Warhammer Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader - turn-based Warhammer 40k RPG from Owlcat Games - Void Shadows DLC coming September 24th

[user]

rushed out in an unplayable state on release only so that Owlclowns could capitalize on the BG3 hype

"BG3 hype" had nothing to do with releasing Rogue Trader in terrible state.

The real reason to rush the game out in 2023 was because there was an announcement that games made in Unity engine will have only a set number of free installations and each installation above that will have to be paid for by the developers (or something along these lines). This change was supposed to go live in 2024. Hence the release happening in December of 2023.

Frankly, I won't be surprised if Unity engine ends up being abandoned by the majority of developers as a result.

They should abandon those greedy fuckers. In the end all that will be left of their users will be mobile adware clickers - unfortunately this is quite a large portion of the market, but even these will abandon them once the community dries out.
I am a Unity developer but it'd be better if it dies, so that others won't try to pull this kind of shit without a second thought.

I believe the decision was made by someone who deemed it "necessary" for the viability of their budget. However I've found that those decisions are often way stupider than one would expect, and usually, don't account for long-term consequences, reputation or really understand technical realities (aka the huge clusterfuck of things that were bugged/not working).

 

[MjKorz]

I believe the decision was made by someone who deemed it "necessary" for the viability of their budget. However I've found that those decisions are often way stupider than one would expect, and usually, don't account for long-term consequences, reputation or really understand technical realities (aka the huge clusterfuck of things that were bugged/not working).

They had a history of two extremely buggy releases at that point. The initial release of Kingmaker was so bad, they forgot to include the executable file lol. Instead of making extra sure that their third release would not suffer the same fate, they decided to spit into the face of their playerbase and rush the game, creating another buggy release. At some point, when mistakes like these become systematic, incompetence stops being a valid excuse, especially since they refuse to acknowledge it by making extra sure to not rush the game, and the only viable reason becomes very clear: greed. Or malice and genuine hatred towards their own players.

 

[Harthwain]

To put things into perspective why the unity excuse doesn't fly: initial announcement was made on September 12, backpedalling (severe changes to the runtime fee policy) occurred on September 22.

...

On September 12, Unity announced that beginning January 1, 2024, its pricing for developers would include a “Runtime Fee,” [...]

Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, the upcoming cRPG set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe developed by Owlcat Games, now has a release date, as revealed in the new trailer that you can watch above. That date is December 7, 2023.

[...]

Posted: Sep 13, 2023 3:00 pm

On September 12, 2023 Unity announces its pricing changes and on September 13, 2023 - literally the day after - we have a release date set on... December 7, 2023 (before January 1, 2024). I would say it checks out.

Owlcat already made it clear that their future games will be a mix of Unity and Unreal, it seems they are not planning to abandon Unity. At least completely.

Looks like they're switching gears to Unreal. Also, keep in mind that some current projects are running on Unity. It will take time for developers to change the engine to something else.

 

[MjKorz]

To put things into perspective why the unity excuse doesn't fly: initial announcement was made on September 12, backpedalling (severe changes to the runtime fee policy) occurred on September 22.

...

On September 12, Unity announced that beginning January 1, 2024, its pricing for developers would include a “Runtime Fee,” [...]

Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader, the upcoming cRPG set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe developed by Owlcat Games, now has a release date, as revealed in the new trailer that you can watch above. That date is December 7, 2023.

[...]

Posted: Sep 13, 2023 3:00 pm

On September 12, 2023 Unity announces its pricing changes and on September 13, 2023 - literally the day after - we have a release date set on... December 7, 2023 (before January 1, 2024). I would say it checks out.

Owlcat already made it clear that their future games will be a mix of Unity and Unreal, it seems they are not planning to abandon Unity. At least completely.

Looks like they're switching gears to Unreal. Also, keep in mind that some current projects are running on Unity. It will take time for developers to change the engine to something else.

The point of my post was that there was a very short time interval between the announcement and the radical changes to the runtime fee policy: roughly 10 days. Even if they made the decision to rush the release in one day (which is absolutely retarded), they had plenty of time to course-correct and delay the release after the backlash and the policy change.

 

[Harthwain]

The point of my post was that there was a very short time interval between the announcement and the radical changes to the runtime fee policy: roughly 10 days. Even if they made the decision to rush the release in one day (which is absolutely retarded), they had plenty of time to course-correct and delay the release after the backlash and the policy change.

First of all - they committed themselves at that point.

Secondly - it doesn't really matter that there was some policy change from Unity after the backlash. Unity has shown itself as unreliable and at that moment it lost the trust of many developers and publishers. Nothing is going to change that. There simply was no reason for Owlcat to risk going back into 2024 when the safer course was to stay in the tail end of 2023.

 

[MjKorz]

First of all - they committed themselves at that point.

Game release dates get shuffled all the time, going back to the original schedule (assuming there was a different release date initially which was changed as a result of the Unity runtime fee announcement) would have surprised absolutely no one and they had no legal or other obligations to release exactly on that date.

Also, you assume the release date was the result of the Unity runtime fee announcement, we don't actually know that. There is no proof whatsoever that the Unity announcement forced them to change the release date and they made no such statement as far as I'm aware. The release date we got could have very well been the originally planned release date which brings me back to my point: they rushed the game on purpose to cash in on the BG3 hype.

Secondly - it doesn't really matter that there was some policy change from Unity after the backlash. Unity has shown itself as unreliable and at that moment it lost the trust of many developers and publishers. Nothing is going to change that.

So release the game in progress properly and switch to some other engine later. The immediate runtime fee problem was backpedalled on almost immediately and there was plenty of time to shift the release date.

There simply was no reason for Owlcat to risk going back into 2024 when the safer course was to stay in the tail end of 2023.

But there was a very good reason: not making another catastrophically buggy release.