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[NickFire]

I feel really bad for the people who did not have a say in the reboot's design / themes / etc.

Beyond that though, I mean, come on? To me it looked like another instance of company deciding the core audience wasn't good enough and they preferred to appeal to others instead. Which rarely works, and can be catastrophic if the company does not have other profit drivers to carry it through mistakes. In this case it clearly was an exceptionally poor decision, both because of end-result and because they had plenty of notice to change course if they paid attention to business trends or even just the reaction to the first reveals.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

I didnt know this studio made Descent until I checked their wiki page and they used to be called Parallax Software. Great game and ran super smooth on our fam's 486/66.

 

[F0rneus]

I fucking love Saints Row 2, 3 and 4. I like those games better than any GTA. Haven't played the reboot yet but since it's on PS+ and it will likely be the last SR might as well try it.

 

[Kadve]

Speaking of things that aged poorly :

Happy with sales. Not so much with the PR nightmare steaming from the incident. There was a reason why they got thrown into the Gearbox pit after all.

 

[Moses85]

Nothing of value is getting lost here!

 

[NeoGiffer]

 

[The Stig]

Shame. I have great memories of descent, freespace and SR2/3, 4 was ok too.

One thing though. Everyone calls the SR reboot "woke". It didn't really strike me as woke, just very Gen Z. The original gang was pretty diverse and you were able to dye your hair blue in the original games too......

 

[Oddvintagechap]

That really sucks but whoever greenlit saints woke deserved a canning...

studio was outdated, that was just a hail mary.

 

[Thick Thighs Save Lives]

Volition posted a new letter to the community just now on their X account:

 

[BbMajor7th]

Reeks of bad management: Red Faction was overplayed, Saints Row was rinsed into oblivion, Agents of Mayhem was a charmless, out-of-touch Crackdown knock-off and the recent Saints Row reboot felt like the most transparent and cynical 'audience broadening' exercise in recent history. More thoughtful leadership would have carved out a niche and found more meaningful ways to revitalize old IPs, instead they drove the studio and it's intellectual property into the dirt.

 

[F0rneus]

Damn it's kind of ice cold of Deep Silver to announce that Saints Row will live on! I mean ok, good. PLAION are a good team but...like...Wait a bit. Cause it makes you look happy that you own the IP and don't give a fuck about the people who lost their jobs.

 

[DavidGzz]

Is that you on your avatar pic ?
If so you might be responsible for Volition's demise.
Let me explain.
The soyboys working at the studio could not handle such amount of manhood and bulging muscles this close to them. They lived in a state of constant fear, could not concentrate on their work, and produced shitty games as a result.
Nicely done

Yes it is. And yeah, they must have used Blizzard's hiring method. Feelssoyman

 

[Chronicle]

A message to all in business. The cry babies on Twitter don't support what they cry for.

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Volition posted a new letter to the community just now on their X account:

Those are some giant paragraphs.

 

[nkarafo]

Oh.

Seems like nothing of value was lost.

 

[nkarafo]

I like how so many people mention stuff like Descent and Freespace and feel bitter about the closing, as if a single developer in Saints Row Reboot had anything to do with those games. I bet half of them weren't even born when those games were made.

 

[Neon Xenon]

Would love to see something new done with Descent.

It's likely you've already heard of this game, but there is a 6DOF shooter called Overload that's very easy to recommend to any fan of those games. It doesn't carry the name Descent, but it is definitely Descent; to the point where you'll hear some familiar sound effects, see similar weapons, and you even get music from Allister Brimble (Descent I + II).

Going by the price history on the IsThereAnyDeal page, Overload seems about due for a sale on Steam soon.

 

[CYRU5_DA_GR34T]

can't release multiple bombas in a row these days, especially while working for a scummy holding company that suddenly needs to cut costs

Hehe he said bombas

 

[CYRU5_DA_GR34T]

They asked for it. I am so glad people are getting sick and tired of all this woke shit. Its finally starting to show.

Amen

 

[saintjules]

Shut the front door…

 

[Destruction-1002]

In a world where GTA VI was nowhere close to be seen, was basically impossible to fail to made a successful Saints Row sequel, but they tried really hard and made it. Is sad, because even a clone of Saints Row 2 or 3 with better graphics would have sold pretty well IMHO.

Rockstar Games doesn't have competitors
The last GTA will be 10 years old in 15 days and still being played

As is the latest GTA game, people have to buy it

 

[Forsythia]

Yep, they fucked up. Never has "gone woke, go broke" been more appropriate

 

[StreetsofBeige]

Yep, they fucked up. Never has "gone woke, go broke" been more appropriate

Media is the only industry out there where they cater their big products to a niche group of people. For sake of sales, profits and literally not getting shut down like in this case the tried and true business strategy is to make something people want and can relate to. Price isnt even an issue in this case because gamers have been tuned to pay standard prices of $60 or $70 for ages. So that one important facet of business is already solved.

If a company wants to focus on a niche product for a niche target audience, it can be done. Not every product has to be mainstream like bottles of Pepsi. But to be successful, you still need sales and you got to have costs low because the sales potential isn't Pepsi at billions of revenue. You can be Debbie making custom cupcakes in a small bakery and be successful and survive.

Personally, I dont think 99% of gaming companies even do research. They just sit in a room, come up with gaming ideas and make the game. Then they cross their fingers 4 years later when it's ready to launch that it will sell well.

I'd bet any company puts more research and money on whether a bar of soap's packaging art looks good or not to the general audience. A lot of games have big budgets. Given how many games so poorly, Im confident most dont do any research at all.

 

[Drew1440]

Horrible end to a once great studio, though most of the talented developers would have long gone by now. What a shame it had to end on that awful reboot.

 

[Lord Panda]

I guess the Freespace 3 dream is dead(erer) now.

 

[M1chl]

The "woke" criticism is just so lazy, last game was bad, but it wasn't bad because of inclusion. Saints Rows games were always super diverse, its....fucked up.... I am really sad about this actually. They made killer games.

 

[The Stig]

The "woke" criticism is just so lazy, last game was bad, but it wasn't bad because of inclusion. Saints Rows games were always super diverse, its....fucked up.... I am really sad about this actually. They made killer games.

THANK YOU.

It was just a bad game. I swear a ton of users on here just look for anything to trigger their fear of this "woke" boogeyman (not to say it isnt a thing, but people are seeing it in places where it clearly doesnt exist.)

 

[Hayabusa83]

Hard to believe that The Punisher came out of this studio. Maybe one of the greatest comic book games ever made.

 

[MacReady13]

Sad news but, when you cave to the mob who are not only the vocal very tiny minority but don’t even buy fucking games, this is what you get! Sad but true.

 

[Hayabusa83]

Sad news but, when you cave to the mob who are not only the vocal very tiny minority but don’t even buy fucking games, this is what you get! Sad but true.

Unfortunately tiny online mobs can be amplified. Many such cases.

 

[Red5]

I guess the Freespace 3 dream is dead(erer) now.

Freespace is owned by Interplay and they're still publishing old and low budget titles. Maybe Nightdive can take a shot at it.

 

[Gamer79]

 

[elbourreau]

The thing is not about the reboot part (even if not a smart idea...) but the disrespect they showned tot their fanbase.

Action >reaction. Don't forget.

 

[Rocco Schiavone]

 

[Sybrix]

I missed all of this at the time, mainly because I've always thought Saints Row games were a pile of shite.

What exactly was woke about this game?

 

[daninthemix]

Red Faction Guerilla was amazing and they just didn't know where to go next, so we got the terrible Armageddon.

Saints Row kept getting sillier until after 4 it had nowhere to go.

They've driven both of their franchises into the ground. What else do they have going for them?

 

[SScorpio]

It's likely you've already heard of this game, but there is a 6DOF shooter called Overload that's very easy to recommend to any fan of those games. It doesn't carry the name Descent, but it is definitely Descent; to the point where you'll hear some familiar sound effects, see similar weapons, and you even get music from Allister Brimble (Descent I + II).

Going by the price history on the IsThereAnyDeal page, Overload seems about due for a sale on Steam soon.

The two founders of Parallax who worked on Descent 1 & 2 were founders of Revival Productions and were involved in the creation. The only thing missing in the game Descent which was purchased by a different studio that released a crappy game.

Compared to modern games Overload was a little lacking. But for Descent fans, it catches the vibe and is a ton of fun. They even released a free level editor so you can go back to the days of 90s FPS level making. There's a community DLC where they picked the best community levels, and bundled them together. They did a 50% revenue split of sales with the community creators.

 

[PeteBull]

I missed all of this at the time, mainly because I've always thought Saints Row games were a pile of shite.

What exactly was woke about this game?

Dev team, their agenda, focus on diversity/not offending twitter fucks who never buy games to begin with, main heroes team being college students doing crimes to pay off college debt, removing all kinds of sexy/spicy thing, again not to offend usual suspects who dont give a fuck about game and gaming in general, coz they dont buy fucking games.

When fanbase, so ppl who bought/played/enjoyed previous games in the series called devs out on all that shit, what we got was rude responses, u can see screenies of those in this very thread, so ppl like me decided to not worry about this trainwreck since no point- hence low game quality(coz quality cant be high when ur priority is diversity quotas and woke agenda, instead of making high quality good and fun game) and by proxy terrible sales= closed down studio and amazing series with tremendous sales potential killed :/

 

[StreetsofBeige]

The thing is not about the reboot part (even if not a smart idea...) but the disrespect they showned tot their fanbase.

Action >reaction. Don't forget.

And you'll get that from gaming employees, since so many of them are lippy. All you need to see is how every important confidential memo issued at head office for techie workers gets leaked to the masses 10 minutes later. techie people (including their Twitter handlers) love being edgy.

If Frito Lay released a shit flavour of chip and everyone was ragging on it, I bet any money these would happen on social media:

1. A mundane CSR/Twitter handler kind of response like "Thank you for your feedback, we will do our best to improve"

2. Like KFC or Taco Bell, you'd get some witty and fun responses

3. You definitely would not get the Frito Lay social media team lipping back

There's something about gaming and tech industry workers where they got zero leash. Maybe it's inherent characteristics. Maybe management doesn't know how to control a crowd. I dont know. Maybe a bit of both.

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

Obviously I care and sympathize with the people involved, but as for the product loss I couldn't care less. Tried one SR game (can't remember the number) but it was absolute cringe and juvenile trash.

 

[Laieon]

Dev team, their agenda, focus on diversity/not offending twitter fucks who never buy games to begin with

Twitter/X is filled with right wing & conspiracy nut jobs these days though, not the people you all apparently think are on there.

If you're focusing on diversity, you're absolutely offending all the twitter fucks.

Not mention "gO WoKe Go BRoKe" isn't really a thing. You know what kills game companies? Making bad games. Shocker, I know.

 

[PeteBull]

Twitter/X is filled with right wing & conspiracy nut jobs these days though, not the people you all apparently think are on there.

If you're focusing on diversity, you're absolutely offending all the twitter fucks.

Not mention "gO WoKe Go BRoKe" isn't really a thing. You know what kills game companies? Making bad games. Shocker, I know.

It was obvious game gonna flop, same like recent battlefield games, lets not go into who is on twitter and who isnt, i dont give a damn about them, back when game launched twitter wasnt elon musk's property yet so it was croweded with woke ppl, and pretty sure many/all of them are still there anyways, its not like there is any other platform, and they love to tweet/get outraged about stuff, so its like a drug to them.

Again, dont give a damn about that crowd, devteam of SR reboot did, and thats how they ended up, hopefully some other dev studios learn lesson from other's mistakes, coz if it will be their own mistakes- it might be too late, and i hate good ppl/good devs lose their jobs, after all i want them to have job and work on new games we all can enjoy

we knew how it all will end right after cgi reveal trailer, when u rather wanted to be "bad guys" than the main crew from the trailer lol, we are used to be bad ass mofos, not some sissy boys/girls straight from diversity qouta, SR is about being bad ass after all, and those fortnite looking heroe's look anything but bad ass to any1 except those woke weirdos


To give better idea i can present u an example, guy who got introduced in s2 of warrior series, yes he is gay but he is fricken bad ass who happens to be gay, its huge difference vs all the diversity first/agenda first aproach u had/have in saints row reboot, here timestamped his introduction from s2 trailer of that series (love the series here so i used it as an example

 

[Dorfdad]

Who will the woke community rally around now

 

[Hudo]

Who will the woke community rally around now

Aren't they busy with that Volcano Highschool game?

 

[PeteBull]

Aren't they busy with that Volcano Highschool game?

That smells like era's goty 4sure, forced goty ofc ;P

 

[ZVWQP-9B8TM-VH9CT]

good news. I hope they starve.

 

[Shadowstar39]

A game made for "modern audiences"... the problem is that they forgot it's the "old audience" who actually buys games.

Sucks to be them...

This, and I highly doubt kids and teens are buying all the games. Why, antecdotal evidence sure, but when my son and friends were playing games it was always minecraft, fortnite, cod and free2play crap or phone games. Single player games were more for us old heads who have the money to buy the games. What did they think would happen when they write us off. Shame really.