this post was submitted on 22 Apr 2024
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I figured the game was abandoned, to be honest. Their updates have been unreasonably slow and what little they did release was insultingly barebones. With how much money they made during their unexpected COVID success, you'd think your first order of business would be hiring a top notch PM and experienced devs to keep your development on track.
Edit: I want to add that Enshrouded, in my opinion, seems like what I had hoped Valheim would develop into with more time.
I think the devs have a pretty healthy attitude, really. Sure, they take their sweet time, but I prefer that over half-assed rush jobs and selling out. The last updates were also absolutely great and the game gets better and better. It’s in early access since forever, but it is more balanced, polished and refined than 90% of fully released games out there. And it doesn’t feel hollow after twenty hours either. It will keep fucking you up, even after hundreds of hours. It’s an absolute gem and I don’t really care if it takes them three more years to finish it…
If you consider taking 4+ years for 1 biome expansion and a few other smaller content updates to be a reasonable development cadence, you are definitely welcome to have that opinion.
To me that’s reasonable if it means the devs get to have a life and get to make something they really love. And it’s definitely reasonable given the fact that I paid fifteen euro’s for hundreds of hours of fun. They definitely do not owe me more, quite the opposite, really.
Okay but I don't think you can just assert that this is a binary without much more information. Would hiring more devs and a PM with the gobs of money they made cause any additional crunch? Obviously at extreme ends, it would, but I don't think anyone is suggesting that. For what it's worth, I like Valheim too, but they absolutely did not end up maintaining the huge amount of hype they had. That may have been intentional, but it cost them.
They made the game with a small team and apparently they want to finish it with a small team. I kind of respect the fact that they didn’t want to go (much) bigger, just because there was a lot of hype and money. And I also respect the fact that they don’t seem to care that it “cost them”.
If you want game development to be less about money, this is a pretty good example of what that could look like. It’s not the most efficient way of doing things, you are definitely right about that, but it’s great. And given what they have delivered so far, I think it’s hard to complain. There is a ridiculous amount of gameplay, for a low price. And everyone who bought it knows that it is unfinished.
Oh for sure, I don't disagree. If this is what they want, power to them! I'm also a developer, so I completely understand it. As a consumer though, I am not obligated to like their game more for it, and Valheim looks to me like a lot of potential I would have otherwise consumed left nonexistent and money/hours I would have spent on their game not happening. That's all I'm saying. It's totally fine if they read that and say "that's okay!".