Devs should not be "forced to run on a treadmill until their mental or physical health breaks", says publisher
www.eurogamer.net
Manor Lords' publisher has hit back at claims the game is an "interesting case study in the pitfalls of early access", …

This really does not sound healthy. The game is released, for a certain amount of money. If people don’t like what they get for their money, they simply should not buy it.

But by now gamers have been so trained to expect to endless content treadmills and all their ilk like mtx and battle passes that publishers/developers get egged on if they don’t work on their game 24/7 and forever.

  • Zos_KiaEnglish
    17•5 months ago

    Minecraft falls squarely in this category. I paid 15$ some 12 years ago and am still getting a yearly update for free.

    And yet if you go in the MC community, one of the most common complaints people have is that the updates are never enough and the Devs are lazy etc… I guess this goes to the point of this article, people can easily be trained to have unrealistic expectations.

    I’m not crying for Mojang/Microsoft but I can’t imagine how it feels to be an indie dev and have people shit on you because the work you do for free is not good enough.

      • Zos_KiaEnglish
        9•5 months ago

        microtransaction hell

        As far as i know the full game is entirely playable without spending a dime more than the price of the game. You can join an infinity of multiplayer servers or play the game solo from start to finish and beyond, and you still get the yearly update which, despite your statement, includes much more than “a new mob every six months”.

        I personally don’t mind that cosmetics and entirely optional non-game-advantaging additional content are paid, as it is what bankrolls the studio to keep pumping out free updates every year. How do you propose they finance this otherwise ?

          • Zos_KiaEnglish
            1•5 months ago

            I don’t know, the bedrock version started in 2011 way before Microsoft bought the studio. It was never free or community-driven, it is cheaper than the Java version, but it doesn’t have access to the free modding community. This sounds like a relatively good non-toxic deal to me, either you pay upfront or you suffer the micro-transactions. If you don’t have the money, you can still play the full game for a relatively low price.

            Your implication that they don’t optimize or develop new content for the base game is simply unfounded and proven wrong every year like clockwork.

    • @[email protected]English
      4•5 months ago

      And yet if you go in the MC community, one of the most common complaints people have is that the updates are never enough and the Devs are lazy etc… I guess this goes to the point of this article, people can easily be trained to have unrealistic expectations.

      Tbh I think a big part of the problem is Mojang’s failure to communicate with it’s players, less so the lack of features being added.

      • Zos_KiaEnglish
        3•5 months ago

        I don’t know, they have an annual event, affiliate youtubers who distill the news as they come, “leakers” on twitter. You can’t really expect a studio to pull a 1.16 every year, but short of that it seems there is no way to please the MC community.