“R* are the GTA guys, and it blows my mind that they would be this casually destructive of their brand.”

“I’m sure he didn’t mean genuine harm to Biden or AOC.”

The problem is: a lot of work went into these mods. So, so much work - maybe more labor than would be economically feasible for a commercial remaster. Certainly it represents far, far more work-hours (and thus money, if you were paying people) than was spent in the highly-automated remastering process, and it’s clear…

Yeah, these kinds of remasters are totally cash-grabs (which is why publishers will keep doing them rather than total remakes).

The problem is, a “modern looking San Andreas” would cost many tens (if not hundreds) of millions of dollars, whereas the “remaster” could be outsourced for peanuts. Which is exactly why they will do it again.

I don’t doubt it works for a few companies with specific games - especially if they have sufficiently older games where a remake radically transforms it, the game has natural limits (that keep production costs down) and/or the original sales weren’t very high but the series has subsequently become vastly more popular.

Given that GTA V has sold significantly more copies than every single previous GTA and expansion put together, and they have additional revenue streams from the online service, and the amount of labor that went (and still is going) into it was more than went into the trilogy games combined, GTA V is effectively its…

“How about remakes instead of remasters”

*Or, in this case, Unreal Asset Store. [It’s Unreal 4.]

“people didn’t like because it was centralized under Blizzard’s control. Which is exactly the kind of objection that an NFT-based system would quell.”

Oof, yeah. Indie developers really need to remember that they should never, ever make public comments when they’re feeling upset or stressed (if they’re not the ones tasked with community management, no public comments on their own ever, period), but someone should post a little something on a regular basis as proof…

Yeah, anyone in that situation calling themselves a CEO doesn’t help. It makes an inexperienced indie developer seem more professional and experienced and part of a corporate structure than they actually are, which raises expectations. On the other hand, gamers have crazy expectations anyways, so... /shrug

Are salaries that low? Absolutely. I’ve had game dev jobs at start-ups where I made substantially less than 50 (in an area where that wasn’t a livable wage). More experienced developers weren’t making the minimum salaries required to buy a house. Game salaries are, relative to equivalent positions in any other…

“for tech and games we have really great benefits”

If it is a brand, then trademark it first and Netflix wouldn’t have been able to use it.

when everyone tried to copy World of Warcraft, but they all failed for one reason or another

And with those massive licensing costs comes the necessity of spending tons of money on marketing, too. Their yearly spend on this has got to be pretty high, even before you get into the actual staff required to maintain and run it (and provide customer support, etc.) - who all could be working on a game that’s…

The problem is, it’s not abstract money that keeps the game going, but staff. Staff who are now not available to work on a game that would make more money. (And if one is serious about keeping a game going, you don’t just want a maintenance staff, but actual developers coming up with new content, plus continued…

Okay, but even with the caveats, this is insanely popular. In fact, that all these users are in one country actually makes it more impressive, not less. On any given day, almost 15% of the entire gaming population of China is actively playing it. That makes it a major cultural phenomenon with few parallels - certainly…

Yep. Although to be fair, it also does do some new things, too - but they’re really bad.