Via CasualGaming: "Online casual gaming is once again in the spotlight this week with UK newspapers expressing outrage at online title Billy Suicide which, as the name suggests, sees players attempt to prevent the game's protagonist ending his life.
The storm follows hot on the heels of recent controversial titles such as Kaboom: The Suicide Bombing Game and Little Hooliganz.
Billy Suicide is a dark Flash game where users must aid their character through his daily routine. If they fail in keeping Billy's mental health at an acceptable level, he takes his own life, resulting in game over."
"30XX is one of the best roguelikes out there, combining the tight platforming action of the Mega Man X series with the challenge and randomization that roguelike fans crave. Batterystaple Games has done lots of refinement through updates since 30XX first appeared on Steam Early access a few years ago. The latest such update adds a new character for free, one who combines the best attributes of the two existing characters. Also, the Steam version is on sale, making it a great time to travel to the distant year of 30XX!" says Co-Optimus.
"Hammerwatch II's journey to Xbox has been long and perilous. After first launching on Steam in the fall of 2023, the game finally turned up on PlayStation 5 last December. Since then, Xbox gamers who enjoyed the original Hammerwatch and the sublime Heroes of Hammerwatch have been anxiously awaiting their turn at the long-promised sequel. At last, the wait is nearly over because Hammerwatch II will hit Xbox and PlayStation 4 on April 23," says Co-Optimus.
Joe 'Three Sheets' Neate (Executive Producer): "As I’m sure you can imagine, when it comes to Sea of Thieves my days are full of numbers. Development costs, active servers, days until the next update… Sometimes, though, a truly extraordinary number stands out – a number like 40 million, which I’m incredibly pleased to say is the number of pirates who’ve now set sail in Sea of Thieves!"
Garrr... more people to walk the plank and send to Davey Jones locker.
would have been funny to release this on talk like a pirate day.
40 million have set sail...that's great. How many are sailing now? Monthly active users....when it actually matters. How many people purchased the game is another important number.
You don't get numbers like that from MS mouth pieces, they just like to say stuff like "this game was looked at 129 million time, the biggest amount of people browsing a game of this genre on xbox gamepass ever in the last 3 weeks compared to before gamepass was out (small print only 2 million bothered playing longer than 20 seconds and only 100 people are playing it concurrently)
It's all smoke and mirrors
There are usually around 10,000 concurrent users on Steam not counting Xbox or PS but really it doesn't matter as long as there are enough people on the servers to play which there always were and will be for a long time now with the PS players coming on board. Same goes for how many people bought it and how many are on GP, we aren't the accountants of these console companies so why would we care?
Reporting on MAU stats is very misleading. Other companies publish units sold, MS cannot or will not due to Game Pass. We all know that their prior startegies have not panned out so now they have to actually sell games on other consoles. In any case, SoT is doing impressive preorders on PS5 and will very likely motivate Satya to release more games other than the four indicated games on their competitor's consoles. Take note Phil is radio silent....
40 Mil across Stream, Windows 10, and Xbox. Healthy numbers for sure, but when PC is the biggest platform, I expected more. It’ll be interesting to see how it does on PlayStation. Very well could be double that player count in 6 months with PS too. It’s crazy for developers to skip the most popular platform, not sure why they’d want to, but they must have had their rea$ons.
Hey, I know something else that "can act as a catalyst to influence the behaviour of people who are already vulnerable, particularly young people, and result in an overall increase in suicide"; censorship of freedom of expression. Oh, and the news.
As distasteful as the game might be (not played it), a newspaper that has 18600 articles (search) somehow related to the word "suicide" calling for censorship of catalysts, is like someone trying to shoot themselves, and every other media that one might imagine depends on the freedom of expression, in the foot.
Personally, I think their time would be better spent on some real journalism, like looking into why so many people are prone to suicide, the source of the problem, the things that matters etc. Well, maybe they have, but I can't be bothered looking through 18600 articles.
so preventing someone from commiting suicide is a bad thing? hmm ok
Thank-you PAPYRUS for opening my eyes, i shall now allow my friends to go jump off a cliff....................
WHAT!?
since when is helping someone a bad thing? seriously, mabey this game could help people to understand how to help people, how is that bad?