Online games news Tedious Retro Gamer, 25-03-2024 Online Games Bay
Shocking news has just dropped - Undawn had flopped! Even though once famous actor Will Smith was involved in this project, still it flopped. Which brings an interesting question - what the heck is Undawn???
Undawn, a free-to-play mostly mobile game published by beloved company Tencent, according to Reuters, "flopped spectacularly". If you missed that shocking news, then... welcome to the club. Not many people knew the game even existed, it was published in June 2023 on Steam and at the best moment on Steam 8531 people played it simultaneously, which was not a bad result.
I mean it would be not bad for an indie title, but when a giant like Tencent published a game, involved Hollywood actor Will Smith to promote it, even put his character in the game, it does not sound so great. But there is another layer to that story - over 300 developers were involved in the production of Undawn and the whole project cost reached over 130 million USD. Oh, you poor thing, Tencent. According to Reuters report, in February 2024 the game had an income of 287,000 USD, which would be nice... for an indie project.
What can be said about the game? It is as basic as you can imagine - walk around an empty world and shoot zombies, then return to your base and repeat. Enough said, the Steam players were not amused - the game enjoys 55% of positive reviews, and it is fully deserved. Inside you will find parts that look like they were put together at a last moment, f.e. some character models are not full animated, some seem like they were taken from another title because they are in a completely different style. Basically, if the 130 million USD part of the story is true, it looks like a money laundering scheme that was planned to fail, rather than a title that was supposed to be shown to the public.
Turns out that if you take a ton of money, produce generic mobile gameplay, slap a disgraced actor on the cover and then forget to tell anyone about that project, it will fail. Who knew?
25-03-2024
Comment below
The earthquake called restructuring of a beloved company seems to come to an end. After selling a few studios, laying off over 1300 people, cancelling some upcoming titles, the CEO of Embracer Group has come up with a bold strategy for the future - he is going to make better games!
Youtuber jtisallbusiness claims that he has spent 100,000 USD on building his powerful character of Barbarian in Diablo Immortal. And now he has a problem... Sorry mate, we all have problem, because of you.
Wargaming, company behind World of Tanks, World of Warships and World of Warplanes, is known for its predatory marketing approach towards customers, so article like this is nothing new or nothing surprising, but there might be people unfamiliar with the topic, so... Yeah, there are things that need to be said.
While there are dozens of smaller and bigger dramas going on right now, from Twitch questionable ideas, TwitchCon, Phasmophobia discord, Mizkif suspicions, cheating in chess and many, many more, there is one that is so stupid that it is hard to ignore.
This news creates mixed feelings in me - I want to make a smug face and repeat "I told you so!" and at the same time I wish this news was not true. Yes, it is Stalker 2 again. Yes, it’s bad news again. No, I’m not surprised. During the Gamescom 2023 a new trailer of the title was shown and... let’s just say it wasn’t received well.
Gamer Network, parent company of such publications as Eurogamer, Gemesindustry.biz, Rock Paper Shotgun, Dicebreaker and few more, finally was acquited by IGN Entertainment. And, of course, they started with sacking people.
Admitting you have a problem is a first step to fix that problem. A simple rule that a lot of gamers should look into - if you are unhappy with the state of gaming industry, start with your own behavi...
Phasmophobia was just upgraded with Apocalypse update, which is... a good news. But at the same time made the biggest problems of the game even more visible.