The Chinese Room, developer of Dear Esther, comment on game refunds and how the policy of two hours of playtime is ridiculous for developers.
Microsoft announced its financial results for Q3 of fiscal year 2026, including an update on its gaming Xbox business and more.
Not looking good. Hopefully Asha Sharma is able to turn Phil’s disaster around.
To me it's still quite remarkable how they can cash-in 5.3bn in revenue in a single quarter, since their hardware is basically dead.
The stock mark is what makes Microsoft remarkable, They have convinced every institutional and retail investor to just keep piling money into them. Like many big tech giants they are just a big growing pyramid scheme. As long as people keep dropping money into ETF's that cover the market Microsoft will always be liquid. At the same time it is completely stifling innovation and competition. People need to start being more discreet in how they invest their money as it's killing the system.
Riiiiight because people will just flock back to them for one or two games per year.
15+ years of bad performance is what they call irreparable in business. It is time for them to sell off the assets and get out of entertainment.
These declines are on the back of extra revenue received from releasing games like Forza horizon 5 on PlayStation. So I’m being sarcastic here when I said they should go back to exclusives. Killing off a revenue stream from Ps5 sales will only make things worse
Spiders: "We're going to cut straight to the chase so you're not left wondering: After a long period without clear answers, we have received confirmation that Spiders is being liquidated.
What does it mean? This means the company as a whole no longer exists. We'll cease our functions immediately. The planned DLC will release via Nacon, and then-- well, that's it.
We're sorry that it's come to this and would like to thank each and every one of you for your support over the years.
If you have any questions or run into issues with your games, please contact Nacon directly as we'll no longer be able to reply."
2 hours? Imagine being a publisher or dev and having people want to claim refunds after 50+ hours!
Well, I think the 2 hour refund policy is a good thing for consumers. This in a way forces developers/publishers to not lie about their product and it also helps if the hype did not live up to expectation as we seen that happen too much lately. The developers may not like it, but honestly it is for the best. It will require too much work to do it based on percentage. How would you do it for multiplayer game only? Hell, what if its loaded with microtransations and the consumer is put off by it. Doing the 2-hour limit is a smart decision. I can understand that indie developers are worried, but people tend to be more open minded when it comes to them at least in my opinion. Either suck it up, or don't bother putting it on that service. It makes sense overall.
Of course they'd complain. That means they will actually have to create a game with content instead of some weak walking sim or movie game.