PC Hopes and Worries about the Telltale Closure and Future of Console Edition

[Laz Man]

Heres the issue, and alot of people are quick to say "it's not tfp its telltale" this game is now solely in tfps hands which means they cannot shift blame anymore. 

I was never asking it to keep pace with the pc version simply wishing they wouldnt have even tried, yeah fine updates are great but every update hurt the game worse, sadly I'm not sure how much of what the dev's say can be trusted after how they handled the news about the game rights. They held onto the info until after an update dropped likely to hide behind the uptick in players so they can say "the game is just more popular on pc" most games dont do massive overhauls so I cant say one way or the other if this is true. My comparison to minecraft was intentional yeah the graphics are better on 7dtd but minecraft was made by one dude and changed hands twice after that, the game has far more in terms of content and again runs on a phone on its latest version, people are quick to say the issue is with the consoles but far more intensive games run just fine on them, the issue is with the engine not the system I mean come on ARK can run on consoles, dayz was ported, yet this game of all games just somehow gets a pass for not being able to run, also looking at where the consoles are right now graphically they aren't too intense.

Perhaps they shouldnt have  allowed the game to be ported in the first place.

However, if Telltale approached me proposing that they could successfully port over my game as a complete sandbox game to console I might of taken the offer as well...

Prior to Telltales bankruptcy, I never knew of their financial woes and only knew them from their successful titles (e.g. TWD, etc.)

It is worth pointing out that despite all of the issues console gamers were able to purchase a one of a kind game (for consoles) and continue to enjoy it even until this day which is a huge value add considered how quick consumers shelve other AAA titles...

Not a game developer so I cant speak to how easy or hard it was to port Ark/Dayz...both titles are not voxel titles though so not exactly an apples to apples comparison.  I would assume it also boils down to how experienced/knowledgeable the company who is doing the port is as well...dont know who did the ports for Ark/Dayz but last I checked.those titles were not without their own share of problems on console.

Edit: I took a quick peek at the ark xbox forums and guess what?  One of the issues they have is no save button and game crashes and all progress is lost...

 

[Ralco]

Perhaps they shouldnt have  allowed the game to be ported in the first place.

However, if Telltale approached me proposing that they could successfully port over my game as a complete sandbox game to console I might of taken the offer as well...

Prior to Telltales bankruptcy, I never knew of their financial woes and only knew them from their successful titles (e.g. TWD, etc.)

It is worth pointing out that despite all of the issues console gamers were able to purchase a one of a kind game (for consoles) and continue to enjoy it even until this day which is a huge value add considered how quick consumers shelve other AAA titles...

Not a game developer so I cant speak to how easy or hard it was to port Ark/Dayz...both titles are not voxel titles though so not exactly an apples to apples comparison.  I would assume it also boils down to how experienced/knowledgeable the company who is doing the port is as well...dont know who did the ports for Ark/Dayz but last I checked.those titles were not without their own share of problems on console.

Edit: I took a quick peek at the ark xbox forums and guess what?  One of the issues they have is no save button and game crashes and all progress is lost...

Oh yeah no doubt ark is a massive turd of a game in general, build your base a little too big and you're down to 5 fps (and that's on playstation) I just did a quick look around and this game has reviewed like crap since launch (player reviews I give exactly 0 care to critics) on xbox alone 50% of all reviews are one star and highly negative, not massively important one of my favorite games is universally hated (the first watch_dogs) what I was looking for were recent reviews from people who'd just purchased the game or updated their reviews. Most have not updated their reviews on any platform. Now why does this matter? Because there was talk of a massive lawsuit against tfp a long while back over reused assets they didnt own, specifically the zombies, they didnt have the money to settle or fight so they sold the rights to telltale. This explains why they suddenly decided the game should be ported despite even to this day saying it was never supposed to be, they needed fast cash, this is all speculation due to the time frames these things happened however if this is true this proves what the game was on console. Also I looked at the steam data for player count and there are months they average less than 8k players, meanwhile consoles never average less than 10k on weekends as they put it. Almost assuredly that number is far higher right now due to the rona, yes the game sold 6m copies on pc but it also sold 4m on consoles, there are people still buying it on console, with full rights back after Sony and Microsoft take their 30% (which is the same cut steam takes) all the remainder goes to tfp now, and instead of treating that with care they're ruining their public image. Metacritic has the ps version at a 5.4 and the xone version at a 5.2, if the xbox version does run worse then theres still major issues with the playstation version, sadly playstation seems to not have user reviews on their own store. But as I said the reviews on the Microsoft store are 50% one star, only 16% are 5, and anything in between is mostly negative.

 

[meganoth]

Oh yeah no doubt ark is a massive turd of a game in general, build your base a little too big and you're down to 5 fps (and that's on playstation) I just did a quick look around and this game has reviewed like crap since launch (player reviews I give exactly 0 care to critics) on xbox alone 50% of all reviews are one star and highly negative, not massively important one of my favorite games is universally hated (the first watch_dogs) what I was looking for were recent reviews from people who'd just purchased the game or updated their reviews. Most have not updated their reviews on any platform. Now why does this matter? Because there was talk of a massive lawsuit against tfp a long while back over reused assets they didnt own, specifically the zombies, they didnt have the money to settle or fight so they sold the rights to telltale. This explains why they suddenly decided the game should be ported despite even to this day saying it was never supposed to be, they needed fast cash, this is all speculation due to the time frames these things happened however if this is true this proves what the game was on console. Also I looked at the steam data for player count and there are months they average less than 8k players, meanwhile consoles never average less than 10k on weekends as they put it. Almost assuredly that number is far higher right now due to the rona, yes the game sold 6m copies on pc but it also sold 4m on consoles, there are people still buying it on console, with full rights back after Sony and Microsoft take their 30% (which is the same cut steam takes) all the remainder goes to tfp now, and instead of treating that with care they're ruining their public image. Metacritic has the ps version at a 5.4 and the xone version at a 5.2, if the xbox version does run worse then theres still major issues with the playstation version, sadly playstation seems to not have user reviews on their own store. But as I said the reviews on the Microsoft store are 50% one star, only 16% are 5, and anything in between is mostly negative.

Interesting theory about the reused assets trouble pushing them to the telltale deal, but I looked around the web for some info and two facts don't quite fit:

1) the assets thing was in mid 2014 when 7D2D was still at version 7. The console version from telltale released in april 2016. Now it is still possible that the deal was brokered 2 years earlier and they waited for a promising version to port. Still, a lot of time between the two events

2) The biggest problem with the theory though is that it was one single asset that seems to have been bought in the unity asset store from a dishonest seller. The company who owned the asset (Tripwire Interactive) couldn't reach TFP and contacted steam for a takedown as a last resort. The lawyer from tripwire said "This could have been resolved in one hour" and a sum of $1000 for a licence is mentioned somewhere. And that sum seems about the right price for one single asset!

Now even if there was a lawsuit (that was somehow kept secret, because a lawsuit is mentioned nowhere) and triple damages were awarded that would be about $3000 for TFP to pay. And that one year after a kickstarter that put a bit less than $500.000 into their accounts.

 

[Laz Man]

i have tinfoil hats for the both of you.  Cabin fever from covid? lol

 

[Ralco]

Interesting theory about the reused assets trouble pushing them to the telltale deal, but I looked around the web for some info and two facts don't quite fit:

1) the assets thing was in mid 2014 when 7D2D was still at version 7. The console version from telltale released in april 2016. Now it is still possible that the deal was brokered 2 years earlier and they waited for a promising version to port. Still, a lot of time between the two events

2) The biggest problem with the theory though is that it was one single asset that seems to have been bought in the unity asset store from a dishonest seller. The company who owned the asset (Tripwire Interactive) couldn't reach TFP and contacted steam for a takedown as a last resort. The lawyer from tripwire said "This could have been resolved in one hour" and a sum of $1000 for a licence is mentioned somewhere. And that sum seems about the right price for one single asset!

Now even if there was a lawsuit (that was somehow kept secret, because a lawsuit is mentioned nowhere) and triple damages were awarded that would be about $3000 for TFP to pay. And that one year after a kickstarter that put a bit less than $500.000 into their 

This is why I said I'd heard talk, I hadn't ever looked into it it was just a pretty good reason as to why they went against their apparent refusal to port to console. 

i have tinfoil hats for the both of you.  Cabin fever from covid? lol

Tinfoil hats? You clearly read none of this. 

 

[Ralco]

Now even if there was a lawsuit (that was somehow kept secret, because a lawsuit is mentioned nowhere) and triple damages were awarded that would be about $3000 for TFP to pay. And that one year after a kickstarter that put a bit less than $500.000 into their accounts.

This part also doesnt hold up when there are people defending the unwillingness to update this game with "every update costs them millions" 500k isnt much if that's true, and besides as said before microsoft and Sony take 30% and telltale would take their cut even if tfp only got a small percentage they still made money (4 million copies sold isnt nothing) and this is only factoring in the games sold as digital copies not hard copies of which microsoft and sony wouldnt take a cut. The data is hard to find on how many of those 4 million were digital or hard copies, but as the game is still being sold on both stores that money isnt going nowhere, telltale is gone and by proxy so to is iron galaxy, so if the game sells for 30 dollars ish on both stores and the stores take 30% that leaves 70% of the profits now going to tfp and instead of using that money to hire out a few small developers to push out small updates for a couple of months they instead are taking that money and putting it towards this possible next gen game which isnt confirmed rick just said hed like to and we wont know until the pc version goes gold whether they even want to do a next gen port. We can talk all day about what they might do but what they're doing as of now is not consumer friendly. 

 

[Jon Dillinger]

Well folk i have no Fear i been mowing grannies lawns and cleaning out gutters saving my tips and quit drinking for 6 months and now i built  PC . So what are you console guys waiting for AS aPS4 (PS4 was the more stable ) who moved to PC i was actually amazed to see how well the underpowered ps4 could play . im on a 8 core 64 gigd ram and 4 video and i can barely push the Frames i was getting on console at high res . This leads me to the my next point Holy crap can this game be optimized . So im assuming once 7 days finally goes gold it will be super optimized and we'll see it on PS5 any one hoping to see anything more on Ps4 good luck , but then again early in the new console gen it is a risk doing a NEXTgen only title release . so maybe well see a second Gold version now so you may be asked to buy a whole new game and before you all freak and start saying why do i have to buy the same game twice (mine craft and mine craft java mine craft bed rok xbox 360 version so on ) Technically any Gold version of the NEw 7 days will legally be a New game completely unrelated to the TTG version of A14 Honestly if TTG would have released 7 days as a BETA we would have gotten a lot more update and it would have been tons cheaper for TTG it could have help stem the bleeding............................Roland look what you started LOL . Ps don't walk away from a generating Map lest return to find yourself mauled by a Boar wolf bear zombie dog ( my 1st day on PC it took my 55 min to generate my 1st map i went to the bank and back it was still on country roads) ok well i have the day off so it looks like ima go check out the PC alpha 19 seeds thread later my former console mates .hurray for controllers support in A19 it works great !! even on Linux (i love and hate linux )

 

[meganoth]

Well folk i have no Fear i been mowing grannies lawns and cleaning out gutters saving my tips and quit drinking for 6 months and now i built  PC . So what are you console guys waiting for AS aPS4 (PS4 was the more stable ) who moved to PC i was actually amazed to see how well the underpowered ps4 could play . im on a 8 core 64 gigd ram and 4 video and i can barely push the Frames i was getting on console at high res . This leads me to the my next point Holy crap can this game be optimized . So im assuming once 7 days finally goes gold it will be super optimized and we'll see it on PS5 any one hoping to see anything more on Ps4 good luck , but then again early in the new console gen it is a risk doing a NEXTgen only title release . so maybe well see a second Gold version now so you may be asked to buy a whole new game and before you all freak and start saying why do i have to buy the same game twice (mine craft and mine craft java mine craft bed rok xbox 360 version so on ) Technically any Gold version of the NEw 7 days will legally be a New game completely unrelated to the TTG version of A14 Honestly if TTG would have released 7 days as a BETA we would have gotten a lot more update and it would have been tons cheaper for TTG it could have help stem the bleeding............................Roland look what you started LOL . Ps don't walk away from a generating Map lest return to find yourself mauled by a Boar wolf bear zombie dog ( my 1st day on PC it took my 55 min to generate my 1st map i went to the bank and back it was still on country roads) ok well i have the day off so it looks like ima go check out the PC alpha 19 seeds thread later my former console mates .hurray for controllers support in A19 it works great !! even on Linux (i love and hate linux )

Good tongue-in-cheek opinion piece, sadly in a hard to read text block. The same with Ralco. Is this some writing deficiency induced by playing too much on console?

The comparison of A19 FPS with console FPS is a bit unfair, graphics quality and feature content made a big jump and that costs a lot of cycles. Maybe download the old A15 on your new PC and see if you get more FPS out of it now than on PS4.

The developers of the game say they already used up many of the easier optimizations. A lot of potential is probably wasted because they use a commercially available engine (Unity) that is NOT optimized for voxels and closed source. And this optimization mismatch even extends down to the graphics card hardware which was not built to make voxels fast and easy.

I remember that one of the first voxel games ever had the same problem of being impressive in how you could interact with the world but could not hold up to normal games in graphics quality and FPS. And until a short time ago raytracing  was in a similar situation, until nvidia poured massive resources into making the hardware and software support it. No such endeavour was ever made for voxels.

 

[Outlaw_187]

Good tongue-in-cheek opinion piece, sadly in a hard to read text block. The same with Ralco. Is this some writing deficiency induced by playing too much on console?

Hey, easy with taking shots at us console players! 

You both made great points. We just want the best for the console version and we console players are passionate about this game. 

I for one am very greatfull this game was ported to consoles, otherwise I never would have even heard of it. I'm a console player, always have been & always will be. 

I was lucky enough to get a good enough laptop to play the current version of 7dtd and am loving every minute. Not everyone can afford this and really is stupid for one to buy a PC strictly to play this game...although I will admit I kinda did

Anyhow I will support this game on any platform, paid dlc to update our current version, buy a whole new "gold" version on PS4 or ps5 or whatever. 

I realize the pimps were shafted by telltale & now they're being dragged through the mud since they bought the rights back. However I don't blame the fun pimps, they're taking care of their core crowd, the PC version since that is where this all started. 

I have faith they won't forget about us console folks although I also realize this is WAY down the road. 

All I know is I'll be here waiting for them!

 

[meganoth]

Hey, easy with taking shots at us console players! 

You both made great points. We just want the best for the console version and we console players are passionate about this game. 

I for one am very greatfull this game was ported to consoles, otherwise I never would have even heard of it. I'm a console player, always have been & always will be. 

I was lucky enough to get a good enough laptop to play the current version of 7dtd and am loving every minute. Not everyone can afford this and really is stupid for one to buy a PC strictly to play this game...although I will admit I kinda did

Anyhow I will support this game on any platform, paid dlc to update our current version, buy a whole new "gold" version on PS4 or ps5 or whatever. 

I realize the pimps were shafted by telltale & now they're being dragged through the mud since they bought the rights back. However I don't blame the fun pimps, they're taking care of their core crowd, the PC version since that is where this all started. 

I have faith they won't forget about us console folks although I also realize this is WAY down the road. 

All I know is I'll be here waiting for them!

Exactly. Buying a PC just for one game is madness, unless you have the money and can't live without that game anymore.

The sensible thing for most console players (who eventually get a next-gen console to replace their current one anyway) is to wait for a relatively probable version of the finished game on next-gen (I'm being kind of captain obvious to even spell that out).

 

[Jon Dillinger]

So yeah my typing is devoid of any punctuation , and my sentences only 90 % complete and missing a word or two , and not trying to make excuses but, Dyslexia ,Tracking issues and 5 concussions may be a recipe for the subpar typing ability , and couple that with impatience ,three beers and a doobie (lol "beers and a doobie"i swear that could have been a movie ) and being awake playing 7 days 16 hrs strait would also influence the situation . i thank you guys for your candor and hope to maybe improve my type some what , ill never be as code as some one who types for a living coders and mods and such . my point is thank you for considering the legitimacy of ones statement despite its sometimes terrible presentation .

      I spec'ed my PC to play 7 days but your crazy if you don think im not gonna sink my teeth into some Postscript-um and Hell let loose , maybe a dash of tarkov and sprinkle in a little modded fall out 4 . Also i really wanted to get in on the fun of participating in the alpha process 1st hand so yeah it was a little crazy playing COD MW sober for 6 months (god that game is aggravating when i'm not stoned or buzzed) and Covid put the kibosh on the regular income so it was side jobs and frugality that funded to computer that i could have easily purchased with the better late than never  Unemployment that finally came in that is now funding my 1st home loan and my new side business building custom console controllers . So of ya'll wanna talk about a special edition 7 days to die Ps4 controller ' ill design something sweet and ya'll could it pitch to Sony when the time is right , and have them release a special 7 days to die controller with the console release if / when happens cause lets be serious 7 days was the tops selling game on Ps4 store for like 2 weeks or even a month ya'll know better than me but yeah i think Sony might see that history and help sell 7 days on their console heck even a special edition 7 days to die console would be cool .

Sony is still cashing in on the console version the 30 + different 7 days communities on Ps4 have post every 10,15 min of people trying to link  and play ......... point being i hope Sony recognizes the pull this game had and the huge selling potential it will have in the future on the next gen with it being a full port and still alone in its competition bracket (unless there's another voxel minecraftish clone with fall out 4 graphics out there) yeah there are plenty of survival builders but non of them are voxel with SI , testosterone ,and humor that's winning combo right there  . so 7 days is the only choice like a Sweet IPA in a sea of domestic pilsners 7 days is a cut above the rest .  BTW i did drop two hundo on a new graphics card 8 gig of VRAM Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee  so i guess im descending into madness lol

... And that's whats i appreciates abouts yous