You don't hate journos enough. Anyway, 70k players is underwhelming for a AAA game, and given how it already felt to number 23 in the charts, there are reasons to think botting might have been used
It also doesn't tell us anything about the game's longevity. There have been games that have high peaks, but struggle to maintain a high concurrent player count like Starfield. And with a game like Veilguard being in development for 9 years, 70k ain't enough. The current copium going around is that it's not a bomba like Dustborn or Concord.
Topping Steam Charts is like being a "New York Times Best Seller." Its a meaninglessly low bar to clear that basically anything with a little money behind it will accomplish.
A AAA game needs a huge fumble to not make it on the list, of which DA has a decently sized built in fanbase already to dodge that.
Let's assume 100k sales (to account for console and people who bought and didn't play yet) for it. That's only about 6 million dollars before any taxes or cuts are taken out. Steam will take almost 2 million of that off the top themselves (unless EA has a special deal worked out).
So even being generous, they made less than 4 million dollars on this game so far. A game in development for a decade from one of the biggest studios out there under the notorious "it needs to sell 10 million copies or we shut down your company" EA banner.
This is a massively loss no matter how you spin it once you think about numbers.
They are trying to use the concord disaster to reframe all future woke failures as successes. As if the bar for success should be “sold more than 25k and didn’t immediately lose $200 million”.
I bought Drunken Robot Pornography just to say I did and get people's reactions.
Honestly, I miss when "indie games" were things like that. Wierd ideas that didn't have enough appeal for a huge investment from a big company, but were still fun ideas.
I am absolutely fucking flabbergasted they even approached 60k after looking at a single image of the game, truly.
Like if you watch a trailer, look at a screenshot, there shouldn't, realistically, be any reason to draw you into this game, but even more so if you actually like fantasy or Dragon Age.
I am genuinely impressed that they even approached that number, that will be an overwhelming success in their eyes, and this concept will repeat for as long as this is part of the general video game discussion.
The only reason I am saying this is because they will point at any big game and say its numbers are lower for as long as they possibly can.
Given how much they put into paying off and controlling the reviews for metacritic scores, I'd have been more shocked if they didn't put in the money to have at least 50k bots for release week.
Normie gamers seem to make most of their purchases based on hype and FOMO, and botting playing numbers is trivially easy. They've clearly decided to back this game with some serious marketing so it'd be irrational of them not to pad the player numbers at this point.
I mean that all makes sense, I just don't know a person that is interested in this, and as small as my world may be, I'm shocked there is any hype around this at all.
There are things I understand normies falling for, like the Rings of Power or Disney+ shows, games like Spider-Man 2 for ps5/pc, I'm not surprised normies hop along with it and say its so great despite how lackluster it is.
But this is a medium-ish? fantasy series that hasn't had a good game for years and years and years, so this level of support/hype artificially or naturally is very strange to me.
It's definitely moving the goalposts. When an obviously woke game flops it had nothing to do with wokeness, but when a woke game tries to camouflage itself while banking on an existing fanbase, success must be because of tranny pronoun lectures and no other reasons.
The funny takeaway from this is Schrier admitting the game is woke. Usually they will try to obfuscate and say the term has no meaning.
Especially considering the pedigree of the franchise and being day 1. Most high value beand names can easily break 100k day 1. Sure, it tapers off fast, but the milestone still stands.
Haha, but nah Schreier is pure slime, he's probably not even played more than 5 minutes. He's just leaving an out to blame the gameplay and not the ideology when it turns out it actually is a flop.
You don't hate journos enough. Anyway, 70k players is underwhelming for a AAA game, and given how it already felt to number 23 in the charts, there are reasons to think botting might have been used
It also doesn't tell us anything about the game's longevity. There have been games that have high peaks, but struggle to maintain a high concurrent player count like Starfield. And with a game like Veilguard being in development for 9 years, 70k ain't enough. The current copium going around is that it's not a bomba like Dustborn or Concord.
For comparison: Factorio has 60k players on RIGHT NOW. (8 am on Friday) And it's expansion has already been out a week and a half.
Oh and: https://steamcharts.com/app/1845910 is giving an error.
They had to hide its player numbers.
That's not a fair comparison!
Factorio is crack for autists.
Speaking of which, I need to check on my base...
The biters are already inside.
Topping Steam Charts is like being a "New York Times Best Seller." Its a meaninglessly low bar to clear that basically anything with a little money behind it will accomplish.
A AAA game needs a huge fumble to not make it on the list, of which DA has a decently sized built in fanbase already to dodge that.
Let's assume 100k sales (to account for console and people who bought and didn't play yet) for it. That's only about 6 million dollars before any taxes or cuts are taken out. Steam will take almost 2 million of that off the top themselves (unless EA has a special deal worked out).
So even being generous, they made less than 4 million dollars on this game so far. A game in development for a decade from one of the biggest studios out there under the notorious "it needs to sell 10 million copies or we shut down your company" EA banner.
This is a massively loss no matter how you spin it once you think about numbers.
They are trying to use the concord disaster to reframe all future woke failures as successes. As if the bar for success should be “sold more than 25k and didn’t immediately lose $200 million”.
They also released it before holiday season when it would've had actual competition
AAAAAAAAAAAAA
AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome is a very good and forgotten title and I appreciate the reference.
I have about 200 hours in A Reckless Disregard for Gravity. Dejobaan made some interesting games back in the day.
Havent looked into the remastered version of AAAAAAAA!!
I bought Drunken Robot Pornography just to say I did and get people's reactions.
Honestly, I miss when "indie games" were things like that. Wierd ideas that didn't have enough appeal for a huge investment from a big company, but were still fun ideas.
"I am right!" he exclaims, to the hand picked group of people who would only agree.
They could have redone Anthem into something that worked. Instead we got this.
EDIT: Some more numbers.
75k people for a "highly anticipated AAA" game is absolutely horrible.
Naraka: Bladepoint has 286k people playing right now. But it's not fair to judge a free multiplayer game to a single player one, so...
Skyrim special edition has 18,975 people playing right now
Baldur's Gate 3, the game they keep trying to be had 875,343 players.
Then again, that fucking banana meme game had more than Baldurs' Gate 3's peak, at 890k people.
Maybe Steam numbers are meaningless.
On that note, maybe a more appropriate comparison would be the "controversial" Hogwarts Legacy?
Hogwart's Legacy had a 527,652 player peak, and currently has 23,395 players at the time of this post.
I am absolutely fucking flabbergasted they even approached 60k after looking at a single image of the game, truly.
Like if you watch a trailer, look at a screenshot, there shouldn't, realistically, be any reason to draw you into this game, but even more so if you actually like fantasy or Dragon Age.
I am genuinely impressed that they even approached that number, that will be an overwhelming success in their eyes, and this concept will repeat for as long as this is part of the general video game discussion.
The only reason I am saying this is because they will point at any big game and say its numbers are lower for as long as they possibly can.
Given how much they put into paying off and controlling the reviews for metacritic scores, I'd have been more shocked if they didn't put in the money to have at least 50k bots for release week.
Normie gamers seem to make most of their purchases based on hype and FOMO, and botting playing numbers is trivially easy. They've clearly decided to back this game with some serious marketing so it'd be irrational of them not to pad the player numbers at this point.
A good 1k are probably streamers streaming it for mockery as well
I mean that all makes sense, I just don't know a person that is interested in this, and as small as my world may be, I'm shocked there is any hype around this at all.
There are things I understand normies falling for, like the Rings of Power or Disney+ shows, games like Spider-Man 2 for ps5/pc, I'm not surprised normies hop along with it and say its so great despite how lackluster it is.
But this is a medium-ish? fantasy series that hasn't had a good game for years and years and years, so this level of support/hype artificially or naturally is very strange to me.
It's definitely moving the goalposts. When an obviously woke game flops it had nothing to do with wokeness, but when a woke game tries to camouflage itself while banking on an existing fanbase, success must be because of tranny pronoun lectures and no other reasons.
The funny takeaway from this is Schrier admitting the game is woke. Usually they will try to obfuscate and say the term has no meaning.
He also was saying Astro Bot had non-binary robots when people pointed out they game wasn't woke
Especially considering the pedigree of the franchise and being day 1. Most high value beand names can easily break 100k day 1. Sure, it tapers off fast, but the milestone still stands.
https://xcancel.com/jasonschreier/status/1852065019510558948
Finally, an honest journo
Haha, but nah Schreier is pure slime, he's probably not even played more than 5 minutes. He's just leaving an out to blame the gameplay and not the ideology when it turns out it actually is a flop.
Defending the stupidest shit imaginable to own the chuds.
now show him monster hunter wilds player count 🤣
Well at least this doofus' retarded screenshots reminded me I need to download the Monster Hunter Wilds open beta later for my weekend entertainment.