Warning: Fallout season one spoilers ahead!
01.04.2024 - 21:29 / gamesradar.com / Swen Vincke / Thomas Mahler / Austin Wood
No Rest for the Wicked, the Diablo-esque action RPG in the works at Ori and the Blind Forest and Ori and the Will of the Wisps studio Moon, won't be $70. CEO Thomas Mahler says the game's price point is down to the nature of the team, their shared stance on the rising price of games, and the notable lack of shareholders pawing at the company's books.
"We've been hearing gamers complain about $70 being the new norm for quite a while now," Mahler says in a lengthy tweet. "We're also regularly still seeing $70 games with microtransactions on top and usually players hate that.
"I also openly took a stance against some of the ridiculous stuff that's going on with developers charging 65$ and up for purely cosmetic items," he adds, presumably referring to his dig at Diablo 4's pricey horse armor.
"Since we're releasing Wicked into Early Access, we didn't think it'd be smart to nickel and dime players by charging full-price right out the gate. We try to be extremely efficient at Moon. We're not hiring hundreds of people just to create an illusion for shareholders that we're growing. We don't have any shareholders. If we can make better products at a lower cost than AAA studios and can thus charge lower prices, that's a sign of us doing something right, not wrong."
Mahler points to the two Ori games, with Blind Forest and Will of the Wisps priced $20 and $30 respectively at launch. The CEO reckons this was "less than we probably could have" charged, but reasons that "we sold around 10 million copies because of the quality of our titles and probably also because we try not to be greedy."
No Rest for the Wicked will be $39.99 at launch, presumably with a standard one-week launch Steam discount on top of that (and an affiliate discount for partnered content creators sharing the game). Its Steam page confirms that the price will rise post-Early Access, though we don't know exactly how much. But to Mahler's point, "nobody 'forced us' to offer a discount, we thought it'd be a great gesture!"
With layoffs bleeding the games industry even as many publishers report record revenues, the ever-looming invisible hand of shareholders and investors has been an especially hot topic lately.
Weekly digests, tales from the communities you love, and more
Swen Vincke, head of Baldur's Gate 3 dev Larian Studios, has repeatedly criticized publishers – often publicly traded publishers – for putting profits over people. RuneScape creator Andrew Gower says his new MMO thankfully doesn't have to answer to publishers or investors, so there's "no one breathing down my neck." Likewise, "without any shareholders to please," The Sims competitor Paralives isn't doing paid DLC. The list goes on, as more and more independent or privately
Warning: Fallout season one spoilers ahead!
Given that they worked together on two Scream movies beforehand, it's impossible not to compare Melissa Barrera's newest horror collaboration with directors Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett to the Ghostface-fronted franchise. Abigail, the trio's latest, is similar in tone, too, as its characters try to make sense of the bonkers situation they've found themselves in through vampire pop culture.
Ori creator and Moon Studios co-founder Thomas Mahler has said that it will be hard to make Ori 3.
A Marvel fan theory speculates on why the ruthless antihero Frank Castle managed to survive the Blip in The Punisher Season 2.
Stellar Blade players determined to use the action RPG's NSFW 'skin suit' or die trying are challenging themselves to beat the demo's boss without taking any damage, despite the game director's advice to remain clothed.
There's no denying Baldur's Gate 3's massive popularity, and its director of publishing, Michael Douse, has drawn comparison between it and the survival crafting game Palworld for finding success with a game that not all investors might have taken a chance on.
Hellblade director and Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniades is no longer at the Microsoft-owned studio.
Ninja Theory co-founder Tameem Antoniades has left the company.
Following a bit of a tease last week, Yellow Brick Games — the studio founded by former Dragon Age creative director Mike Laidlaw — has properly revealed its new third-person action adventure, Eternal Strands, which is coming to PC and consoles next year.
CD Projekt Red's chief operating officer Piotr Nielubowicz has said that the studio's single-player games may never have microtransactions, but its inclusion in multiplayer projects hasn't been ruled out.
Bethesda, the world-renowned game development studio behind the Fallout franchise, rolled out a new hotfix patch for the multiplayer action role-playing game Fallout 76. This release came just days after the previous Fallout 76 update and is aimed at rectifying some significant issues to enhance the gaming experience.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's Vincent Valentine actor Matthew Mercer has revealed the role was sprung on him as a last-minute surprise because Square Enix knew how much he wanted the part.