Dude just buy a xbox or pc and call it a day .

Not a bad article but there were things there that were completely unnecessary like the PlayStation hack, PS3 being expensive to buy or the always online and Kinect of Xbox. These things have nothing to do with industry consolidation.

With Sony, you could have went with the purchase of Evolution Studios and their shutdown after not delivering with Drive Club. Article writer did mention Lion Head closing their doors but could have mentioned the huge publisher acquisitions of Zenimax Bethesda and Activision purchases. It was kind of spoken about to sure up game pass but could have expanded more on these and their effect on the industry and their competitors.

Problem with Embracer is that they haven't made any impact with their purchases. They bought Studios and IP but have done really nothing to show for it. Maybe it was to get profit down the line eventually on their acquisitions by being the owner in the background. But their spending just seemed wasteful.

We'll see what they'll do over time and if it was worth the acquisitions.

With the cost of game development rising so much it is only a matter of time before the small to medium size publishers are required by larger companies. one huge failure, code, sync, the whole ship. Microsoft threw the biggest punch rent it wired so much talent so don’t be surprised when there is a definite reaction to those acquisitions.

I have always said this and I will always say this. I am against game platforms buying of publishers there enough independent studios they could acquire they should never go after publishers and then make their games exclusives

They were a warning since last year when they began shutting down several studios left and right after acquiring the rights to Deus Ex and the Legacy of Kain series.

This is why I don't want MS, Goggle, Amazon or Apple anywhere near gaming. At anytime these tax dodging mega companies can just take huge chucks of any industry they decide to enter away. Until we have consumer protections that are allowed to work outside of MS money hatting we will carry on losing more and more.

The more things owned by fewer and fewer companies the worse everything always gets.

I wonder how much of this isn't just taken work of others who have modded for free.

Edit: Also, great way for R* to take popular ideas and build them into GTAVI based on demand.

Ah, perfect timing with them taking down the Bully online fan mod. Greedy a$$ company.

Buying mods? No thanks.

I'm not entirely sure how to read this, as it doesn't seem exactly like an exact parallel to Bethesda's paid mods shenanigans.

Rather than single player stuff, this appears to be aimed solely on Cfx Servers. From what I've gleaned, apparently Rockstar bought the Cfx mod team several years ago, coming a few years after weird contentions led them to ban a few of their members. Ultimately, the question is if they plan to keep this contained to only online/servers.

I have to guess to a degree yes. It'd be pretty hard to "force" paid mods for single player when modding files locally on your own machine, but much easier for servers they'll control. So perhaps this is their soft launch ahead of GTA6 online and they'll clamp down more tightly on non-official servers going forward? Ever since they've become a 1 or 2 property studio, I haven't really cared much for Rockstar stuff, so I'm not entirely up on everything surrounding this. Sounds like it has the potential to be problematic further down the line, but right now fairly easy to ignore...I think lol.

Paid mods are just wrong

Yeah, the Microsoft deal has DEFINITELY worked out for everyone.

Can this mother fucker just get lost already

He belongs in here ⚰️, hopefully sooner than later.

Kotick Made $155 million from MS in the buyout, the little b*tch needs to stop whining. Thanks to this Microslop deal and massive industry consolidation thousands upon thousands of devs and other workers lost their livelihoods. This greedy piggie pervert needs shut up and f-off.