That doesn’t make it any less dumb. Firstly, all the Children of Atom would have died from radiation poisoning after spending decades living right next to a nuclear bomb leaking radiation. Secondly, the majority of Megaton’s population were not members of the cult. They were just regular people who, for some…

Why would you want something like Megaton..? Megaton was nonsensical. Nobody would build a town around a nuclear bomb that’s leaking radiation unless the town’s population consisted exclusively of ghouls. It was a stupid gimmick, much like 90% of Fallout 3's locations.

Quote time!

Again, these are just Steam metrics. I imagine a large percentage of players are (or were) playing it on Game Pass. I know I did. When Skyrim and FO4 launched, Steam represented 100% of their PC player base. That’s never been the case for Starfield. We don’t know the exact percentage of players playing on Steam vs GP…

I’m really surprised that their PR team thought it would be a good idea to argue with people on the internet.

I understand your argument. You’re saying that “indie” is a budget category and that indie games always have low budgets, allowing them to take more risks and innovate in ways that larger budget games cannot. That experimentation results in the “indie vibe” you’re describing.

Does that mean suddenly the game doesn’t have any indie quality anymore?

Back in 2012, Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim also saw diminishing player counts after launch, with a second-month player drop on Steam of 30 percent. Presently, Skyrim typically sees more active players on Steam than Starfield. A more recent Bethesda RPG, Fallout 4, saw its Steam player count decreased by 58…

Thanks to the setting? More so thanks to the grappling hook that made the parkour largely unnecessary. Dying Light had the same issue.

“Indie” doesn’t reflect any particular element of a game. You can compliment a game’s art direction, audio design, narrative or VR implementation. You can’t compliment a game’s “indie-ness.” That’s because “indie” just refers to a game’s publishing model. Was it self-published by the developer? It’s indie. That’s it.…

I’m not sure I’d equate those things with indie games. For one, most indie games aren’t very innovative or unique. For every indie game that tries something new, there are like 50 that don’t. You just don’t hear about them because they’re incredibly generic and forgettable. Dave the Diver isn’t a great example of an…

$30m is pocket change by AAA standards. These days, the average AAA game costs over $70m. $30m is the higher end of AA territory.

What is an “independent” vibe..?

The difference is that there’s no Oscar category for “Best Indie Film.” That’s because “indie” isn’t a genre or specific element of filmmaking. That’s why “indie” shouldn’t be an award category. It doesn’t have any specific criteria and is absurdly broad.

Except “indie” isn’t a style or genre. There’s a huge variety of indie games across multiple genres and with completely different aesthetics. If indie means “lower budget” than that diversity increases even more.

They just need to get rid of the “indie” categories entirely. “Indie” isn’t a genre so it’s a stupid category to begin with. Replace it with more specific genres like puzzle, platformer, etc. Those would already have plenty of smaller-budget games since AAA budgets are typically reserved for action games.

Some other good games that released this year (or close enough) but received little to no media coverage:

Let them win what..? Do you have any data proving that 30% is an unreasonable cut despite it being industry standard? Do you have any data showing the operating costs of these platforms? What metrics are you using to determine which revenue split would be “reasonable?”

You didn’t actually dispute anything I said. Probably because you can’t. Nothing is created in vacuum. Every human creation is derived from things that already exist. AI-generated content is no different.

While the defaults may be in line, the discounts more often are deeper. And in the specific case of EGS the 3rd party devs/pubs benefit here through the EGS coupon sales model. While they might offer a discount in line with their other pricing, the EGS coupon brings it well under that in line amount as EGS subsidise…