Counterpoint: For something that was pitched as “Skyrim in Space” you would expect it to kinda replace Skyrim.

You seem to completely miss the point that Bethesda fans were expecting a Bethesda game, which of course, was not delivered at all. So yeah, that steap drop in players is a significant indication of the game’s failure to capture its target audience.

The reason it’s relevant is because this game was expected to have as much mileage as Skyrim. Phil Spencer said it himself - and currently it’s doing worse than Skyrim considering how new the game is and how anticipated it was.

In a vacuum, no it should not.

Gonna have to sort of disagree. While I think in general people are expecting every game to be a live service which is a disservice (Uh uh) to those games, I do think player count relative to comparable games tell us things.

It has fewer players than Skyrim, that matters (and people have to want to mod Starfield).

That’s personally what I like about it. I’ve always wanted to try the Eldritch Horror board game, but never had the guts to commit to buying it if I didn’t know I was going to like such a brutal and time-consuming game. This cheap, digital, automated version is perfect for me, and it’s got an aesthetic I like to boot!…

Some tips for any would-be apocalypse averters:

While I agree with the overall vibe of the game, it is still very lacking in literally anything that resembles gaming or horror.

That’s mostly town law than anything. Kyoto wants all buildings to either be traditional Japanese or as plain as possible.

Honestly this article is blowing this thing out of proportion. I have a very convincing dog bark (in that it sounds like a dog), I’ve barked at most dogs I’ve raised, and they’re totally fine. I’ve raised and trained dozens of dogs in my life that I’ve seen the first four reactions they describe in this article…

The “lost sales” thing is a joke. They count from products that aren’t sold in your region (why do you think it’s popular to pirate those, hmmm) or from people who don’t have the resources for the paid version and just make up an imaginary profit number that they think they deserve.

Don’t keep repeating lies and misrepresentations spouted by corporations that work artists sometimes literally to death

Honestly, more people should pirate manga and anime. Both industries are terrible and just need to crash at this point, since none of the big players are willing to make changes they desperately need.

Piracy damages are non material. They work on the dishonest and fraudulent assertion that each infringement instance constitutes a lost sale. That has been flat out debunked far too much and yet its the excuse always used to keep extending copyright terms and creating ever more draconian rights over IP.

So have sales fallen, or is the increased ”financial damage” simply conjecture based on increased traffic to pirate sites?

One of the problems I’ve always had with “piracy damages” as a concept is it’s completely theoretical and almost always based on the false assumption that the same people pirating something would be legitimately paying customers if piracy wasn’t an option, which is nearly never true.

I guess we’re just ignoring how toxic Anne could be to anyone who was publicly critical of her work.

Yeah, it was hardly angry and sounded like she had legit beef with the guy.  There is this whole “Don’t speak bad of the dead thing” that people need to get over.  Just because you die doesn’t mean you were not an asshole

Yeah, his phrasing was why I opened the link in the first place. I was expecting to see some giant novel length forum post about how the dude was abusive, especially given that the rest of the article mentions he’s a violent domestic abuser; but her post is literally just a reply almost at the bottom of its own page…