The Top 10 Game Industry Disasters of 2013
02. LucasArts = Disney
The announcement that LucasArts had been scooped up by Disney came as a massive shock to the fans of its Star Wars franchise - and it did not strike most gamers as a good thing either, but every the eternal optimists and to their credit, gamers do not hold their breath.
Instead we prefer to expect the worse, hope for the best, and take what we get -- and try to make the best of it!
The Star Wars fans worse fears (or fondest dreams depending on which camp you are in) were confirmed when Disney announced it would be making three NEW Star Wars movies. Not only that but the creator of the franchise would only serve in an advisory capacity -- not produce, direct, or write them.
That shock was nothing compared to the one that the gaming community received a few months later, when the management at LucasArts game studios showed up for work one day and announced that they were closing the doors and shutting it down. Completely.They then proceeded to sell-off the IP owned by the publisher and its studio arms, practically giving away the press upon which they used to print their money. Electronic Arts picked up the Star Wars games franchise and its related licenses -- and immediately announced it would not pick up the plans for the announced franchise expansion title Star Wars 1313. Sigh.
DRM should be a crime. Publishers need to realize that ownership is what capitalism is all about. People move, have friends, share with their friends, and PC's and consoles die. Hard drives crash. No one should be punished for having to deal with an already horrible situation, ie: catastrophic HD failure.
DRM also creates more piracy that it stops.
I personally was sad to hear about the loss of THQ.
But thankful that the Warhammer franchise was bought over. For all of their terrible games, their Dawn of War and Space Marine IPs were solid, fantastic games!
Will Sims freeplay be a contender for 2014 given the uproar of their new update? Should be its been bsit and switch. A real time game where sims live 42 days! Disgraceful.
"The fact that the vast majority of the content that was being targeted legally qualifies as fair use under the current interpretation of the law considered"
That's where a lot of people have a misunderstanding about Fair Use. Their vids might be seen as Fair Use but ONLY a court of law can make that decision no one else can. Also Youtube isn't at fault here, they are doing only what the law says. If someone files a copyright claim against a vid Youtube has to take it down or they may face legal action from the content owner.
Youtube has been sued multiple times by companies and other people over copyright infringement. Youtube was actually going to shut down do to all the legal troubles until Google bought them.
I took a gamecube to Iraq as well. Eternal Darkness was the kind of thing that made war seem not so bad.
Considering the Steam OS, I personally think that was a very big announcement from Valve and as you can see, lots of game developers thought the same.
Linux is going to be the future, like it or not.
Great list. On a positive note for us non multiplayers The Last of Us single handedly saved the single player game 2013.
Who cares about THQ. In the long run something else will fill the void. And the Xbox one is hardly a failure as they are still selling strong and making microsoft money. They told us before that it will be a gaming system AND a multimedia system. People just need to understand that.