Cutter wrote on Aug 17, 2021, 18:23:
How goddamned expensive was this thing to make? 3 million sales at $60 each is 180 mil! BF, COD, et al. all cost around 50 mil to make - forget marketing budgets. No way this cost more than that. If they don't even know the actual numbers they're getting screwed. Hire a good law firm now.

It is quite possible for a game to be profitable, even extremely profitable and yet the developers not seeing a dime.

See these blog posts(Especially the second one):

https://dukenukem.typepad.com/game_matters/2004/01/contract_deal_p.html
https://dukenukem.typepad.com/game_matters/2003/12/royalties_and_a.html

and this list of "developer commandments":

http://www.igda.org/articles/smiller_commandments.php">https://web.archive.org/web/20090309024900/http://www.igda.org/articles/smiller_commandments.php

This comment was edited on Aug 19, 2021, 08:45.

Pepe wrote on Aug 5, 2021, 16:15:
Why did they bother with 3Drealms, it's a shell of a company with half a dozen employees and has not made a game in ages.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_3D_Realms_games

Burrito of Peace wrote on Jul 7, 2021, 03:32:

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Jul 6, 2021, 23:48:
"built-in patent protection" ... that sounds ridiculously ominous, and will no doubt come back to plague legitimate users in a dozen ways.

I am somewhat curious as to what games actually end up getting built with Lumberyard/Open 3D Engine or whatever they are going to call it in the end.

Exactly, they are almost certainly referring to the Apache license's provision regarding patents:

"3. Grant of Patent License. Subject to the terms and conditions of this License, each Contributor hereby grants to You a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, no-charge, royalty-free, irrevocable (except as stated in this section) patent license to make, have made, use, offer to sell, sell, import, and otherwise transfer the Work, where such license applies only to those patent claims licensable by such Contributor that are necessarily infringed by their Contribution(s) alone or by combination of their Contribution(s) with the Work to which such Contribution(s) was submitted. If You institute patent litigation against any entity (including a cross-claim or counterclaim in a lawsuit) alleging that the Work or a Contribution incorporated within the Work constitutes direct or contributory patent infringement, then any patent licenses granted to You under this License for that Work shall terminate as of the date such litigation is filed."



It isn't ominous once you see it from an open source perspective instead of a proprietary software perspective.

The Apache 2.0 license basically says "You can use this software for whatever, whenever, without fear of infringing on anything. If you instigate litigation against anyone or anything that uses this product, your license to the product is immediately revoked the second you file your lawsuit."

To meet the Apache Foundation's legal requirement to use that license requires going through some extensive hoops. Amazon would not have done this lightly. So, essentially, CryTek can go piss up a rope and cannot sue Joe Bob Indie Developer for using the Lumberyard engine. On top of this, you have the Linux Foundation which is very, very aggressive when it comes to patent trolls trying to step on open source development that is under their umbrella.

Tusker wrote on Feb 23, 2021, 05:51:

Bopper wrote on Feb 23, 2021, 04:09:
"...a bill that would ban the sale of Grand Theft Auto and other violent video games."

and

"preventing some video games from being sold to minors."

are quite different things.

Yep. The law currently prevents some games being sold to minors; this bill is to expand the law to prevent them being sold to anyone.

Presumably, this law will only apply to retailers operating in Illinois. Evans is going to flip out when he hears about digital delivery platforms.

The current law is completely inoperative since SCOTUS has already declared such laws unconstitutional.

As noted in the article this has already been addressed by the courts:

https://apps.oyez.org/player/#/roberts6/opinion_announcement_audio/23000

MoreLuckThanSkill wrote on Sep 6, 2020, 12:45:
3D Realms? I'd have to guess most of the original guys are retired or dead by now. Oh well, looks very Hexen-ish, I'm somewhat interested.

Chuck Jones who was an artist on Rise of The Triad, Shadow Warrior and Duke Nukem 3D is working on this game.

Ravenus wrote on Aug 14, 2020, 07:42:
The voice of Caleb still gives me goosebumps.

He is doing voice work for 3DR/Slipgate on one of their unannounced FPS's. Chuck Jones(www.chuckejones.com) is an artist on that project as well.

Beamer wrote on May 5, 2020, 10:59:

Pr()ZaC wrote on May 5, 2020, 10:30:
I'd so like an X-COM remake based on the original. So much (more) freedom in the first one.
Also, Sid Meier's Pirates!.

Sid Meier owns both those IPs!

Try Xenonauts, which is a more faithful XCOM reproduction. For what it's worth, though, I think that XCOM/XCOM2 are infinitely better than any of the ones based more on the 1994 game.

Surely Take Two and not Sid Meier owns the XCOM IP?

"Of course by then development had shifted from the Quake II Engine to the Unreal Engine to an internally developed engine and then to the Quake 3 Engine."

Yeah, they never used the Quake 3 Engine. I think this person meant Doom 3, but they didn't use that either. Also they never developed an internal engine completely from scratch for DNF. But it is true that they rewrote large part of the engine, but they kept a small base from the Unreal Engine.

As for WoW, yeah there is no doubt that the 3DR crew in general and George Broussard in particular were big fans. I vaguely remember that quote around the time of the Jace Hall footage as a joke from George's side. I have no idea if WoW had any real impact on DNF development, I doubt it. But in any case there is no way they actually stopped development at any point just to play WoW.

There were plenty of things wrong with DNF's development, there is no need for exaggeration or anything like that. It was completely messed up, that is for sure.

Sepharo wrote on Feb 25, 2020, 12:01:

Kristian Joensen wrote on Feb 25, 2020, 11:58:

Beamer wrote on Feb 25, 2020, 11:26:

Mr. Tact wrote on Feb 25, 2020, 11:21:
14 years? Pfft. No problem, Star Citizen will crush that.

It's close to DNF territory, though that wasn't continually worked on (though, it was worked on by professional teams doing it as a full time job, so...)

I guess it depends on what you mean by "worked on continually". I think there was a month between 3D Realms laying off its development team and Triptych Games being set up and taking over development.

If you are referring to restarts of the project, that is a bit complicated. after they switched to the Unreal Engine it was never the case that they just threw everything out from one day to the next or that they ever stopped working on the game.

They admitted to playing WoW for like a year without doing any actual work.

I am going to have to pull a [citation needed] on that. Heck even if you can find a quote, it is almost certainly something said in jest. I am far from an insider or anything like that, but I think I followed the development pretty closely.

Beamer wrote on Feb 25, 2020, 11:26:

Mr. Tact wrote on Feb 25, 2020, 11:21:
14 years? Pfft. No problem, Star Citizen will crush that.

It's close to DNF territory, though that wasn't continually worked on (though, it was worked on by professional teams doing it as a full time job, so...)

I guess it depends on what you mean by "worked on continually". I think there was a month between 3D Realms laying off its development team and Triptych Games being set up and taking over development.

If you are referring to restarts of the project, that is a bit complicated. after they switched to the Unreal Engine it was never the case that they just threw everything out from one day to the next or that they ever stopped working on the game.

aka_STEVE wrote on Jan 3, 2020, 11:03:
We'll see if Valve goes out of their way & sends a team of lawyers to stop this project........

From the quote in the article: "We've reached out to Valve, who've given us explicit permission to continue with our project using their original code."

At this point I would definitely support the idea of someone setting up a fund for keeping games off EGS. Like with grants conditioned on games NOT appearing on EGS.

The thing the media almost never mentions about this case is that when 3DR sold the rights to the IP, they still reserved certain rights. Such as the Duke movie rights, the rights to all pre-DNF Duke games and the rights to complete certain specified Duke games. Including a game called "Duke Nukem Survivor". They maintained that Duke Nukem Mass Destruction WAS the Survivor game.

This comment was edited on Aug 19, 2015, 12:50.

When they release a game that can be playef offline I might give them a chance, until then Blizzard might as well not exist as far as I am concerned.

"Mortal Kombat X is now available for Windows, PlayStation 4, and Linux."

Linux? Were do you get that from. It is not mentioned in the press release.

Creston wrote on Mar 5, 2015, 19:10:
Not releasing on Steam is pretty silly anyway. Sure, it's a 30% cut, and that may be more than what GOG or Origin or Uplay or GMG or whatever take, but Steam also has by far the most potential customers.

It's better to sell 50000 copies with a 30% cut taken out than it is to not sell 50000 copies.

I am a huge fan of GOG but they are also taking 30%: http://www.gog.com/indie

ChaosEngine wrote on Feb 3, 2015, 21:03:

eRe4s3r wrote on Feb 3, 2015, 18:24:
Oh please, if they really wanted they could just literally remake it. They already have working Homeworld 1 in their fancy engine, and Cataclysm just expanded on that anyway.

Remaking a game without the source is a significantly more difficult undertaking than updating an existing game with a new engine. Do you know exactly what the speed, turn rates, damage, fire rates, AI behaviours of the beast are? Neither do Gearbox.

So yeah, they could remake it, but it would be a big job and then people like you would just whinge when they charged full price for it.

EricFate wrote on Feb 3, 2015, 20:27:
All they need to do is include hooks for modding tools. Sooner or later, someone will get around to making a working version of Cataclysm.

Apparently, it will have mod support.

Got a source for that? I have a hard time beleiving Gearbox would allow mod support on any of their games.

ChaosEngine wrote on Jan 28, 2015, 22:44:

Alamar wrote on Jan 28, 2015, 20:47:
Reminds me of when Apple announced years back they had paid out 100 million or so to app devs...

Assuming Valve takes the usual 30%, and round it slightly to 33%, that means they've made 25 million 'free' dollars just for hosting that transaction...

Where does all their money go, if not (many) new features, or games...

Your math offends me. Please explain where you get 25 million dollars as either 30% or 33% of $50mil?

As to where the money goes, Steam doesn't host itself you know. The data centre costs aren't cheap. Plus each item has to go through a submission process. Most items probably never recoup the costs of that process.

Finally, they're a company, and they like this thing we call profit. Valve are not in any way obligated to reinvest all their money back into games.


Anyway, it sounds like Homeworld is going to participate in this... can't wait.

Cutter wrote on Jan 28, 2015, 22:04:
How about allowing people to sell their used games ya pricks?

On what planet is a digital copy of a game in any way "used"? It just makes no sense at all.

The 50 million is what is paid out, that is after Valve takes its cut, so that is 2/3 in this scenario. Surely half of 2/3 is 1/3? Surely half of 50 million is 25 million?

Krovven wrote on Jan 17, 2015, 19:35:
Intrusive? Lol. How so? I don't think you know the meaning. It auto logs you in when you load the game. It behaves like it's not even there...unless you go to the website to view the info.

I logged in to Social Club every time I loaded the PS3 game and never even saw it. I logged in for GTA IV and for Max Payne 3. Never once have I ever had an issue.

People claiming they and others should pirate because they have stick up their ass over Social Club, these people are the problem and you are a bunch of fucking cunts.

I'm surprised Blue hasn't been deleting posts advocating piracy, as he used to.

How about you actually read what I wrote? I spefically said that I will NOT pirate the game and that I am willing to give Rockstar Social Club a chance.

It is the periodic online "entitlement" checks and hardware based DRM I have an issue with. You know the kinds of DRM that require good, stable internet connections and interfere with you upgrading your computer. That is what GTAV will have.