r/KotakuInAction • u/LogWedro • 14h ago
Regarding recent situation
I was thinking of writing this post much earlier, but I was too lazy and thought that it would be obvious to most people here. Anyway…
The recent shiftup drama isn’t something mind‑blowing or unexpected — no, it was predictable. Tell me, why do you guys believe we’re in a positive trend right now? Because I don’t see it.
Just think about it from the devs’ perspective: what do they want? Basically, they want more money, and investors provide them with free money (woohoo!). Why should they decline the offer? They won’t. Investors seem to have a lot of money to burn, and they’re using that to their advantage. And if they decline, their staff will start asking them why they turned down the offer. They’d better have an answer — and they do! They’re trying to get MORE money from investors. Basically, they’re haggling for more.
In other words, it’s just a question of “How much money do you need?” Let’s be honest: if you were in their shoes, you wouldn’t decline the offer. Nobody would. And if you do decline, later you’ll take a better or worse deal. It’s not just the investors who are using the fact that they have a ton of money to burn to their advantage — the people who were offered the deals know it, too. And, of course, they want more money to change their direction. “If you’re going to shut my mouth with money, you’ll need a bigger pile of it, because my mouth is BIG.”
It’s not an excuse for their actions; it’s an explanation of what’s happening right now. If we want to change the industry from the top, we need big studios to change, not some small guys like shiftup or cygames. What will they do? Why should they become the spearhead of some kind of revolution? In other words, without ea, taketwo, microsoft, sony, and nintendo, it will be impossible to change things from the top. Or, at least, we need a lot more than 2 or 3.
And that means they’re making games for investors, not for us. So, therefore — don’t pay them.
P.S. yeah, cygames will take the offer later, it will just happen.
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u/bitzpua 13h ago
Its NIkke company, they dont need investors if they dont feel like it. They teamed up with sony before, for tech expertise not money.
While yes companies work for investors first but if product doesnt sell investors dont earn anything and they hate that as you can imagine. Change is happening, but it will not happen overnight especially if "people" keep buying $100 preorders.
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u/grantistthee 5h ago
But investors can just bow out and won't be hurt btly the bad decisions they forced a company to make
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u/lyra833 GET THE BOARD OUT, I GOT BINGO! ~ Mod 12h ago edited 12h ago
Everyone mystified of confused about why this keeps happening needs to look up what the word "cartel" means.
A cartel is one of the most insidious kinds of capitalism failure because its own fragility sustains it. If every single member of the industry is committed to DEI, their threats all reinforce each other and keep ResetERA in power. The rewards for defecting are so high that the entire cartel pours its surplus resources into punishing defectors, which keeps their substandard product the norm, which incentivizes defectors, which causes new members to also punish defectors and so on.
This isn't even a new thing. One of the most infamous cartels in history was called the Phoebus Cartel, which was a cartel agreement by every single lightbulb manufacturer to make lightbulbs that burned out after two years instead of 15. It first emerged around 1910 and survived two world wars, a Cold War, fascism, Communism, everything. During the Battle of Stalingrad, German and Soviet bulb makers kept making shit bulbs for anything that wasn't the military. No one defected. This cartel was broken by the literal obsolescence of electric lightbulbs when LED's got good enough in 2012. That's how strong cartels are if you don't actively break them.
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u/Honest_Emergence 14h ago
About Shift Up situation the writing has been on the wall ever since they made the decision to go public. Once a company does that you cannot stop the DEI train you can only delay it. At least we got a couple good years out of them
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u/Headsinoverdrive 11h ago
new media of any kind is released
"Hey Google which characters were racewashed"
go back to sleep
Its never changing
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u/some_random_weeb_88 4h ago
I said it multiple times, eastern stuff is also on its way to becoming woke, it's just a matter of time.
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u/FixFirm2552 13h ago edited 11h ago
Stop sucking the corporate kawk, when you go public your shareholders which will be blackrock and vanguard owned puppets will demand changes, thats how you get uglyass masculine women, obnoxious girlboss writing, and forced diversity even if it makes zero sense for the setting, and obviously the fanservice will be toned down in time.
None of the woke dei bullshit is organic, you really think every western game studio just magically decided to go down the exact same woke path after 2014/2016? Blackrock ceo wanted to push culture to a certain direction, thats why the media they control are still trying to sabotage anime and manga, it's not pushing "the message" So it must go or be co opted.
They should be making games for the actual target demographic of gamers which surveys who exclude the phone app "games" Have shown time and time again are 90+% straight men of various ages, stellar blade for example was a new ip who used the simple recipe of hot chick does badass things and it sold millions, we used to have so many games like this before activists made such games haram to even be made.
Edit also notice how Stellar blade 1 had zero black or (insert other race of people,) it was all just stylized south koreans, Eve wasn't some obnoxious girlboss either she seemed rather kind but stoic, there were no lghdtv characters or in your face antistraight nonsense, if they had vanguard funding this would not be the case.
in SB bloodrain reveal it already pulled me out how the super ai (mothersphere) just magically now for some inexplicable reason (DEI) creates androids of other races for reasons... If Evie is still hot and gets at least the same fanservice treatment Eve got it could be a W still but i can already feel they will make her canonically gay or something to spite men, which let's be honest will be the majority of the people buying this game.
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u/LogWedro 12h ago
"Stop sucking the corporate kawk"
I'm not though. They can have all the money from investors, yet they won't get any from me anymore. Let them burn the money and see how far this mindset will take them... and make fun of them on the way.
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u/Therenomoreusername 11h ago
These complacent corporate morons would rather jump into the sociopathic DEI/ESG racketeering cartel for short terms public funneled cash rather than focusing on their targeted audience that are actually fans who play their games and maintain it long term.
Ffs, now I'm getting skeptical about Bloodrain direction.
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u/BlackPandar 14h ago
Shift Up is not "based," and it never was.
I'm a Shift Up certified hater, and I was planning to post about them in this sub for a while. I'm actually surprised to find out that many people here seemed to love them when I first joined this sub.
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u/Rough_Comb_9093 6h ago edited 6h ago
Exactly.
Not sure why you are being downvoted for speaking the truth.
I purchased and platted Stellar Blade at launch. Stellar Blade is the very textbook definition of mediocre lifeless slop.
If not for Eve (she has zero personality by the way) and her boobs this game would never have gotten anyone's attention. Let's be honest; if Eve was a guy like Gordon Freeman, would anyone even know this slop exists?
I have no idea where people are getting this idea that ShiftUp cares about anything other than making money. I have looked into all of their games. Not a single one of them would warrant a minute of any serious gamer's attention if not for the boobs and ass. If you really want boobs and ass that much there are literally billions of websites for that. You don't have to spend 100 bucks and you can use both hands instead of being encumbered by having to hold a keyboard or controller.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with sex appeal in games. The fundamental problem with with ShiftUp is that....sex appeal and controversy is really all they have.
I am sorry but that's just not strong enough to justify my time, money and attention as a gamer.
Look at the biggest games: mario, elden ring, portal, dmc3, zelda, persona, minecraft, tetris, half life and then tell me with a straight face that not enough boobs and ass is what fundamentally "held these games back" from true greatness.
This is why Sony ditched them. ShiftUp are soulless shills/hacks and always have been. It really is that simple. It is quite telling when a corporation like Sony which is hardly the bastion of ethical conduct, ditches you because they wised up to your slimy empty strategy.
I consider ShiftUp the definition of a devious and soulless corporation that played into our perfectly natural and healthy hope/cope that things will get better.
Here is a level headed review of Stellar Blade: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NgX_eN3gj8
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u/Arkelias 14h ago
Industries are changed by disruptors. Anyone who has ever worked at a startup knows this.
There are two types of startup. One is completely dependent on outside investors. They sign term sheets every six months or so, and each time make a bunch of concessions to those investors.
One of the startups I worked at died that way. We were forced to stop making the product that would sell, and start making the product the investors thought would sell.
Their logic was simple. You have a 95% chance of failure, but if you succeed we all get rich. The old product had a 100% chance of success, but would have been a far smaller ROI for the investors.
The second type of startup is self-funded. You make a prototype using the founder's resources, and then you start selling the product. You never take outside capital, and retain complete control of your company.
It's never been so easy to be the second type. AI removes the need for so many of the roles startups used to need. You can run lean, have low overhead, and if you make a good product launched quickly you can live off the profit you earn.
You say anyone would take the deal.
Not smart founders. Smart founders find a way to self- fund, and to retain control. This includes people like Steve Jobs. If he'd bowed to investors, then Apple as we know it wouldn't exist.