Doom Eternal’s delay just brought more crunch:
So just last week we received the lovely news that CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 will be delayed and that crunch will resume regardless; the delay hasn’t stopped the crunch at all. Which is just wonderful, isn’t it? Well this week we learned something even more wonderful! You see, Doom Eternal, which is currently in development over at id Software, has been doing exactly the same thing!
The company was supposed to release the game back in November 2019, and when the company announced its delay many people came out to be all angry about it while other people, who are a bit less whiny and realise that they can wait for their games, were completely fine with it. However, it now seems that the company was “crunching pretty hard most of last year”, according to the game’s director Marty Stratton.
The company, rather than letting people calm down a bit and work reasonable hours now that a delay had come around, were instead pushed into going hard on development time. The employees were forced into a lengthier period of crunch and this executive doesn’t really seem to care all that much about that either.
It’s now gotten to the point where we should no longer praise devs for announcing that its games will be delayed because that quite possibly means that the employees, who are afraid of being let go in an incredibly volatile industry if they don’t conform to what they’re “encouraged” to conform to, don’t obey.
Whenever a game is delayed this question needs to be re-examined. Is it being done so that the workers can be forced into further hard work that immensely damages their mental wellbeing, or is the delay being made in good faith and it’s to stop anything like this from happening. However, we can no longer take these devs at face value and should be willing to question them and to hold them accountable. And it should be noted that when the word “devs” is used in this instance, it means the executives and managers at these companies. Those people are the ones responsible for this. Poor management is what gets games pushed into crunch, it isn’t a “natural” part of the development process.
So remember to always question what these companies are trying to pull and always remember that age-old mantra that brands are not your friends, because they aren’t. They do not care about you as an individual, and they will be more than willing to lie if it gets them the PR they want. However, the increased visibility of crunch has forced them to acknowledge it, and maybe the lies behind the delay will now also force them to address these issues.
Sources:
- Eurogamer – id Software crunched “most of last year” to hit delayed Doom Eternal date
- Gamasutra – Doom Eternal dev team were ‘crunching pretty hard’ during 2019
- VG247 – “We were crunch pretty hard most of last year” – Marty Stratton unapologetic over Doom Eternity’s delay
A tax watchdog went after Rockstar:
Rockstar has been called out by a tax watchdog group in the UK called Taxwatch UK, and this watchdog group decided to just check out some of Rockstar’s publicly published financials and revealed something rather fun. You see, Rockstar, despite being a multi-billion dollar company, likes to make use of tax relief incentives in the UK that are actually kinda intended for… small businesses so they can get their break in the industry.
However, not to pass up on free money, Rockstar has gotten about £80 million in tax relief from this programme. The company claimed a nice percentage of the overall fund for 2018/2019 by claiming an amount that was 37% of the total! Rockstar took 37% of the entire UK’s Video Game Tax Relief (VGTR) fund. Which is a rather insane figure for a company that makes more money than many others combined.
In addition, to qualify for this tax relief fund you have to produce something that is “culturally British”, but that’s intentionally vague and so a game of theirs like Grand Theft Auto V, which is set in a recreation of Los Angeles that features many aspects of American life, is clearly culturally British because it has a more British sense of humour and some of it was developed by British people, I guess?
Rockstar was quick to respond, and it did the usual PR thing you’re meant to do. You know, the company spoke about how that money went to hire over a thousand people throughout the British Isles in places like London, Lincoln, Yorkshire and Scotland and so that makes it perfectly fine. The company was using this tax relief fund to get itself some additional funding, and that is completely legal. But you do need to maybe think of the morality behind it. It’s kinda iffy, ain’t it?
The Association for UK Interactive Entertainment (UKIE), which is essentially the UK’s version of the ESA (a lobbying group meant to stick up for the game devs and publishers against whatever backlash they get from… anyone), also came out to criticise Taxwatch UK for the report because it’s pretty hostile towards Rockstar and Rockstar just like can’t handle that kind of bullying. Bullying coming from a small tax watchdog group with no actual power. Terrifying.
It’s worth remembering that tax relief schemes like these are meant to be for smaller companies, and when they’re used like this they’re pretty much being abused. Tax relief can be a godsend to smaller companies that are just starting out, but when the money is being thrown at a billionaire company it kind of starts weakening what that tax relief was intended for in the first place.
Sources:
- Taxwatch UK – Rockstar takes the pot – 2019 accounts show huge increase in Grand Theft Auto tax claim
- Eurogamer – Rockstar responds to report it claimed £6m in UK tax relief
- Gamasutra – GTA developer Rockstar pushes back against UK tax abuse allegations
- VG247 – Rockstar and UKIE respond to Taxwatch UK’s £6 million tax relief report
Original Half-Life games are free on Steam for a while:
In a rather surprising, yet also unsurprising, development, Valve has decided to release its entire Half-Life collection for free on Steam for a few months in the lead-up to the release of its upcoming VR-exclusive Half-Life: Alyx (which the team has stated, in a recent AMA, is pretty much done). The game is effectively free to download and install until the new game releases in March.
Valve announced the news in a Steam blog post and stated that the whole story is available for people to check out. This is, obviously, a marketing thing intended to get you excited about a prequel to a game that people have wanted a sequel to since 2007. The company wants you excited about jumping into the boots of one of the best characters in gaming history, but this time as the protagonist and in a VR environment that can effectively stop a whole load of people from playing it because of the cost.
But let’s not get cynical here. Or at least not too cynical. So if you’ve never played the Half-Life games before then grab them. The first game is quite different from the rest but worth a play, but I would say that most of your enjoyment may come from the sequel and the episodes. Just keep in mind that there is no conclusion to the Episodes. They just end on a cliffhanger and that cliffhanger was never addressed. Never.
So go grab them if you haven’t played them, and if you have played them but haven’t on Steam somehow then go grab them. If you’re interested in picking up Half-Life: Alyx and haven’t played any of the games then definitely grab em. Otherwise just… do what you want. They’re good games! Okay, this post is deteriorating. On to the next one!
Sources:
- Steam – Pay now for free – Half-Life series
- Eurogamer – All previous Half-Life games are now free on Steam in the run-up to Alyx’s release
- Eurogamer – Valve says Half-Life: Alyx is “done” so you probably don’t need to worry about delays
- IGN – Every Half-Life game is free to play until April 21st
- IGN – Half-Life: Alyx devs confirm ‘game is done’
- Kotaku – Valve is ‘confident’ Half-Life: Alyx won’t be delayed
- Polygon – The Half-Life games are free to play on Steam through March
- Polygon – The 7 big things we just learned about Half-Life: Alyx
- Rock, Paper, Shotgun – The whole Half-Life story is free to play on Steam right now
- Rock, Paper, Shotgun – Valve are confident Half-Life: Alyx won’t be delayed
- VG247 – Half-Life series is free-to-play until Half-Life: Alyx releases
- VG247 – Half-Life: Alyx will be around the same size as Half-Life 2, delay not expected
Ninja Theory has a new game in the works:
Ninja Theory, the devs that put out the superb and well-received exploration of mental health Hellblade: Senua’s Sacrifice, have put out a statement to announce its new game. The company has been working on a sequel to Hellblade since at least last year (when the company announced it), but this is a completely new thing.
The new game has been called Project: Mara and will be a more grounded experimental horror game about “mental terror”. This sounds a lot like the company is exploring similar themes to Hellblade, and I think a whole load of people will be quite happy if that’s the case. However, other than knowing the game exists and that it’ll be an exploration into new ideas for storytelling and such, we know nothing. We don’t know when it’s coming, we don’t know what the gameplay is going to be like. We pretty much know nothing at all.
The only reason this can really be called news at all is because Ninja Theory has prestige now. The company did a good job with the first Hellblade and so the company is worth a shot. If this new games shakes things up like Hellblade did then lightning may have struck twice. Let’s cross our fingers and hope that that’s exactly what happens.
Sources:
- Blogpost – Ninja Theory Announces Project: Mara
- Eurogamer – Hellblade developer Ninja Theory announces Project: Mara
- IGN – Hellblade developer Ninja Theory announces Project: Mara
- Polygon – Ninja Theory teases new ‘experimental’ horror game Project: Mara
- Rock, Paper, Shotgun – Hellblade developers Ninja Theory announce Project: Mara
- VG247 – Ninja Theory’s Project: Mara is a “real-world and grounded representation of mental terror”
TikTok’s owners are getting into gaming:
ByteDance, the Chinese conglomerate behind TikTok, the video sharing app that I don’t really understand but that all my students use on a daily basis, has decided that it’s time for its business fingers to spread out a bit and start getting into the mobile gaming market. Because, you know, mobile gaming makes a hell of a lot of money and with the name “TikTok” behind you you’ll likely make something young people will want.
The decision appears to be aimed at a more “hardcore” subdivision of the mobile market. A decision that appears a bit strange at first glance seeing as the casual mobile market makes such a killing, but the company is planning on going after the high-spenders, and so it needs to bring in some “whales” (for those who don’t know, this is the dehumanising way in which customers who spend a lot of cash in games are labelled).
This new division has been quietly building for a while, but the company has now gone public with its plans. These plans are going to put it in direct competition with another, and more well-known (in gaming circles) Chinese conglomerate, Tencent. So a battle between these two rich companies as each tries to outdo the other in the hardcore mobile market is soon to ensue. Should be fun to watch.
Sources:
WailingWolf 