It is absolutely ridiculous that these developers can get away with releasing a beta (essentially what it is) and setting the full release price without the end user knowing they're a guinea pig.
The terrible reputation is self-inflicted and deserved.
https://store.steampowered.com/search/?supportedlang=english...
It makes the game stay in people's minds longer because people keep coming back to it asking "is it good yet, have they fixed it yet?". It kind of feels it has worked like that for Cyberpunk. If it's a finished game on launch day people will quickly make up their minds if it's for them and then move on.
Personally I would be on the fence about buying it even if it was good on launch and I would probably not buy it straight away. But I might just change my mind if I get reminded of it enough times. Then again I felt like that about Cyberpunk as well and I still haven't bought it.
It has some performance issues. Not the same thing.
unpolished =/= unfinished.
But then there are stories No Man's Sky too, which had a miraculous turnaround as well. So maybe it can happen sometimes...
That's a black swan that can't easily be replicated.
In my opinion, Cyberpunk was punked by the gaming industry to harm CD Project Red. I have no proof at all, of course.
Cyberpunk was a good example of that. And the graphs make it really easy to see how it's changed over time: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1091500/Cyberpunk_2077/#a...
On the other hand, there are players who'd rather have the game earlier (like me) than a few months later, despite its launch issues.
The alternative approach -- Baldur's Gate 3 being in Early Access forever -- is fine too, but damned if that wasn't a long wait.
Maybe the compromise is bigger companies being willing to release in Early Access more often. That shouldn't be limited to just indie companies, but any publisher that wants early and broad public feedback.
Especially for a city-builder game (where there isn't really a campaign or spoilers), I don't see why not...
Publishers care a lot less about review scores, and never cared strongly about user reviews. They were so polarized to begin with that Steam changed it from numeric actors to up/down (or meh). It's a long running game and scores can improve.
Also, I really wish Apple chose some other name for its Game Porting Toolkit... hard to find relevant discussions in the sea of "other" GPT talk.
CS2 -> Counter Strike 2 C:S2 -> Cities: Skylines 2
I don't see the issue with making it more clear to end users that they're beta testing a game.
And user reported benchmarks are the worst metric I can imagine. There is so much work on profiling and inaccuracies among frame counters, I don't want to trust that to some random person on the internet.
>If the average hardware specs can't run that game >=60fps >=90% of the time on any graphical setting then it's beyond fair to give it a "Hardware reports indicate that this game performs poorly" label.
Not really. Framerate isn't everything and I don't think it's a good thing to further enforce. The best selling games still choose to run 30fps and most games running max specs will "perform poorly" by design. That's why most games only give "recommended specs", not specs for every settings.
but yea, source2 engine could have used some more love before going live
Software is not “essentially a beta” because it doesn’t meet a bunch of entitled users’ arbitrary definitions of “finished”.
A game having some performance issues doesn’t mean you’re a beta tester.
Did you even buy this game? I suspect not.