Single player horde mode locked to I7? | Hacker News Reader

Single player horde mode locked to I7?

steamcommunity.com

66 pointsekimekim24 comments

Apart from the obvious stupidity of tying game features to particular processor SKUs, I'm additionally baffled by the fact that no one was ever told about it. Like, if this was a scheme by Intel to sell more i7's, how was it supposed to work if no one knew the feature was there? Inexplicable.

"The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost if you keep it a secret!"

Well, unless your plan is actually to destroy the world, or in this case, make i7 owners slightly more entertained!

I read your comment and went to scroll down to add the Strangelove quote. Delighted when I saw you already had. :)

Some extra info to save people digging through that whole thread:

* The game developers have since released the content for all CPUs

* The developers at reVive, which are normally focused on making the Vive work with Occulus exclusive titles, released a patch in under an hour to remove the restriction.

Looks like they were getting swamped by negative reviews:

http://store.steampowered.com/app/342180/

> The developers at reVive, which are normally focused on making the Vive work with Occulus exclusive titles, released a patch in under an hour to remove the restriction.

Good. I was about to say this seems like about the easiest thing in the world to crack given that the CPUs are otherwise almost entirely compatible, all that would be required is hooking the get processor function.

I have two machines one an i5 4690 another an i7 6700 and have two vives, one(I7) has single player horde mode the other(I5) does not!

I had to stop and think about the word "vives", heh. Of course I was not expecting someone to describe his partners' gaming setup, but still tripped me up.

This seems like a weird thing to do, and perhaps even more so that it wasn't more clearly communicated. I don't follow this game at all, but there are clearly commenters who do who are surprised about being locked out.

This situation, from the initial complaint through to the apparent resolution, is absurd and strange. There were no winners here (besides customers getting extra stuff on Intel's dime, I guess?).

That said, I think this is a time that the title can stand to be summarized. Something like "'Arizona Sunshine' game locks game modes to i7 CPUs only"? Probably could be better than that.

This seems like a pretty clear breakdown of HN's "original title" policy. The title here only makes sense in the context of a game-specific Steam forum, and provides no real information out of context.

> There were no winners here (besides customers getting extra stuff on Intel's dime, I guess?).

Well, since they advertised that the mode was available and it actually wasn't for a significant portion of users, I would say every person who purchased the game and doesn't have an i7 won by getting access to the content they were sold without having to wait three months.

Steam devs get called out on this fairly regularly, to the point where I'm surprised any product that isn't just milking early access tries it anymore.

Titanfall 2 won't launch on a Pentium CPU, but runs fine if you use a ExtremeInjector and a special dll that is floating around.

Amazing the things a quick hook can do, isn't it?

One possibility is that there is some unoptimized code that depends on certain CPU features in the newer models, and that they're working to optimize it. One of their later comments says:

> We have recommended and still recommend using the Core i7 in order to maintain a constant 90FPS with advanced physics.

There's also this:

> These surprise game modes were meant to be a reward for those players with high-end VR systems who were looking for the most immersive experience possible.

Does Intel own a stake in any VR companies? Did they bundle their game with any PC building companies? It could be that they made all their money on the bundles, not on the CPUs directly.

Only slightly related, but reminded me of http://boingboing.net/2012/01/10/lockdown.html

This was a great read! Thank you

From the end user POV it's a shitty thing to do, but most likely this stems from the developer making a deal with Intel. It takes a lot of resources and effort to deliver VR games with the quality and length that PC gamers have to come to expect, and the VR market is still tiny; at the end of the day you can't really blame VR developers for taking deals left and right, because it's the only way to subsidize development.

If every time something like this happens there's an internet outrage, what's gonna happen is that no one will subsidize shit (because why would you pay a developer if exclusivity or exclusive features are not on the table?), VR content development will stall as there won't be incentive for developers to spend months/years of work only to barely break even (if they get lucky), VR adoption will not go on, etc.

Something's gotta give, VR gamers need to cut developers some slack if VR is to flourish in the future, you can't have your cake and eat it too.

More and more, the 'exclusive' feature I want in any product is for it to do what it says on the goddamn tin. Alas that's a feature few care to provide.

That's fine and all but they should let consumers know before they buy it. There's nothing inherently wrong with exclusivities if it's made abundantly clear ahead of purchase. It's wrong for consumers to discover they can't play parts of the game they bought because they're on the wrong side of an arbitrary business agreement.

well, to be fair, from the dev's phrasing it seems like these are EXTRA modes which weren't even advertised, so customers were not under the impression that they would be able to play these. If this is true, then honestly I think the customer outrage is a little excessive and entitled. If they didn't have i7s, then they got exactly what they paid and expected.

If they did have i7s, then because of Intel's funding, they got more than they paid for. Yeah, it's still kind of weird and just doesn't seem like a good business practice, but if this is true, then this outrage seems a little overly entitled.

Of course, if these modes were originally known, and everyone expected that they could play these modes, then this thing is indefensibly scummy.

That could be the case, it was hard for me to tell. Nonetheless it seems like a bad practice regardless:

Person A with an i7 buys the game. Talks about the great features to Person B. Person B, with an i5, decides to buy to the game but can't find the features. What happened? Neither person has any idea.

Yes, this is due to Intel participation. From their post on Steam forum:

======================

Vertigo Games [developer] 17 hours ago Single Player Horde Mode & Apocalyptic Mode

These are two game modes that we have not focused on previously.

Working with Intel allowed us to create even more content than we originally planned, including these modes and the physics systems in the game, making Arizona Sunshine one of the richest VR experiences possible. We want to give 5th, 6th and 7th gen Intel® Core™ i7 owners first glimpse into these additional modes, but they’ll be available March 6, 2017 to everyone who owns the game.

Single Player Horde Mode is as you would expect, a single player experience in Horde Mode.

Apocalyptic Mode is the highest level of difficulty in the campaign. Its features include: • Only one weapon (handgun) • Very limited ammo • No checkpoints - you die and go back to the start of the game • One hit death

Completing this is tied to an achievement that will result in an award of a golden desert eagle pistol for use in multiplayer and future apocalyptic sessions. The gun will be added in a future update.

If you splurge and get a nice Xeon chip for your system guess you're likewise screwed.

"Sorry, you spent too much money on your Intel® powered VR system."

A xeon would be a poor choice for a gaming rig. More money for lower clock speed.

Edit: you guys can't seriously believe that a xeon is a good gaming CPU...

For those that do a lot of heavy 3D where you need cores, cores and more cores Xeon is a lot more cost effective than paying a crazy premium on 6 or 8 core i7 chips.

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