Escape From Tarkov studio boss says he "did not foresee" players would get mad about charging extra for PvE - eviltoast

This has to be the funniest PR disaster in video game history. “Guy did not forsee players getting mad for locking a gamemode behind a $250 edition, doubles down on it and tells people to chill out”

  • avater@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Okay, maybe he shouldn’t be Boss then, he seems to suck at his job big time.

    • Carnelian@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      This is “announcing I will be stepping down” material for sure, dear lord. Never seen a more ridiculous or predictable disaster

      • aksdb@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Reminds me of the Volkswagen boss when their emission cheating leaked. He said he didn’t know. Wow, you earn millions for managing a company that big and then claim to not know about something. The fuck did you do then? So either he was lying or admitting that he didn’t do his damn job. Both cases should have lead to him having to give back whatever he “earned” in his position.

        • Talaraine@fedia.io
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          7 months ago

          I’m sure he got a bonus instead. The “C” in C-Suite stands for Certifiable. Literally divorced from reality. Needless to say they don’t earn their pay at all but all the wannabees on the board keep throwing money at them because they want their shot to be a do-nothing, too.

      • Wrench@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        I used to play EFT, and he would periodically say stupid shit like this regularly. Like reliably 2x a year at least.

        He’s extremely out of touch with the fan base, and gets upset at the “toxic community” for complaining that the “early access” game (for what, ~8 years now) has major game breaking bugs still, and most importantly, has been overrun by hackers for many years.

        Imagine an MMO where all the epic loot is randomly spawned in a free for all battle ground, and the hackers can see all items on the map, vacuum it up remotely, and leave the lobby before legit players could even sprint there in a straight line.

        And then the lead dev says “man, you guys whine so much, get over it”

    • Zess@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      The game recently had a big spike in players after selling an overpriced DLC. Seems like his PR stunt paid off.

        • HeavyRaptor@lemmy.zip
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          7 months ago

          There is definitely a buzz, the SPT (single player Tarkov mod) servers have been constantly overloaded for days now

            • homicidalrobot@lemm.ee
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              7 months ago

              I believe it. Multiple friends of mine updated to play and see the streets changes when this press cycle hit, a few even shared footage of suspicious noiseless head/eyes deaths while they were in enclosed spaces. If it has been long enough, just the words escape from tarkov will send some fans back, negative experiences suspended.

      • avater@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Pretty sure it’s a pair of brothers isn’t it? Am I remembering that wrong?

        I think you mean the russian brothers from The Day before

    • Senseless@feddit.de
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      7 months ago

      I migrated my emails to my own domain and needed to change the address on every service. They don’t even allow changing the email address for years now, judging by their faq. It’s fucking embarrassing.

      • ArtVandelay@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        That’s typically an indicator of piss poor database design, where they likely use your email address as some kind of unique identifier

    • Ashtear@lemm.ee
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      7 months ago

      This was the news to me on this whole mess. I knew about Ark but hadn’t heard about this one. Shameless.

  • Phegan@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    When you sell a package that promises all DLC and you then sell a DLC before you even release the game, you can get fucked.

  • LiveLM@lemmy.zip
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    7 months ago

    lol guess he assumed his player base was a little more used to getting fleeced than they really were

  • GrymEdm@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    Given the recent solar eclipse, I’m reminded of the people who stared directly at the sun and found it to be dangerously bright.

  • 🇰 🌀 🇱 🇦 🇳 🇦 🇰 ℹ️@yiffit.net
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    7 months ago

    If you didn’t forsee people getting pissed at a content add that costs $250 and not counted as DLC so those with the lifetime DLC pass don’t get it without paying more, you are a monumental moron and probably shouldn’t be in charge of running a business where you have employees who can lose their livelihood because of your poor leadership and incredible lack of foresight.

  • Lets_Eat_Grandma@lemm.ee
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    7 months ago

    If the guy wasn’t a dumbass he would have sold the pve edition as a standalone game and avoided all the drama.

  • FeelzGoodMan420
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    7 months ago

    Serious question. Why is this game fun? I played it a few years ago for like 5 hours and I thought it was absolute dogshit and boring as shit Has it improved dramatically since then? Do you guys just enjoy Inventory Simulator? I just don’t get it.

    • bigmclargehuge@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      I love tactical shooters and, at its core, EFT is one of the best. By core, I mean the movement, gunplay, physics, sound design, etc. When the going is good, there is almost no experience as visceral as EFT.

      What I personally think fucking sucks is basically everything else. Especially the tryhard, creatine-powder-snorting, sweatband wearing *community that has zero sympathy for people who actually have a life and want a really detailed tactical shooter, without dedicating 15 hours a week into researching bullet penetration and common camping spots. Couple that with devs who seem to show active distaste for a lot of their more casual fans, and casual gamers in general, and you end up with a really mixed bag.

      I’m one of the people who had this game completely revived for me by the single player mod, SPT-AKI. I can play on my own, with progression, and slightly more laid back difficulty, while still enjoying challenging AI and some of the best gunfights in gaming. I would absolutely love to play an official pve mode, I absolutely refuse to pay $250 for it.

      *edit: this only obviously describes a portion of the community. Should clarify that I know there are plenty of players that this doesn’t describe.

      • homicidalrobot@lemm.ee
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        7 months ago

        SPT and the multiplayer conversion (Now Project Fika, formerly MPT) are the best ways to experience the game now for a multitude of reasons. I think learning heatmaps and dead locations applies no matter how you play - and the same can be said for bullet penetration, it’s just part of the game - but there’s a neverending stream of cheaters that feel far worse to lose to than a boss you weren’t prepared for. I can get trashed by tagila eighty times and accept that gear is just forfeit, I chanced it going to factory; when I am killed by a head/eyes with no audio five seconds into a fresh raid multiple times a day there’s substantially less to learn from and improve on.

        Worth noting you can get mods for SPT that change how AI behave, categorize them so some are doing a common farming route, some are moving to quest locations. It doesn’t make up for what we lost (the awkward vocal exchanges as you agree to not slay a new player at a starting quest location), but it helps retain some of the spice.

        • bigmclargehuge@lemmy.world
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          7 months ago

          This is the first im hearing of project fika, I’d actually looked into co-op SPT a few months back and things weren’t seeming optimistic, it’s super cool that it’s come that far.

          And yes, the game has tons of detail and it’s worth at least brushing up on some wiki articles to understand things like ammunition hierarchy. I actually tend to prefer games that lend themselves to a bit of research to get the most out of them (300 hours in Elite Dangerous and I’m still a noob).

          Really I was just trying to make the point that this is a game where if you just want to jump in for a few matches without doing that research, you’ll get absolutely demolished, even if you don’t meet a cheater, because so many people play this game obsessively.

          That’s why I vastly prefer PVE and always will. That detail is there, but I’m not at a complete disadvantage if I want to take a more relaxed approach. I’m not forced into a match against players who take this video game more seriously than I take my job.

    • Whitebrow@lemmy.world
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      7 months ago

      It’s just the cult of goblins going in, looting and then storing it all in your backpacks in your hovel. There’s occasional enemies and you need to outmaneuver or outgun them, or both. If that’s your jam, it’s great. But overall it’s just a miserable experience, especially when playing solo.

  • OofN@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    I’m sad I spent so much money on the EoD edition, but I’m so glad I found SPT to make the game I wanted EFT to be. Fuck BSG, I won’t play this game online and I won’t give them a single cent more.

    • thisisnotgoingwell@programming.dev
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      7 months ago

      EoD is edge of darkness. It’s basically the most expensive version of the game which was originally offered and was supposed to include all subsequent dlc, hence the outrage(ridiculous pay to win features and price aside). SPT is a modded version of EFT(escape from tarkov) that let you play the game single player and added a bunch of cool stuff. BSG(Battlestate games, the publisher/dev studio) didn’t like that so they would copyright videos that used SPT. It’s a whole mess

      • bigmclargehuge@lemmy.world
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        7 months ago

        Single Player Tarkov. It’s a mod that replaces player PMCs with modified AI, plus allows the installation of numerous other mods.

        Basically perfect for people who love the gunplay and gameplay loop, but don’t care for the playerbase.

  • mariusafa@lemmy.sdf.org
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    7 months ago

    Even if I have the EOD I really hope EFT gets dumped and new games of the same genre come alive. I fucking hate the devs, they are even worse than EA or UBISOFT in terms of caring about the game more than money. The old prices were already a fucking scam.

    Their netcode is trash, the game is full of hackers on wipe starts and mid wipe (basically were the fun is). Plus if you aren’t a fucking streamer that plays 15h a day the game you are pretty much fucked up.

    I hope gray zone gets better and outruns them.

  • pikmeir@lemmy.world
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    7 months ago

    CyberPunk 2077 did a similar thing. Seems to be a new pattern. Promise free DLC to drum up support. Charge for the DLC. Wait for things to cool down. Do it again.