Thomas Mahler, Game Director at Moon Studios, the developers of Ori games just cannot believe "why are gamers so eager to trust and even forgive the snake oil salesmen?"
Over on gaming forum ResetEra , Thomas Mahler wrote a lengthy post where he discusses the recent Cyberpunk 2077 controversy among other things. It seems like Mahler is baffled by the fact how gamers are eager to trust and forgive developers for broken promises, developers who he calls "snake oil salesmen" in the post.
Mahler starts off by mentioning Peter Molyneux and Black and White game, which failed to deliver everything that was promised during development. "He pulled this shit for a good decade or more with journalists and gamers loving listening to Uncle Peter and the amazing things he's doing for the industry. It took him to release some pretty damn shoddy games for press and gamers to finally not listen to the lies anymore," Mahler writes in the post.
Furthermore, he states that Sean Murray learned straight from the Peter Molyneux handbook. "Even days before No Man's Sky released, he hyped up the Multiplayer that didn't even exist and was all too happy to let people think that No Man's Sky was 'Minecraft in Space', where you could literally do everything," he explains.
Hello Games
Mahler finds it incredible that players forgot about these promises as soon as Hello Games released a bunch of updates, bringing the game closer to what was actually promised. He even calls out The Game Awards host Geoff Keighley for "showering" No Man's Sky and Murray with awards. "Rewarding that kinda behaviour will surely help the industry grow stronger."
As for CD Projekt Red and Cyberpunk 2077, Mahler states that CD Projekt Red carefully crafted every video release to create a picture in players minds that the game was just insanely compelling. "They stopped just short of outright saying that this thing would cure cancer. This strategy resulted in a sensational 8 million pre-orders," he says.
Mahler concludes his rant by saying that these three are clear examples of players being made fools of. He even says that gamers and journalists don't really seem to mind all that much about this.
"Don't paint a picture that you'll not be able to deliver. Just don't fucking lie to me. You're fucking over gamers, you're fucking over journalists (that should know better, so shame on you!) and you're fucking over other developers."
Cyberpunk 2077 by CD Project Red, RPG in Cyberpunk 2020 universe
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