Then, responding to those who have said he’s “only doing this for the money", Szymanski tweeted: “Yes, no fucking shit. I make games for a living. If I didn’t want to earn money from them I wouldn’t charge money for them.”

The game follows the premise of being trapped in an underwater submarine out of necessity to capture deep pictures.

  • @[email protected]
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    1873 months ago

    People will literally complain about everything, no sense in trying to appease everyone all the time.

    • @[email protected]
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      453 months ago

      No matter what it is you do or how well you do it, even if you do it for free, a specific subset of motherfuckers will still act like you owe them something.

      • Rikudou_Sage
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        353 months ago

        Especially when you do it for free. I write a lot of open source and sometimes the comments are real “nice”.

        • @[email protected]
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          93 months ago

          That’s awesome of you and I hope, while those people are unlikely to disappear from your life, your memories of ungrateful feedback last no longer than they would for a salamander.

    • @[email protected]
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      213 months ago

      I wish cities and elected officials would have the same mindset. Instead the best action for some reason has become inaction.

      Best to do nothing, then have one group or another hate you?

  • @[email protected]
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    1523 months ago

    Lmao…

    AAA dogshit shovelware game increases price from $60 to $70 and some people are unhappy.

    Small time indie dev bumps game price from $6 to $8 to keep up with inflation and people lose their shit to the point it goes on gaming msm

    No wonder we’re the most abused market.

    • @[email protected]
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      133 months ago

      Well, one is a 17% and one a 33% price hike, so outrage is totally understandable! I’m not being serious, btw.

      • @[email protected]
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        143 months ago

        This is an excellent example of how you can use statistics/percentages to push a false narrative.

        Cause you hear “Dev increased game 33%” and you wonder what the fuck is going on, and in that same vein a 17% price hike doesnt sound nearly as outrageous. Despite the fact that 33% is a paltry 2 dollars, that came with a massive increase in content, and the measly 17% is a massive increase in price for a game that is fundamentally worse than what was made 10 years ago in scope and content.

        and to be clear, I am not saying RecluseRamble is in any way pushing any kind of negative/false narrative. I’m just using his % without context (within the vein of his own post) to show how things can be manipulated.

        • AatubeOP
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          53 months ago

          I agree, I hate it when I say “removing unemployment payouts to millionaires can save our nation tens of millions of dollars!” to be met with “that’s just .418% of our national debt”

  • kryllic
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    1373 months ago

    "I like the business model of ‘I want money so I make something that I think is worth money, and you pay me that money and you get the thing, and we’re all happy’,” Szymanski continued. “That’s it. There’s nothing complicated or hidden here.

    Lmao I love it, gonna get this game now

      • @[email protected]B
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        23 months ago

        Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

        Dusk

        Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

        I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.

  • @[email protected]
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    1143 months ago

    No mate, I’m doing you a favour playing your game. You should pay me. It would be great exposure. I’ve got literally some followers.

    And yeah, I’ll bang on about minimum wage being too low and I’ll post about AAA Devs ripping off their workers, but a lone developer asking $10 for something that probably took them months, too much. Too much.

    What a sell out.

    (/S just in case)

  • m-p{3}
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    953 months ago

    Meh, it’s two dollars and the dev is an indie, at least it doesn’t go towards filling the pockets of a large publisher.

  • FlashMobOfOne
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    3 months ago

    The people complaining about a $2 price increase are the same guys harassing women on Instagram for free OF subs.

  • circuitfarmer
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    723 months ago

    “You’re only doing it for the money” to a game dev is the same as being asked in a job interview to show all the git repos you worked on in your spare time.

    People develop skills, and they often choose to use those skills to make money. We expect game devs to only break even now? F off with that shit.

  • @[email protected]
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    3 months ago

    I hope this is clever marketing from the developer because I had never heard of this game until now and also because I can’t for the life of me figure out why anyone would abuse an indie developer for $2.

    I understand some people might do that, but they’d have to be a tiny percentage.

    • Corroded
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      443 months ago

      People bully FOSS developers when their creations are free so I can’t say I’m surprised.

      I hope this is clever marketing from the developer because I had never heard of this game until now

      The same person made DUSK and Squirrel Stapler. Squirrel Stapler and Iron Lung are shorter games that have been popular with streamers.

    • @[email protected]
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      133 months ago

      I once made an app for Samsung watches for disc golf scorekeeping. It could accept any number of players, apply a handicap throughout the game so you could know exactly how you were doing vs your opponent with different handicaps on every hole, and gave a nice scorecard at the end to view. It was $0.99

      Someone complained that I made them “throw away their money down the drain” since it didn’t also have gps to tell them how far they were from the hole.

      • @[email protected]
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        53 months ago

        Yes, some people will literally waste 100x more resources, in mental energy and time, than the price of admission to complain.

        But my point was that this type of criticism can be ignored - if you get 1000 sales and 2 people turn out to be dickheads you shove them in the (mental) bin.

  • @[email protected]
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    3 months ago

    Did they face significant backlash? Or is IGN just trying to “make fetch happen”? I might have just missed it.

    • AatubeOP
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      113 months ago

      Yes they did, just read the tweets linked

      • @[email protected]
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        3 months ago

        Tweets do not represent significant backlash .

        Edit Significant backlash would be something like getting delisted from steam

        • AatubeOP
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          253 months ago

          A ton of people attacking the dev on Twitter is significant backlash. An earthquake does not have to cause a Tsunami to have a big effect.

        • AatubeOP
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          43 months ago

          IMO, not even visiting is very weird. Just use a blocker and steal their revenue.

          As an uninformed, I also wonder why you think IGN would make up stuff.

          • @[email protected]
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            3 months ago

            They (including Musk) make money off of how ubiquitous it is, even if you’re not viewing ads. They leverage that daily view count.

            No judgement, but if you’re visiting X/Twitter, you’re supporting them. As for IGN, there’s the “too much water” controversy, but basically, they’re just way too corporate for me…

            • AatubeOP
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              13 months ago

              It’s like insisting on always paying with cash imo. Does some ethics but quite a bit of an inconvenience if you’re in a queue.

              • @[email protected]
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                23 months ago

                Ok yeah, you can be annoyed, but your cash example is ALSO perfectly fine if a person decides digital money isnt for them

                • AatubeOP
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                  13 months ago

                  Yeah, I get the same level of annoyed on both of these. Cheerio

          • @[email protected]
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            23 months ago

            You can’t say things like that here! We are a bunch of nerds who cling so tightly to online privacy and morals it is practically our personality!

            Nah it is weird, in the sense that most people really won’t put in that much energy to avoid a site even if it was to gather information. It’s atypical.

    • @[email protected]
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      43 months ago

      I believe it. A friend of mine raised the price of his game from free to $2 with a big update, and still kept the download for the older version free. He got all sorts of backlash, even death threats. These people are children.

  • MagnyusG
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    153 months ago

    It’s a 5 dollar game (being generous) that was already overpriced at $6. I get wanting more money, but your product isn’t worth the price increase to begin with.

    • @[email protected]
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      583 months ago

      I forgot that everyone is forced to buy this game. This price increase is an outage. If only the people who thought about playing it could make the decision to buy it or not, then that might be reasonable. But come on people, this game costs more than a small pizza half a small pizza!

      /s

    • circuitfarmer
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      293 months ago

      It’s a 5 dollar game (being generous) that was already overpriced at $6.

      Facts and opinions are different things.

      If you don’t like the game, or think it’s overpriced, don’t buy it. The dev should continue to price it as they see fit.

      When AAA publishers price games at $70, the solution is not to buy it. It’s not different here, except that $6 > $8 is not a difference most people (except the dev, due to volume) will care about.

      • @[email protected]
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        143 months ago

        And if the difference between $6 and $8 really is where they draw the line, they can always wait for a sale. I’ve bought many indie games on sale where I thought eh, that might be fun for $12 but not worth risking my $20

      • @[email protected]
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        43 months ago

        Well. Thankfully he never said that his statement was an objective fact.

        Seriously, what’s up with you people? Do you need every single statement prefaced with “this is only my subjective opinion and not concrete fact but-!” Or you’ll take it like they’re trying to preach the word of god?

        You’re not a computer. Why are you acting like one?

        • circuitfarmer
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          143 months ago

          Seriously, what’s up with you people?

          This tends to mean you’ve misunderstood a basic social norm.

              • @[email protected]
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                53 months ago

                Well, one, Jesus Christ, it’s not even my statement. Two, the guy saying “this game isn’t worth $8” is obviously a subjective statement because it literally cannot ever be an objective statement.

                Like. By definition.

                When you see a movie rating and someone rates it four out of five stars, you understand that’s not them declaring a universal constant, correct?

                • circuitfarmer
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                  73 months ago

                  Here’s perhaps what has eluded you overall: $2 isn’t even worth continuing this argument.

        • @[email protected]
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          63 months ago

          Well. Thankfully he never said that his statement was an objective fact.

          They did. Just because you don’t explicitly say “this is a fact”, doesn’t mean you’re not making a statement of fact. “This is a $5 game” is a statement of fact. “I wouldn’t pay more than $5 for this game” is a statement of opinion. That’s the difference between humans reading a passage and computers doing the same. Humans take context and past experience into account, all of which say that the phrasing they originally used implies an objective fact.

          • @[email protected]
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            23 months ago

            No he didn’t. He said “this isn’t a $6 game, let alone an $8 game”. Both of those are subjective opinion statements. He is referring to the perceived value of the game being lower to the actual costs of the game ($6 and $8 respectively)

            This is really not a difficult thing. I’m not sure why so many Lemmy users are struggling with it

            • @[email protected]
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              63 months ago

              In the only perfectly logical interpretation of the comment, you would be correct. Unfortunately, humans are not always perfectly logical and will often say things that are illogical. The most common meaning intended by the phrase “this is a $5 game” is the illogical one of presenting it as an objective fact.

              I refuse to believe that this is the first time you’ve encountered an illogical statement.

              • @[email protected]
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                13 months ago

                So under your grand interpretation, you should default to just saying “no, when they said that they actually meant it in the wrong way”.

                You might just be too cynical and online to read man

                • @[email protected]
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                  33 months ago

                  It’s fine (and expected in most human interactions) to default to assuming that the most commonly intended meaning is what’s intended. And no, that doesn’t mean you should respond like an asshole. Respond to the intended meaning of the original statement instead of commenting on how your use of the English language is superior to theirs.

                  This is how human interactions work in general. It’s worth learning if you want to fit into society.

    • @[email protected]
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      3 months ago

      Yeah, I dunno how fairly to price a video game. But it’s kind of interesting that price increases on some things are universally seen as bad, but when a video game developer does it (irrespective of how much money they have), everyone suddenly becomes the most staunch Ayn Rand free market capitalist in a way I don’t think they would be if their local plumbing company or restaurants suddenly raised prices 20% and said “no fucking shit, I do this for a living”.

      It was a big thing with the Disco Elysium game, wherein the creators by all means did every single possible move to maximize their personal profits and ended up having it come back to haunt them, and basically everyone said they were being exploited by this horrific system because they’re vaguely communist game developers.

      Again, it’s not to say that David shouldn’t price his game at $8 or that the DE guys didn’t get fucked, but it’s interesting how political views become flexible based on how much an audience likes a guy.

      I realize this is grounds for the most downvoted comment on Lemmy. That’s fine. It is what it is.

      • @[email protected]
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        83 months ago

        You’ve left one thing out of your little “everyone is a libertarian when it comes to video games” theory there - I’ve never heard of the game, never heard of the dev, I am very much left leaning and I support the dev’s decision to raise the price of the game by 20% if that’s what they want to do. If it’s worth it, people will still buy it. If it’s not, they won’t. This is hardly some AAA publisher pulling a bait and switch during pre-orders. The game is out and available, anyone unsure of it can easily read reviews, watch videos of people playing it, etc and of course, they can also do a refund.

        • @[email protected]
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          3 months ago

          That’s fine. It’s not really a flaw in my statement. I assume you’re also fine with increases on most goods and services then on a somewhat “at will” / free market basis. My comment only refers to people who are often staunchly against such practices but make a “hole” in this view specifically for video games / media

      • @[email protected]
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        53 months ago

        I believe the prevailing opinion is that price increase for anything is fine as long as it goes towards the people doing the work. Increase a game’s price so the devs get better pay? Cool. Increase the price of bread so that bakers get better pay? Cool. Increase the price of anything so that shareholders get better returns? Not cool.

      • @[email protected]
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        33 months ago

        Yeah, the other comment mention about AAA game increasing price from 60 to 70 and “no once cares” and it’s fucking bullshit. Everyone would be in arms if it happens to a game that’s already released.

        What they usually do now is selling it at 80 from the get go but it’s another discussion. People go in arms when a game DOESN’T go into discount after some time ffs. The usual expectation is for a game to go cheaper overtime, not more expensive.

      • Rusty Shackleford
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        93 months ago

        Maynard James Keenan, the singer of Tool, is artfully insinuating that he is a “hooker” prostituting his music, and since he is male, he has a penis.

        • @[email protected]
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          33 months ago

          From singing about prostituting his music to now being a black belt in BJJ and having Mike Tyson train in his gym.

          It’s crazy how things come around.

  • @Drewelite
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    153 months ago

    Consumers these days have so much entitlement. I understand not wanting to be tricked with advertising or wanting a safe product, without toxic chemicals or whatnot.

    But at the end of the day, assuming that’s the case, someone should be able to make whatever they want and charge whatever they want. If no one buys it, they’re a bad business person. The end. But lately I’ve seen so many people doing things like starting witch hunts to go after makers of something they don’t like. Or trying to strongarm a company into changing a product by holding their reputation for ransom. Or deciding as a community on an idealized business model and punishing companies that don’t use it.

    And the gaming community is the worst of them. Like if you don’t like multiplayer games, fine. Don’t shit on a game for like 5 paragraphs just to finally say, “See? RDR2 did just fine, we should be making single player games. Anyway I didn’t actually play this and neither should you. 0/5 stars.”

    Like bro, this team worked really hard to make a game they believed in. They didn’t have to run it by you. If you don’t like it play something else. But people will claim you have no right to have created what you did, the audacity that you thought you could is appalling, and frankly… You’re an immoral person to work for money. Like damn guys, chill. Nobody has to make you games. I don’t go see Starry Night and write a letter to Van Gogh’s estate like, “I’m not a fan of blue”