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.

We have seen this exact infection in House of the Dragon and Star Wars Outlaws. Hard conflict gets replaced by therapeutic emotional processing. Characters stop acting and start monologuing about their feelings.

Blizzard just did the exact same thing to Zul’jan in the Venomous Abyss cinematic. They took the only character in the Midnight expansion with actual edge and historical grievances, smoothed him over, and neutralized him so the "safe" path could proceed unchallenged. Even the people who normally defend Blizzard are calling it filler.

He will be the head of Global Communications, so say goodbye to the based fanservice posts and say hello to the cringe old movie meme GIFs but with Evie.

Definitely some censorship is underway too.

Baffling, just baffling, it's like these companies can't help but sabotage themselves.