Bulletstorm 2 was planned, but cancelled
A sequel to the delightful Bulletstorm had once been in the works, Epic Games has revealed, but sadly it wasn't to be. The project was cancelled, and People Can Fly put to work on a new project. When life gives you dick-lemons, make dick-lemonade.
A sequel to delightfully silly and sweary shooter Bulletstorm had once been in the works, Epic Games has revealed, but sadly it wasn't to be. The project was cancelled, and co-developer People Can Fly was put to work on a mysterious new project. When life gives you dick-lemons, make dick-lemonade.
"We thought a lot about a sequel, and had done some initial development on it, but we found a project that we thought was a better fit for People Can Fly," Epic president Mike Capps said.
"We haven't announced that yet," he clarified to GameSpot. "But we will be announcing it pretty soon."
Commenting that he'd "love to go back" to it, Capps noted that sales weren't stellar either. "From a sales perspective it was good, but not amazing. I think EA was hoping we'd do better."
Capps waggles the finger of blame in the direction of piracy to account for poor sales of the PC edition. "It didn't do very well on PC and I think a lot of that was due to piracy," he said. "It wasn't the best PC port ever, sure, but also piracy was a pretty big problem." The poor demo and questionable marketing probably didn't help either.
To great surprise, mine especially, I thought the original Bulletstorm a forgotten gem of 2011.
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replyAlice O'Connor posted a new article, Bulletstorm 2 was planned, but cancelled.
A sequel to the delightful Bulletstorm had once been in the works, Epic Games has revealed, but sadly it wasn't to be. The project was cancelled, and People Can Fly put to work on a new project. When life gives you dick-lemons, make dick-lemonade.-
I'm glad you added the bit about poor marketing and a poorer demo. I'm sure piracy did affect sales on PC--doesn't it always?--but it does seem like the easy way out for developers looking to explain away below-average results. "It wasn't our fault! It was the pirates! They swashbuckled us out of millions! BILLIONS, even!"
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"Where's all the DRM gone?"
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"It didn't do very well on PC and I think a lot of that was due to piracy," he said. "It wasn't the best PC port ever, sure, but also piracy was a pretty big problem."
....right. Blame piracy, it's easy.
Anyway, I actually thought the game was really good (on console) so this is disappointing. I hope they come back to it one day.
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i pirated it on the ps3 so he can suck my wang
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LOL. I'm pretty sure I saw the 360 version on "sites" before the PC version showed up. The PC piracy excuse is a very poor excuse for those of us that see the console ISOs out even before the game is officially released.
I just think that people didn't even play it for PC; on gaming forums I didn't see much discussion about the game and when someone would bring up a sale on the PC version very few people conversed in the thread about the sale because it wasn't a great game.-
So are you making a correlation between recency of console iso availability and sheer volume of PC iso availability? Because I don't think that there is in any way anything like a parity here. I'm as aware of any console piracy as possible, and there is no way you can convince me that there is less piracy of PC games.
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Nobody has ever said that console piracy is larger than PC piracy. What's retarded is blaming all your problems on one and pretending the other doesn't exist at all.
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I don't see them saying this. I see them saying this: "I think EA was hoping we'd do better." And of course, all piracy plays do not equate an actual sale lost, because many would not buy the game if they had to in order to play. However, just knowing the persistence of piracy on the PC platform, I can't imagine that if even a fraction of those piracy plays were a sale that this title (or many titles) wouldn't have done much better.
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Every 360 and PS3 game for a long time are cracked and available just like the PC and in fact the 360 and PS3 versions come out way before the PC version.
Interesting no one really talks about that :(
I telling you make all pre orders for PC games like Kickstarter where you see the amount pre ordered and the money counter it be a massive move for the industry. No more bullshit piracy excuses or what ever we would have hard numbers and facts.
Oh yeah PC scapegoat douches that think PC piracy is hardcore(not talking about Shackers), fucking FYI --> The Witcher 2 Assassins Of Kings Enhanced edition is out for the Xbox 360 and its not out for the PC on the hacker scene, so you tell me where the piracy is worse?
:( piracy on the PC is a cheap excuse, it doesn't fly anymore.-
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Valcan, I think devs blame PC piracy for poor results more than they blame console piracy, because console piracy really isn't as prevalent. You're absolutely right in that pirated console games are out and available, but cracking a console requires more work than downloading a PC-game ISO and running/burning it. Anyone with a PC can pirate PC games, but consoles require mod chips, soldering, and other work that isn't as easy to perform.
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Not to mention the risk involved. If Microsoft detects you playing a pirate game, they ban your account/system (one or both) from Xbox Live. Given that most console gamers these days live and breathe multiplayer stuff, that pretty much makes piracy a deal breaker.
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You are right :( there is more effort for sure, its just frustrating, it feels so one sided.
I hate the feeling that the picture of piracy for the PC could cause certain games to not show up on the PC.
Sigh, all well its part of gaming I suppose not much you can do, such a shitty deal :(
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Maybe the Industry would make better games with the Kickstarter idea. They'd REALLY see what people wanted and just make the same upgraded revision title every year. A way for people to really vote with their money is to help fund the project they want to play. Granted, you're technically paying a few bucks more for that AAA title you helped fund and bought, but you also helped it be a better game (most likely).
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I blame shitty PC controls and that it was $20 overpriced for what you got at the release date. From what I played at release, they put little effort into the PC version and they are surprised that PC players didn't run out to buy the game.
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also, the game was GFWL and it took me 30 minutes to figure out that I needed to update GFWL to play the game. Error message was generic and didn't say what was wrong.
Great art in the game. Good humor (imo). -
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Also if devs want people to stay away from their titles. Be sure to tie it to GFWL or Gamespy.
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That's a far more likely reason the game didn't sell well than piracy.. not to mention it could be (one of) the reason(s) why people were driven to pirate instead of pay for it.
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hahaha I knew it. Never change Epic.
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Well, as much as I hate to take data and evidence and say "nuh uhh...", what did Crytek say exactly?
If memory serves the one data point they brought up was that the PATCH for Crysis (1) was downloaded like twice as many times as the game was purchased.
If the patch was downloaded 10x as much as the game I could see a point but that could also just mean a lot of people needed to download the patch more than once for whatever reason. For that matter, I don't think that they ever said how they got this number - it's not like they have all of the download info from all of the places it was downloaded.
They may have had a very legit reason behind the scenes but when you lob out a flimsy statistic attached to a game that a large portion of the PC world could not play in 2007 on release, it's suspicious.
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i bought it when it was on sale for 5 bucks on steam a week or two ago... it's pretty damn boring. follow the hallway, do some QTE's, shoot the popup enemies.
bleh.
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Fuck this really pisses me off :( I really loved #1
So much rage, you know what these high profile devs shops should do Kickstarters for their games and see what type of numbers the PC would get. Some times I feel their excuses are bullshit with Kickstarter you would see if its worth it or not.
Hell you don't need kickstarter their should be a visible pre order amount to target for PC games that be real cool to see.
Shhh next time don't make whack adds that are marketed really badly and a demo that is nothing like the real game. -
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Can't say I didn't squeeze what entertainment I could out it after picking it up on the x-mas sale, but I think $5 was more than it was worth. Maybe multiplayer was where all the fun was.
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Pretty sure the general opinion of the game here is that it's good and a lot of fun.
I loved Bulletstorm. -
Not me: http://www.shacknews.com/chatty?id=25417810#item_25417810
Bought it at full price and loved it -
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It seemed like a very polarizing game to me
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It wasn't great. One of my biggest purchase regrets of 2011.
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I can't get past Mission 1 due to a Crash To Desktop every time I pass an invisible line in the sand.
I move the metal plate and kick a barrel at dudes, then I go to the next barrel to kick it, and crash. If I shoot the barrel from a distance, it crashes when I get to that spot.
This is AFTER updating my video drivers to get past the part in the Intro Mission where I got on the elevator, and everything went black. Not lighting black, No Graphics black. But the escape menu still worked, showed up superimposed on nothingness.
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one would assume that pirates don't discriminate between which games to pirate other than the ones they like.
one also assumes piracy affects all games of the same nature equally, so that doesn't explain why bulletstorm did worse than other games of the same genre if it was, as CAPPS leads us to believe that somehow it *deserved* better sales.
it's almost like CAPPS is in denial.
i personally thought bulletstorm was quite good. certainly not worth the full price, but both the writing and the gameplay mechanics were a breath of fresh air in an otherwise stale genre. -
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Couldn't resist could you Epic. Point your fingers at your customers and blame them for shitty sales. Can't wait for you to cry when your next PC extravaganza is underperforming. Remember, treat your customers with contempt, and they'll remember.
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If Bulletstorm was originally released on Steam and didn't use GFWL, sales would have been A LOT better.
As it is I bought it for £14 on release (got a cheap deal somewhere) and had a thoroughly enjoyable 12 hours smashing through the game. -
Soon as I saw this item on RPS this morning I knew it would be a shitstorm once it hit the Shack.
Dear Shack,
I know you didn't pirate the game. I didn't pirate it, dognose bought it for me. And like a dozen other people as well.
I know you don't pirate games. You buy them retail or used or off Steam or GOG but you don't pirate games.
Here's what you need to know and accept though: other people do pirate games. Yes, they really do.
I know you don't want to accept this. I know you want to find [TRITE_REASON_X] why it didn't sell other than piracy. I know you want to use [DRM_ARGUMENT_1] why piracy is not the problem.
Here's the thing: as has been said time and time again, the people who make these games and publish them are not stupid. They don't think one pirated game is one lost sale. They don't see that DRM turns people off and so they just apply more of it. They do have ways of knowing sales numbers. And yeah, some number of these games are probably dialing home and reporting on pirated copies.
I know why you're fighting it. You're afraid that if publishers decide that the PC is just a big piracy haven then they'll abandon it. You're afraid that Ubisoft-level DRM is going to take over.
But instead the opposite is happening. Rockstar went from not even acknowledging a PC port of GTA4 for months after the console release to a day-and-date release of GTA5 on the PC with the console versions. They made a PC port of LA Noir (no RDR though). Alan Wake finally came, with all the DLC and a cheaper price in tow. Gearbox went from delivering a shoddy Borderlands port to literally writing a love letter promising a superior PC experience with Borderlands 2 (as opposed to just dropping the PC port since everyone bitched so much). EA has not only kept making PC versions of games but they now make their own Steam competitor. GameStop doesn't have much of a PC gaming presence in their brick and mortar stores but they bought Impulse, another Steam competitor. Companies like Microsoft are getting back on board with things like their PC port of Fable III (the first MGS PC release in years), Age of Empires Online, and Flight, all on Steam even they run a Steam competitior. And even indie devs are making serious bank thanks to indie bundles and such. Plus thanks to Steam and the Mac App Store, even the Macintosh is a viable platform now and Valve is even attempting to port Source to Linux. Dark Souls is coming to the PC. Epic is making a PC-exclusive title again. And for fucks sake Ubisoft just released recent games on GOG with zero DRM.
Piracy is a problem. When a game developer says piracy is a problem they're not just making excuses. I don't know the answer. No one does. Ubisoft is even waffling.
But in the meantime just accept it and drive on.-
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The developers seem to think that only his game is released in a certain month and that we have unlimited money.
If we have to choose between games, obviously we will buy the better ones, and if we have bought enough games (or enough for each person budget) obviously we aren't going to buy more games.
And there is were piracy comes into play for a lot of users. nothing, or a pirated copy that DOESN'T damage developers at all (because they wouldn't have bought it anyway)?
Then they tip the balance against them, by adding, GFWL, badly porting it, etc etc; so obviously people is going to buy another game instead.
Bulletstorm wasn't a bad game, but it was not good enough for its price.-
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You forget the fact that a % of the people that pirate the games at release, buy it when the price lowers.
Doing so doesn't hurt the developer in any way possible, because we are not talking about physical goods here, and those people weren't going to buy it at the full price anyway.
And when you buy a game at a sale price, its only means that the initial price tag wasn't a good one, it means nothing about piracy.
You know, there is a reason why Blizzard and Valve have very few piracy problems, and that really means a lot.
If a developer makes a good product at a good price and treats their costomer good, people care more about their product and prioritizes that game on top of other possible purchases when deciding wich games to buy or not.
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There are a lot of game developers, there are a lot of games, and there is a big video game market.
Are you seriously trying to say that only 12 games a year should be released because you or others can only afford one $60 game per month?
If you (or others) can't afford it don't buy it. Seriously. The full price is the "have to have it" price. The people who don't want to wait three months for L4D2 to go on sale buy it on day one. The people who have to have it day one pay full price. It's called price segmentation.-
If you want to play the multiplayer in a console game that isn't Call of Duty or Halo, you need to buy it within the first three weeks, during the peak of its popularity, otherwise you're stuck trying to create matches with your friends, or trawling the pub cesspool. Case in point: Brink. That was a game that died due to quickly waning interest and insufficient developer post-release support.
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Im not saying that, im saying that they expect that we all buy all of theirs games independent of the quality, price, etc, and when they wake up from that dream of perfect sales, they blame piracy.
And variety is good, but when your game sells less than the compentence don't blame piracy.....
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> GFWL
Which no one besides those on the Shack had a problem with
> poor marketing
No argument there
> high price point
$60 is the new AAA norm. Get used to it. If you don't like it don't pay it. Wait for it to become cheap. Like when it was $5 on Steam.
I assume that they're counting a $5 sale as a "sale" and so when they say sales were poor they're including the $5 sales in there.
> janky pc port
PC port ran fine for me. Not sure what your problem was.
> weak demo
Never played the demo so I'll take your word for it.
And absolutely none of your arguments address the concept that they probably know how badly it was pirated anyway, and most of them come across as piracy justification.-
Games that sell well are pirated too. And while $60 may be the norm for AAA games, people aren't going to buy a $60 AAA game they don't know shit about. So we have a $60 game that nobody know about with a crappy demo, and the answer must be piracy? No, no, no. Let's not blame anybody else, especially those connected with the game, the demo, or the marketing and publishing.
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You are seriously missing my fundamental point.
Let's say, for the sake of argument, that they can actually know sales and piracy numbers. Or at least get the ballpark figures.
If a game doesn't sell well and doesn't get pirated much or at all then yes, it was probably the quality of the game or the marketing or something.
But if a game doesn't sell well and also gets pirated a lot, probably even more than it sold, is it not a valid argument that the sequel should be canceled since the original game didn't sell and was pirated a lot?
I mean, I get what you're trying to say - that the game didn't sell well because it wasn't marketed well enough. But not every game has the budget to be marketed properly. And not every developer puts out a good demo. Are you saying that only the games that can afford to be marketed well deserve to exist or sell well? Because that's going to make every single game Gears of War or Madden.-
I'm willing to guess that most games get pirated more than they sell. That's what pirates do: they steal stuff. There are developers who don't get scared by piracy numbers, but think of it in a different way, like Gabe Newell: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/38082/Valve_Piracy_Is_More_About_Convenience_Than_Price.php
"The easiest way to stop piracy is not by putting antipiracy technology to work. It’s by giving those people a service that’s better than what they’re receiving from the pirates."
Bulletstorm didn't get a sequel because it financially broke even (the exact phrase from Capps was "didn't make money for us": http://www.shacknews.com/article/69406/epic-bulletstorm-hasnt-been-profitable ). That, along with the "we have this other project that was a better fit for People Can Fly" remark. -
Who makes a AAA game and doesn't market it? Aparently the same people that are suprised when sales are low. And whats the best way to cover up for the fact that your stupid enough to invest AAA bucks in a game and then put out the crappiest possible demo and not market it? Blame piracy. Lol.
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"> GFWL
Which no one besides those on the Shack had a problem with"
GFWL is a piece of crap. I will not ever even remotely considering getting a game that uses it. You are just smugly dismissing concerns over GFWL as being relegated to the Shack while there are many REAL issues with GFWL. After the horrible experience I had with GOW PC, I will never go near that piece of crap again. But I guess the fact that it was virtually impossible for me to sign up for GFWL doesn't count as a problem or my experience should just be dismissed as irrelevant because I happen to post on the Shack?
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Whoa, whoa, hold up. What's this talk of a GTA5 release date?
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Sorry, I thought they had announced platforms but instead what's happened is that there's been a rumor/leak that it will come out for PS3/360/PC at the same time. But there's been no release date set, the "day and date" thing was referring to the PC version launching with the consoles.
I do think it will be on the PC as well as consoles, or at least they're thinking about it, otherwise they could just go ahead and announce PS3/360 since those are a given.
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Well said, Schnapple.
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Wow, where to start?
Rockstar went from not even acknowledging a PC port of GTA4 for months after the console release to a day-and-date release of GTA5 on the PC with the console versions. Hasn't happened yet; don't treat forward-looking statements as fact.
Alan Wake finally came, with all the DLC and a cheaper price in tow. This is despite Microsoft's prior efforts to keep Alan Wake off of the PC. Microsoft did have to sign off on allowing Remedy to release Alan Wake on Steam, so let's thank Microsoft for letting Remedy develop and release Alan Wake on the PC.
Gearbox went from delivering a shoddy Borderlands port to literally writing a love letter promising a superior PC experience with Borderlands 2 (as opposed to just dropping the PC port since everyone bitched so much). Again, forward looking statements.
EA has not only kept making PC versions of games but they now make their own Steam competitor. GameStop doesn't have much of a PC gaming presence in their brick and mortar stores but they bought Impulse, another Steam competitor. EA's Origin is one of the worst-reviewed PC digital distribution platforms in terms of customer experience. Impulse isn't much to write home about; GameStop was an opportunist, picking up something that StarDock didn't want to run anymore.
Companies like Microsoft are getting back on board with things like their PC port of Fable III (the first MGS PC release in years), Age of Empires Online, and Flight... OH NO YOU DI'INT!! Microsoft released a Fable III port many many months after the original console release, Facebook-ified AoE, and turned Flight into a shadow of its former self, killing off its long-established user-generated content and third-party content. In terms of Microsoft PC games, this isn't a Renaissance, but a new Dark Age.
Dark Souls is coming to the PC. Epic is making a PC-exclusive title again. More forward-looking statements; stop it already.-
[GTA5] Hasn't happened yet; don't treat forward-looking statements as fact.
I admitted my error above
This is despite Microsoft's prior efforts to keep Alan Wake off of the PC.
Microsoft didn't make efforts to keep it off of the PC, they just didn't fund the PC port. I think the significant takeaway is that Remedy thought it would be worthwhile to do a PC port anyway and their sales numbers bear that out.
[Gearbox] Again, forward looking statements.
Are you arguing that they didn't write the PC a love letter?
http://www.borderlands2.com/loveletter/
I mean yeah time will tell if they follow through but the significant takeaway is that they didn't decide to drop the PC port of Borderlands 2 and instead are kissing asses. Surely this means the PC port is worth doing, even if gamers bitched about the port of the first one.
In terms of Microsoft PC games, this isn't a Renaissance, but a new Dark Age.
No, the Dark Age was when they didn't put out anything, game-wise, on the PC.
Fable III did indeed come out long after its console counterpart but again they still thought it was worth doing a PC port even though they did not do a port of the second game.
AoE got Facebook-ified because Ensemble couldn't manage or plan worth shit so they got closed
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/crunch-culture-killed-ensemble-studios
Flight is not the successor to Flight Simulator. Flight Simulator was a dinosaur on a creaky, old, completely CPU-driven engine that was not seen as worth saving in light of sales. Flight Simulator was always a weird product as it wasn't a game and it wasn't a software product like Microsoft is used to doing. Flight is more like a game and so that's what Microsoft is doing. If you want a flight simulator, go run X-Plane or one of the now superior FSX competitors.
More forward-looking statements; stop it already.
I can't possibly be excited about announcements?
What the hell happened to you to make you so bitter and angry?
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Damn, I loved it, favorite FPS in the last few years.
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This is why I think that Epic's unannounced "PC-only" title will be an MMO, F2P, or otherwise require master server authentication.
In case of poor PC sales, blame piracy. A proud, 4 year tradition at Epic. -
I've only just had the pleasure of playing this game (thanks Ormsbee!) and it's pretty damn good. The graphics artists and map makers really earned their money in it that's for sure. OK the story and dialog won't win any awards, but it was far better than I was expecting and I would have definitely been interested in a sequel. Shame that.
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If it wasn't for the tie-in for the GoW3 Beta I doubt it would have done well on consoles either. The game had it's novelty, but it wasn't very good. The graphics were terrible, the sound design lacking, levels were uninspiring, and the over-the-top cliches and profanity got old after 20minutes.
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I had fun playing it and therefore it was fun. QED.
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I really loved this game. I was hoping for a sequel. oh well......
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Maybe releasing a demo that showed quite possibly the worst aspect of the game wasn't such a good idea after all?
The demo disgusted me, really, and I ignored this game till Deathlove gifted it to me during a sale.
The game's great, I had tons of fun, but the demo was so fucking awful and not representative of the real game. And there were many people with the same opinion. -
The demo was terrible so I didn't buy it. Probably was the same for other people.
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too bad, I had a blast. Months and months after it came out though, thanks to marketing and poor word of mouth from the demo. Maybe they could have handled it a little better?
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A shame. BS was great, one of the biggest sleeper "hits" for me ever. It's a shame that the market has room/demand for several military shooters per year, but not one original straight forward shooter like BS. I mean I play and enjoy my CoDs and BFs, but damn if kicking goons in the face and impaling them with cactuses was a nice change of pace.
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This is great news one utter shit waste of a game is not coming back just hope its dead with out hope of a necromancer walking past to summon it back to life a year or two down the road.
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I tried buying it on steam, but it was not available in my region.
I tried even EA store, but nope, not available in my region
Did some digging and apparently it was not to be sold in iceland because games for windows live don't support it.
First game i've pirated in years, after sincere tries of trying to get them to accept my money.
Is an awesome game. And I will actually buy it if It ever becomes available on steam "in my region"
Don't blame piracy if that is the only bloody option to get the game! -
I wanna talk to this guy and explain that poor sales on the PC had nothing to do with piracy. I bought this game, had to manually edit my .ini to get it to show textures, the .ini was locked so I created a support ticket, 2-3 days later there was a fan fix for the issue, closed my ticet with EA saying "I fixed my problem." EA then sent me a 30 dollar voucher for any game on Origin (I chose "The Saboteur" by the way.)
Piracy wasn't the issue for me, it was the bugginess and lack of PC support that ruined it in my book.
And besides, EPIC's name was all over this thing (more than people can fly anyway) and this is the first game you give us since Gears Of War 1 and Unreal Tournament III, then you complain about not having your old market share? I've played enough Game Dev Story to know that if you don't realease a game in a few years, you start losing fans... :)-
I just signed up to say well ****** said. I remember Epic ditching the pc for gears of war 2 and 3 and being pretty pissed. The only thing that kept me buying bulletstorm when it came out was that it was more people can flys work than epics. That and I can't pass up a potential mix of unreal and painkiller which I believe I got. gFUUUwl will delete your game saves on a good day. Anyone arguing that they dont have a problem with GFWL just isn't normal... If you haven't had your saves deleted yet try moving your game progress to another computer.
What I still don't understand is that I bought the game on steam, what the hell was GFWL needed if the game was on steam...-
And what ***** me off the most is I won't get to see that cyborg guy totally malfunctioning and going completely mental now. I was really looking forward to part 2. Away and **** yourself Epic
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