"Bethesda Outline Anti-Consumer Review Policy" by Rock, Paper, Shotgun

Oh, one more thing. When I see some shit like this come out then all I can hear is "We're uncertain about the quality of our games and have put so much money into our budgets (and you 'know' what 'that' means) so we need to make sure that they'll sell as much as it can before any potentially negative information sways anyone to not buy it".

The thing that could lead to as much of an equivalent of another gaming crash for the triple-A scene would be that triple-A publishers/developers blow the budgets out of proportion and have to resort to money scheming tactics like microtransactions, day 1 DLC, on-disk DLC, pre-order bonuses, season passes, pre-order incentives etc in order to even make the kind of profit that they need.

When it comes to BGS' past history (2 years back) is this an indication that they might be heading in that direction?

Cause I don't get it. Go look up the amount of budget that Skyrim cost to produce and look at the amount of profit they made. I'm certain they made over 1000% profit. Where would all that money go to make them suddenly be so terrified of not selling well? With that kind of profit they could produce 8 flops in a row and still have enough money for 2 more games where they could 'play it safe'.

Where does all that money go to? Zenimax? Some of it, sure. But so much so that they have to resort to these kind of tactics for their very next game? I still don't get it.
 
Mr Fish said:
Where does all that money go to? Zenimax? Some of it, sure. But so much so that they have to resort to these kind of tactics for their very next game? I still don't get it.
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They need a playground for Bethesda's writing and PR team. And colouring books. And crayons- lots of crayons. And little scooters. And colourful building blocks. And a ball pit. And a sand pit.

Expensive stuff.
 
Mr Fish said:
Snip
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I personally think they lost multiple billions of dollars on ESO, Fallout 4 was one way of recouping that, it failed. Now Skyrim remasters, but PS4 isn't as interested. Modders like myself are being used by them as a cash cow, using us to sell Fallout 4 and a 5 year old game. The next step is to monitize mods.
 
@DirtyOldShoe
Did they really lose a shit ton of money on ESO or are you just speculating? Cause I'd like to see source on that. (Because it'd make my nipples so hard and I haven't used my clamps in a while)

And I don't see how Fallout 4 failed. It sold a fucking shitload of copies.

http://fortune.com/2015/11/16/fallout4-is-quiet-best-seller/
"Bethesda’s Fallout 4 sold 12 million copies and generated over $750 million in its first 24 hours at retail on Nov. 10."

Yes, the reviews over time has dropped and the reception for the DLC's and season pass is pretty bad but that don't mean they didn't make a shitload of money with Fallout 4.
 
Yup, there are still far more people out there that think positively of Bethesda than those who've wizened up to Bethesda's scallywagging.
 
Mr Fish said:
Might be a little derailing but what happened to Bethesda around the point of Fallout 4? Before then one could argue that they wanted to do things right by the fans and that they wanted to produce games just that they had poor management and prioritized the wrong way. But with Fallout 4 it's like they've been hit with a magic retard stick.

Pre-Fallout 4: Skyrim mods can now be sold on Steam! Except we'll take most of the money cause fuck you. Oh that didn't work out? Aw...

Fallout 4 - Let's completely ruin the game and not even pretend to give a shit about anything anymore. Let's just copy whatever else is popular out there because we are creatively bancrupt. And let's even halfass it so that the crap we 'do' produce isn't even good in any way. But before we release it:

Pre-order - Let's allow people to pre-order the game right after its official announcement cause people hyped yo! Let's coax the dullards into giving us more cheese! And while we're at it:

Pre-order season pass - Let's put out a season pass out of all things because that's necessary as fuck yo. And let's allow the "fans" pre-order it too so that they can give us even MORE cashmoney whoop whoop! But hey... >_> This game kind of uh... Sucks. *Pete Hines walks in* Yeah I don't wanna sit through our dialogue it fucking sucks. Yeah... So let's uh...:

Censoring Information - Let's show as little of the game as possible cause, well... "But what about the big gaming events when we have to show the gameplay" Euuh... We'll.. We'll confiscate their camera devices so that no information is leaked out!

Season Pass - Well, we're glad you're enjoying the game so what we're going to do is that we're going to hike the price up because we plan on making more DLC's!

DLC's - What the hell are we gonna do? Let's just take base assets that modders already unlocked for the settlement crafting and sell those to players. Brilliant! Oh and writing quests is difficult so let's just steal a modders quest.

Forums - Fuck the old forums, we need a mobile friendly look so let's start up Bethesda.net.

Bethesda.net mods - Oh gee, I guess fans are taking other people's mods and uploading them without their permission so that they can be available on the consoles. Whoopsie!

Pete Hines - Not interested in talking about [insert topic of the day here] in a game with talking mutants and ghouls.

Skyrim re-release - We need more money... Let's just repackage Skyrim and sell it for full price with mod support.

Playstation fuckery - Except for Playstation, they're kind of unreasonable so let's just allow esp's on that version.

And now this thing about review copies.
I mean, what happened?
Bethesda weren't necessarily 'bad', just a bit incompetent but the future for them wasn't grim or anything. And after the skyrim paid mods on Steam they turned full retard.

I don't get this at all.
I love it cause I get to shit on Bethesda even more.
But I don't understand why Bethesda seems to 'want' to fuck themselves over.
Or are they just trying to see how far they can push people without going overboard?
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I quote this, in case a wild Bethesda drone appears. That's a great rant-list.
 
How big the $ loss on TES: Online? Might be some connections between this fail and cash-grabbing galore of bethesda today. Not that it's excusable, of course...
 
Mr Fish said:
@DirtyOldShoe
Did they really lose a shit ton of money on ESO or are you just speculating? Cause I'd like to see source on that. (Because it'd make my nipples so hard and I haven't used my clamps in a while)

And I don't see how Fallout 4 failed. It sold a fucking shitload of copies.

http://fortune.com/2015/11/16/fallout4-is-quiet-best-seller/
"Bethesda’s Fallout 4 sold 12 million copies and generated over $750 million in its first 24 hours at retail on Nov. 10."

Yes, the reviews over time has dropped and the reception for the DLC's and season pass is pretty bad but that don't mean they didn't make a shitload of money with Fallout 4.
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In regards to ESO, some information on the internet vanish after a while, I didn't think to screen shot them sadly, so I have no merit, just speculation and bad long term memory.
There is a funny quote from the game designer here though.
http://www.p4rgaming.com/zenimax-de...rumor-we-couldnt-have-wasted-that-much-money/
Insulting the game he designed in many ways, It's actually quite entertaining. There was also the issue of them banning many of their subscribers for finding bugs in the game, they call them exploits.

Skyrim has sold 11 million copies on PC, can only guess it is like 660 million copies on console based on things I've read over the years. Fallout 4 only sold 3.6 million on PC, that's like 216 million on console.
So Syrim should have made them around $39.6 Billion Where Fallout 4 was around 12.96 Billion if the average person paid $60. Skyrim is 3 times more succeful then Fallout 4 financially.

I'm no mathematician, nor am I a game developer, but both of those numbers seem like a lot. But that could be a failure to them. Who knows how much it costs? Money stops making sense to me after 6 digits.

I know one thing for sure, that money was not spent on writers.

After the sales on remaster, Skyrim will probably be breaking 50 billion in revenue.

ESO on steam only has from 1000-5000 players online, if that is compared to Skyrim with 20-40 k playing, using similar figures for console, If we assume there is 60 times the players on console as there is on PC, Skyrim has anywhere from 5-25 times the people playing it. Fallout 4 has anywhere from 4-20 times more people playing it. For an MMO, those numbers aren't very good.
 
Am i missing something? I don't see a problem here as long as you don't buy the fucking game in the first week or so you are good. If you want to pre-order it and be swindled out of your money, well that's your choice. On the other hand this solves the situation where game "journalists" have a big advantage against their more skeptical competition who, because of their.... skepticism, don't get the early preview copies of the game.

DirtyOldShoe said:
...numbers...
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Where are you getting those numbers????

http://www.statisticbrain.com/skyrim-the-elder-scrolls-v-statistics/
 
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AskWazzup said:
Am i missing something? I don't see a problem here as long as you don't buy the fucking game in the first week or so you are good. If you want to pre-order it and be swindled out of your money well that's your choice. On the other hand this solves the situation where game "journalists" have a big advantage against their more skeptical competition who, because of their.... skepticism, don't get the early preview copies of the game.



Where are you getting those numbers????

http://www.statisticbrain.com/skyrim-the-elder-scrolls-v-statistics/
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Fallout 4 units sold PC
https://steamdb.info/app/377160/graphs/
Skyrim units sold PC
https://steamdb.info/app/72850/graphs/
ESO players
https://steamdb.info/app/306130/

Skyrim vs Fallout 4 players
https://steamdb.info/graph/
Currently 33k playing Skyrim, 5k playing eso, multiply that by 60 for console respectively.
 
DirtyOldShoe said:
Fallout 4 units sold PC
https://steamdb.info/app/377160/graphs/
Skyrim units sold PC
https://steamdb.info/app/72850/graphs/
ESO players
https://steamdb.info/app/306130/

Skyrim vs Fallout 4 players
https://steamdb.info/graph/
Currently 33k playing Skyrim, 5k playing eso, multiply that by 60 for console respectively.
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Ok, but you were claiming that it sold 11 million on pc (even this number is kind of fishy, it even says near the number that it might not be correct), when it's only the steam numbers, and then conjured up some insane numbers for console sales out of nowhere.
 
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AskWazzup said:
Ok, but you were claiming that it sold 11 million on pc (even this number is kind of fishy, it even says near the number that it might not be correct), when it's only the steam numbers, and then conjured up some insane numbers for console sales out of nowhere.
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There is an ignore option, if you click on my profile picture, select that and you won't need to be bothered with any estimate or theories I make that may not be 100% factual based on observations I've made.
 
nick-young-confused-face-300x256_nqlyaa.png
 
DirtyOldShoe said:
I'd like to agree with what you're saying, but reviewers are all in dev pockets, tiptoeing around truths.
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/batman-arkham-knight/critic-reviews
http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/assassins-creed-unity/critic-reviews
Out of all those professional reviews, those "Broken games" you mentioned still got an average of 70 out of 100. Those reviews are nothing more that lining the pockets of the developers with lies. When you look at the user review counts for those games they are mostly accurate.
Batman Arkham Knight : 2.5 out of 10
Assassins Creed Unity : 3.0 out of 10

If reviewers were honest and did as journalists do, reporting fact from a non- objective point of view I would agree with you 100% Sadly they are no better then the shit game makes. One scratches the others back. At least now that the reviewers feel like they have been wronged, perhaps the reviews will be a bit more honest.

Bethesda is now a cash grab company, reviewers are developer ass kissers so that they can get paid. Now they are all streamlined. And honestly, if someone didn't know BAK was unplayable at this point, they should loose money for living under a rock.
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Shardik said:
Under ordinary circumstances I'd agree, but it's not like we could trust these clowns in games "journalism" to tell us about buggy, broken or just plain bad games anyway, even if they had all the time in the world to play them before release.

It doesn't matter how badly Bethesda treats them - in the end, RPS, IGN and all of the rest of them will just continue to suck Todd Howard's dick anyway.
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Review copies go out to more than just the big-name sites. Plenty of youtubers or smaller sites get review copies.
And if there's one thing you can trust the game journos to do, it's chase the clicks. Even if they all write 10/10 bestgaemofalltime reviews, you can be sure that if reports of it being buggy unfinished shit start to pop up elsewhere, on reddit/youtube/other reviews, they will write articles about it because they gotta get in on that action while it's hot.
Just like what happened with the two examples I mentioned. Plenty of articles about how buggy and shit they were. Of course, in those cases these articles went up some time after release, at least in part because both had some form of day-1 embargo anyway. Link



Also, everyone knows 7/10 is the worst score possible for a big release anyway.

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DirtyOldShoe said:
There is a funny quote from the game designer here though.
http://www.p4rgaming.com/zenimax-de...rumor-we-couldnt-have-wasted-that-much-money/
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p4r is a parody news site, like The Onion and such.

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AskWazzup said:
Ok, but you were claiming that it sold 11 million on pc (even this number is kind of fishy, it even says near the number that it might not be correct), when it's only the steam numbers, and then conjured up some insane numbers for console sales out of nowhere.
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Aren't Fallout 4 and Skyrim both exclusive to Steam on PC? Like New Vegas was.
 
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