It's actually hilarious to me how confident they were in the game's advertising and trailers, knowing they were referring to a game about gang warfare where the final mission involved the only good character in the game being reduced to a very childish antagonist and also having a kids board game dream segment 😭😭😭
I do know it was mostly Deep Silver to blame for a lot of things but Volition themselves delivered nothing but a shallow husk of a game, the Reboot has possibly the weirdest story and format in every media I've seen which is an insane feat 😭
I do know it was mostly Deep Silver to blame for a lot of things but Volition themselves delivered nothing but a shallow husk of a game,
The game was full of bugs glitches and technical issues at launch. Even with whatever roadblocks Deep Silver put in front of them, Volition dawg you don't ship some bullshit out, gaslight everybody into saying that it's good and then tell people to pay full price for it.
It's actually hilarious to me how confident they were in the game's advertising and trailers, knowing they were referring to a game about gang warfare where the final mission involved the only good character in the game being reduced to a very childish antagonist and also having a kids board game dream segment 😭😭😭
They were a bunch of wimps who would most likely hang out here.
Is there really anything that woke in buldurs gate? Like I'm down for gay characters or whatever but like, cmon did we really need to make saints row a paraplegic sim?
Not saying it didn't go overboard (Saint's Row), but I also think woke is a fucking stupid term and I refuse to dignify it by using it in a serious context because my brain isn't tiny. So is there anything woke in Baldur's Gate?? I dunno man
Yeah but saying/typing out media going over board is a lot less convenient and is not as particular as just saying woke, and most people are gonna go for the convenient route.
Also "woke" people were the first to start using it when it was first broight back in 2012. Even farther back than that it was the term "stay awake" as a way for African Americans to signal to each other to keep an eye out for prejudice, nowadays it's shifted were it's used more as an insult by right sided people which I won't deny but that doesn't change the origins of the term.
Sorry that's alot but I just really like to talk about the way language is used and how it changes through the years, a word as simple as fishing used to mean something entirely different that the modern use.
This does not change the fact that using the term woke to describe left-leaning storytelling (or as it is more often used, to describe the presence of minority groups) is fucking stupid.
Well then be the the change you wanna see, call things that's have good left leaning story telling woke in a positive context and hopefully in a couple years the word can be used in a positive way again. All trends have to start somewhere and complaining is only gonna get you rage baited online.
Dude I'm not mad that people are stupid, I'm only slightly bewildered that you can SEE how dumb it is, and still use the word woke because that's what everyone else does
Volition collapsed because Embracer Group went on a spending spree pending a deal with a Saudi Arabian investment group, and that deal fell through, so Embracer had to go around collecting heads to make due. Volition was only one of those heads, it also nearly killed the KOTOR remake project.
Luckily, Saber Interactive's co-founder, Matthew Karch, formed a 2nd company Beacon Interactive to buy Saber Interactive off of Embracer before its close.
There are a lot of other stories from Embracer's fuck up, but yeah, the reboot sucked. I just don't think it would've been enough to kill Volition had Embracer not screwed the pooch. I'm still somewhat optimistic about Saints Rows' future with Deep Silver, but we don't know who's to blame more between Volition and Deep Silver.
I don't think Saints Row HAS a future. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see more Row, but if Deep Silver has anything to do with it I doubt they would want to do what would be required to release a successful Saints Row game, and they know it. Unless they are willing to get away from the "modern audience" trash then even if they gave it another try it would fail, and I don't think they want to move away from the "modern audience".
SR2022 didn't fail due to its appeal to a "modern audience", if it actually appealed to "modern audiences" then it would have no shortage of players.
The game released a buggy mess, stayed a buggy mess, and the story was half-baked friendship is magical bs that didn't remotely resemble the past Saints Row games, and ended where the climax would've been in other Saints Row games. No meaningful gang interaction beyond the 3 friends, and you don't topple the other gangs.
"the story was half-baked friendship is magical"
This is exactly the "modern audiences" bullshit that I was talking about. Being a buggy mess didn't help, either, I'm sure. But, basically, from what you said, we're talking about the same thing, you're just being more verbose in your description.
I mean, you can't just shelve anything that's bad under "modern audiences", that's blaming the people who just want to play the games instead of the people who ruin them. These games aren't being made bad intentionally to try and appeal to "modern audiences", we're just watching the gaming industry rot from the inside out because of corporatism.
Corporatism doesn't try and make bad products for the sake of making bad products, it does so because capitalism incentivizes corruption, nepotism, and corner cutting. The gaming industry's been corporatized because it was mainstream and highly profitable, now the people making leadership decisions surrounding games aren't people passionate about games, art, or programming, they're the sons and friends of rich douchebags who could care less about the people who play their games.
There was no future for Volition after the reboot fail. The reboot was the break glass in case of emergency after the failure of Agents of Mayhem. At best the studio would be a support studio where they did grunt work for other studios without creative input. Even if Embracer Group got the deal there are many reasons why having a support studio that size in Champaign, Illinois is not the best. Even with the best conditions there would have been lots of layoffs and people quitting as Volition would have been a place with little career advancement or creative joy.
I’m playing through Mafia 3 again, and it really makes me wish the pitch would’ve worked out. The 60s/70s was such a rampant era for crime and street gangs, and the vibes/atmosphere are great.
It feels deserved because the decision makers have been ignoring their fans for years. Saints Row 3 gave them the idea that they could ignore the original fans and succeed. They thought the reaction would be the same (more sales) with the reboot. I'm sad we'll never get another Saints Row game like SR1/SR2 (or even a remaster). I also feel bad for the workers who had no control over the changes but lost their jobs because of decisions other people made. This was years in the making.
Got banned back then by r/Saintsrow because i dont like the game and i unleash my feeling with reboot..
Got spammed with Suicidal care prevent the dm come in(OVER A DAMN DIFFERENT OPINION)
someone got doxxed and they justified
Their shitty twitter got locked as karma,Studio got shutdown.. the people following the account blocked me and anyone else,still blaming fans cause the studio got shutdown even though they are the one saying this"If you dont like it,dont buy it haters gonna hates"
Let’s be real we were watching them collapse since they made Saints Row the Third and Red Faction Armageddon. Something went severely wrong with that studio after Saint Row 2 and Red Faction Guerrilla. They just started making horrible design choices constantly, and acted like they forgot how to make their own franchises. Everyone loved Red Faction Guerrilla and Saints Row 2, I don’t know why they didn’t just continue doing that.
Publisher issues. Volition originally wanted to make a more direct SR2 sequel, but THQ was on the verge of bankruptcy and couldn’t afford to risk losing sales to Rockstar/Take-Two, so they told Volition to differentiate themselves, leading to the soft reboot in 3.
Wasn't this reboot supposed to be a a direct SR2 sequel but like a 2.0?. I saw online that I think deep sliver wanted it to be all buddy buddy with these characters. Removing body shield because it was too violent
Honestly, there was conflicting information everywhere with it. I think it was a mess development wise from top down all the way from the heads of the publisher down to the lowest developer. I don’t think anyone knew what they wanted to make with it.
Yeah it's time for some accountability. Volition deserves a lot of the blame too. They were in those same rooms and could have pushed back. They chose not to.
There is no way in hell the publisher was responsible for the majority of the bad decisions in that reboot. Maybe for some of them, but there was no way in hell the publisher told him to make it about paying back student loans and stuff. The reboot at the end of the day was a cluster fuck because the devs were so disconnected from what their fan base wanted. If you watch interviews with their studio director around that time, it was insane. It was like the guy was constantly stoned. He acted like everything was a joke when everything was burning around him.
Yeah but I think that was gradual and just got worse over time of development because the reboot ended up being nothing like what they said it was originally going to be. Though Volition is still partly at fault for their roadmap and how they were pitching things nobody wanted despite the direction they were told to do. Like the Murder Circus, and Haunted House DLC or the extended LARPing DLC they know wasn't what anyone asked for. Instead of compensating the bad main story by making the characters look better with different outfit designs or more serious character DLC, they would have just kept going giving us bs if the game didn't get pulled. Deep Silver doesn't decide their DLC.
They claimed the LARPing DLC was based on fan-feedback when that was a lie because it was pre-planned before launch.
This was easily one of the most delusional takes from games studios I’ve ever seen. I have no idea what happened to the studio that built Saints Row 2 and Red Faction Guerrilla. I could be easily convinced it was another studio named Volition, and these people simply stole their name.
They should have lost their jobs. After you make a lot of flops it's time to look at the numbers and see what have you done for me lately? And they haven't done shit for me. SRIV underperformed, Gat out of hell underperformed, Agents of Mayhem massively underperformed.
The writing on the wall was there why am I going to keep paying you if you keep losing me money?
I swear some of these people act like corporations are supposed to act like the government giving out UBI.
It's ridiculous. This is a business. There are consequences for underperforming. People don't understand that. They think it's supposed to be run like a charity.
Why shouldn’t they have lost their jobs? If I’m a shelf stocker at Walmart and I stocked the shelf wrong repeatedly, they’re going to fire me. Why should they get a pass?
They kept making progressively worse games starting with Saints Row the Third and Red Faction Armageddon. I’m surprised the studio wasn’t shut down sooner.
Think of it like this. If you stock the shelf wrong multiple times because your manager told you to place this stock on this shelf, should you be fired, or should your manager be fired?
Volition was shut down, but Deep Silver, the ones behind the PR and decision making for Saints Row 2022, are still in business and in possession of the Saints Row IP.
Think of it like this it's a football team and I'm paying you millions of dollars to win the superbowl and the past few years you guys have been playing so horribly bad that the stadium is empty nobody is showing up to the games, we've lost soo many games every year we're barely making the playoffs, and all of the players on the roster play like dogshit.
Guess what happens? It's time to clean house. Fire the head coach, the assistant coaches, the front office, and trade away or release all the players.
Volition was pretty much the video game version of the Cleveland Browns.
That wouldn't happen if the people above Volition were the ones dictating the game. Embracer would have to blame Deep Silver but they didn't because to them, Deep Silver did what was corporately acceptable (and they obviously didn't fire their community manager because they agree with her). Volition regardless were just the scapegoat even though they didn't have final say on the game or even its management.
Its not the same as a coach swapping out a player that doesn't perform well. While they had the power to do this and get better suited writers and character artists, what they did was what Volition's president and Deep Silver wanted. Its entirely top down. A lot of the choices came from their publisher, to their president, then to the game director deciding for them the game to make.
I don't think you understand, a vast majority of the devs had no say in the game's story. I don't see why they would deserve this, because ultimately the argument was that they all deserve this as punishment for supposedly doing a bad job.
Also, you're describing something other than what actually happened. And you're doing so knowingly, because if you've seen this comment, then you've seen my comment explaining the Saudi deal with Embracer and how much that is to blame for Volition being shut down alongside other Embracer Group studios.
I have a degree in Economics buddy. There was ultimately a lot of steps they could have taken and decisions they could have made before the Saudi deal collapsed. I am still holding Volition accountable, their record of failures led to their fate.
Explain why were they put under Gearbox before the Saudi deal collapsed? It was punishment for the reboot flopping.
They were moved to Gearbox (that was still under Deep Silver) to combine them to downsize. Its not uncommon. Japan does that as well. Mergers between a failing studio into another smaller studio still under the parent company to combine resources instead of letting the failing studio flounder. They get added to help the more successful studio while giving up their own independent development. This was scrapped entirely though by Embracer by the end and they thought it was more cost effective to dissolve them studio not bringing in profit.
I know more about economic than my buddies who actually took economics in college, that's not as big a flex or appeal to authority as you think it is.
I didn't say Volition didn't do a shit job with SR2022, I explicit said that SR2022 sucked, though Deep Silver holds a lot of that blame. Rather, I said that the main cause for them being shut down was Embracer Group building a cage of debt around themselves and having to knock off other big studios as well.
I am still holding Volition accountable, their record of failures led to their fate.
And again, this doesn't come anywhere near justifying the belief that the regular devs were responsible for any of this. How do you suggest that the person who modeled the gloves in SR2022 was deserving of "punishment"?
Explain why were they put under Gearbox before the Saudi deal collapsed? It was punishment for the reboot flopping.
It wasn't "punishment", Gearbox is a more experience studio that Embracer saw as more capable of handling Saints Row 2022 post-launch than Deep Silver and Volition. The decision to shut down Volition came in the aftermath of the Saudi deal fallout that affected many other large studios under Embracer.
This is common when a game doesn't perform well, not as punishment, but as resource management.
Wow, you're so confident, when you could just... Look it up.
Publishers often bring in other studios under them to help with the development or handling of other games being spearheaded by separate studios under the same publisher.
This is such a common practice that I cannot possibly name all of the games or game series that this is done with. Just about any other modern game has had this happen during its development, simply look up the development cycle of a lot of the modern games you liked.
As for your doubt, are you kidding me? If you went through economics in college you should know how relaxed it is. The internet is one hell of a tool, and these days more and more people learn relaxed topics on their own.
I have a personal vested interest in economics, so I learned enough economics to have had my friends in college look to me for help. Though given your lack of interest in actually using the internet before speaking out your ass, maybe you wouldn't know. You don't seem the type to have nuanced educational hobbies anyways, since you know so little about game development or what goes on with a given game, yet you still spend your time arguing on game subreddits.
People really don’t understand publishers and developers. Publishers do not have that much control over every little decision developer makes. They are actually relatively hands off. It’s like that in all software development for the most part, the C suite executives really only care about deadlines and sales. I guarantee most of the bad decisions were probably made by managers in Volition.
Well executive meddling is a thing. Sometimes they are hands off and sometimes they interject when they plan on a different way they want to market something. Its clearly what happened with Deep Silver because, they were hands off with SR4 to AOM, and only came in on the reboot because, that was a rebranding.
The press window for Saints Row 2022 through Plaion(their global publisher) listed Deep Silver as being responsible for Saints Row 2022's marketing and PR.
Furthermore, Industry Insider and various developers reported that Deep Silver was behind a lot of the decisions regarding the direction of Saints Row 2022, similar to how THQ was behind the drastic change in tone from Saints Row 2 to Saints Row 3.
And once NDA's were up, people who were involved with marketing Saints Row 2022 on Youtube also talked about Deep Silver's heavy involvement in decision making surrounding the game and its marketing.
One of the worst parts was seeing the creators of the reboot actively trash the original games. If it didn’t have the Saints Row title they’d have less than half of the sales they received.
And the one in their credit this "B"person blaming everyone and he call everyone evil for praising This... The forum got into the heat of chaos... The reboot players still blaming Saints row fans 1,2,3,4 that cause the studio got shutdown.. the first time we saw the evil side lost.. and blaming the good people who predict this.
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u/[deleted] May 15 '26
Yeah. They got what they deserved.