Also a great point.

I'm not ruling anything out at this point. It could be a classic case of a greedy corporation pushing out the real artists in order to exploit the art. It could be that the devs (specifically the 3 guys involved in the lawsuit) got lazy after they got paid. It could be both, neither, something else entirely. Honestly with how things go these days I'm just grateful there hasn't been anything distasteful enough tl give me qualms about playing Subnautica.

I don't believe for one second they are actually letting this guy do anything. He's a fall guy. He's going to get fired when something bad happens and they need someone to fire.

So either someone else is running it behind-the-scenes (like how Musk wasn't technically the head of DOGE) or the department ceased functioning (they could be inviting a terrorist attack as an excuse- go to war, declare emergency powers, cancel elections, etc).

Or they just actually gave this guy this job. But that just seems so incredibly unlikely.

After the last decade or more of people complaining about greedy publishers forcing devs to release half-baked messes too early (Cyberpunk, No Man's Sky, etc), it feels like I'm living in a bizarro world to see so much criticism for a publisher delaying a game to (allegedly) make it better.

Bloomberg reported that the bonus was tied to revenue targets. So the $250,000 estimate must be estimating significantly higher revenues for them in 2025.

What you posted is just the sales on 1 platform for 1 game, whixh came out in 2018 when games were cheaper.

Is it still more expensive if they just shelve it

Yes. Like, it's not even a question it's more expensive to delay it. First of all, they are choosing to pay for 6-12 months of extra development, which alone is probably several times more money than the bonus that they would have paid out. I don't know what their payroll is, but we don't need to know because math.

If the bonus was for 1/2 annual salary per person (which would be insanely high), then the cost of the bonus would be the same as 6 months of additional payroll. Meaning that with any longer delay than 6 months or smaller bonus structure than 1/2 of annual salary, it becomes more expensive to delay the game. Both of which are incredibly likely in my opinion.

And that's just salary. It's possible the studio was planning on laying people off after release, but more likely that they would have moved to a other project that is currently wrapping up pre-production. So this is causing a cascading effect unless they hire additional staff to catch up.

Then you have marketing costs. The rule of thumb in the industry is that half the overall budget is marketing. There are all sorts of contracts they probably had- digital stuff like banner ads on websites, on the console digital storefronts, partnerships with twitch streamers and YouTubers and review websites, physical stuff like cardboard cutouts and fliers. They may have started printing for boxes for physical releases (though I'm not sure whether this game would have had one or not). They may have started acquiring merch inventory: shirts and stickers and backpacks and flashlights and more perhaps. Some of these contracts they may be able to postpone or cancel, but they certainly aren't getting back 100% of what they paid.

And in all of this time they aren't getting the huge revenue spike they were expecting. The vast, vast majority of a game's revenue comes at launch (excluding live services, which this hopefully will not have). They need to survive another year on the trickle of revenue coming in from the sales of their other games, or Krafton may need to pump more of their own money into Unknown Worlds. Or debt.

I'm at least willing to wait until it gets reviews to make a sound judgement.

I don't think the bonus would have been a big enough reason to delay the game. Delaying a game like this relatively last-minute and giving it an extra year of development is waaaay more expensive than the bonuses would have been. That's a gigantic revenue spike they were expecting to get this year and now have to push out to next year, and they may well end up paying out similar bonuses next year too.

My suspicion, from the history of Steve Papoutsis, is that Kraftom wanted to add in anti-player elements and the original founders refused. Probably micro transactions, or maybe even having a bigger multiplayer focus to make it closer to a live-service game. Some mechanism to get money from customers beyond the original purchase. I suspect crap like that will be reason enough not to buy the game when it comes out.

It only takes 1 badly made mod to make Skyrim unstable. I'm not sure what information you would be looking to gain from that.

He probably "works" more than that, because for him his "work" looks like riding a private jet, golfing with business associates, fancy lunches and dinners, or sending emails from his phone on the beach.

I mean... Your last sentence is already becoming more and more true every day, and has been for years. Microsoft was trying to eliminate the used game market back with the Xbox One. In the US at least there has been a sever decline in videogame stores. Gamestop used to be just one of a handful like Babbage's and EB Games. Other stores on this initial post like Toys-R-Us also used to carry physical videogames too (I think Circuit City may have too?).

Plus I always felt that videogames are just consumed too differently from movies. Movies are something easy to consume in a night or a weekend, especially because the rental versions were usually just the movie with none of the special features. I rented videogames a few times as a kid, and I always felt so much pressure to try to play as much of the game on the time I had it as possible. It ended up a stressful and unpleasant experience. Plus you had some videogame developers who adjusted difficulty specifically for rental markets, like Lion King and Battletoads, which I would argue was detrimental to those games.

There's a reason TV show rentals never really caught on like movies either- it just takes too long to consume comfortably. The Netflix mail model made a bit more sense for shows at least, but couldn't quite bridge the gal for videogames. GameFly tried it and I suppose technically still exists, but I haven't heard anyone talk about it in years. RedBox tried and had a nice moment, but ultimately got swallowed by streaming.

Plus DLC and updates are becoming more common, so it would be annoying to have to go and re-rent a game, purchase the DLC, try to speed through it in a weekend, then return the rented game but still be out whatever you paid for the DLC with no way to play it.

Rentals were pretty good for being a low-risk way to try a game out. You could spend $1-$5 usually for a game that might cost $40-$50 to buy new, and occasionally publishers would have promotions where a rental would come with a coupon to offset the rental price if you want to buy the game. Nowadays that has been replaced by free downloadable demos. Which aren't perfect, but I think are better than the old rental system.

Is there enough value in AI to justify burning down the planet for it?

It's really easy to declare an emergency and claim that the Executive branch needs expanded Emergency powers when you stop all of the emergency prevention mechanisms.

Trump has a history of attacking mail-in and absentee ballots. Sure would be a shame if we HAD to vote in-person but a pandemic broke out. That at least makes it easy to suppress votes, but could even be used as a justification to "postpone" elections.

Same thing with going to war with Iran, or suffering any one of a number of disasters the Trump administration seems to be actively inviting.

I'm pretty sure they're all stall pokemon.

I'm not up on the competitive meta and I'm not entirely sure what this screenshot of from. It looks like the 3DS era from the art, but I don't recognize the UI layout here. It could just be the online multiplayer from one of those games, or it could be a romhack, or it could be an online fan-made tool like Pokemon Showdown.

Blissey and Chansey are both just stall pokemon. Tons of HP and bulk, plus movesets that promote healing or supporting teammates rather than doing damage. Quagsire is a bulky choice with very defensive typing, and also in most gens a more defensive moveset. Mareanie and Ferrothorn are defensive pokemon who set up arena hazards (they do a little bit of damage or can inflict poison every time an opponent sends out a pokemon). Amoonguss can heal itself and set up slow chip damage and poison.

Clefable is probably filing a similar role to Blissey on the other team, and the Fairy type gives a defensive answer to any Dragon type opponents.

Mandibuzz is bulky and I guess kind of a defensive typing. Rotom is... There. There is probably some gimmick strat I'm not aware of to make these ones annoying walls too.