NPD has reported that game sales are down 20% this May compared to last year. Shocking? Many websites seem to think so, but it really isn’t.
Rockstar has launched an official marketplace for "every server and every player" to buy mods: Cfx Marketplace.
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.
What I see happening here is, R* is going to ban mods in GTA6 UNLESS you buy them from the marketplace and R* then gets a cut of that sale.
Ah, perfect timing with them taking down the Bully online fan mod. Greedy a$$ company.
Yep, right there with you. I'll happily donate to a mod creator if it looks really cool, or if I enjoy it. But expecting payment up front? Nope, not touching it.
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.
Discord messages Rockstar Games management reviewed before firing union members have reportedly been revealed.
They were involved in protected Union activities and Rockstar will be in trouble with the NLRB.
Basically this is Rockstar vs the Union members word. These employees could be cherry picking or spoofing the chat logs.Rockstar could be lying. I will withhold judgment until Discord is subpoened and releases the chat group text from their servers.
A rare interview from the former GTA and Red Dead Redemption writer and executive producer.
Interesting to know.
Among MGS4, Agent was the reason I wanted and bought a PS3. (Who knew we would get other gems like Killzone 2 and TLoU.)
I always assumed it got cancelled due to hardware restrictions even at that time.
Such a shame, I remember first reading about it in official playstation magazine, Agent and The Getaway are the two cancelled games I wish I could play 😩
Because it had to be open world, of course. Couldn't change that and make the Agent game work otherwise. Totally buying it.
I used to laugh whenever I'd see someone cite Agent as a game to look forward to, because it was never officially canceled (at least, as far as I've seen.)
"It's still real to me, dammit!"
There are better articles about the NPD sales figures for May -- but whether they get approved remains to be seen.
The authors of this hasty story state: "this year, LA Noire, another Rockstar game failed to meet expectations and therefore didn’t sell as well as expected."
Without attribution, this sentence is meaningless. failed to meet whose expectations? LA Noire cannot be compared to Red Dead Redemption in any case; it is in a completely different genre and broke new ground technically. Rockstar is to be congratulated for backing a risky venture instead of sticking to formulaic games.
LA Noire is continuing to sell quite well -- and i have not heard any major market analyst or critic calling it a "failure" as this article implies. It is ridiculous to expect LA Noire to carry the entire month of May 2011 sales on its back -- when the market is in a general slump across all platforms.
There are deeper reasons for the lackluster sales of late; including an economy that make some people think twice before spending a lot on expensive games; there is considerable growth in mobile games and indie games (both much cheaper means of entertainment).
video gaming is too expensive for many right now