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       #Post#: 29008--------------------------------------------------
       Re: General Gaming Thread
   DIR By: WinteryAlice
       Date: September 15, 2024, 5:37 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       By the command of the cybernetic lasses, all shall be digitized,
       so that this world may once again be pure and harmonious.
       #Post#: 29014--------------------------------------------------
       Re: General Gaming Thread
   DIR By: King (2.0)
       Date: September 15, 2024, 7:32 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       --- Quote from: WinteryAlice link ---
       >
       > By the command of the cybernetic lasses, all shall be
       digitized, so that this world may once again be pure and
       harmonious.
       >
       --- End Quote ---
       "Pure and harmonious". Knowing the internet, I'm sure that it
       has other plans.
       #Post#: 29016--------------------------------------------------
       Re: General Gaming Thread
   DIR By: Cibryll
       Date: September 15, 2024, 7:42 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       --- Quote from: King (2.0) link ---
       >
       > "Pure and harmonious". Knowing the internet, I'm sure that it
       has other plans.
       >
       --- End Quote ---
       Bloom Beasts often do--
       * gets eaten by an Interstice Lamia *
       #Post#: 29057--------------------------------------------------
       Re: General Gaming Thread
   DIR By: Kim Tyranto
       Date: September 20, 2024, 12:08 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       --- Quote from: Charlie link ---
       >
       > Wait SERIOUSLY!?
       >
       > I thought December 2020 spelled the end of Aidan's returning
       from the dead or whatever. ;-;
       >
       --- End Quote ---
       … unofficially…
       --- Quote from: WinteryAlice link ---
       >
       > By the command of the cybernetic lasses, all shall be
       digitized, so that this world may once again be pure and
       harmonious.
       >
       --- End Quote ---
       … accurate cybernetic lass goal…
       #Post#: 29082--------------------------------------------------
       Re: General Gaming Thread
   DIR By: Cibryll
       Date: September 22, 2024, 2:35 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Wha--
       Fatal Fury, a fighting game, has gotten an unexpected guest
       character. Cristiano Ronaldo of all people. WHAT.
       #Post#: 29087--------------------------------------------------
       Re: General Gaming Thread
   DIR By: King (2.0)
       Date: September 23, 2024, 8:15 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       --- Quote from: Charlie link ---
       >
       > Wha--
       >
       > Fatal Fury, a fighting game, has gotten an unexpected guest
       character. Cristiano Ronaldo of all people. WHAT.
       >
       --- End Quote ---
       I just remembered that Mario Kart 8 had DLC for a Mercede Benz
  HTML https://www.mariowiki.com/GLA
       that you can use in races.
       #Post#: 29120--------------------------------------------------
       Re: General Gaming Thread
   DIR By: Lunatrix
       Date: September 25, 2024, 2:12 pm
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Not to mention that there is also Ariana Grande in some or other
       Final Fantasy game.
       #Post#: 29128--------------------------------------------------
       Re: General Gaming Thread
   DIR By: King (2.0)
       Date: September 26, 2024, 5:31 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       --- Quote from: Lunatrix link ---
       >
       > Not to mention that there is also Ariana Grande in some or
       other Final Fantasy game.
       >
       --- End Quote ---
       Oh yeah, Final Fantasy Brave Exvius had several playable
       variants of her. That aside, Shadow Generations will have a DLC
       level and will have Paramount Shadow, complete with Keanu
       Reeve's voice.
  HTML https://www.videogameschronicle.com/news/sonic-x-shadow-generations-is-getting-a-movie-pack-dlc-featuring-keanu-reeves/
       #Post#: 29250--------------------------------------------------
       Re: General Gaming Thread
   DIR By: Cibryll
       Date: October 8, 2024, 8:21 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Wall of text
  HTML https://x.com/yanako_rpgs/status/1843622946981720171.
       In case it gets wiped off the face of Twitter, I'll quote it in
       spoilers.
       [spoiler]
       --- Quote from: @yanako_rpgs ---
       > Alright guys, I can finally come clean with this..
       >
       > I'm not stating any names, but I feel this has to be said. A
       couple days ago I had a meeting I scheduled with my Publisher.
       >
       > I'd been talking to this Publisher since early February this
       year. I scheduled this interview because due to some poor
       communication, I was starting to get suspicious (and a little
       nervous)
       >
       > I went ahead and played a few of their old (2 years ago) and
       recent (this month) games on Steam. I was very shocked to see
       that all of the Japanese had been machine translated.
       >
       > Mind you, in my package they sent me I was told word for word
       "Our network of native speakers, specialized in video  games can
       localize your game in 10 more languages."
       >
       > I was quoted over 15,000$ for this localization into 14
       languages. All of this money would have to be recouped (along
       with countless other expenses)
       >
       > The total cost of their "service" for marketing, porting,
       localization, etc, was 176,000$
       >
       > Meaning, I make ZERO rev-share money until 176k in revenue is
       made. After that, I would have got 50% PC, 30% console
       (digital), and 0% console physical. There was a 15k buyout for
       physical, no royalties
       >
       > These terms are already kind of a big redflag, but I kind of
       sweetened it over thinking "well, Dokimon is just half of my
       product, MonMae being the other half.. so maybe it's ok to
       sacrifice some funds in exchange for exposure"
       >
       > The other thing I noticed was, not only were nearly all of the
       Japanese comments complaining about the translations (from all
       of their games), but there was also very very few of them (only
       5-20 Japanese reviews even on some of the bigger games).
       >
       > This leads me to believe their marketing budget is also a lie,
       because they ensured me Japan is a very big market for them that
       they target after I had expressed the importance about my games
       awareness in Japan.
       >
       > This kind of lead me down a rabbit hole, and I won't get into
       too many details, but I came to find almost everything they told
       me was a lie.
       >
       > It made me very angry with the world, the state of the
       publishing scene in video games, and angry at myself for not
       doing better research earlier.
       >
       > Another lie I was told was 20,000$ in development funds, which
       I was okay'd in a month or two after our first contact in
       February. This has been delayed continuously, and now that the
       game is practically finished, they basically told me:
       >
       > "oh, it's finished so you don't really need the development
       funds anymore right? We'll give it to you as an advanced royalty
       instead"
       >
       > I don't even know what that is or what it's supposed to be but
       it sounds extremely vague and sketchy
       >
       > Thus I scheduled an interview, and there I feel as if all of
       "my fears" were confirmed. I decided not to bring up the machine
       translations until the end of the interview, which I'm very glad
       I did.
       >
       > This is because the interview started out with them basically
       breaking, and changing a lot of their promises they had made to
       me.
       >
       > When I finally dropped the bomb that I had played several of
       their games and all of the Japanese was machine translated, they
       were extremely wide eyed, and shocked, and they gave me very
       poor excuses that seemed to be made-up on the spot.
       >
       > The two people I was interviewing with also were giving
       conflicting answers to my follow up questions
       >
       > I was extremely polite throughout the entirety of the
       exchange. However I did ask if I could be given the name or
       company name of the Japanese translator (I wanted to confirm it
       existed), which I was denied.
       >
       > We ended the interview on "good terms", still being polite,
       "talk again soon" and etc, and so far it's been a while and
       there's been no response to my email I sent an hour after the
       call.
       >
       > I believe it is very clear that I will never hear from them
       again. I assumed this would be the case when I first found out
       about most of this dirt of them a month or two ago (basically,
       2-3 days before I did my Steam page announcement for Dokimon).
       >
       > I dodged a bullet. A big one. I think it is perfectly
       practical to say that this company lies about nearly all of
       their "costs" which they recoup 100% of, and prey on indie
       developers with big promises at the start that fall off and
       become less and less as the game launch date gets closer, where
       developers are most desperate.
       >
       > Developers get a 15,000$ buyout for "console physical" and no
       other funds until the publisher makes back their 6 figure
       recoupment (unless they planned on lessening this EVEN FURTHER,
       which is possible)
       >
       > The original buyout we discussed in February was 80,000$ +
       20,000$ dev funds, but I was told in this interview it was
       dropped to 15k "bc reasons" and as I mentioned earlier the 20k
       dev funds became a royalty (3 days before the interview)
       >
       > Meaning, it is extremely likely they are essentially buying
       people's games for 15,000$ (or less), doing a hackjob marketing
       phase, DeepGL translating into several languages, making
       100-150k off the game (potentially MUCH more, since developers
       don't keep a cent of physical sales), and the developer never
       makes a cent more than that initial 15k as they never surpass
       the recoupment cost.
       >
       > This is also reflected in the fact that after 3 months my
       requests for (a VERY minor) edit of the contract were not
       answered. They finally discussed it at the beginning of the
       call, this is where promises were falling short, and I was told
       "but if all this works out we can finally get the contract
       signed this week!"
       >
       > I think this is extremely predatory, and damaging towards
       indie developers. Years upon years of your, and potentially
       several peoples lives may amount to nothing more than 10-15k,
       and a sullied reputation in several countries where your game
       had god awful translations.
       >
       > I think it's extremely important to share this information and
       supply more resources to indie developers to ensure they don't
       get once'd over. I got extremely lucky.
       >
       > It's been very challenging and time consuming to work with
       them and provide them with updates, builds, meetings, promo
       materials, appeal to requests and etc, but thankfully I never
       signed the contract (mostly due to their incompetence) and was
       able to get out before I was in too deep
       >
       > However, this publisher has worked with countless developers,
       sometimes releasing several games in a month. I really feel bad
       for them. I've also gotten some friends from other countries to
       confirm these games were machine translated in other languages,
       so it wasn't just Japanese..
       >
       > Anyway, this is the story about 1. Why my Steam Page release
       was "bittersweet" and 2. Why Dokimon wasn't released earlier
       this year..
       >
       > Since last month I've had to start putting together so many
       plans to market and produce my game I thought would be taken
       care of for me.
       >
       > I spend all of my time working. Even on the train, I'm hand
       translating the game's 12,000+ word script line for line on my
       phone in Google documents.
       >
       > This game is the cultivation of 3+ years of work, countless
       sleepness nights, countless 80-100 hour work weeks, countless
       hardships, and one of the most stressful things I've ever had
       the fortune to work on,
       >
       > and I almost just lost it. I'm very thankful that I was able
       to find out right in time and get out of this deal. It's
       stressful translating the game on my own, and marketing,
       especially with such little notice.
       >
       > But I'm going to do my best. If there's anything you can do to
       help spread a word of warning to indie developers about
       predatory publishers, please do it.
       >
       > If there's anything you can do to help me market my game, or
       any advice, please let me know. I'm currently in crunch mode
       aiming for a late-November release and every bit of help and
       advice will count.
       >
       > This got very long, if you read until the very end, thank you.
       Please share this to spread awareness
       --- End Quote ---
       --- Quote from: @yanako_rpgs ---
       >
       --- End Quote ---
       --- Quote from: @yanako_rpgs ---
       > Key takeaways, RESEARCH LIKE MAD
       >
       > - check reviews of their games, old +new, check them in
       MULTIPLE LANGUAGES
       > - message devs that worked with them before
       > - seek help or advice if there's red flags
       > - pay a lawyer to look over your contract
       > - DON'T rush into ANYTHING
       >
       > Red Flags: 1/2
       --- End Quote ---
       --- Quote from: @yanako_rpgs ---
       > Red Flags :
       > - Bad communication (replies often take 1-2 weeks or more)
       > - Changing terms (sudden or drastic changes)
       > - Promises made upfront or months get revisited
       > - Their share is too much, 50% PC and 70% console is CRAZY
       > - if it sounds like an excuse, maybe it is
       > - Rev buyouts
       --- End Quote ---
       [/spoiler]
       #Post#: 29271--------------------------------------------------
       Re: General Gaming Thread
   DIR By: Cibryll
       Date: October 10, 2024, 11:39 am
       ---------------------------------------------------------
       Oh no.
       Now there's a Shrek crossover with some PowerWash Simulator
       game.
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