Probably knows that he has no legs to stand on legally and corpo bootlickers would take the easy "its not your IP so you can't complain!!" avenue endlessly.
So its a pretty good measured response to complaining without letting the easy defense over.
Nothing new there, devs have been either outright copying or duplicating mod content for years/decades now after the mod feature became popular enough.
Easiest way to spot this? Compared actual Vanilla WoW to both current WoW and "Classic" versions and see what added features there are. Then go through the mod history of the game and find almost all the newer quality of life features at some point existing as a standalone, fan created mod.
On the one hand sure that would help him get into the industry, but on the other hand that can be the quickest way to tank both his enthusiasm and work quality.
Stellaris has hired modders before and the quality of their work plummeted because said modder was no longer the one in charge of both production quality and pace. Now they had someone in a management position stating what was to be done and how quickly.
They're actually really disruptive in a classical "monolithic deliverable" development ecosystem where you have a lead architect and a swarm of implementers.
Simply put, they think too much. They're good at agile, great at microservices, but a nuisance otherwise.
Honestly, if Blizzard hadn't started to incorporate mods into the default game they would have eventually caught themselves in a pickle. Because they spent a lot of time designing the game around the assumption you'd have a bunch of them, to the point where the game was impossible without.
Like, good luck doing most raids without some DBM knockoff (eventually most bosses gained an energy bar and buffs to denote a lot of that) and outside communication (they had a whole patch for an ingame voice chat that never got used). Or even leveling without ol' Carbonite or the other (all quests now show where everything you need is).
So its less QoL they are taking credit for, and more being so fucking lazy for so long that they built a game that required some external programs to be playable and then realized that had a lot of potential to bite them in the ass.
Firaxis had to delay the release of the final DLC for Civ 6 for 9 months on console because they had to openly admit that Aspyr their subcontractor were so shitty that they were having to shop around for a new porting outfit during the middle of their active development cycle.
Props to him, modding games on the OG Xbox was a pain based on the conversion process and some of tools (or lack thereof) that were required to get anything done. Battlefront 2 was one of the easist games to mod because Pandemic released the source code, but you still needed a separate tool to rip and convert the textures/MDLs for the Xbox version of the game because they were packed different from the PC version.
Halo 2 was easily one of the most difficult games to mod, mostly when it came to AI logistics, as they had some of the best AI in the industry, even to this day. It would take hours to bake the AI into maps and required a lot of tooling to get them work right, but they were procedural to the map, which was awesome because once the logic was baked in, they could react and do things independent of needing node graphs for map plotting.
In short, modding Xbox content is something that was practically a full-time job just due to the complexity of it all and the limitations. This guy is definitely very humble because a lot of people just have no idea how much work he had to invest into creating a lot of custom content for a game like that, which a company is using without having given him anything for it in return.
It's basically a repacking plant of a company anyhow. Their entire model is vulturing, so this isn't terribly surprising. I'm sure there's some clause in the original license that mods are Lucas property or some shit, even if it's unenforceable. You just gotta have deep pockets to fight it.
In the 90's we had all those Acclaim games. Like 90% of their catalogue (or more) were license games from other IPs. Aspyr is just a middleman, so never gonna be creativity.
He seems way to chill considering some developers got payed for his work.
Probably knows that he has no legs to stand on legally and corpo bootlickers would take the easy "its not your IP so you can't complain!!" avenue endlessly.
So its a pretty good measured response to complaining without letting the easy defense over.
Nothing new there, devs have been either outright copying or duplicating mod content for years/decades now after the mod feature became popular enough.
Easiest way to spot this? Compared actual Vanilla WoW to both current WoW and "Classic" versions and see what added features there are. Then go through the mod history of the game and find almost all the newer quality of life features at some point existing as a standalone, fan created mod.
Actually a good bounty for a bug fix. Somewhere in the ballpark of 1-2 months salary for a full timer.
On the one hand sure that would help him get into the industry, but on the other hand that can be the quickest way to tank both his enthusiasm and work quality.
Stellaris has hired modders before and the quality of their work plummeted because said modder was no longer the one in charge of both production quality and pace. Now they had someone in a management position stating what was to be done and how quickly.
Enthusiasts don't make good team members.
They're actually really disruptive in a classical "monolithic deliverable" development ecosystem where you have a lead architect and a swarm of implementers.
Simply put, they think too much. They're good at agile, great at microservices, but a nuisance otherwise.
Take-Two's return on equity over the last ten years is barely above the average of the whole market.
And their 2023 numbers were shit terrible, lost a billion dollars.
Honestly, if Blizzard hadn't started to incorporate mods into the default game they would have eventually caught themselves in a pickle. Because they spent a lot of time designing the game around the assumption you'd have a bunch of them, to the point where the game was impossible without.
Like, good luck doing most raids without some DBM knockoff (eventually most bosses gained an energy bar and buffs to denote a lot of that) and outside communication (they had a whole patch for an ingame voice chat that never got used). Or even leveling without ol' Carbonite or the other (all quests now show where everything you need is).
So its less QoL they are taking credit for, and more being so fucking lazy for so long that they built a game that required some external programs to be playable and then realized that had a lot of potential to bite them in the ass.
Star Wars devs/writers stealing community work? Must be a day that ends in Y.
These DEI hires don’t care about your or modding skills. Now keep making free content at the alter at diversity. You owe it after all.
Faggot deserves to have things stolen from him without credit.
:3
Aspyr is a shitshow.
Firaxis had to delay the release of the final DLC for Civ 6 for 9 months on console because they had to openly admit that Aspyr their subcontractor were so shitty that they were having to shop around for a new porting outfit during the middle of their active development cycle.
Source - https://steamcommunity.com/app/2446550/discussions/0/4347732779392154378/
Another thread with a list of grievances against the company for past failures - https://steamcommunity.com/app/2446550/discussions/0/4347732779393121251/
Props to him, modding games on the OG Xbox was a pain based on the conversion process and some of tools (or lack thereof) that were required to get anything done. Battlefront 2 was one of the easist games to mod because Pandemic released the source code, but you still needed a separate tool to rip and convert the textures/MDLs for the Xbox version of the game because they were packed different from the PC version.
Halo 2 was easily one of the most difficult games to mod, mostly when it came to AI logistics, as they had some of the best AI in the industry, even to this day. It would take hours to bake the AI into maps and required a lot of tooling to get them work right, but they were procedural to the map, which was awesome because once the logic was baked in, they could react and do things independent of needing node graphs for map plotting.
In short, modding Xbox content is something that was practically a full-time job just due to the complexity of it all and the limitations. This guy is definitely very humble because a lot of people just have no idea how much work he had to invest into creating a lot of custom content for a game like that, which a company is using without having given him anything for it in return.
The game squad.. is half made from mods lol. All the various nation factions.
It's basically a repacking plant of a company anyhow. Their entire model is vulturing, so this isn't terribly surprising. I'm sure there's some clause in the original license that mods are Lucas property or some shit, even if it's unenforceable. You just gotta have deep pockets to fight it.
In the 90's we had all those Acclaim games. Like 90% of their catalogue (or more) were license games from other IPs. Aspyr is just a middleman, so never gonna be creativity.