In a bad-vibes moment, they’re denying a huge outlet like IGN a review code. No matter what I think of IGN in particular (nothing good tbh), that’s not something I can find a real explanation for other than “We made DC’s Gollum and want to avoid bad press as long as we can”.

    • Katana314@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      37
      arrow-down
      5
      ·
      10 months ago

      I have seen it happen before when review outlets don’t get copies, but the game still turns out awesome. I think it happened for Doom Eternal.

      It feels pointless to play devil’s advocate here though, since one way or another, I’m basically sure it’s going to be terrible. I just don’t like consigning internet opinion based on anything other than gameplay and actual reviews.

      • ThunderingJerboa@kbin.social
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        25
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        10 months ago

        You are referring to Doom 2016 actually. While that turn out decent, one of their key arguments was due to it being online focused. We all know Doom 2016 had rather generic multiplayer.

        With that said, it feels silly not to have issues when publishers refuse to send out review keys. Its a huge red flag for a game, this doesn’t mean it will be bad but its a trend we shouldn’t be happy about. Its only done to help preserve preorder numbers.

        • Whirlybird
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          Its a huge red flag for a game, this doesn’t mean it will be bad but its a trend we shouldn’t be happy about. Its only done to help preserve preorder numbers.

          We shouldn’t care about it at all, because you shouldn’t be preordering games. There is literally no need to in this day and age. When was the last time a game actually sold out and anyone was unable to buy a copy? The PS2 generation maybe?

          • ThunderingJerboa@kbin.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            10 months ago

            I agree with you but that sort of ignores the reality that many people preorder fucking games. Also you think its better there is less material out there in the world before a game releases? What kind of bullshit is this, I rather have fucking reviews out than letting the fucking companies just do as they may. Suppressing reviews is bad, having companies trying to weaponize gamers against reviewers is also bad. This isn’t to say reviewers can’t be shit but this braindead take I keep hearing is “reviewers bad, so this isn’t a loss” is fucking stupid, I rather we have more voices than less voices in this discussion and reviews are awesome if you find the right reviewer who has the same taste in games as you, hell looking at reviewers you disagree with is also awesome since maybe something they like you will hate and you will be alerted about that in the game. People don’t have infinite time to watch fucking streams of a game they will play especially a story driven game. Hell relying on the 2 hour refund policy of steam is also not sufficient since games can be quite fun for the first few hours but slowly becomes a slog. Dead island and Dying light are fantastic examples where you get a great first few hours then just so much fucking filler until you get some better stuff near the end of the game.

            • Whirlybird
              link
              fedilink
              English
              arrow-up
              1
              ·
              10 months ago

              but that sort of ignores the reality that many people preorder fucking games.

              It doesn’t, I’m saying that people that do pre-order games need to stop doing it because there is no real reason to do it.

              What kind of bullshit is this, I rather have fucking reviews out than letting the fucking companies just do as they may.

              You can just not buy the game until after reviews come out even if they don’t come out til after the game releases. Crazy, I know.

              • ThunderingJerboa@kbin.social
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                edit-2
                10 months ago

                It doesn’t, I’m saying that people that do pre-order games need to stop doing it because there is no real reason to do it.

                Who knew telling people to stop preordering video games means they will stop preordering video games. Its almost like this shit has been said for well over a decade now with no impact at all, if not the problem getting worse due to volume.

                You can just not buy the game until after reviews come out even if they don’t come out til after the game releases. Crazy, I know.

                And those reviews have to come from the people who bought the game on day 1 especially if review copies aren’t given. Crazy, I know. So someone has to bite the bullet to actually say what a game is like.

                Edit: Again really, are you pointlessly supporting the act that corps will just hide their game’s dirty laundry until launch day, this helps noone besides the suits, we should strive for more voices before a game launches, not cheer for the silencing of voices because we find some of them obnoxious.

                • Whirlybird
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  10 months ago

                  And those reviews have to come from the people who bought the game on day 1 especially if review copies aren’t given. Crazy, I know. So someone has to bite the bullet to actually say what a game is like.

                  Yeah, the people and companies who review games for a living.

                  Again really, are you pointlessly supporting the act that corps will just hide their game’s dirty laundry until launch day

                  I’m not supporting it at all, I’m simply saying that if you’re of even average intelligence it shouldn’t make any difference what they do.

    • woelkchen@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      13
      arrow-down
      3
      ·
      10 months ago

      I’ve read somewhere else a couple of days ago that the official explanation is that without the public servers being live, reviewers would not get the full experience.

      Not defending WB (I’m not interested in that game at all), just giving context.

      • caseofthematts@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        25
        arrow-down
        2
        ·
        10 months ago

        That’s just an excuse. WB choose when to activate the servers. They could have easily put them online for reviewers.

        • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          arrow-down
          2
          ·
          edit-2
          10 months ago

          So they could be in a game world with like 50 other people?

          *turns out it’s just a 1 to 4 person game.

          • heyoni@lemm.ee
            link
            fedilink
            English
            arrow-up
            4
            ·
            10 months ago

            Reviewers getting copies a week before launch are generally netting like 40-50 hours of game time in a short timeframe. Combine that with the fact that it’d be more like hundreds of reviewers and you might actually have a decently active community.

        • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          4
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          10 months ago

          Unless they’re having trouble getting them working, which isn’t encouraging for launch.

          They at least have some working, they flew a bunch of streamers to LA for an event and had them stream the game a few weeks back.

          Looked like a crackdown-ish game with DC character running around. Think like the Spider-Man games of the last few years but without the beloved characters

        • woelkchen@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          2
          ·
          10 months ago

          Well, now they’ll be reviewing a fully Denuvo’ed copy, so the version actual buyers get to play.

  • pjwestin@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    63
    ·
    10 months ago

    Really sad that the last time we hear Kevin Conroy as Batman is gonna be in this train wreck.

  • BmeBenji@lemm.ee
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    43
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    Imagine you just finished playing Arkham Knight, and you get an interview with Rocksteady as a game developer. They love you, your passion, your creative skills, and they onboard you. This “game” is what Warner Bros hands down to you to work on. The well-known head of the studio leaves within a few years of you joining. You hold out hope that everything will come together so people can enjoy the art that you’ve worked so hard on. Warner Bros adds a battle pass. Warner Bros makes it a “game”-as-a-service. Warner Bros announces nonsensical lore additions for the sake of post-launch content. Warner Bros denies review copies. The “studio” you thought you were signing up for has become nothing but a slot machine for the higher-ups.

    What a shitty thing to do to a whole group of wonderfully creative and skilled people.

    • kromem@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      17
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      edit-2
      10 months ago

      See, this is the thing people don’t realize when they think generative AI is going to reduce headcounts overall.

      Corporations suck. The entire reason they exist is because of the high transactional costs surrounding labor (there’s a Nobel winning economics essay on this from the turn of the 20th century called “the nature of the firm”).

      They will reduce value and increase price as much as possible because they only exist to be a middleman between the consumer and the producer.

      But right now there’s no alternative. It’s crazy expensive to make AA and up games so you need to target mass market appeal to get the money for it and usually need to crawl up finance bros’ asses who don’t even play games and look down on those who do.

      That’s all about to change dramatically.

      Co-op studio structures where employees are owners, smaller teams with large aspirations, franchises with small but dedicated fan bases - these largely died out in the 90s besides remnant very indie groups as transactional costs to produce a game went through the roof and those costs are about to turn around.

      Yes, gen AI means less people are needed to make a game. But it doesn’t mean less people will be making games. It means there will be more games, and games coming from people with vision rather than coming from people with a quarterly statement they are trying to maximize.

      Hello Games was a team of around a dozen people, and while it was a bumpy road, using procgen allowed them to build an entire universe. Well procgen and a whole host of other tools are about to suck a lot less and be much more accessible to even small studios to make ambitious games.

      My hope is that we see things happen rapidly enough that many of the thousands of devs who have lost their jobs at mega-corps will be able to reorganize to take on the Goliaths and win rather than be forced to move on to other industries.

      A shakeup is about to happen that’s going to destroy the season pass, micro transaction, soulless meat grinder that’s most large studio/publishers today - it’s just maybe ~3 years out from the inflection point of no return.

      But one thing is for certain - most of the largest games companies are woefully unprepared for what’s coming and are about to be stepped all over like Blockbuster or Circuit City.

      • zecg@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        10 months ago

        right now there’s no alternative. It’s crazy expensive to make AA and up games

        You’re kidding? UE5 with Nanite is a whole-ass studio and you can use it for free and pay a percentage once you’re making money. It’s never been cheaper and the games have never been more plentiful. AAA has this problem exactly because games like Palworld are hits eating huge amounts of gamers’ time.

  • MiltownClowns@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    39
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    10 months ago

    You let companies review your game when you want fans outside your bubble to hear how good your game is. You don’t let companies review your game when you don’t want fans inside your bubble to fund out how bad your game is.

    • Whirlybird
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      10 months ago

      You also don’t send free review copies to a company that openly trashed your game in their preview and made a huge song and dance about it.

  • MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    21
    ·
    10 months ago

    Guess they are trying to get every sale possible as this likely won’t do well. A shame really. Really enjoyed the Arkham series.

    I’m guessing it’ll be in the 40s range on Metacritic once all said and done.

    • Vordus@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      10 months ago

      It’s Rocksteady, so it’ll be higher than 40s. Heck, it’s almost impossible to get a score lower than 40 on metacritic…

      Mid 60s I’m guessing, perhaps as high as 69 if reviewers are feeling generous. The kind of score which would be absolutely fine if it were a cheap and cheerful B-game made by a scrappy team of underfunded devs, but which is an absolute embarrassment when applied to a multi million dollar tentpole. The kind of score that implies ‘meh’.

      • MeekerThanBeaker@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        1
        ·
        10 months ago

        Could be right… though it went from me wanting to get this around launch day to… let’s hope it’s on GamePass. My backlog of games also helps me to wait on this one.

  • Margot Robbie@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    22
    arrow-down
    2
    ·
    10 months ago

    Look at the silver lining, at least someone won’t be in the worst reviewed Suicide Squad related media anymore.

    A small win is still a win.

  • edgemaster72@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    18
    ·
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    “But, we chased all the trends, even if they were incongruous with the property! Why don’t people want our game Uncle Phil? Oh well, time to go bury it, maybe we can get a tax write off for this like the Batgirl movie.”

    Alternatively: “We’ve changed nothing after all the negative feedback, and we’re all out of ideas.”

  • davemeech@lemmy.ca
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    17
    arrow-down
    3
    ·
    10 months ago

    Yeah this is never a good sign.

    That being said, perhaps because I got into a couple.of their podcasts, but I like a bunch of people at IGN. How come you’re not a fan?

    • Whirlybird
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      10 months ago

      but I like a bunch of people at IGN. How come you’re not a fan?

      Not OP but I don’t visit IGN or give their opinions any weight because they’re paid shills who overscore every single AAA game, especially if its on the most popular console that gives them the most views.

      Also they hired NXGamer who is an out and proud dedicated Sony fanboy.

  • randomaside@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    14
    arrow-down
    1
    ·
    10 months ago

    I really can’t wait to see the Matt McMuscles “Wha’ Happun’??” Episode about this game.

    I just don’t want to think this mess anymore. Please Matt, save me from the thinky pain!

  • CitizenKong@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    16
    arrow-down
    7
    ·
    10 months ago

    That game might have had a chance to find its audience but with the surprise success of Palworld it’s now definitely DOA.

    • ripcord@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      10
      ·
      10 months ago

      Wait, why are the two related? People will be playing one and not have time for the other once it comes out?

      • KingOfTheCouch@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        10 months ago

        Yup. That’s exactly it. There a lot of people in the “no particular fandom” category that can determine a sales winner and loser.

    • Blackmist@feddit.uk
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      10 months ago

      I doubt that’s got much to do with anything. Palworld is a pretty standard survival early access thing whose only distinguishing feature is that they’ve somehow evaded Nintendo’s lawyers until after the release window.

      Maybe they sent the cease and desist to the wrong address, like there’s an 87 year old Japanese woman wondering what this strange letter is she received and what she’s done wrong.

      This fuck up is entirely of Rocksteady’s own making. It might review amazing, but gamers have utterly soured on live service bullshit. The Arkham games were gamer’s games. They can’t just fob this off on us like they can with CoD or FIFA.

      • PrettyLights@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        6
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        10 months ago

        Nintendo is one of the most litigious game companies there is, and Palworld Dev is also based in Japan so there’s no international complications.

        If Nintendo had an infringement case at all they’d already have buried Palworld.

    • kingthrillgore@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      10 months ago

      Palworld is a flash in the pan and I predict its count will drop in a couple of weeks. If Suicide Squad fails, its because its a bad game.

    • Whirlybird
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      ·
      10 months ago

      What on earth does Palworld have to do with Suicide Squad?

  • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    10 months ago

    I saw shroud playing it on twitch at an event they brought him to the other day. It gave crackdown vibes but with DC character jumping around. Just fly here beat up random dudes, repeat endlessly