount of money. If people don’t like what they get for their money, they simply should not buy it.

The problem does not lie with gamers. It lies with 'AAA' developers who publish unplayable cashgrabs that need years of bugfixing before reaching a playable state, thus leading to expectations of ongoing development. Not that Early Access has helped in that regard.

I think part of the problem is down to how a lot of games come out as "Early Access" which implies it's more bare bones and will get fleshed out over time.

If a game releases as EA then the expectation is you will get more content until release, if a game just comes out without EA then it's assumed it has all content and anything new is dlc/mtx/expansions.

I'm not gonna bother addressing Live Service games, wish they would go in the bin with most other MTX.

If someone complains about buying a finished game and not getting more of it later, they're idiots and there's nothing you can do but ignore them.

Publishers that do ultra-early access/roadmaps/live services with promises of content/bug fixes/trust me we're making the rest of the game later, are clearly to blame for the mess too. They're the ones poisoning the well.

But plenty of games release in a final state and that's okay. They have to be firm about it though.

I just want to buy a game that's actually finished. Early Access has ruined that first play experience.

Spend years releasing unfinished and incomplete work.

Gamers expect work to be unfinished and incomplete.

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The article says that comment came from a CEO of another game company, not players. Tim Bender, the CEO of the publisher for The Manor Lord, said "Players are happy, the developer is happy, and we as publisher are thrilled beyond belief." I don't understand where the post title that says he cited gamer expectations came from.

Thank you for all the free updates ConcernedApe. I hope you're enjoying your time with your millions and if/when you release the Haunted Chocolatier I'll get that too. You're great and your game is great.

Sorry, but I for one am not going to accept these companies blaming everything on gamers. I'm not into bootlicking. Gamers are annoying af for sure, but I'm not blaming systemic industry problems on gamers. That's complete horseshit.

Game Publishers: complains about how users expect endless content

Also Game Publishers: Mostly pushes for live service games and Free-to-Play

surprisedpikachu.gif

A good game will stand on its own merits. It will be complete and self-contained at launch. And any DLC released later will have been planned from the very start.

Endless updates is just another word for cosmetic micro-transactions and an excuse to make you keep the game online all the time.

Never preorder. Never surrender.

Sounds like a management issue, how is the guy paying for the services gets shitted on here

I also don't understand why I am being scolded by a guy I paid 30 bucks too for alpha testimg...

I never complained.

Before you throw stones be advised that this team is like 5 people at most, the game just blew up and some gamers are giving it the Valheim treatment wanting faster and faster updates.

I've seen people say 'I played forza for 150 hours and now it's boring"

Like dude, wtf

Why only devs though? No worker should be exploited like that, no matter the occupation!

Generally speaking it’s impossible to define a standard for how much output is “enough” for a developer.

Management always wants to extract as much as possible.

The dev seems to have a good publisher that's on their side, which is nice to see. I find it bizarre that this rebuttal comes in response to the CEO of Hinterland Studios, the devs of Long Dark, which was in early access itself for ages. Dunno if they think they're above it all now, but you'd think they would at least be sympathetic of devs facing that kind of shit. Probably just CEO saying CEO shit. Hopefully the Manor Lords dev doesn't let it get to them much, or at all.

Excellent write up by the publisher and good that they warned Greg of the shit storm ahead.

I bought it, played it. It was already fun. The patches fixed some of the issues that made playing it not fun.. so good choices there. I left him some small feedback on the game and some words of encouragement in the hopes that helps.

I hope he can continue his development to deliver his vision for the game. I feel like I got my moneys worth already and I'll spin it up when the next series of updates are done.

Till that time I just saw Timberborn (another one of these jewels) had a cool update so I'll go and try that or one of the mysiad of other cool Early Access games that still receive a lot of love.

I don't want a fucking endless game I want a finished game for the price I pay at release that doesn't require $3000 gpu to render the most obnoxiously detailed graphics of a game that has the fucking depth of mine sweeper.

I don't know if this recaps the situation accurately, to be honest.

Sounds like the publisher is complaining about some article that's trying to use the game as a reference on why early access can be a bad thing.

I don't see how the gamers are an issue though. They will expect what you tell them to expect, this is something for the publisher to manage, and I don't even think this is a problem for Manor Lords.

All of it just seems like news sites trying to come up with their clicks.

Especially with this game, where the dev and publisher have actively worked to manage expectations before early access. That it’s not at all complete yet. There were so many people super hyped, comparing it to total war and what not. So they made it clear this game is on another scale.

If it had been the other way around, if they had hyped up the game like crazy and made huge promises about the post EA launch content, then yeah, it would be a failure.
And I suppose in practice it also would’ve been a “failure” if they hadn’t managed expectations, due to the hype and the general expectation from post launch content these days… (sigh)

But what we got is exactly what was promised, so what on earth is that Hinterland guy talking about.

Riiiight... it's the users of the product that is forcing the producers to work under toxic conditions, and totally not their money-grubbing capitalist bosses.

Riiiight.

Very reasonable, I hope the dev sticks to his guns and keeps a manageable pace. I feel that it's right to expect content updates coming in if the game is marked early access, but so long as you don't pull a Valheim, people shouldn't be mad at you

I felt this way about Back 4 Blood. The game came out, it was genuinely fun and had a good amount of content, and they added DLC that expanded the game while also not ruining things for anyone who hasn’t installed it.

But there was an unending cry from gamers that it was getting “abandoned”. You can still gather 4 players, or fewer with bots, and have a good time. It’s a different appeal from Left 4 Dead with the card system, and that was fine to me.

I don't care about extra content, it is a welcome addition for games with long-term support like Stardew Valley. If the dev and publisher have a lot of money I do expect long-term bug fixing.

I don't want the devs to kill themselves for a game, obviously. I don't think anyone does. People just want content updates for a property they love. In an industry that lays off people after they ship a game or starts work immediately on the franchise yearly $70 sequel, I just want a game developer that does better than that. That's why the whole world waited patiently for the follow up to the GOTY of 2022 with Shadow of the Erdtree. Elden Ring didn't get a ton of free content updates in that time, they didn't make it a live service or offer mtx, and they didn't pump out their massive expansion in an unreasonable time frame. They built an incredible game and incredible world, and then they continued development on the game they had poured their hearts into for years and spent the time they needed to create the expansion the game deserved, and at a reasonable price.

I'm kind of confused about the whole early access thing and why devs do it. Is it to get support and funding to finish the project?

The other day I saw a Developer that was sad people don't like the new Fable commercial. I was interested so I watched it and it's some Mulan/Captain Marvel cookie cutter plot where the entire commercial is some dude singing the praises for a random woman (presumably the playable character), and then an evil smoky hand holding an evil wizard staff appears on screen for like 2 seconds. For all we know that female MC could be literally Hitler, we were told absolutely nothing about the game, setting, or characters except that the narrator is a retired hero. They have no depth or motivations.

Hopefully it was just a damn awful trailer and not the death of the series.

Weird post. I thought we were all aware of the enshitification in gaming, they had a head start on the rest of the tech industry.

I remember a few games which didn't require such sacrifices from developers.

Some even commercial. Like NWN, with people making their own campaigns without, you know, any effort spent by the developers of the game itself.

Of course when the business model is milking players and making it problematic (either technically or by paradigm) to satisfy interest with community-made modifications, then all the load is on the devs or else the game becomes irrelevant. Well, guess whose fault that is.

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How long should they be forced to walk on a treadmill for, then?

Don't take early access money if you don't plan to be giving frequent updates. It's the nature of the beast.

People don't expect constant updates from pokemon because when you buy it, it's "a complete game". They may drop patches and add content but it's not expected the way it is from a game supposedly in active development like an early access game is.

PC/Console games take massive amounts of man hours to make and as I see it the point of Early Access is to give smaller Indie Developers the funds to hire more people and get the entire game made in an achievable time frame (though some of these things still take almost a decade to get there).

It's a bit like Kickstart, but for Early Access there needs to be enough of a product to appeal to gamers (and hence quite some time invested into creating it up to that point, plus a decent idea and an actual game play which is deep enough and has at least a good enough basis of gameplay design that it's actually fun to play), which also means scams are far less likely because just getting the game all the way to a level that qualifies it for Early Access is already quite the investment in time and possibly money plus worse comes to worse and the developer stops development immediately after caching in with Early Access, buyers still got themselves immediatelly a small game at a cheap price, though not the "dream" full game they were promised they would eventually get.

Remove 'gamers' and insert 'bloated management'.

Every single aspect of video game development is trash. From executives to absurdly whiney and entitled gamer population.

It depends on the game. If I buy a game from a smaller publisher I expect it to be a complete work with full story line. Unfortunately... When I buy from a large publisher I expect to be getting a ¾ complete game that will give me expansion packs.

This isn't the case with Nintendo games though. I feel like and Nintendo game is just done and any extras are... Extra.