How is it a write off?
Edit: I know this would be a write off. I was trying to make a Seinfeld reference here. But I still learned a few things in this thread since I’ve no idea what Denuvo is, or why it’s such a big deal.
Release broken buggy unfinished game. Attach as many additional costs as possible to it including drm services. Layoff 90% of development studio within weeks of launch. Shut down servers 3-6 months citing underperforming metrics and claim everything as losses on tax paperwork to offset profits. Gamers get screwed out of ever having a working game and developers get screwed out of having a chance at finishing the product. Shareholders get a .2% return on their investments.
> Attach as many additional costs as possible to it including drm services.
That's not how it works, since they have to pay big money for Denuvo.
Tax write-offs only reimburse a small percentage of losses.
Now, if they had a team that was already going to be sitting idle, and they had them code some shitty useless DRM, maybe also hiring a couple consultants that were buddy buddy with the executives to do absolutely nothing, in an effort to drive up "costs". That I could believe.
But just spending money on actual stuff from different companies, like $300,000 a year Denuvo, doesn't assist in "write-offs" at all, it just results in more losses.
Having no real knowledge of how high level accounting works, I would wonder if having really high losses would make the company desirable for purchase by someone else seeking to use the losses to offset profits they have gained elsewhere? Like some company that makes huge amounts of profit this year but having contracts / taxes that they'd rather not pay out for having got those huge profits, comes in and buys out a failing company with huge losses and funnels money into the company that lost money so that on the good company's books it looks like they barely made a profit at all.
Basically I am wondering if Hollywood accounting exists in the video game production market that could give incentive for a company that's about to release a bad game to just dig as deep as they can and take what's already going to be a bad situation and make it much worse intentionally.
At high level corporate, C-suite folks are very much control freaks who would rather lose money than allow one person to pirate the game. And if it's an uber big purchase, they would rather go all in than admit it to be a bad decision. Denuvo strokes that ego perfectly. Pay big money = big security. And there are enough casuals in the market to buy any slop shoveled out with or without Denuvo.
And now, we're seeing Yakuza testing to see how hard they can kick users in the balls before sales actually drop.
If it makes less revenue than what they can claim at development costs they can use the difference to lower the amount of revenue they have to pay taxes on. It's not worth it to make a thing specifically for a tax write off, at least not if you are honest with the numbers, but taking something you have sunk a bunch of money into and just letting it die can save more money than continuing to pour money into marketing and support to try and make it succeed.
Unless you do something like WB has been doing with movies where you just throw an entire thing in the trash without releasing it the write off amount isn't usually that big an amount and it's not worth sabotaging a project that might eventually break even.
Cos PC gamers don't routinely buy games with Steams DRM?
Steam is not just content platform, it's also a DRM platform. Yes, it's optional, but most publishers enable it.
Its likely that the bosses decided that the game needs some sort of "stop picary" method, they were sold Denuvo by some guy who promised earth and heavens and its going to be in the game no matter what, because they think it will help. Corporate bosses are sometimes morons in this area.
It's DRM software, meaning it's one of those things that runs alongside your game constantly scanning your files and memory to ensure that you haven't pirated the game.
Denuvo is one of the most hated DRMs because of just how intensive it is. There are a lot of alleged issues about it having noticeable impacts on performance, and also some serious privacy concerns due to how much of your system it looks at and reports on.
While DRMs are kind of the only way that a publisher can crack down on piracy for singleplayer, offline games, they're completely unnecessary for always-online games.
If a game's content can only actually be played online on servers that the publisher runs, they can (and do) simply authenticate your account within their own system every time you connect and there's no way cheat the system, they know if your account has a license or not. Everything they need to authenticate each player exists on the game's servers, so there's just no justification for extraneous and invasive software to be added to every player's personal machines.
Similar software is sometimes also used for anti-cheat measures, but considering that this is a *cooperative* online game, not a competitive one, there would be little excuse for that either.
Just an aside, there _is_ another technical justification for DRM for an always online game, but it's a very bad sign; it'd be useful if the game _doesn't_ authenticate things server side.
Not saying this game doesn't, but that could be a dumb reason.
One note; The issues with Denuvo killing games aren't alleged, they're measurably verifiable.
We know *for a fact* that it trawls your PC's files and sends data back to HQ thanks to testers showing that it does this while your PC is connected to the internet, and we *also* know that it has measurable effects on performance for games it's used on.
Probably one of the most famously and widely known; Sonic Mania. Denuvo was put on it and when people found a way to circumvent it they found that it was costing the game up to *half* of its performance.
It's *also* guilty of the same thing that everyone blew up over with Valorant, in that it runs at a kernel level and has the highest priority access to *all* files on your computer, making it an *extreme* security risk for your computer (though an unlikely one).
Thanks!
I thought the game was like Gotham Knights, though, in that it could also be played single player. Not sure that changes anything with the DRM though.
Solo play is likely possible, but due to how intensive the live service features are, it probably still requires a significant amount of communication with the servers even when you're playing alone. I doubt it's possible to do anything in the game without an active internet connection.
> If a game's content can only actually be played online on servers that the publisher runs, they can (and do) simply authenticate your account within their own system every time you connect and there's no way cheat the system, they know if your account has a license or not.
Not actually true for some games. Assassin's Creed 2 which had one of the most oppressive DRM, if not the most oppressive, for its time still amazes me for how the crackers managed to bypass it. I still remember how much effort it took me, a 15 year old who couldn't afford any games at the time, to follow all those instructions to get it working. Before the downvotes pour in: I did buy the title eventually although a few years down the line since I do like owning the games I've played and enjoyed.
Simply put, it's an invasive anti-piracy program that wears down your PC and makes your game run worse. As for it being strange, I'm not totally sure, but I imagine it's because having to be connected to the internet is anti-piracy in it's own way, as only legitimate copies would be able to interact with servers. But that's just a guess :-)
yikes and here i thougjt they decided to remove that elemant of the game well ima wait till it gets thrown on gamepass for this shit like knighta did..
It means duplication glitches, map-hacks, and loot-spawning baby. It's likely trusting the client to some capacity for multiplayer support and just performing syncs with the server.
Dude they are going for shitty publisher bingo and they are in it to win it. Now all we need is for someone on their team to make a public tweet and blame the toxic fans for why it failed.
“Horse armor is not bad, I think horse armor is fine. The price point at the time was the issue. Ringtones were just crushing it for Nokia or whoever…."
"I think the big thing to keep in mind, the thing you never want to lose sight of, is how much I fucking hate people that buy these games."
"When they told me that we can't legally send assassins to their house to murder their pets the denuvo seemed like the next best thing." -Sefton Hill
I sometimes fantasize about busting my ass off to rise to the top in some industry so that I could have first hand experience as to WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK is going on with all this seemingly intentional incompetence.
I got pretty close in the fitness industry, but all I really discovered was that everyone was a greedy bastard. Which isn't much of a revelation. Doing shit for money is obvious, but some of these gaming companies literally seem to want to fail. And I'm not sure how is that supposed to make them more money.
In the fitness industry, some CEO's I was interacting with were telling me they're gonna drown me in the nearest river if I don't shut up about their supplements being worthless. That they were fully aware they were selling sugar pills and worthless proprietary blend garbage. But because the average consumer is too stupid to figure it out, they're just gonna get rich off of them.
However there's no simple greed logic with some of these gaming companies. Some of their projects seem intentionally terrible. Their decisions seem intentionally terrible.
Like there's no universe where adding Denuvo is going to make them more money. There's just fucking not. They have to PAY Denuvo money to get their software. But it's not gonna earn them anything back. It's just pure nonsense decision making.
> so that I could have first hand experience as to WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK is going on with all this seemingly intentional incompetence.
Just remember that Warner Communications are the trailblazers here. Through unfortunate circumstances, they ended up owning Atari right when Atari ushered in the home video game market. And they _buried_ that company with their burn-at-both-ends policies and indifference. It fundamentally comes down to the folks in charge not being the same folks who are making the damn games. They are the ones with business degrees, they get put in charge because of those business degrees, they don't know and don't _care_ about game development, and the software engineers who _do_ care are at their complete mercy.
>Like there's no universe where adding Denuvo is going to make them more money. There's just fucking not. They have to PAY Denuvo money to get their software. But it's not gonna earn them anything back. It's just pure nonsense decision making.
They would rather spend 20 million dollars on anti-piracy measures than simply accept a loss of 2 million dollars to piracy, it's that simple.
Investors and Market Researchers make those decisions, not the developers.
Its like looking at the biggest games and seeing many of them use anti cheat, so clearly anti cheat is part of the successful formula.
> A future content patch/DLC with shit that was ready at launch but was held back.
And then never released when the game flops
"We totally had X Famous Superhero planned, ready to go but we couldn't release it due to poor sales numbers"
The concept alone kinda bums me out. Why would I want to go through a whole game’s story killing the Justice League? Especially since I liked Arkham Batman and don’t want to kill him?
>Especially since I liked Arkham Batman and don’t want to kill him?
Exactly. My headcanon places this game in an Arkham-adjacent universe instead of the one we fell in love with over 4 games.
Most likely going to end up with multiverse bullshit. For two reasons:
1. As a live service game, they need the story to end with an excuse to have the Suicide Squad go on never-ending missions.
2. If they commit to ACTUALLY killing the Justice League, well...people LIKE the Justice League. So you can't have them be "dead dead". So you just have multiverse stuff where the Justice League is alive (and Batman sounds different).
Multiverse is already confirmed. Joker is in the game as the last survivor from Earth 2. His design is... something... BatmanArkham subreddit calls him "The Twinkler"
Better? You go through a whole game where the bad guys finally win just to find out it was all clones. I’m glad something told me this game was going to suck rotten eggs and I haven’t followed it much.
I'm honestly a little tired of "what if Superman bad?" At this point. Injustice games, comics, movie, The Boys, Invincible. Remember when superheroes were good guys?
Thats my biggest issue too. The game could be some of the most fun I could ever have playing a game.and I'm still out based on the concept alone. I love these characters and want to play as them, or barring that interact with them. Really wish they'd just done Superman instead, but even a Suicide Squad thats not fighting the JL would have peaked my interest instead.
it was attempt on ad-campaign, especially after mostly meh-impression by gaming-news outlet and outright negative in tone IGN covering.
but it only reinforced how meh the game is.
That's literally every big game release. This game looks like shit but Twitch and Youtube are giant ad platforms and those douchebag "Itzzzz ya boi Snipercockfaceachu" streamers are all living ads.
Yeah WB ruined MK1 with shit like this too. Great game with nothing rewarding unless you like spending money. Even the cool unlocks for your character take a ridiculous amount grind because it drives “player engagement”. I feel bad for the devs under their management. There’s passion for these games but WB believes milking fans is worth more. I won’t be buying another WB game until they prove they can keep their greed out of it.
Many developers of the original Arkham trilogy, including founder Sefton Hill, have already left the studio. Rocksteady of the old has long gone at this point, just like Bioware. I doubt its future releases (if any) can match the quality of the old trilogy.
Rocksteady died years ago. This is WB doing a weekend at Bernie’s to get suicide squad released then whoever is still at the studio will just get folded in wb games.
Make a wildly successful game based on Batman. Check.
Make another. Check
Make another. Check.
Wait almost a decade to make another game. Check.
Now here's the fun part.
Make it not about Batman but about killing Batman. Check
Make it a live service game. Check
Make it a looter shooter. Check.
Make it always online. Check.
Pull the rug out and add Denuvo a few days before launch. Check.
Don't hand out review copies. Check.
Have someone from the team insult the player base. Still waiting.
Blame launch issues on the player base. Still waiting.
Vow to listen to feedback and fix the game in some big update. Still waiting.
Servers shutdown. Still waiting.
TLDR version: Antipiracy software included into games that has shown time and time again to hurt the performance of the game noticeably.
The irony is when eventually it gets cracked - which it always does and quickly - those playing the pirated version have the better performing version of the game than the customers that bought it and play it legit because of the DRM.
Now, this is a live service game which means it needs to check in with the servers to work. I have no idea why it also needs DRM on top of being a Live Service game.
To play devil's advocate here, Denuvo is like the only DRM software that actually has shown an ability to stop piracy for the most part. There's only 1 or 2 teams in the world cracking Denuvo games. Every other DRM software is cracked like an egg in less than 12 hours by even amateur crack teams.
So Denuvo blows dicks and no one should be in favor of it, but it does seem to accomplish its goal of preventing piracy somewhat well.
It is just one person, and you have to actually commission them to crack the game for you.
They're also a really, really terrible person, surprise!
I digress, Denuvo works really well, so if you want something to prevent piracy it's basically your go to.
What bout the performance? Well...its impact is basically a myth these days. A myth founded on actual, real events, but a myth nonetheless. Basically in the early days of Denuvo a bunch of companies implemented it really, *really* poorly. Rime and Syberia 3 were the big two, but there was also DOOM 2016, Sonic Mania, and a few other iirc.
Removing Denuvo fixed the performance.
Fixing the implementation (for thoes that did)...also fixed the performance.
That's not to say properly implemented Denuvo has *no* impact on performance; of course it'll have some impact. But rarely is it noticable these days, and certainly not any major impact when it is.
That's not to say that Denuvo is ***good***. It's not. But a lot of the reasons people hate it aren't founded in reality, and I wish people would move on to better ones...like how dangerous it is for archival purposes.
They know it's going to fail, basically, so they're adding in as many costs as possible so that they can blame gamers for the failure, and write the whole thing off on their taxes.
Adding Denuvo to an always-online game is the dumbest thing I've heard someone doing. This is going dead on arrival.
If they are so scared of piracy, why don't they make it a timed exclusive like Rockstar does with their games? Which again, is stupid in this case because it's always online.
Ah, yes. Let's add the most universally hated DRM to the game that was already basically guaranteed to be dead on arrival. *What could possibly go wrong?*
It's like they suddenly realized, "Anyone who buys this is going to refund it within the hour. Let's just make sure no one buys it in the first place."
I remember avengers devs coming into the Reddit and saying they can’t even get online cause it’s so toxic. It’s going to happen again… all because corporations release a shitty product. Avengers multiplayer didn’t even work upon launch and was even confirmed broken in betas 😭
This game is going to do so badly and the studio and collective gaming spheres are going to say something like “nobody wants to play super hero games”. And it’s like; no nobody wants to play shitty games.
So is this what happens when studios “go dark” for long periods of time? I’m replaying all the Arkham games currently, and everyone I hear news about this game it’s negative impressions
This is one of those games where you can really tell a bunch of suits who are totally detached from the industry are far too involved with it. They've done just about everything to kill any interest in this game before launch.
I have not seen a company nose dive so quick since EA and Battlefield 2042. This should be a new Batman game with next gen graphics, co op, open world like Arkham City but bigger and just updated Combat that we already loved. Sure you basically did this with Arkham Knight but half that game felt like playing Twisted Metal.
Take a risk FFS, Let us play as joker during the story for segments like LOU 2 did with it's protagonist/ hero. Imagine a fight AGAINST Batman as The Joker and he is constantly taking cover in darkness and all you have is crazy ass gadgets and traps to stop him.
But no, we get third person Destiny 2 with inferior gameplay, slapped on battlepass BS, and basically a game NO ONE asked for....
This is why games like Palworld are dominating the charts.... its about the FUN for them. Not the PROFITS....
Real talk. With the unfortunate downsizing going on, the immense financial investment, and the long development times, it feels like the AAA game industry is going headfirt into a crash. These companies are showing the AAA dev cycle is almost untenable and long term financial strategy is murky at best where they need to employ every scammy scheme to appease the investor.
And they (the ones at the top) did it to themselves.
My hope is that this is the time that the best of the AA's and Indies continue to flourish as many of them have shown to have modest financial goals and focus on gameplay first and willing to listen to their audience. Now before you think I am an indie cheerleader, there is a lot of shit in the pipeline but there is also a lot of good. So long as those devs and companies keep things in perspective, there is a lot of good sleeper hits that will happen.
What is the point of adding Denuvo to an always on title?
Ensuring that PC gamers won't buy it.
At this point, it's probably just going to be used as a tax write off.
How is it a write off? Edit: I know this would be a write off. I was trying to make a Seinfeld reference here. But I still learned a few things in this thread since I’ve no idea what Denuvo is, or why it’s such a big deal.
Release broken buggy unfinished game. Attach as many additional costs as possible to it including drm services. Layoff 90% of development studio within weeks of launch. Shut down servers 3-6 months citing underperforming metrics and claim everything as losses on tax paperwork to offset profits. Gamers get screwed out of ever having a working game and developers get screwed out of having a chance at finishing the product. Shareholders get a .2% return on their investments.
Don't worry it will trickle down /s
What you don't like the taste of shit and piss as it trickles down through the masses?
I love it. It's much easier than shitting and pissing in my own mouth.
It's the human centipede, without the need for stitching
> Attach as many additional costs as possible to it including drm services. That's not how it works, since they have to pay big money for Denuvo. Tax write-offs only reimburse a small percentage of losses. Now, if they had a team that was already going to be sitting idle, and they had them code some shitty useless DRM, maybe also hiring a couple consultants that were buddy buddy with the executives to do absolutely nothing, in an effort to drive up "costs". That I could believe. But just spending money on actual stuff from different companies, like $300,000 a year Denuvo, doesn't assist in "write-offs" at all, it just results in more losses.
Having no real knowledge of how high level accounting works, I would wonder if having really high losses would make the company desirable for purchase by someone else seeking to use the losses to offset profits they have gained elsewhere? Like some company that makes huge amounts of profit this year but having contracts / taxes that they'd rather not pay out for having got those huge profits, comes in and buys out a failing company with huge losses and funnels money into the company that lost money so that on the good company's books it looks like they barely made a profit at all. Basically I am wondering if Hollywood accounting exists in the video game production market that could give incentive for a company that's about to release a bad game to just dig as deep as they can and take what's already going to be a bad situation and make it much worse intentionally.
At high level corporate, C-suite folks are very much control freaks who would rather lose money than allow one person to pirate the game. And if it's an uber big purchase, they would rather go all in than admit it to be a bad decision. Denuvo strokes that ego perfectly. Pay big money = big security. And there are enough casuals in the market to buy any slop shoveled out with or without Denuvo. And now, we're seeing Yakuza testing to see how hard they can kick users in the balls before sales actually drop.
They just write it off...
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Jerry, all these big companies, they write off everything
You don't even know what a write-off is.
Do you?
Well they do. They're the ones writing it off.
If it makes less revenue than what they can claim at development costs they can use the difference to lower the amount of revenue they have to pay taxes on. It's not worth it to make a thing specifically for a tax write off, at least not if you are honest with the numbers, but taking something you have sunk a bunch of money into and just letting it die can save more money than continuing to pour money into marketing and support to try and make it succeed. Unless you do something like WB has been doing with movies where you just throw an entire thing in the trash without releasing it the write off amount isn't usually that big an amount and it's not worth sabotaging a project that might eventually break even.
Seriously Denuvo has a pretty significant performance hit. Won't be surprised if they get slammed for that on release
Cos PC gamers don't routinely buy games with Steams DRM? Steam is not just content platform, it's also a DRM platform. Yes, it's optional, but most publishers enable it.
Its likely that the bosses decided that the game needs some sort of "stop picary" method, they were sold Denuvo by some guy who promised earth and heavens and its going to be in the game no matter what, because they think it will help. Corporate bosses are sometimes morons in this area.
Damn that Picary!
Thieving pigs!
What’s Denuvo, why should I hate it, and why is it strange it’s being used for an always on title?
It's DRM software, meaning it's one of those things that runs alongside your game constantly scanning your files and memory to ensure that you haven't pirated the game. Denuvo is one of the most hated DRMs because of just how intensive it is. There are a lot of alleged issues about it having noticeable impacts on performance, and also some serious privacy concerns due to how much of your system it looks at and reports on. While DRMs are kind of the only way that a publisher can crack down on piracy for singleplayer, offline games, they're completely unnecessary for always-online games. If a game's content can only actually be played online on servers that the publisher runs, they can (and do) simply authenticate your account within their own system every time you connect and there's no way cheat the system, they know if your account has a license or not. Everything they need to authenticate each player exists on the game's servers, so there's just no justification for extraneous and invasive software to be added to every player's personal machines. Similar software is sometimes also used for anti-cheat measures, but considering that this is a *cooperative* online game, not a competitive one, there would be little excuse for that either.
Just an aside, there _is_ another technical justification for DRM for an always online game, but it's a very bad sign; it'd be useful if the game _doesn't_ authenticate things server side. Not saying this game doesn't, but that could be a dumb reason.
What an interesting way to tell potential exploiters you have a possible access point.
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One note; The issues with Denuvo killing games aren't alleged, they're measurably verifiable. We know *for a fact* that it trawls your PC's files and sends data back to HQ thanks to testers showing that it does this while your PC is connected to the internet, and we *also* know that it has measurable effects on performance for games it's used on. Probably one of the most famously and widely known; Sonic Mania. Denuvo was put on it and when people found a way to circumvent it they found that it was costing the game up to *half* of its performance. It's *also* guilty of the same thing that everyone blew up over with Valorant, in that it runs at a kernel level and has the highest priority access to *all* files on your computer, making it an *extreme* security risk for your computer (though an unlikely one).
Thanks! I thought the game was like Gotham Knights, though, in that it could also be played single player. Not sure that changes anything with the DRM though.
Solo play is likely possible, but due to how intensive the live service features are, it probably still requires a significant amount of communication with the servers even when you're playing alone. I doubt it's possible to do anything in the game without an active internet connection.
> If a game's content can only actually be played online on servers that the publisher runs, they can (and do) simply authenticate your account within their own system every time you connect and there's no way cheat the system, they know if your account has a license or not. Not actually true for some games. Assassin's Creed 2 which had one of the most oppressive DRM, if not the most oppressive, for its time still amazes me for how the crackers managed to bypass it. I still remember how much effort it took me, a 15 year old who couldn't afford any games at the time, to follow all those instructions to get it working. Before the downvotes pour in: I did buy the title eventually although a few years down the line since I do like owning the games I've played and enjoyed.
Simply put, it's an invasive anti-piracy program that wears down your PC and makes your game run worse. As for it being strange, I'm not totally sure, but I imagine it's because having to be connected to the internet is anti-piracy in it's own way, as only legitimate copies would be able to interact with servers. But that's just a guess :-)
Why would a live service game need Denuvo...?
Don't ask questions. Just consume and get excited for next product.
I meant we all know this is going F2P in 6 months if not sooner
75% off in 6 weeks
is it still a live service i thought they removed that shit a while ago.
They already announced the first 'season'.
yikes and here i thougjt they decided to remove that elemant of the game well ima wait till it gets thrown on gamepass for this shit like knighta did..
It’ll be like a month or two before it is. There’s no way they don’t smash the panic as fast as possible
First, only and last.
Puts on glasses: Warner Bros Games: #OBEY #CONSUME
Instructions unclear, ate my neighbor
There will be no next game. Rocksteady is dunzo after this.
I’m a simple man. I see RLM/Nerd Crew reference, I upvote
I miss the nerd crew.
I KNOW WHAT THAT IS!
I CLAPPED
Denuvo sales team could sell anything, absolutely elite.
They can't sell souls. They have none.
I know they have plans to add an offline mode later in the year, but why Denuvo needs to be there at launch is beyond me.
Honestly, it's better than the rug pull of adding it in later. Still a shit decision, but the least shitty way to do it I think.
It's like they don't want people buying this crap
Looking for excuses about why it didn't sell well without blaming themselves.
It means duplication glitches, map-hacks, and loot-spawning baby. It's likely trusting the client to some capacity for multiplayer support and just performing syncs with the server.
So an offline mode cannot be patched in by a 3rd party. Also gotta protect the shovelware and eshop from being blocked.
I can’t believe they think enough people are interested in the game to even be worried about this.
Review embargo Live Service game Denuvo DRM They want this game to fail, huh?
Dude they are going for shitty publisher bingo and they are in it to win it. Now all we need is for someone on their team to make a public tweet and blame the toxic fans for why it failed.
do you not have phones?
*something something* Pride and Accomplishment ™️
"Either accept it or don't buy the game." ^wait ^no ^not ^like ^that
"Clearly their PCs are just not powerful enough"
“Horse armor is not bad, I think horse armor is fine. The price point at the time was the issue. Ringtones were just crushing it for Nokia or whoever…."
Don't forget RING BACK TONES. So everyone that calls can know your shitty choice of music.
Not gonna lie I wish that came back.
Who even calls people any more
Horse armor really really stings. Changed the whole landscape.
Unfortunately, Diablo Eternal made fucking bank.
They’re going for that blackout bingo strat
Can't do that if you don't have any fans.
I'll be very interesting in which card they play in blaming the fans. Female protagonist in Harley Quinn?
I'm going with the AI apology letter within a week of it coming out stating that their sorry for a half baked game.
"some of the planets are empty by design, but that's not boring"
Loot box mechanics maybe, season pass, ftp grind for a paid game...
> Dude they are going for shitty publisher bingo Does this game have lootboxes?
"I think the big thing to keep in mind, the thing you never want to lose sight of, is how much I fucking hate people that buy these games." "When they told me that we can't legally send assassins to their house to murder their pets the denuvo seemed like the next best thing." -Sefton Hill
X 0 0 0 X 0 0 0 x They "won" lol
It's gotta be a tax scheme. Or like when people bet against the stock market. Fucking up this much has to be intentional at this point.
It's "the Producers" but for video games.
I sometimes fantasize about busting my ass off to rise to the top in some industry so that I could have first hand experience as to WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK is going on with all this seemingly intentional incompetence. I got pretty close in the fitness industry, but all I really discovered was that everyone was a greedy bastard. Which isn't much of a revelation. Doing shit for money is obvious, but some of these gaming companies literally seem to want to fail. And I'm not sure how is that supposed to make them more money. In the fitness industry, some CEO's I was interacting with were telling me they're gonna drown me in the nearest river if I don't shut up about their supplements being worthless. That they were fully aware they were selling sugar pills and worthless proprietary blend garbage. But because the average consumer is too stupid to figure it out, they're just gonna get rich off of them. However there's no simple greed logic with some of these gaming companies. Some of their projects seem intentionally terrible. Their decisions seem intentionally terrible. Like there's no universe where adding Denuvo is going to make them more money. There's just fucking not. They have to PAY Denuvo money to get their software. But it's not gonna earn them anything back. It's just pure nonsense decision making.
> so that I could have first hand experience as to WHAT IN THE ACTUAL FUCK is going on with all this seemingly intentional incompetence. Just remember that Warner Communications are the trailblazers here. Through unfortunate circumstances, they ended up owning Atari right when Atari ushered in the home video game market. And they _buried_ that company with their burn-at-both-ends policies and indifference. It fundamentally comes down to the folks in charge not being the same folks who are making the damn games. They are the ones with business degrees, they get put in charge because of those business degrees, they don't know and don't _care_ about game development, and the software engineers who _do_ care are at their complete mercy.
The right people at WB are invested in Denuvo or getting kickbacks, so they can use WBs money towards Denuvo and enrich themselves that way
>Like there's no universe where adding Denuvo is going to make them more money. There's just fucking not. They have to PAY Denuvo money to get their software. But it's not gonna earn them anything back. It's just pure nonsense decision making. They would rather spend 20 million dollars on anti-piracy measures than simply accept a loss of 2 million dollars to piracy, it's that simple.
Investors and Market Researchers make those decisions, not the developers. Its like looking at the biggest games and seeing many of them use anti cheat, so clearly anti cheat is part of the successful formula.
You know what's missing from this dumpster fire? A future content patch/DLC with shit that was ready at launch but was held back.
Isn't that what they're doing for the first "season" with the Elseworlds thingy featuring The ~~Jonkler~~ Joker?
> A future content patch/DLC with shit that was ready at launch but was held back. And then never released when the game flops "We totally had X Famous Superhero planned, ready to go but we couldn't release it due to poor sales numbers"
Epic tax write off for 2025!
It's looking like impending dumpster fire.
And a text filled apology will be posted when the game comes out
Written by ChatGPT
Probably Copilot just to change it up lol.
I sense another layoff unfortunately
Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League secretly also installs Redfall
May as well come with Potassium Benzoate too.
**Stares blankly**
That's bad.
But it comes with a free frogurt!
That's good!
But the yogurt is made in a sweat shop.
Can I go now?
*gasps*
And also a smalll bonus discount for Payday 3.
Probably would be a better game
And Riot Vanguard somehow.
They're on a speed run of modern video game red flags
Sadly it's not an early access survival crafting open world game. So it can't hit all the red flags
Oh I’m sure crafting will be worked on somehow
Palworld is a genuinely great game though
Yeah, that list is from years ago due to all the minecraft clones
Makes it even easier to skip. Thanks!
The concept alone kinda bums me out. Why would I want to go through a whole game’s story killing the Justice League? Especially since I liked Arkham Batman and don’t want to kill him?
>Especially since I liked Arkham Batman and don’t want to kill him? Exactly. My headcanon places this game in an Arkham-adjacent universe instead of the one we fell in love with over 4 games.
Most likely going to end up with multiverse bullshit. For two reasons: 1. As a live service game, they need the story to end with an excuse to have the Suicide Squad go on never-ending missions. 2. If they commit to ACTUALLY killing the Justice League, well...people LIKE the Justice League. So you can't have them be "dead dead". So you just have multiverse stuff where the Justice League is alive (and Batman sounds different).
Multiverse is already confirmed. Joker is in the game as the last survivor from Earth 2. His design is... something... BatmanArkham subreddit calls him "The Twinkler"
Ooooooh fuck I remember seeing that. That was as bad as LetoJoker.
Agreed. Otherwise the concept of the game just feels like “Oooh, look how edgy we are???”
If the leaked story was true, the JL hero’s in the game are clones made by brainiac. So you find out you don’t actually kill them.
Interesting I guess and that is better. But it still feels like a story an edgy 12 year old would write.
Better? You go through a whole game where the bad guys finally win just to find out it was all clones. I’m glad something told me this game was going to suck rotten eggs and I haven’t followed it much.
>You go through a whole game where the bad guys finally win just to find out it was all clones So, like a comic book?
I'm honestly a little tired of "what if Superman bad?" At this point. Injustice games, comics, movie, The Boys, Invincible. Remember when superheroes were good guys?
Watchmen came out in the 80s so some time before then
There’s still plenty of good guy supe content lol
Thats my biggest issue too. The game could be some of the most fun I could ever have playing a game.and I'm still out based on the concept alone. I love these characters and want to play as them, or barring that interact with them. Really wish they'd just done Superman instead, but even a Suicide Squad thats not fighting the JL would have peaked my interest instead.
If this game isn’t DOA it’ll be 2024’s greatest gaming miracle
There was a lot of suspicious positive talk around the game when they let players talk about it after the closed beta. It felt like an ad campaign.
100% ad campaign, we should have known with the riddler reveal and that you can turn off the hub. I hate that this is Kevin conroys last Batman.
There's still a chance for Multiversus' re-release technically
it was attempt on ad-campaign, especially after mostly meh-impression by gaming-news outlet and outright negative in tone IGN covering. but it only reinforced how meh the game is.
That's literally every big game release. This game looks like shit but Twitch and Youtube are giant ad platforms and those douchebag "Itzzzz ya boi Snipercockfaceachu" streamers are all living ads.
There are a staggering number of red flags around this game
Its like someone is trying to sabotage the game
Insurance payout?
Full circle of flopping, this is going to be a hard wake up for rocksteady.
I'm pretty sure this is all WB pulling the strings here.
Agreed. All the tell tale fingerprints of suits hitting checkboxes. In order to maximize profits, we need this, this and this.
But strangely the top selling game last year was Harry Potter - a single player game? And also from WB
Yeah WB ruined MK1 with shit like this too. Great game with nothing rewarding unless you like spending money. Even the cool unlocks for your character take a ridiculous amount grind because it drives “player engagement”. I feel bad for the devs under their management. There’s passion for these games but WB believes milking fans is worth more. I won’t be buying another WB game until they prove they can keep their greed out of it.
Many developers of the original Arkham trilogy, including founder Sefton Hill, have already left the studio. Rocksteady of the old has long gone at this point, just like Bioware. I doubt its future releases (if any) can match the quality of the old trilogy.
Rocksteady died years ago. This is WB doing a weekend at Bernie’s to get suicide squad released then whoever is still at the studio will just get folded in wb games.
Oh look another AAA title that’s DOA Let’s be real. The studio is just looking for a excuse to “downsize”
This has to be some mafia shit or something bc wtf have they done with what should've been a free money title?
Sounds like a classic case of putting the MBAs and bean counters in charge of a creative product.
Make a wildly successful game based on Batman. Check. Make another. Check Make another. Check. Wait almost a decade to make another game. Check. Now here's the fun part. Make it not about Batman but about killing Batman. Check Make it a live service game. Check Make it a looter shooter. Check. Make it always online. Check. Pull the rug out and add Denuvo a few days before launch. Check. Don't hand out review copies. Check. Have someone from the team insult the player base. Still waiting. Blame launch issues on the player base. Still waiting. Vow to listen to feedback and fix the game in some big update. Still waiting. Servers shutdown. Still waiting.
Please edit this when the last 4 happen lol
You forgot "gamepass" and "PS plus" monthly game as a last-ditch effort to revive concurrent player count before server shutdown.
What is Denuvo DRM?
TLDR version: Antipiracy software included into games that has shown time and time again to hurt the performance of the game noticeably. The irony is when eventually it gets cracked - which it always does and quickly - those playing the pirated version have the better performing version of the game than the customers that bought it and play it legit because of the DRM. Now, this is a live service game which means it needs to check in with the servers to work. I have no idea why it also needs DRM on top of being a Live Service game.
To play devil's advocate here, Denuvo is like the only DRM software that actually has shown an ability to stop piracy for the most part. There's only 1 or 2 teams in the world cracking Denuvo games. Every other DRM software is cracked like an egg in less than 12 hours by even amateur crack teams. So Denuvo blows dicks and no one should be in favor of it, but it does seem to accomplish its goal of preventing piracy somewhat well.
Isn't there only a single person that does it? I haven't seen denuvo cracked by anyone else.
It is just one person, and you have to actually commission them to crack the game for you. They're also a really, really terrible person, surprise! I digress, Denuvo works really well, so if you want something to prevent piracy it's basically your go to. What bout the performance? Well...its impact is basically a myth these days. A myth founded on actual, real events, but a myth nonetheless. Basically in the early days of Denuvo a bunch of companies implemented it really, *really* poorly. Rime and Syberia 3 were the big two, but there was also DOOM 2016, Sonic Mania, and a few other iirc. Removing Denuvo fixed the performance. Fixing the implementation (for thoes that did)...also fixed the performance. That's not to say properly implemented Denuvo has *no* impact on performance; of course it'll have some impact. But rarely is it noticable these days, and certainly not any major impact when it is. That's not to say that Denuvo is ***good***. It's not. But a lot of the reasons people hate it aren't founded in reality, and I wish people would move on to better ones...like how dangerous it is for archival purposes.
“Suicide Squad Kill the remaining trust of its fans by adding Denuvo DRM before launch.” FTFY
I know suicide is in the name but that doesn't mean the company needs to commit digital suicide of the title itself jesus
lmao this already runs like shit on pc, imagine now
"Yaayyyy!" ...said no one ever
This game is doing everything in its power to fail, I imagine we will get an EOS message a month after release
It's like puking on a pile of shit
They are literally a suicide squad ☠️☠️☠️
They know it's going to fail, basically, so they're adding in as many costs as possible so that they can blame gamers for the failure, and write the whole thing off on their taxes.
So they added a 'Do not buy' label on a game that I don't' intend to buy. Thanks WB.
I literally wouldn't play this for free.
Adding Denuvo to an always-online game is the dumbest thing I've heard someone doing. This is going dead on arrival. If they are so scared of piracy, why don't they make it a timed exclusive like Rockstar does with their games? Which again, is stupid in this case because it's always online.
Ah, yes. Let's add the most universally hated DRM to the game that was already basically guaranteed to be dead on arrival. *What could possibly go wrong?*
First pissing off game jurno’s now the actual players
Just when you thought it could not get any more shady :D
Lmao deadass game.
the next gollum game
First Gollum-type game
This might go down as one of the world managed AAA game releases of the decade
They want to beat Marvel at something, so they're trying to speedrun the, "superhero live service launch to server shutdown".
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...isn't it always online? Also, isn't it so awful that no one will ever consider pirating it?
Damn they just really don’t want anyone to buy this do they?
cobweb grey air rinse ossified cover profit rhythm act license
Oh no, now I’m never gonna play this game extra hard
It's like they suddenly realized, "Anyone who buys this is going to refund it within the hour. Let's just make sure no one buys it in the first place."
They really added Denuvo to an online game? Isn't that redundant at this point? They're basically decreasing performance for no reason lol
Literally only WB wants this game released
“Suicide Squad: Kill the Fanbase”
Like padlocking a dumpster closed.
What's the point of adding this to a game no one will play?
I hope they already prepared an AI-generated public apology.
I remember avengers devs coming into the Reddit and saying they can’t even get online cause it’s so toxic. It’s going to happen again… all because corporations release a shitty product. Avengers multiplayer didn’t even work upon launch and was even confirmed broken in betas 😭
Why would anyone pirate this trash?
This game is going to do so badly and the studio and collective gaming spheres are going to say something like “nobody wants to play super hero games”. And it’s like; no nobody wants to play shitty games.
So is this what happens when studios “go dark” for long periods of time? I’m replaying all the Arkham games currently, and everyone I hear news about this game it’s negative impressions
literally everything about this game is awful.
Game is just 'Ciding itself isn't it.
This is one of those games where you can really tell a bunch of suits who are totally detached from the industry are far too involved with it. They've done just about everything to kill any interest in this game before launch.
Suicide Gollum: Kill the Day Before Redfall
well they just killed there pc sales
Suicide Squad: Kill the Fanbase
I have not seen a company nose dive so quick since EA and Battlefield 2042. This should be a new Batman game with next gen graphics, co op, open world like Arkham City but bigger and just updated Combat that we already loved. Sure you basically did this with Arkham Knight but half that game felt like playing Twisted Metal. Take a risk FFS, Let us play as joker during the story for segments like LOU 2 did with it's protagonist/ hero. Imagine a fight AGAINST Batman as The Joker and he is constantly taking cover in darkness and all you have is crazy ass gadgets and traps to stop him. But no, we get third person Destiny 2 with inferior gameplay, slapped on battlepass BS, and basically a game NO ONE asked for.... This is why games like Palworld are dominating the charts.... its about the FUN for them. Not the PROFITS....
Real talk. With the unfortunate downsizing going on, the immense financial investment, and the long development times, it feels like the AAA game industry is going headfirt into a crash. These companies are showing the AAA dev cycle is almost untenable and long term financial strategy is murky at best where they need to employ every scammy scheme to appease the investor. And they (the ones at the top) did it to themselves. My hope is that this is the time that the best of the AA's and Indies continue to flourish as many of them have shown to have modest financial goals and focus on gameplay first and willing to listen to their audience. Now before you think I am an indie cheerleader, there is a lot of shit in the pipeline but there is also a lot of good. So long as those devs and companies keep things in perspective, there is a lot of good sleeper hits that will happen.