Microsoft bought Zenimax/Bethesda

[DoctaSax]

Might be relevant:  a while back MS started offering mod support for games acquired via their xbox app on the PC - in as much as people can choose to enable them, not that they have to get the mods through there, let alone some type of CC service. In short, it looks like they're quite ok with mods and have a hands-off approach to them.

https://www.neowin.net/news/microsoft-confirms-mod-support-for-microsoft-store-games-on-pc/

 

[Prime66]

9 hours ago, MIJ said:

I doubt they'll abandon steam, they know how much more profitable it is to use steam for their games instead of the Microsoft store.

However they might sell out and make it an EGS exclusive like how they did with the Outer Worlds, and remember, Obsidian is owned by Microsoft.

You can blame Private Division for the Exclusive EGS deal 
it was done to my knowledge before Microsoft bought Obsidian. 

 

 

But on a more general note, I really don't get the fearmongering. 
I admit I had already written Bethesda as well as their next games off. Would i have still bought them? Sure 
But after the fiasco that was 76, I didn't have any hope that Bethesda will release a good game again.   
So the acquisition by Microsoft does give me some hope for the next game. I admit im worried that modding won't be possible in the scope that it is now, but I don't see them singling out Adult mods. 

[cailic]

3 minutes ago, Prime66 said:

But on a more general note, I really don't get the fearmongering. 
 

Hmmm... is it fear mongering?  I hadn't thought about that.  I was merely expressing my concerns as possibilities.  Wouldn't fear mongering be more like expressing concerns as fact?  Such as spreading rumors?

[Prime66]

14 minutes ago, cailic said:

Hmmm... is it fear mongering?  I hadn't thought about that.  I was merely expressing my concerns as possibilities.  Wouldn't fear mongering be more like expressing concerns as fact?  Such as spreading rumors?

 

Sorry English isn't my first language. It does depend on how you look at it, right? 
Sure nobody stated as a fact that Adult mods won't be a thing going forward but still so many people saying it can induce fear in someone how has been around for some time and is passionate for the community.  

[Fotogen]

4 hours ago, cailic said:

Back, around the mid 90's Microsoft came out with a game called... something I don't remember.  It was a resource gathering, build your civilization game.  When I saw it, I was like "Ew!  Microsoft.  It must be shallow and simplistic."  But it was probably the first game where you got see your villagers bending down to gather berries, throwing spears to take down game and chop at trees to produce lumber.  It wasn't a simplex game as I thought.  For the time, it was one of the best games of that genre, at least for a year before others of the like were released. 

 

Years ago, I was in a computer store with an X-box display running a demo for one of their fighting games.  I had to stop and watch because the fighters were two females.  This is the first computer game I had ever seen that had realistic titty jiggle.   I, of course didn't linger.... too long.   It kinda made me wanna buy an X-box.  But I think there were only a dozen or so games available for it at the time.  Yes, at one point during my depraved existence, I almost bought a console game! 

 

The point is, Microsoft can occasionally surprise us, in a positive way. 

 

I just hope we never get the "Surprise!  Now that you've bought OUR game, you will have to pay an annual subscription fee to play it."

 

 

Age of Empires? Developed by Ensemble Studios, published by Microsoft. Game come out 1997. Ensemble Studios was acquired by Microsoft in 2001.

 

MS doesnt develop much. More like nothing. MS buys other, small companies with good ideas.

 

Age of Empires is still going strong even after 20+ years.

[cailic]

3 minutes ago, Fotogen said:

Age of Empires? Developed by Ensemble Studios, published by Microsoft. Game come out 1997. Ensemble Studios was acquired by Microsoft in 2001.

 

MS doesnt develop much. More like nothing. MS buys other, small companies with good ideas.

 

Age of Empires is still going strong even after 20+ years.

That sounds right.  I thought it came out earlier, since I thought I was still working for CompUSA.  I guess I did too much thinking. 

 

I'll have to look the game up again.  Thanks for that.

[27X]

45 minutes ago, Prime66 said:

Would i have still bought them? Sure 

why?

[Prime66]

6 hours ago, 27X said:

why?

Well, 76 and to some extent Fallout 4 dashed the image of Bethesda as one of the good Developers. What I meant to say is im not so bitter that i would never buy a game from them ever again. If the reviews are good and they keep the Monetization out, then why not? 

[ToJKa]

After sleeping on it, i am cautiously positive about this.

Mainly because under Zenimax Bethesda was rolling down shit hill fast. Sure this may not stop it, but at least they have to build up the momentum again ?

[RitualClarity]

20 hours ago, winny257 said:

there was already talk of this in 2010, Microsoft: no sex in games! 
Sorry German

https://www.basicthinking.de/blog/2010/12/16/was-microsoft-wohl-davon-haelt-sex-spiele-fuer-kinect-steuerung-kommen/

https://winfuture.de/news,60307.html

That was on 2010. Things change. What is their current stance?  Considering the age of many gamer now.. they might change it if they haven't already. However,... I doubt they will allow many of the various "types" of content that is available on LL but soft sex like what happened on Mass Effect etc might be possible.

10 hours ago, cailic said:

Hmmm... is it fear mongering?  I hadn't thought about that.  I was merely expressing my concerns as possibilities.  Wouldn't fear mongering be more like expressing concerns as fact?  Such as spreading rumors?

I am of the same belief. Discussing possibilities is one thing, Stating negative unconfirmed comments as fact.. would be in my definition fear mongering.... However, to each his/her/their own.

10 hours ago, Prime66 said:

 

Sorry English isn't my first language. It does depend on how you look at it, right? 
Sure nobody stated as a fact that Adult mods won't be a thing going forward but still so many people saying it can induce fear in someone how has been around for some time and is passionate for the community.  

Your English is quite good.  I wouldn't be concerned too much. (just offer further clarification and ask questions to be sure someone that has comments understood your position... same as a native English speaker such as myself sometimes has to do.) I believe post are more effected (affected? ) by cultural biases and conceptions more so than language barriers from someone that is as sufficient in English as yourself.

9 hours ago, Fotogen said:

Age of Empires? Developed by Ensemble Studios, published by Microsoft. Game come out 1997. Ensemble Studios was acquired by Microsoft in 2001.

 

MS doesnt develop much. More like nothing. MS buys other, small companies with good ideas.

 

Age of Empires is still going strong even after 20+ years.

MS not developing much might be the very thing that is needed. That is my hope. That they don't "develop" and allow those that actually know the job and develop .. do their job and develop and not have micromanagement from higher ups spoiling the game. This is what I believe was happening in Bethesda. They did great before.. sometimes um.. OK but never as bad as the last few games. (Fallout 4 and even worse fallout 76 for example) (to be clear, fallout 4 looks like to me someone trying to hit all the buttons and gather more non Fallout fan purchase instead of staying true to the formula that was successful)

3 hours ago, Prime66 said:

Well, 76 and to some extent Fallout 4 dashed the image of Bethesda as one of the good Developers. What I meant to say is im not so bitter that i would never buy a game from them ever again. If the reviews are good and they keep the Monetization out, then why not? 

Someone can screw up .. companies can royally fuck up and realize or start to do right. Should they be penalized for their past transgressions.. Depends on the person and what they did.  IN the case of the two games mentioned.... not trust them .. sure... but boycott them .. not so much. Provided they show a massive improvement. It is only games .. not human rights or environmental disasters that have been done. (some reasons for me to boycott a company myself)

2 hours ago, ToJKa said:

After sleeping on it, i am cautiously positive about this.

Mainly because under Zenimax Bethesda was rolling down shit hill fast. Sure this may not stop it, but at least they have to build up the momentum again ?

Maybe, hopefully. Depends on what Microsoft has planed for this asset and what they do. If they leave those very people responsible for the recent issues in charge.. I fear they will still roll down hill fast.  If MS removes those that were responsible or places controls over them that works.. then they should start to fly right ... only the future will tell.

 

 

I for one will be cautious but no more so than before. Wait for future reviews and evidence to what is happening then to the games I might be interested in and make a judgement then. Until then I won't get bent out of shape from this news. After all, I was already set to never purchase another Bethesda/Zenimax game again so I really don't have any loss now. The grieving over the lost of some of my favorite games has already happened.  The only thing now is a faint glimmer of hope. I'd be much more happier if some other company purchased Zenimax etc. that has a history of being good game content creators. However, there is a very short list of possible companies and even those are suspect.

 

The golden years of video gaming has up and gone.  IMO Hopefully, (at least for those that have a desire for content that is provided through LL  ) the future is bright with all the now free tools and skills that are available for game content hobiest to create that content that is being tossed to the way side by main stream content providers.

 

[Grey Cloud]

20 minutes ago, RitualClarity said:

I believe post are more effected (affected? ) by cultural biases and conceptions more so than language barriers from someone that is as sufficient in English as yourself.

Affected.

 

What effect does the disease have?

It affects one's respiratory system.

?

[brown66]

Sorry my English. It's not my native language.

If anybody wants to know what will happen to ES and Fallout mods, look to what happened to Mojan and Minecraft, after they were purchased by Microsoft. I think that Minecraft was the only game on the world that has more mods than Skyrim, and now Microsoft says that, legally, it owns every mods that were made for Minecraft. And I don't see Microsoft wants to be the owner of nudes and sex mods, whether they are past, present or future mods...

[mircislav]

Knowing MS and Mr. Gates, I wouldn't be surprised if they put stop to modding scene - as messing in their software property...

[Dallas-Arbiter]

On 9/21/2020 at 9:16 AM, firepunch1 said:

Damn. If they were willing to put out 7.5 billion for Zenimax/Bethesda then I'd be surprised if they don't end up buying more studios as well. Also, Microsoft already owned Obsidian at this point so now both Obsidian and the Fallout IP are under their control, would be interesting to see if Obsidian will end up doing the next Fallout as a result.

You know, that's all people talk about, Obsidian doing another Fallout. There is a problem with that...  Almost everyone that worked on New Vegas is no longer at Obsidian. Most of them aren't even working anywhere anymore.

 

[Nexussuckstwice]

19 hours ago, cailic said:

Capturing and selling slaves was rather common in older games.

Not really except in Fallout series it was not. Few more allowed you to liberate slaves not to capture or buy them. Some games like Master of Orion allowed to enslave and relocate population of captured planets but it was never deeply explored. In most games where actual slavery could make sense (such as Civilization) it was merely implied and never appeared on screen. On the other hand genocide was and still is an option.

 

17 hours ago, cailic said:

We need more gaming companies in Germany and Russia.  I'm just gonna leave it at that.

Russian developers busy making mobile "games". Their Golden Age ended around 2008. Anyway even the best Russian games never acquired critical acclaim in the West.

And it seems Germany not much different in this regard - mostly mobile stuff:

https://www.game.de/en/sales-of-game-apps-grow-by-23-per-cent-in-the-first-six-months-of-2020/

https://www.game.de/en/market-share-of-games-made-in-germany-remains-stagnant/

 

Remember old good games like Drakensang series? Yeah, gone with the wind.

[winny257]

2 hours ago, RitualClarity said:

That was on 2010. Things change. What is their current stance?  Considering the age of many gamer now.. they might change it if they haven't already. However,... I doubt they will allow many of the various "types" of content that is available on LL but soft sex like what happened on Mass Effect etc might be possible.

I don't think so, how many game developers are there in which soft sex is integrated?
I know very few, I know that BioWare, CDPR, Warhorse Studios and maybe a few that I don't know.
even the French studio Ubisoft does not allow soft sex, actually too bad. 

 

and I found this too, is though from December 20, 2019.
Microsoft in Poland allegedly looking for studios: who could it be?

Sorry German

https://www.gamepro.de/artikel/microsoft-polen-studio,3352622.html

[27X]

4 minutes ago, winny257 said:

I don't think so, how many game developers are there in which soft sex is integrated?
I know very few, I know that BioWare, CDPR, Warhorse Studios and maybe a few that I don't know.
even the French studio Ubisoft does not allow soft sex, actually too bad. 

There's plenty of sex happening at Ubi$haft, it's just nonconsensual and involves getting hired.

[winny257]

16 minutes ago, 27X said:

There's plenty of sex happening at Ubi$haft, it's just nonconsensual and involves getting hired.

lol, this happened even in Rainbow Six Siege
Rainbow Six Siege: Ubisoft removes sex, gambling, and blood! 

https://www.pcgames.de/Rainbow-Six-Siege-Spiel-54457/News/ubisoft-online-shooter-sex-gluecksspiel-asien-1268578/

[winny257]

2 hours ago, Nexussuckstwice said:

Russian developers busy making mobile "games". Their Golden Age ended around 2008. Anyway even the best Russian games never acquired critical acclaim in the West.

And it seems Germany not much different in this regard - mostly mobile stuff:

https://www.game.de/en/sales-of-game-apps-grow-by-23-per-cent-in-the-first-six-months-of-2020/

https://www.game.de/en/market-share-of-games-made-in-germany-remains-stagnant/

 

Remember old good games like Drakensang series? Yeah, gone with the wind.

There are a lot of German game developers also for the PC. 

Spoiler

 

[t.ara]

If MS would start to block SKYRIM´s modding scene, they would kill what they have bought, which is not logical:

-who is interested in investing any more time into OLD game-titles?

-killing the NEXUS and LL community at once and in whole means to kill a big group of last gamers, which play the bethesda games specially only because of modding possibilites (this would be their last action)

 

Before they (MS) shopped bethi, they should have made their exact homeworks, which "structures" are existing between the gamers and the games. With this step they have to live with their new IMAGE to house mod-able games with such a density. I do not await any further games which will support modding like it has been-a creation-kit is not an official modding tool-it´s an editor, it ´s an entrance to add some contence-mostly what is the default game is offering-in skyrim it made sense because of it´s structure-in other bethi-games, it definitively did not make sense.

 

And if it becomes scary or somehow uncomfortable, some modders of today will suddenly LEAVE and create new own games by using open source engines without any limitations, which means:  it´s the question for MS to stay in  A POSITIVE FINE TUNE with the modding-scene (the rest of it). I would instead await a positive action in form of some new BONUS-TOOLS for skyrim, stuff & maybe partitial licenses of develope-software, which is useless laying in bethesda´s chests.

 

Nothing will change in a bad way.

 

[Cezul]

Bethesda has been kind of on a freefall for a good while now, this MIGHT be a good thing. What is to be determined though, is how much of a shithead MS is going to be in the future.
 Limited, or outright stamping modding support out will be a huge mistake, they'd shoot themselves in the foot. It's the mod support that really keeps these games alive. Like others have pointed out, I would have stopped playing Skyrim, Oblivion, Morrowind etc YEARS ago if not for mods. These games, brand new cost pretty penny ( $60USD ), and being able to mod the game to infinitely expand it's content, whatever that content may be, is paramount to really getting your money's worth out of them. Sure, there's a lot of games that i have played, and i enjoyed them. I go through them once or twice and then I never touch the damn thing again. That's not the case with an Elder Scrolls/Fallout game, provided modding is kept available, and unstifled.

Microsoft's best business strategy here, is literally to simply step back, and let Bethesda work. If MS can do that, it'd be like having a goose shitting golden eggs every other year for them.

[MIJ]

41 minutes ago, t.ara said:

And if it becomes scary or somehow uncomfortable, some modders of today will suddenly LEAVE and create new own games by using open source engines without any limitations

 

I have seen a lot of phrases like this lately so let me throw my two cents on this idea:

Let's be honest, that's unrealistic and will never happen. There isn't a single open source engine out there that could offer the same level of ease of modding and scale like Skyrim and Fallout 4 have given us, even Godot is still way too early in it's life cycle to offer us the necessary optimized tools to create the next big action 3D open world game,

 

And even if we somehow compromise in what we can create you still need a lot of 3D modelers, animators, programmers, level designers, etc, to create an open source game with an open source game engine that's both interesting and fun for people to pick up and have a lot of ready to use assets and tools for modders to use. You'd need a community as dedicated and well coordinated like Space Station 13 or UnityStation to pull that off without the project dying half way through.

 

Part of the reason why Zenimax games are still loved until this day is because of the Creation Kit and how they allowed you to use every asset and tool in their fun games to create whatever you wanted, it's that ease of modding that made everyone happy, if they (MS) take it away, gamers won't be able to find it or recreate it elsewhere.

[Zor2k13]

Without the unofficial patch team just about any beth game is a broken mess here and there during play. Take away the creation kit and that team will stop fixing beth games period. 

 

Serious sam 2014 comes out in two days it comes with a giant robot mech thing you can stomp around in and blow shit up real good with. Just in time to help deal with this crap deal.

[MIJ]

3 minutes ago, Zor2k13 said:

Without the unofficial patch team just about any beth game is a broken mess here and there during play. Take away the creation kit and that team will stop fixing beth games period.

Okay I need some conformation on this, is vanilla Bethesda games really that bad?

 

I played Skyrim LE, Fallout 3 and New Vegas without community patches (completely vanilla) on my first runs and I never really encountered any major problems except on new vegas where the robot at the ending got stuck halfway through the battle. I only install them because some mods require them and because every tutorial I read on how to make your game stable after installing 100+ mods said I need the patches.

[Zor2k13]

Try to play skyrim and go through the main quest, try to follow whatshername from that shop in riverwood when she walks you through town telling you where to go get the golden claw. Beth placed her movement markers too far apart but the patch fixes it. Have you read the changelog of the unofficial patch over the last few years? Just the log for skyrim there is a gigantic amount of fixes done.