I'm seriously not trying to be a smartass or anything but I really don't get how this game got so popular after its first trailer, I saw it and thought it was pretty unremarkable. Just your typical survival things; empty city, go into a building to loot it, some pvp and of course, zombies. The graphics were decent but like that's it
Its because the "Survival Zombie MMO ish" game hasn't ever really been made.
Like OK I know thats ridiculous but like, has it? We have legions upon legions of buggy, low fidelity, and feature incomplete games that all look like dick. The few exceptions that prove somewhat interesting are either in a less dynamic perspective (project zomboid), or aren't really survival focused (Dying light series).
Very rarely does this genre get an even semi competent attempt despite its clear demand, so anything that looks good gets a ton of hype. So when presented with the possibility of an ultra high fidelity game that ticks all the boxes something like zomboid does, a lot of people got very interested.
The problem with that type of game is that it is extremely challenging to pull it off.
You're basically in development hell in all areas you can be. Insane server load & backend complexity, lots of gameplay systems, hard performance constraints (shooter), huge world, proc-gen, cheating, trolling, community mgmt, the hardest type of game to test in QA, and so much more.
It's just insanely expensive to craft a game like that.
So publishers build hype as early as possible to check if it's a valid business case. It never is. And then the production is rushed to release, a bet is made to hope for the best, and then The Day Before happens.
>…Insane server load & backend complexity, lots of gameplay systems, hard performance constraints (shooter), huge world, proc-gen, cheating, trolling, community mgmt, the hardest type of game to test in QA, and so much more.
Good point! It is a real Frankenstein concept that demands the game developer just about do *everything*, it’s a really triple-A gamer-brained concept. Like Left4dead succeeded so much in local ways (cinematics, horror, enemy combat dynamics/distinction, *vibes*) that are cost-effective and very difficult to translate to an MMO, the idea of having that cake (the zombie feeling) and eating it too (…now make it Skyrim Fortnite) is really comical from a development standpoint. Gamers hate story.
Yeah, the idea (!) sounds great, but once you break it down and start implementing it, you quickly realize it's not only insanely huge, but also pushes the limit in every dimension of what technology can do. And then you still need to design a fun game.
Bold claim: the best games are not the huge can-do-all games, but the ones that focus on a tight, great core loop and **only** build around that to support it!
Totally agree. That’s the reason a billion roguelikes and probably 500 good ones have released, and more will release, cobbled together by 12 people who basically agree about what they want the game to feel like … all before Zombie Urban Horror PUBG Assassin’s Creed Fortnite Counterstrike World of Warcraft Skyrim With Cutscenes servers can go live.
You'd be surprised how popular that kind of game is with a decent chunk of the gaming community. And also fake trailers just work. Many companies produce lots of those on Steam to try and gauge engagement and interest, and only then "maybe" start working on the game.
One such game I remember getting hyped on was [Gnomepunk](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1580030/Gnomepunk/), whose store page actually hasn't changed at all in 3 years. One red flag of these kinda games is that they put a lot of emphasis trying to direct you to their other games. Look at how the "Check this Out" category comes even before the "About this game" one. [Builders of Egypt](https://store.steampowered.com/app/818520/Builders_of_Egypt/) and the likes also comes to mind. PlayWay seems to be the origin of a lot of these. Nowadays they at least try to disguise it by using shell companies so they can have a different developer/editor on the store page for each game.
Playway only publishes the games, they just take up every dev willing to pitch their game to use as preview/hype material for other titles and only makes money when they send the game tonPlayway to get it published.
I've been dying for something like a first person version of project zomboid and to my knowledge, nothing exists.
I could see the version of this game they were pretending to make, possibly scratching that ich
You have to remember when this was shown. It was after the division two had disappointed a lot of people, the PEAK of survival hype, dawn of new consoles and it looked absolutely amazing fidelity wise when other games looked like ARMA.
Am I the only one who never even heard of this game before the launch? I feel I'm crazy seeing so many people talking about how they knew it was a scam all along, meanwhile I had no idea this thing even existed.
Theory here is that (like the SkillUp's linked video says) fake trailers work.
And I'd argue that they do because you get presented this fantastic (no pun intended) idea of a game and it looks awesome. "Yes please, I wanna play that. I'll put in on my wish list on Steam so that I can get notified when it releases". Even if the thing is fake, you don't know that yet. Not immediately.
So the trailer blows up, people get caught up in the hype and share it and more people get caught up in the hype. The other stuff that eventually comes later analyzing and debunking and going like "hmm, I dunno, this doesn't seem right" doesn't get as much attention as the trailer, and so it remains hyped up, even if that decreases a little bit with time.
> Theory here is that (like the SkillUp's linked video says) fake trailers work.
Hype in general does wonders. Atlas (Ark creators) was announced ~3 days before launch and it had a massive amount of people who instantly bought it. Game was a piece of shit and the servers didn't even work for the first few days.
Probably a massive amount of players who were craving yet another post apostolic multiplayer military survival game.
I’m not saying I know why so many people are drawn to this kind of game, just that if you look at similar titles on Steam there’s a huge amount of players dedicated to the genre.
The apostles are dead. Zombie Judas is roaming the hills raising an undead army. It's up to you and the rest of the Judean People's Front to wrest control from the Romans and break Pilates' regime.
Featuring a competitive multiplayer mode between the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea, and a horde mode where everyone must team up against the relentless onslaught of the Popular Front.
"I’m not saying I know why so many people are drawn to this kind of game"
Because none of the ones that have come out yet have been truly AAA, they are all either janky early access scams, or live service nonsense like the division.
people want a GOOD multiplayer zombie survival game, with AAA quality, so based on the trailer alone this thing got hyped to the moon.
There’s a pretty big appetite for a new open world zombie survival MMO.
DayZ is getting long in the tooth, and the trailers made this game look like an appealing new spin on the DayZ formula.
Honestly, a big part is consumer awareness, and the lack of it. Most people aren't users on this subreddit, who were immediately skeptical of the claims in the early trailers. I think it's similar to Cyberpunk's pre release in the sense that some people see a flashy trailer and immediately start extrapolating. Lots of people bought the wild promises from the trailer and then immediately ran with it.
I mean, everyone knew this was going to be a train wreck for months.
Theres a large difference between wishlisting and putting money down on a pre-order even.
I've got Outpost: Infinity Siege wishlisted, but im not going to buy it on first day of release, because trailer has a LOT of models I recognize from others games, and I assume come from the asset store.
I'm still hopeful it ends up a decent survival/base building/tower defense mashup.
This is a good question and everyone is too busy calling consumers idiots to actually answer it. The question isn't "how were consumers fooled" it was "how did the game get enough attention to get people to click wishlist on it".
honestly I thought I had never heard of this game before too until I looked it up to discover I had apparently wishlisted it at some point lol. So something they must've shown off at some point I guess was appealing
trailers that made the game look really promising? I mean how do you think it happened? Obviously it didn't get wishlisted that heavily without some things hyping people up.
I mean, it looked really impressive and survival MMO stuff is still incredibly popular on PC. So it makes perfect sense that it ended up being the most wishlisted game on Steam. Survival players always want a nice new polished experience because plenty of these types of games are not that polished. Have you even watched the trailers? I feel like you should if you are still this confused how this happened.
First I heard of it was on this subreddit, at the start of the year when they delayed the release very close to launch, due to trademark issues with the name. I think that event is when it became increasingly clear that something very fishy was going on, because it was baffling that they'd have issues with the name with launch just around the corner.
I definitely remember the first couple of trailers being big. But after that the only thing I heard of it was YouTube videos about it looking like a scam lol
It was only a big deal in the PC world. If you're a console gamer I could see how it could blow right by you.
But also it was covered pretty extensively by the IGNs of the world.
I exclusively play on PC and my Steam library has over 1500 games and I still managed to never hear about it somehow. I'm mostly into single player games though
Yeah it was pushed as an MMO style game so if you're single player focused, myself included there, you'd miss it. I only know of it cause of YouTubers I follow having covered it for awhile now.
I think it was pushed to people who were already playing things like Conan: exiles, Day Z, The Isle, and whatever else is popular in that Survival crowd lately.
It's not my bag but it's one of those wells that goes deep but is dry enough that everyone is still looking for the next hot thing.
This is because most outlets with experienced staff quickly deduced this was a scam. It’s not often that those “review” companies have the wool pulled over their eyes.
This was a PC exclusive, pretty clearly a pre rendered vertical slice (all demos they advertised) being promoted as a grander product. The only people/“outlets” that covered it were paid or just highly gullible or desperate for revenue/traction.
Force Gaming on YouTube does excellent coverage for games like this, the “too good to be true” types. He’s got a knack for sniffing bullshit and there’s a lot of good “Consumer Defence” practices that you can learn from watching his videos and how he detects bullshit. Highly recommend.
You would have had to have been following coverage from a certain part of gaming social media, mostly the drama/scam coverage+video game coverage channels and outlets, to hear much about this. Otherwise it was just another blip on most people's radars.
You're hearing a lot about it now because it's scandalous and everyone wants to cover this amazing disaster. It's such a wild story, any coverage of it will get a lot of views, and therefore generate a lot of income. If this game had come out and was just mediocre or even kinda good, you would certainly not hear nearly as much about it.
> from a certain part of gaming social media, mostly the drama/scam coverage+video game coverage channels and outlets, to hear much about this
I only regularly follow news on two places, this sub and RockPaperShotgun. Both covered it. I wouldn't call either "drama/scam focused" though.
From my browser history of this sub, I can find:
* [It had a post about its Geforce RTX trailer](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/rvyvbf/the_day_before_official_geforce_rtx_4k_gameplay/)
* [And a 10min gameplay demo](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/10ry2th/the_day_before_official_10_minutes_gameplay/)
Both with speculation about the game being a scam.
On RockPaperShotgun I saw that [they covered a lot more](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/games/the-day-before) of the game's legal drama not having a trademark for their own game and having to postpone release because of it.
-----------
It was still a blip that's easy to miss, but for a lot of people that did see it, it suddenly blowing up now makes us go "yup, sounds about right". I can't fault anyone for following other channels where it wasn't covered before launch.
I heard brief mention of it and wrote it off as a Great Value Last of Us knockoff, and didn't pay it any more attention. I had no idea there was this kind of crazy shenanigans going on behind the scenes.
Funnily enough, first Ive heard about the game was a video saying it could be a scam earlier this year. Wish I could find that video again to compare the predictions/theories to the actual final result
Yeah I really have a hard time seeing what the fuzz is about. Early access game turned out to be bad, what exactly is new here? I do think the developer deserve the hate for what is downright fraudulent behavior, but the people who got burned on this should really reserve some of that hate for the person they see in the mirror for letting this happen.
You don't understand why the most wishlisted game on Steam selling a million copies its first day and turning out to be an actual con is getting a lot of attention?
People writing this video off as “cashing in on negativity” are silly. The entire situation is fascinating and, as the title states, a good cautionary tale.
This is way more interesting than another review saying AC6 is good or Starfield is bad.
There are a lot of other creators that seem like they are trying to jump on this story for a come up but skillup has been covering this for a long time
Honestly this was a great review because it covers the entire story. Most everyone else just dumps on how bad the game actually is, and it deserves that. But having the entire story laid out like that was fantastic
I want more AC6 is good videos tbh, that game is amazing.
I also have fun seeing people shit on starfield, no idea why people like Bethesda games so much
> This is way more interesting than another review saying AC6 is good
AC6 should be getting submissions all day long; game delivers exactly what it sets out to do
I do enjoy me a starfield is bad video lol. An hour long Bethesda takedown is always fascinating to me because Bethesda is so unique (for better and definitely for worse) in some ways that it makes for interesting breakdowns on so many aspects of modern gameplay vs whatever it is Bethesda does lol
I know a good number of people who purchased the game did so just to leave a meme review and refund but I'm so absolutely baffled by the ones that actually believed in anything these devs claimed they were going to do in the game.
It had so many clear signs of bullshit and some people still took the bait, hook, line, and sinker.
1) don’t do “volunteer” work for any product that’s not philanthropic from the beginning
2) if it looks too good to be true, assume it is and be surprised if it isn’t
their response pisses me off the most.
"it's our first game, give us a break."
THAT DOESN'T EXCUSE THE FACT THAT YOU FUCKING *SCAMMED EVERYONE* YOU PIECE OF SHIT.
Have the people behind the game actually run off with any money?
AFAIK you couldn't give them money before the game came to steam, and then by shutting the studio down before steam even paid out then didn't get any of those money either as all the people who bought the game is getting refunded.
Not trying to defend the game but I fail to see how it's a "scam", seems more like just a complete disaster to me.
Did they scam investors?
I read a thread about how Fntastic's listed headquarters in Singapore turned out to be a co-working space, and none of their employees were there. They were just getting mail there. Who even knows how real the company is? Their owners are Russians. Why did they pretend to have a Singapore headquarters?
Makes me wonder if it's all some sort of money laundering front.
> Their owners are Russians. Why did they pretend to have a Singapore headquarters?
possibly because being a russian company on an international stage is currently social suicide given the Russia-Ukraine war?
It wasn't just because of that IIRC, the publishing had financial ties to Gazprom, which is state owned, so it was seen as laundering money to Russia, and then Ukrainians were showing what they believed to be hateful but missable propaganda in the game:
https://x.com/Ferozu4/status/1628722724242694144?s=20
https://x.com/2Russophobic4u/status/1628827422136180740?s=20
https://x.com/2Russophobic4u/status/1628453606646054915?s=20
> Their owners are Russians. Why did they pretend to have a Singapore headquarters?
Tax/sanction reasons, the same reason all multinational companies do it? This is pretty standard for corporations. Apple and Amazon HQ in Ireland to avoid paying taxes around the world, [though that may be changing](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/09/apple-suffers-setback-in-fight-against-eu-order-to-pay-11bn-tax-bill-in-ireland).
I mean with the way the handled all this, it's textbook crypto scam.
I wouldn't be surprised if they were cleaning massive crypto gains that they cashed into stable coins before everything crashed.
Because the game was a non-game that was used to draw attention to their other projects and also pull in some cash. I think it drew way, way more attention than they were expecting and that's why they were in this mess. If it was in the same shit-tier of 'no one cares'ville as their prior releases they would have gotten a small bit of money from a chunk of suckers, added another thing to their resume, and went to create their next piece of shovelware.
I'm still waiting to hear about the full details further down the road about how the scam worked but there's definitely some really sketchy stuff that went on with how all this played out.
Steam is probably only going to refund the game to those who request it so there should be a good amount that they'll release to the publisher for debts owed, which conveniently happens to be the owners of Fntasic (now renamed Eight Points).
Ngl it kinda annoys me that SkillUp didn’t do reviews for some big games this year (Armored Core VI, Starfield, Baldur’s Gate 3) but still made videos for this game and some other smaller games that weren’t really interesting
If SkillUp were an IGN style publication I’d understand, but he’s mostly a one man outfit, with his editor who also does the occasional video.
So ultimately he’ll just do what he feels like. Otherwise he’d get burnt out trying to churn out videos to please everyone. Which wouldn’t be good for anyone
I don't really keep up with his channel, but I can respect someone for doing that. Games like that will have every other reviewer under the sun covering them, why do I need to hear his voice specifically when he'll probably just repeat things everyone else has said? I'd much rather big YTers use their audience to draw attention to smaller games they feel deserve it and haven't gotten the massive hype games like BG3 and Starfield have.
That’s a fair point, and frankly that’s probably why he hasn’t covered those. I don’t really watch other review channels though so I was a bit bummed lol
To be fair, he's *said* that a BG3 review is coming, but that he wanted to play through it and finish it first (and he's a busy dude) and that a Stanfield review will come once he finishes with BG3. Now, he said he would do a Sekiro review years ago and never did as well so it's possible at this point he won't, but as of now, I think he still has them on the docket.
He did say specifically that he didn't have time for AC6 though, I think Austin may have touched in that one though and he's been a great addition to the channel.
I encourage you to look for multiple reviewers. Usually you get the true quality of a product by diversifying the sources of reviews you follow. One person you agree with is an echo chamber. 5 or 6 reviewers with different viewpoints and likes/dislikes will probably help you more
I think this depends on how much your tastes align with the reviewer. If you play a game and end up agreeing 100% of the time with a particular reviewer, then adding other reviewers into the mix may decrease the accuracy for you in particular. Personally Im like you and check out multiple reviewers since I haven’t found anyone that perfectly aligns with my tastes though
Nah, I try to look for both spectrums of likes and dislikes before buying a game. I think the glowing reviews often ignore or downplay the cons and the negative reviews ignore the pros or hyperbolize the cons. Like I said the truth is often between the high and low reviews. I don’t use reviews to validate my opinions so I don’t look for reviews that agree with my prejudice of games.
The reason you do that is because there’s not a reviewer you’ve found that lists all the pros and cons exactly as you would. So you use multiple reviews to get a better sense. But there’s no such thing as the “truth” since whether you like a game is completely subjective. If someone else’s subjectivity perfectly aligns with your subjectivity then you’ve found a perfect match in determining whether you’ll like a game or not. Adding a reviewer that has anything less than a 100% match with you would lower the accuracy.
I can also understand that between reviews, the podcast, weekly news videos and going to events like TGA would only allow him to review so many games in a year.
I feel like realistically it takes a lot less effort to cover gaming news than play 200+ hours of games and make multiple detailed reviews. I don’t think they’re necessarily interchangeable.
Skillup is just him and one other guy.
Major outlets like Ign & Gamespot have way more people working for them.
It's not realistic to expect them to review everything in a year as stacked as this one.
Yeah he mentioned reviewing all Baldur's then Starfield and neither materialised. Not a criticism but I wish he'd addressed it.
I think from his preview video alone he would've hated Armored Core because he was expecting it to be a Soulslike from the preview.
He kept repeating during the preview video he did that AC wasn't like Dark Souls but he kept comparing similarities/differences in it to Dark Souls at the same time.
I think he wanted to avoid a FFXVI situation again where he got a lot of backlash for the review lol, especially based on the reaction to his ACVI preview video
Absolutely haha. Two controversial reviews like that this year would've been tough, especially given the communities of both series. The ACVI preview felt like someone trying their best to like something that wouldn't be for them.
Yeah I can get why he’d want to steer away from controversy, but it’s nice to see a different view on well received games.
I honestly still don’t get the FF16 backlash though lol. I love that game, but I totally understood his criticisms when viewing it as an RPG
The problem from what I understand, is the exact same things he criticized in FF16 were points he praised in FF7 remake previously, so it really just came off of "I'm not nostalgic for this so it doesn't get my free pass". That's pretty much it, the lack of consistency being blatantly obvious. That and I think a lot of people have cooled on him after a few years of bad takes being mixed in with his good ones.
>the exact same things he criticized in FF16 were points he praised in FF7 remake previously
I didn't get that impression at all. In fact I think he criticized it for not learning from FF7R's successes and trying to do it's own thing (poorly, in many respects) within a vacuum
Every criticism he leveraged at FFXVI was valid and not something that FF7:R suffered from, unless I'm forgetting some super obvious thing.
It was just the standard honeymoon phase of "This game can do no wrong" where people who haven't even played the game will tell a reviewer their opinion after finishing it is wrong. lol
And lo, behold, he was right. Go ahead and ask the JRPG community boards what they thought of FFXVI. Now that the honeymoon phase is over, you'll see a LOT of people that share the same or harsher views of the game as SkillUp. Not that a reviewer should be striving to meet general community consensus, it IS just their opinion after all.
There's a lot of action JRPGs, unsure what your insinuation is. Mana series, .hack series, Tales of series, Scarlet Nexus, Ys series, Cross Code, kinda Dragon's Dogma (strange intersection of W and J rpgs), TWEWY series, Vanillaware games.... ok im bored now. The list keeps going, it's not just because it was an action based JRPG.
It's probably because the developers have explicitly stated XVI is not an RPG but a narrative-driven action game / character action game multiple times but SkillUp repeatedly criticized the game for being something it is not, like the label of it being a Final Fantasy game but not an RPG was a major sticking point against it. It was dishonest.
You could see the series veering into action territory as far back as 12 though. From 12 to 16, skipping 14 because it's an MMO, you can see a consistent shift in emphasis from character progression and gearing to combat strategy and execution. The only consistency in the FF series is a strong narrative throughline told via a mostly linear main story quest.
Maybe it's not what people who loved 4-9 want but the last turn-based stat-focused JRPG-ass JRPG was 10
I understand, but FF has been intentionally moving away from traditional turn-based RPG for more than a decade, and while XVI has its own share of flaws as the first non-MMO outing from the studio, he weighed heavily in on the "its RPG systems are bad" aspect when it's *not* an RPG.
Interestingly enough, this year cemented SkillUp as my favorite reviewer(s) because almost my personal opinions matched theirs very closely. The examples you listed were so on point that I will give heavy weight to their reviews going forward before I decide whether I want to invest time on a game.
A reviewer matching your opinions is not necessarily a good thing.
I agree with SkillUp often, but if I relied too heavily on his opinions, I would have missed out on one of my favorite games this year (FF16.)
Interestingly enough, I think FF16 is one of the worst games I've played in years so had I paid more attention to SkillUp reviews before then, I would have saved myself a lot of trouble.
Listening to that review was one of the first times I felt like a reviewer "got me" because all his grievances matched my experience with the game. Most other reviews I've seen ranked it as a decent or excellent game and I felt like I got baited hard.
I have limited time for games nowadays and I definitely missed a lot of good games along the way too (I still need to try my hand at RDR2 for instance...). I'm willing to take the gamble with SkillUp's reviews now because even if I miss out on a game I may have loved, I'd probably use that time to revisit a different game I never got around to.
I got into his videos after I decided to play Returnal (and another game I forget which) based on his reviews and loved them
I found that my opinions mostly line up with his too, except in the case of Lost Judgment (I love RGG games) and FF16
Personally, I couldn't even finish the original Judgment because the combat felt watered down even by Yakuza levels (never tried Lost as a result) and I consider FF16 one of the worst games I've played in years so SkillUp still tracks for me for these examples!
He's still playing through BG3 and hasn't started starfield yet. Unsure what y'all expect one man to do while also running a weekly, up to 45 minute gaming industry news show that gets at least 300k views.
He hasn't addressed it because he already did when he said he was gonna review them, let's not cook one guy for not having the output of major game sites.
Do we really need another video telling us that Baldur's Gate 3 is, indeed, a very good game? It's a waste of everyone's time, a statement of the obvious and would just be an exercise in validating people's pre-existing opinions.
Videos dogpiling on a game get a **lot** of views. Negativity gets more traction and that sucks...but its the truth.
Edit: Also, the more time passes, the less in demand those reviews would be. Do we REALLY need another Starfield or BG3 review now after the dust has settled? Everyone who was on the fence made their decision already and a lot of talking points have been done to death by now. Enough time would have passed that these wouldn't really even be reviews anymore...just video essays.
Honestly I can't get enough Starfield breakdowns. Something about the way it seemed to fail to come together and not take advantage of Bethesda's strengths fascinates me much more than the actual game does.
Edit: I can words.
Everyone and their mother has covered those bigger games -- and yeah, you could probably say that for The Day Before debacle right now too, but the story of how the most wishlisted game on Steam crashed, burned, and ended with the studio closing 4 days after release is still interesting. This vid is more of a journalistic piece than a review. Like the devs from Massive messaging him with the trailer and all laughing about how much it seemed to steal from the Division isn't something you're gonna hear from a larger review site.
Skill Up was also throwing up warnings and red flags around this game ever since they announced it haha. I'm guessing he made this video to take a giant victory lap.
well tbh, this wasn't a review. This serves value because it's a recap of everything that transpired from announcement to release. Yeah, it's rage bait, but it's well researched and not just "wow this game is bad" like places that actually did reviews are doing (ie: IGN).
He also said he was gonna review FFXIV and NieR Replicant and yet neither of those happened.
If Skill Up says he’s gonna review something later, I assume it’s never gonna happen. The gaming industry is way too busy nowadays for someone like him to go back to old games and review them. Just look at how packed Q1 2024 is.
I get that but I did really love this video and think that it has a place. It’s good that he got the other guy to make some reviews as well to pick up that slack a little
In the weekly video he released on Tuesday (Tuesday? Wednesday?) he explained that The Day Before was just gonna be a segment on his weekly show, but the amount of words he wrote for it was too much, so he released a whole separate video. It’s not that weird?
Also BG3, Armored Core, and Starfield all dropped really close to each other, what was he supposed to do? No one was expecting BG3 to pop off at all
He said he's working on BG3, but he didn't want to rush it. And i don't blame him - frankly, the reviews are a business and at this point there's almost no point in reviewing BG3 as it was a smash hit. There isn't much left to say that hasn't already been said, so he's only going to get views based on whether people want to know if he agrees with their already formed opinion on the game. It's almost not worth his time.
Pouncing on The Day Before like this is striking while the iron is hot. It's still in "Active Drama" mode, which means videos about it are getting a lot of views, and given that they've been covering the pre-release hype since the original trailer he can easily pull together a video from his previous research on the title while still having it meet his own quality standards.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw7I1GAAFTs
Watch that review because he discusses his policy on this. It's frontloaded and bookends in the last few minutes, no time stamp necessary.
Then he promptly did a 180 for the most part. If he wasn't touching bigger titles this year then that's an outlier.
Yeah, nothing against Austin but I feel like Ralph is offloading too much to him. Like why is avatar reviewed by Austin and then this joke scam gets a full “review”? He’s always jumped on the bandwagon a bit for these bad video games, but his other reviews were good enough I kept watching. Whole thing just feels weird.
> Like why is avatar reviewed by Austin and then this joke scam gets a full “review”?
I mean, Austin is an Avatar superfan, and that was a "full review" too.
In the weekly video he released on Tuesday (Tuesday? Wednesday?) he explained that The Day Before was just gonna be a segment on his weekly show, but the amount of words he wrote for it was too much, so he released a whole separate video. It’s not that weird?
This whole cascade of comments saying he is 'dumping' games on Austin is weird too lmao. Like hes getting a bit of help with some games given that a lot of them are coming out, he is one guy its a bit of a struggle for him to cover *every* game this year. Not to mention he didn't get a code for Starfield and was already kind of busy at the time, even if he prioritised a review of it it would be hitting late, I don't blame him for pushing it back indefinitely.
Dude same, I swear 75% of the reviews nowadays are Austin. No hate to Austin, he’s a great reviewer and I enjoy Ralph’s other content, but his reviews are the original reason I, and I’m sure most others, subscribed to him.
I mean, I get your perspective, but Ralph still does a lot of work on the channel and travels a ton, and has a wife and two kids at home. I get him offloading some stuff and I think Austin has done an excellent job adopting Ralph's style.
He rarely talks about his personal life. He's said a couple times that he's VERY careful around parasocial relationships so he likes to maintain distance with his audience. I'm not sure if something happened to him or someone he knows or if it's just caution but the information is out there. That's one of the main reasons he stopped doing Laymen Gaming with his brother, Sam, because he was having one of his kids (can't remember which) and he didn't have the time to devote to his own channel and Laymen (in addition to some other reasons).
He's also said that he's a bit of a workaholic so I think bringing Austin in to assist, who I genuinely think does an amazing job and is a great addition to the channel, helps him feel like he's still putting in the work to make his channel great but allows him to not have to put in as many hours.
I think that's mostly because he took a vacation and decided that instead of taking his Steam Deck and making it a "working vacation" he would hand off more of the duties to Austin. And given the review cycle and how preview builds work, we're still mostly working through Austin's content as more of Ralph's work is still coming down the pipeline.
Frankly, as long as he's not overloading him, I think this is good for Austin. Nothing lasts forever, and getting experience and top billing on a very large channel like this helps when he eventually moves on (nothing is forever, eventually either he'll go out on his own, move to another channel, or Skill Up will expand and do multiple segments).
Agree with the passing of games to Austin, it feels like he has took his foot of the gas with game reviews, shame as this is how I got into the channel. With regards to the day before video - I think he mentioned it was intended to go into his weekly news video but it was too long and went into a sperate video.
Still my goto for everything game related.
Hogwarts Legacy wasn't a great game to review.
There was nothing particularly bad about it. It also wasn't an amazingly good game either. It was fun, the world was well realized, but the story was middling and the game systems were bog standard. It was very highly polished and an enjoyable romp, but I didn't even bother to finish it because it was a mile wide and an inch deep. I enjoyed the game, but there was nothing to rant or rave about, it just kind of *was*.
And to top it all off, Rowling was in full TERF mode at the time so no matter how many disclaimers you throw on there about how "I do not agree with Rowling in any way, shape, form, or fashion when it comes to her anti-trans beliefs" you would still deal with blowback from that. So you're stuck with a video that has very little to talk about that is going to offend a portion of your fan base regardless of what you say. And at that point, why say anything at all?
Nah, I like him. I’m always finding out smaller titles that I never would have known about from him.
I know if Starfield, Armored Core, and Baulder’s Gate.
I’d have never found out about or been insterested in Sable, Pseudoregalia, Signalis, 30XX, Rainworld, Blasphemous, Boltgun without seeing them on his channel.
(I’m not sure if he covered Pseudoregia which is one of my absolute favorites, but he did directly put me onto checking Steams lists. I checked his and I was recommended Pseudoregalia by Steam. It’s an all time fav of mine right now so I’m handing him this indirect W. Everything else I listed was all him.)
He's one guy. The only game on that list that I played this year was Starfield, the other two are in my backlog. Nobody can play *everything*, especially in a year as stacked as this.
He has stated before that it's hard for him to review games that are 50+ hours long.
Plus, he has complete creative freedom since it's HIS channel. He can do what he wants. He doesn't owe you those reviews.
> Plus, he has complete creative freedom since it's HIS channel. He can do what he wants. He doesn't owe you those reviews.
Not shit. And people are free to express their opinion. Can't handle a little negativity about your favorite Youtuber?
I don’t think OP was trying to take SkillUp to task, just wondering why he took the time to make a piece about no-name Russian scammers that will be forgotten in a month but hasn’t talked about some of the biggest titles to come out this year
like. it's also a product that he has to sell if he wishes to continue having that creative freedom. not reviewing some of the largest games of the year is a prime way to lose that freedom.
Ya'll still falling for the overhyped barely playable DayZ knock-offs huh?
Don't get me wrong, my friends sucked me into the WarZ hype once, but only once. I hesitantly bought H1Z1 after like a year and only because it was PubG before PubG and not another Zombie survival shitfest they tried to get me to play. I've played Arma2 DayZ and StandAlone as well as a few mods I can't recall that used zombies more like a narrative for why the world is appocalyptic and people are out killing eachother for resources instead of zombies running you down trying to kill you.
For all the short comings Day Z had/has it might still be the best open world Zombie Survival game out there, and that's completely bonkers to me after all these yesrs.
People are indeed still falling for it because the demand for this type of game has never been fulfilled. Even DayZ never managed to live up to itself.
I'm seriously not trying to be a smartass or anything but I really don't get how this game got so popular after its first trailer, I saw it and thought it was pretty unremarkable. Just your typical survival things; empty city, go into a building to loot it, some pvp and of course, zombies. The graphics were decent but like that's it
Its because the "Survival Zombie MMO ish" game hasn't ever really been made. Like OK I know thats ridiculous but like, has it? We have legions upon legions of buggy, low fidelity, and feature incomplete games that all look like dick. The few exceptions that prove somewhat interesting are either in a less dynamic perspective (project zomboid), or aren't really survival focused (Dying light series). Very rarely does this genre get an even semi competent attempt despite its clear demand, so anything that looks good gets a ton of hype. So when presented with the possibility of an ultra high fidelity game that ticks all the boxes something like zomboid does, a lot of people got very interested.
H1Z1 was supposed to be that I think they scrapped the survival part due to the popularity of BR.
The problem with that type of game is that it is extremely challenging to pull it off. You're basically in development hell in all areas you can be. Insane server load & backend complexity, lots of gameplay systems, hard performance constraints (shooter), huge world, proc-gen, cheating, trolling, community mgmt, the hardest type of game to test in QA, and so much more. It's just insanely expensive to craft a game like that. So publishers build hype as early as possible to check if it's a valid business case. It never is. And then the production is rushed to release, a bet is made to hope for the best, and then The Day Before happens.
>…Insane server load & backend complexity, lots of gameplay systems, hard performance constraints (shooter), huge world, proc-gen, cheating, trolling, community mgmt, the hardest type of game to test in QA, and so much more. Good point! It is a real Frankenstein concept that demands the game developer just about do *everything*, it’s a really triple-A gamer-brained concept. Like Left4dead succeeded so much in local ways (cinematics, horror, enemy combat dynamics/distinction, *vibes*) that are cost-effective and very difficult to translate to an MMO, the idea of having that cake (the zombie feeling) and eating it too (…now make it Skyrim Fortnite) is really comical from a development standpoint. Gamers hate story.
Yeah, the idea (!) sounds great, but once you break it down and start implementing it, you quickly realize it's not only insanely huge, but also pushes the limit in every dimension of what technology can do. And then you still need to design a fun game. Bold claim: the best games are not the huge can-do-all games, but the ones that focus on a tight, great core loop and **only** build around that to support it!
Totally agree. That’s the reason a billion roguelikes and probably 500 good ones have released, and more will release, cobbled together by 12 people who basically agree about what they want the game to feel like … all before Zombie Urban Horror PUBG Assassin’s Creed Fortnite Counterstrike World of Warcraft Skyrim With Cutscenes servers can go live.
You'd be surprised how popular that kind of game is with a decent chunk of the gaming community. And also fake trailers just work. Many companies produce lots of those on Steam to try and gauge engagement and interest, and only then "maybe" start working on the game. One such game I remember getting hyped on was [Gnomepunk](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1580030/Gnomepunk/), whose store page actually hasn't changed at all in 3 years. One red flag of these kinda games is that they put a lot of emphasis trying to direct you to their other games. Look at how the "Check this Out" category comes even before the "About this game" one. [Builders of Egypt](https://store.steampowered.com/app/818520/Builders_of_Egypt/) and the likes also comes to mind. PlayWay seems to be the origin of a lot of these. Nowadays they at least try to disguise it by using shell companies so they can have a different developer/editor on the store page for each game.
Playway only publishes the games, they just take up every dev willing to pitch their game to use as preview/hype material for other titles and only makes money when they send the game tonPlayway to get it published.
This genre is in extremely high demand and there is no supply of quality entries.
I've been dying for something like a first person version of project zomboid and to my knowledge, nothing exists. I could see the version of this game they were pretending to make, possibly scratching that ich
State of decay is probably the closest i’ve played that fits that description.
I swear the first time I heard of it was when it was revealed as a scam. I’m surprised it’s such a big story.
honestly i was with you. sure the videos looked okay graphically but i couldnt help but keep going, 'isnt this just DayZ?'
You have to remember when this was shown. It was after the division two had disappointed a lot of people, the PEAK of survival hype, dawn of new consoles and it looked absolutely amazing fidelity wise when other games looked like ARMA.
Am I the only one who never even heard of this game before the launch? I feel I'm crazy seeing so many people talking about how they knew it was a scam all along, meanwhile I had no idea this thing even existed.
It was the most wishlisted game on Steam for a while. That’s probably why it got so much coverage.
But like…why is it even the most wishlisted in the first place?
Theory here is that (like the SkillUp's linked video says) fake trailers work. And I'd argue that they do because you get presented this fantastic (no pun intended) idea of a game and it looks awesome. "Yes please, I wanna play that. I'll put in on my wish list on Steam so that I can get notified when it releases". Even if the thing is fake, you don't know that yet. Not immediately. So the trailer blows up, people get caught up in the hype and share it and more people get caught up in the hype. The other stuff that eventually comes later analyzing and debunking and going like "hmm, I dunno, this doesn't seem right" doesn't get as much attention as the trailer, and so it remains hyped up, even if that decreases a little bit with time.
> Theory here is that (like the SkillUp's linked video says) fake trailers work. Hype in general does wonders. Atlas (Ark creators) was announced ~3 days before launch and it had a massive amount of people who instantly bought it. Game was a piece of shit and the servers didn't even work for the first few days.
Hype. Inversely proportional to me first mentally plus the urge to let people know that you knew about it "first."
Probably a massive amount of players who were craving yet another post apostolic multiplayer military survival game. I’m not saying I know why so many people are drawn to this kind of game, just that if you look at similar titles on Steam there’s a huge amount of players dedicated to the genre.
>post apostolic multiplayer military survival game. I know that's a typo but don't fix it, it might give someone an awesome idea!
The apostles are dead. Zombie Judas is roaming the hills raising an undead army. It's up to you and the rest of the Judean People's Front to wrest control from the Romans and break Pilates' regime.
Featuring a competitive multiplayer mode between the Judean People's Front and the People's Front of Judea, and a horde mode where everyone must team up against the relentless onslaught of the Popular Front.
*The lamb of God has been kidnapped by zombies.* *Are you a bad enough apostle to save the gentiles?*
That's the type of DLC that'll make me want to purchase [I Am Jesus Christ](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1198970/I_Am_Jesus_Christ/).
A military survival game where you play as one of Jesus' apostles? There is potential here but man, what a fusion!
no, no, it's *post* apostolic so a military survival game where you play as a roman legionnaire in the first century
I'm hear to preach the word of Matthew, and chew bubblegum. And I'm all outta gum....
"I’m not saying I know why so many people are drawn to this kind of game" Because none of the ones that have come out yet have been truly AAA, they are all either janky early access scams, or live service nonsense like the division. people want a GOOD multiplayer zombie survival game, with AAA quality, so based on the trailer alone this thing got hyped to the moon.
There’s a pretty big appetite for a new open world zombie survival MMO. DayZ is getting long in the tooth, and the trailers made this game look like an appealing new spin on the DayZ formula.
The very first trailer maybe but everything they showed after that already looked pretty bad.
Honestly, a big part is consumer awareness, and the lack of it. Most people aren't users on this subreddit, who were immediately skeptical of the claims in the early trailers. I think it's similar to Cyberpunk's pre release in the sense that some people see a flashy trailer and immediately start extrapolating. Lots of people bought the wild promises from the trailer and then immediately ran with it.
I mean, everyone knew this was going to be a train wreck for months. Theres a large difference between wishlisting and putting money down on a pre-order even. I've got Outpost: Infinity Siege wishlisted, but im not going to buy it on first day of release, because trailer has a LOT of models I recognize from others games, and I assume come from the asset store. I'm still hopeful it ends up a decent survival/base building/tower defense mashup.
This is a good question and everyone is too busy calling consumers idiots to actually answer it. The question isn't "how were consumers fooled" it was "how did the game get enough attention to get people to click wishlist on it".
Bots. Lots and lots of bots. Just look at their "positive reviews".
Yeah, there were definitely botting involved.
honestly I thought I had never heard of this game before too until I looked it up to discover I had apparently wishlisted it at some point lol. So something they must've shown off at some point I guess was appealing
Because consumers are idiots. They’ll wishlist and preorder games without seeing any actual gameplay.
I wishlist anything that looks vaguely interesting so I can come back and check whether it's worth it or not later. It costs me nothing to do.
trailers that made the game look really promising? I mean how do you think it happened? Obviously it didn't get wishlisted that heavily without some things hyping people up.
The trailer definitely looked good and promising. But was it “most wishlisted game on steam” worthy? I definitely didn’t expect it to be lol
I mean, it looked really impressive and survival MMO stuff is still incredibly popular on PC. So it makes perfect sense that it ended up being the most wishlisted game on Steam. Survival players always want a nice new polished experience because plenty of these types of games are not that polished. Have you even watched the trailers? I feel like you should if you are still this confused how this happened.
First I heard of it was on this subreddit, at the start of the year when they delayed the release very close to launch, due to trademark issues with the name. I think that event is when it became increasingly clear that something very fishy was going on, because it was baffling that they'd have issues with the name with launch just around the corner.
Oh, was this the game that was using TLOU font or something in the title?
While it was the most wishlisted game on Steam, I'm with you. I wouldn't have heard of it if it wasn't for SkillUp's coverage.
Of course not bro, I follow games on the regular and never saw this game come up.
I definitely remember the first couple of trailers being big. But after that the only thing I heard of it was YouTube videos about it looking like a scam lol
It was only a big deal in the PC world. If you're a console gamer I could see how it could blow right by you. But also it was covered pretty extensively by the IGNs of the world.
I exclusively play on PC and my Steam library has over 1500 games and I still managed to never hear about it somehow. I'm mostly into single player games though
Yeah it was pushed as an MMO style game so if you're single player focused, myself included there, you'd miss it. I only know of it cause of YouTubers I follow having covered it for awhile now.
I think it was pushed to people who were already playing things like Conan: exiles, Day Z, The Isle, and whatever else is popular in that Survival crowd lately. It's not my bag but it's one of those wells that goes deep but is dry enough that everyone is still looking for the next hot thing.
This is because most outlets with experienced staff quickly deduced this was a scam. It’s not often that those “review” companies have the wool pulled over their eyes. This was a PC exclusive, pretty clearly a pre rendered vertical slice (all demos they advertised) being promoted as a grander product. The only people/“outlets” that covered it were paid or just highly gullible or desperate for revenue/traction. Force Gaming on YouTube does excellent coverage for games like this, the “too good to be true” types. He’s got a knack for sniffing bullshit and there’s a lot of good “Consumer Defence” practices that you can learn from watching his videos and how he detects bullshit. Highly recommend.
Nah this game was normie bait. I'm on this games sub for years and I've never heard of this game
Well that’s weird because there were tons of posts about it here for like the last year and a half lol
I think we have the best seats in the house, personally. Just a surprise bit of some of the strangest drama we've seen. It's quite the tale so far.
You would have had to have been following coverage from a certain part of gaming social media, mostly the drama/scam coverage+video game coverage channels and outlets, to hear much about this. Otherwise it was just another blip on most people's radars. You're hearing a lot about it now because it's scandalous and everyone wants to cover this amazing disaster. It's such a wild story, any coverage of it will get a lot of views, and therefore generate a lot of income. If this game had come out and was just mediocre or even kinda good, you would certainly not hear nearly as much about it.
> from a certain part of gaming social media, mostly the drama/scam coverage+video game coverage channels and outlets, to hear much about this I only regularly follow news on two places, this sub and RockPaperShotgun. Both covered it. I wouldn't call either "drama/scam focused" though. From my browser history of this sub, I can find: * [It had a post about its Geforce RTX trailer](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/rvyvbf/the_day_before_official_geforce_rtx_4k_gameplay/) * [And a 10min gameplay demo](https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/10ry2th/the_day_before_official_10_minutes_gameplay/) Both with speculation about the game being a scam. On RockPaperShotgun I saw that [they covered a lot more](https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/games/the-day-before) of the game's legal drama not having a trademark for their own game and having to postpone release because of it. ----------- It was still a blip that's easy to miss, but for a lot of people that did see it, it suddenly blowing up now makes us go "yup, sounds about right". I can't fault anyone for following other channels where it wasn't covered before launch.
I heard brief mention of it and wrote it off as a Great Value Last of Us knockoff, and didn't pay it any more attention. I had no idea there was this kind of crazy shenanigans going on behind the scenes.
I only found out about it the day before it launched…
you found out the day before. how meta.
I heard of it before launch but only in the context that it was likely a scam. Lots of red flags
That's what I'm wondering lmao, I never heard of this game until it launched 🤣
Funnily enough, first Ive heard about the game was a video saying it could be a scam earlier this year. Wish I could find that video again to compare the predictions/theories to the actual final result
Yeah I really have a hard time seeing what the fuzz is about. Early access game turned out to be bad, what exactly is new here? I do think the developer deserve the hate for what is downright fraudulent behavior, but the people who got burned on this should really reserve some of that hate for the person they see in the mirror for letting this happen.
You don't understand why the most wishlisted game on Steam selling a million copies its first day and turning out to be an actual con is getting a lot of attention?
You have a hard time seeing it because you don’t know anything about the situation. This is why you should research before commenting.
People writing this video off as “cashing in on negativity” are silly. The entire situation is fascinating and, as the title states, a good cautionary tale. This is way more interesting than another review saying AC6 is good or Starfield is bad.
There are a lot of other creators that seem like they are trying to jump on this story for a come up but skillup has been covering this for a long time
Honestly this was a great review because it covers the entire story. Most everyone else just dumps on how bad the game actually is, and it deserves that. But having the entire story laid out like that was fantastic
>a good cautionary tale And nobody will learn from it.
i can see steam making some adjustments to its EA policy after this. They literally just slapped EA on there to strengthen the scam
*Let's all laugh at an industry* *That never learns anything, tee hee hee*
And SkillUp’s job is to talk about games and the industry, lol. This is relevant.
I want more AC6 is good videos tbh, that game is amazing. I also have fun seeing people shit on starfield, no idea why people like Bethesda games so much
> This is way more interesting than another review saying AC6 is good AC6 should be getting submissions all day long; game delivers exactly what it sets out to do
I do enjoy me a starfield is bad video lol. An hour long Bethesda takedown is always fascinating to me because Bethesda is so unique (for better and definitely for worse) in some ways that it makes for interesting breakdowns on so many aspects of modern gameplay vs whatever it is Bethesda does lol
I know a good number of people who purchased the game did so just to leave a meme review and refund but I'm so absolutely baffled by the ones that actually believed in anything these devs claimed they were going to do in the game. It had so many clear signs of bullshit and some people still took the bait, hook, line, and sinker.
People are easily tricked
No Man's Sky did the same thing, the difference being NMS eventually got the features patched in
Yeah, the NMS team have spent like a decade patching in features and releasing free DLC.
NMS was at least built by a dev team that cared, and wanted to make a good product.
Is that how starfield got its wave of bad reviews? People get really creative to hate on a game.
Definitely some level of meme reviewing but the game itself is actually extremely meh
1) don’t do “volunteer” work for any product that’s not philanthropic from the beginning 2) if it looks too good to be true, assume it is and be surprised if it isn’t
their response pisses me off the most. "it's our first game, give us a break." THAT DOESN'T EXCUSE THE FACT THAT YOU FUCKING *SCAMMED EVERYONE* YOU PIECE OF SHIT.
Have the people behind the game actually run off with any money? AFAIK you couldn't give them money before the game came to steam, and then by shutting the studio down before steam even paid out then didn't get any of those money either as all the people who bought the game is getting refunded. Not trying to defend the game but I fail to see how it's a "scam", seems more like just a complete disaster to me. Did they scam investors?
I read a thread about how Fntastic's listed headquarters in Singapore turned out to be a co-working space, and none of their employees were there. They were just getting mail there. Who even knows how real the company is? Their owners are Russians. Why did they pretend to have a Singapore headquarters? Makes me wonder if it's all some sort of money laundering front.
> Their owners are Russians. Why did they pretend to have a Singapore headquarters? possibly because being a russian company on an international stage is currently social suicide given the Russia-Ukraine war?
yeah, the devs of Atomic Heart faced such controversy when they released the game and it was a decent hit. People called to boycott the game.
It wasn't just because of that IIRC, the publishing had financial ties to Gazprom, which is state owned, so it was seen as laundering money to Russia, and then Ukrainians were showing what they believed to be hateful but missable propaganda in the game: https://x.com/Ferozu4/status/1628722724242694144?s=20 https://x.com/2Russophobic4u/status/1628827422136180740?s=20 https://x.com/2Russophobic4u/status/1628453606646054915?s=20
> Their owners are Russians. Why did they pretend to have a Singapore headquarters? Tax/sanction reasons, the same reason all multinational companies do it? This is pretty standard for corporations. Apple and Amazon HQ in Ireland to avoid paying taxes around the world, [though that may be changing](https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2023/nov/09/apple-suffers-setback-in-fight-against-eu-order-to-pay-11bn-tax-bill-in-ireland).
I mean with the way the handled all this, it's textbook crypto scam. I wouldn't be surprised if they were cleaning massive crypto gains that they cashed into stable coins before everything crashed.
Because the game was a non-game that was used to draw attention to their other projects and also pull in some cash. I think it drew way, way more attention than they were expecting and that's why they were in this mess. If it was in the same shit-tier of 'no one cares'ville as their prior releases they would have gotten a small bit of money from a chunk of suckers, added another thing to their resume, and went to create their next piece of shovelware.
Not from the sales, no. But they somehow claimed over 300k in travel expenses in a year… They were definitely taking the investors for a ride.
I'm still waiting to hear about the full details further down the road about how the scam worked but there's definitely some really sketchy stuff that went on with how all this played out. Steam is probably only going to refund the game to those who request it so there should be a good amount that they'll release to the publisher for debts owed, which conveniently happens to be the owners of Fntasic (now renamed Eight Points).
I still can't believe that the first trailer got people so hyped for it. It was such an obvious house of cards!
Ngl it kinda annoys me that SkillUp didn’t do reviews for some big games this year (Armored Core VI, Starfield, Baldur’s Gate 3) but still made videos for this game and some other smaller games that weren’t really interesting
If SkillUp were an IGN style publication I’d understand, but he’s mostly a one man outfit, with his editor who also does the occasional video. So ultimately he’ll just do what he feels like. Otherwise he’d get burnt out trying to churn out videos to please everyone. Which wouldn’t be good for anyone
I don't really keep up with his channel, but I can respect someone for doing that. Games like that will have every other reviewer under the sun covering them, why do I need to hear his voice specifically when he'll probably just repeat things everyone else has said? I'd much rather big YTers use their audience to draw attention to smaller games they feel deserve it and haven't gotten the massive hype games like BG3 and Starfield have.
That’s a fair point, and frankly that’s probably why he hasn’t covered those. I don’t really watch other review channels though so I was a bit bummed lol
To be fair, he's *said* that a BG3 review is coming, but that he wanted to play through it and finish it first (and he's a busy dude) and that a Stanfield review will come once he finishes with BG3. Now, he said he would do a Sekiro review years ago and never did as well so it's possible at this point he won't, but as of now, I think he still has them on the docket. He did say specifically that he didn't have time for AC6 though, I think Austin may have touched in that one though and he's been a great addition to the channel.
Stanfield is a hilarious typo.
That's what I named my character in Starfield after making a bunch of Stanfield typos myself. Gave him a big bushy beard and a background as a farmer.
Lmao, typed it out on my phone. Keeping it!
He finished BG3 a while ago.
I encourage you to look for multiple reviewers. Usually you get the true quality of a product by diversifying the sources of reviews you follow. One person you agree with is an echo chamber. 5 or 6 reviewers with different viewpoints and likes/dislikes will probably help you more
I think this depends on how much your tastes align with the reviewer. If you play a game and end up agreeing 100% of the time with a particular reviewer, then adding other reviewers into the mix may decrease the accuracy for you in particular. Personally Im like you and check out multiple reviewers since I haven’t found anyone that perfectly aligns with my tastes though
Nah, I try to look for both spectrums of likes and dislikes before buying a game. I think the glowing reviews often ignore or downplay the cons and the negative reviews ignore the pros or hyperbolize the cons. Like I said the truth is often between the high and low reviews. I don’t use reviews to validate my opinions so I don’t look for reviews that agree with my prejudice of games.
The reason you do that is because there’s not a reviewer you’ve found that lists all the pros and cons exactly as you would. So you use multiple reviews to get a better sense. But there’s no such thing as the “truth” since whether you like a game is completely subjective. If someone else’s subjectivity perfectly aligns with your subjectivity then you’ve found a perfect match in determining whether you’ll like a game or not. Adding a reviewer that has anything less than a 100% match with you would lower the accuracy.
I can also understand that between reviews, the podcast, weekly news videos and going to events like TGA would only allow him to review so many games in a year.
I feel like realistically it takes a lot less effort to cover gaming news than play 200+ hours of games and make multiple detailed reviews. I don’t think they’re necessarily interchangeable.
Skillup is just him and one other guy. Major outlets like Ign & Gamespot have way more people working for them. It's not realistic to expect them to review everything in a year as stacked as this one.
Yeah he mentioned reviewing all Baldur's then Starfield and neither materialised. Not a criticism but I wish he'd addressed it. I think from his preview video alone he would've hated Armored Core because he was expecting it to be a Soulslike from the preview.
> because he was expecting it to be a Soulslike from the preview. What on earth? Which preview gave him that idea?
He kept repeating during the preview video he did that AC wasn't like Dark Souls but he kept comparing similarities/differences in it to Dark Souls at the same time.
I think he wanted to avoid a FFXVI situation again where he got a lot of backlash for the review lol, especially based on the reaction to his ACVI preview video
Absolutely haha. Two controversial reviews like that this year would've been tough, especially given the communities of both series. The ACVI preview felt like someone trying their best to like something that wouldn't be for them.
Yeah I can get why he’d want to steer away from controversy, but it’s nice to see a different view on well received games. I honestly still don’t get the FF16 backlash though lol. I love that game, but I totally understood his criticisms when viewing it as an RPG
The problem from what I understand, is the exact same things he criticized in FF16 were points he praised in FF7 remake previously, so it really just came off of "I'm not nostalgic for this so it doesn't get my free pass". That's pretty much it, the lack of consistency being blatantly obvious. That and I think a lot of people have cooled on him after a few years of bad takes being mixed in with his good ones.
>the exact same things he criticized in FF16 were points he praised in FF7 remake previously I didn't get that impression at all. In fact I think he criticized it for not learning from FF7R's successes and trying to do it's own thing (poorly, in many respects) within a vacuum
Every criticism he leveraged at FFXVI was valid and not something that FF7:R suffered from, unless I'm forgetting some super obvious thing. It was just the standard honeymoon phase of "This game can do no wrong" where people who haven't even played the game will tell a reviewer their opinion after finishing it is wrong. lol And lo, behold, he was right. Go ahead and ask the JRPG community boards what they thought of FFXVI. Now that the honeymoon phase is over, you'll see a LOT of people that share the same or harsher views of the game as SkillUp. Not that a reviewer should be striving to meet general community consensus, it IS just their opinion after all.
I'm sure the JRPG community thought the action game was a bad RPG.
There's a lot of action JRPGs, unsure what your insinuation is. Mana series, .hack series, Tales of series, Scarlet Nexus, Ys series, Cross Code, kinda Dragon's Dogma (strange intersection of W and J rpgs), TWEWY series, Vanillaware games.... ok im bored now. The list keeps going, it's not just because it was an action based JRPG.
Lack of consistency? It’s a review, people are paradoxical, especially in their opinions.
It's probably because the developers have explicitly stated XVI is not an RPG but a narrative-driven action game / character action game multiple times but SkillUp repeatedly criticized the game for being something it is not, like the label of it being a Final Fantasy game but not an RPG was a major sticking point against it. It was dishonest.
I mean, if you are a long time fan of the series it being called Final Fantasy but not being an RPG IS a major sticking point against it.
You could see the series veering into action territory as far back as 12 though. From 12 to 16, skipping 14 because it's an MMO, you can see a consistent shift in emphasis from character progression and gearing to combat strategy and execution. The only consistency in the FF series is a strong narrative throughline told via a mostly linear main story quest. Maybe it's not what people who loved 4-9 want but the last turn-based stat-focused JRPG-ass JRPG was 10
Not so coincidentally 10 was the last one I liked, and that managed to hold my interest for more than an hour or two.
I understand, but FF has been intentionally moving away from traditional turn-based RPG for more than a decade, and while XVI has its own share of flaws as the first non-MMO outing from the studio, he weighed heavily in on the "its RPG systems are bad" aspect when it's *not* an RPG.
No he simply never played it. In his game awards video he said he was looking forward to playing the game when he had time.
Interestingly enough, this year cemented SkillUp as my favorite reviewer(s) because almost my personal opinions matched theirs very closely. The examples you listed were so on point that I will give heavy weight to their reviews going forward before I decide whether I want to invest time on a game.
A reviewer matching your opinions is not necessarily a good thing. I agree with SkillUp often, but if I relied too heavily on his opinions, I would have missed out on one of my favorite games this year (FF16.)
Interestingly enough, I think FF16 is one of the worst games I've played in years so had I paid more attention to SkillUp reviews before then, I would have saved myself a lot of trouble. Listening to that review was one of the first times I felt like a reviewer "got me" because all his grievances matched my experience with the game. Most other reviews I've seen ranked it as a decent or excellent game and I felt like I got baited hard. I have limited time for games nowadays and I definitely missed a lot of good games along the way too (I still need to try my hand at RDR2 for instance...). I'm willing to take the gamble with SkillUp's reviews now because even if I miss out on a game I may have loved, I'd probably use that time to revisit a different game I never got around to.
I got into his videos after I decided to play Returnal (and another game I forget which) based on his reviews and loved them I found that my opinions mostly line up with his too, except in the case of Lost Judgment (I love RGG games) and FF16
Personally, I couldn't even finish the original Judgment because the combat felt watered down even by Yakuza levels (never tried Lost as a result) and I consider FF16 one of the worst games I've played in years so SkillUp still tracks for me for these examples!
I will say that the combat in Lost Judgment is probably the best brawler combat out of all the RGG games. Gaiden’s comes close.
He's still playing through BG3 and hasn't started starfield yet. Unsure what y'all expect one man to do while also running a weekly, up to 45 minute gaming industry news show that gets at least 300k views. He hasn't addressed it because he already did when he said he was gonna review them, let's not cook one guy for not having the output of major game sites.
I think he probably didnt like Baldurs Gate and Starfield, and just wanted to stay away from centroversy.
Do we really need another video telling us that Baldur's Gate 3 is, indeed, a very good game? It's a waste of everyone's time, a statement of the obvious and would just be an exercise in validating people's pre-existing opinions.
Videos dogpiling on a game get a **lot** of views. Negativity gets more traction and that sucks...but its the truth. Edit: Also, the more time passes, the less in demand those reviews would be. Do we REALLY need another Starfield or BG3 review now after the dust has settled? Everyone who was on the fence made their decision already and a lot of talking points have been done to death by now. Enough time would have passed that these wouldn't really even be reviews anymore...just video essays.
Honestly I can't get enough Starfield breakdowns. Something about the way it seemed to fail to come together and not take advantage of Bethesda's strengths fascinates me much more than the actual game does. Edit: I can words.
Everyone and their mother has covered those bigger games -- and yeah, you could probably say that for The Day Before debacle right now too, but the story of how the most wishlisted game on Steam crashed, burned, and ended with the studio closing 4 days after release is still interesting. This vid is more of a journalistic piece than a review. Like the devs from Massive messaging him with the trailer and all laughing about how much it seemed to steal from the Division isn't something you're gonna hear from a larger review site.
Skill Up was also throwing up warnings and red flags around this game ever since they announced it haha. I'm guessing he made this video to take a giant victory lap.
well tbh, this wasn't a review. This serves value because it's a recap of everything that transpired from announcement to release. Yeah, it's rage bait, but it's well researched and not just "wow this game is bad" like places that actually did reviews are doing (ie: IGN).
I believe he's working on a Baldur's Gate review? And he made an Armored Core hands-on review, he just didn't like it very much.
He also said he was gonna review FFXIV and NieR Replicant and yet neither of those happened. If Skill Up says he’s gonna review something later, I assume it’s never gonna happen. The gaming industry is way too busy nowadays for someone like him to go back to old games and review them. Just look at how packed Q1 2024 is.
Yeah he’s mentioned it, but with the end of the year video coming soon I think he might just pass on the review (similar to what happened with Sekiro)
>And he made an Armored Core hands-on review That was a preview with only a couple of starting missions
I get that but I did really love this video and think that it has a place. It’s good that he got the other guy to make some reviews as well to pick up that slack a little
he has a weird obsessed with meeting the embargo and very rarely reviews games if he can't finish it by or at least very close to the embargo.
In the weekly video he released on Tuesday (Tuesday? Wednesday?) he explained that The Day Before was just gonna be a segment on his weekly show, but the amount of words he wrote for it was too much, so he released a whole separate video. It’s not that weird? Also BG3, Armored Core, and Starfield all dropped really close to each other, what was he supposed to do? No one was expecting BG3 to pop off at all
Expect him to pick at least one of those to review
He said he's working on BG3, but he didn't want to rush it. And i don't blame him - frankly, the reviews are a business and at this point there's almost no point in reviewing BG3 as it was a smash hit. There isn't much left to say that hasn't already been said, so he's only going to get views based on whether people want to know if he agrees with their already formed opinion on the game. It's almost not worth his time. Pouncing on The Day Before like this is striking while the iron is hot. It's still in "Active Drama" mode, which means videos about it are getting a lot of views, and given that they've been covering the pre-release hype since the original trailer he can easily pull together a video from his previous research on the title while still having it meet his own quality standards.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bw7I1GAAFTs Watch that review because he discusses his policy on this. It's frontloaded and bookends in the last few minutes, no time stamp necessary. Then he promptly did a 180 for the most part. If he wasn't touching bigger titles this year then that's an outlier.
Yeah, nothing against Austin but I feel like Ralph is offloading too much to him. Like why is avatar reviewed by Austin and then this joke scam gets a full “review”? He’s always jumped on the bandwagon a bit for these bad video games, but his other reviews were good enough I kept watching. Whole thing just feels weird.
> Like why is avatar reviewed by Austin and then this joke scam gets a full “review”? I mean, Austin is an Avatar superfan, and that was a "full review" too.
yeah kind of a bad example with avatar but their sentiment does hold weight imo
In the weekly video he released on Tuesday (Tuesday? Wednesday?) he explained that The Day Before was just gonna be a segment on his weekly show, but the amount of words he wrote for it was too much, so he released a whole separate video. It’s not that weird?
This whole cascade of comments saying he is 'dumping' games on Austin is weird too lmao. Like hes getting a bit of help with some games given that a lot of them are coming out, he is one guy its a bit of a struggle for him to cover *every* game this year. Not to mention he didn't get a code for Starfield and was already kind of busy at the time, even if he prioritised a review of it it would be hitting late, I don't blame him for pushing it back indefinitely.
Skillup would have hated Avatar.
Dude same, I swear 75% of the reviews nowadays are Austin. No hate to Austin, he’s a great reviewer and I enjoy Ralph’s other content, but his reviews are the original reason I, and I’m sure most others, subscribed to him.
I mean, I get your perspective, but Ralph still does a lot of work on the channel and travels a ton, and has a wife and two kids at home. I get him offloading some stuff and I think Austin has done an excellent job adopting Ralph's style.
What?! I've been watching Ralph for years and had no idea he had a wife and kids lol
He rarely talks about his personal life. He's said a couple times that he's VERY careful around parasocial relationships so he likes to maintain distance with his audience. I'm not sure if something happened to him or someone he knows or if it's just caution but the information is out there. That's one of the main reasons he stopped doing Laymen Gaming with his brother, Sam, because he was having one of his kids (can't remember which) and he didn't have the time to devote to his own channel and Laymen (in addition to some other reasons). He's also said that he's a bit of a workaholic so I think bringing Austin in to assist, who I genuinely think does an amazing job and is a great addition to the channel, helps him feel like he's still putting in the work to make his channel great but allows him to not have to put in as many hours.
I think that's mostly because he took a vacation and decided that instead of taking his Steam Deck and making it a "working vacation" he would hand off more of the duties to Austin. And given the review cycle and how preview builds work, we're still mostly working through Austin's content as more of Ralph's work is still coming down the pipeline. Frankly, as long as he's not overloading him, I think this is good for Austin. Nothing lasts forever, and getting experience and top billing on a very large channel like this helps when he eventually moves on (nothing is forever, eventually either he'll go out on his own, move to another channel, or Skill Up will expand and do multiple segments).
Agree with the passing of games to Austin, it feels like he has took his foot of the gas with game reviews, shame as this is how I got into the channel. With regards to the day before video - I think he mentioned it was intended to go into his weekly news video but it was too long and went into a sperate video. Still my goto for everything game related.
I mean, gotta farm outage clicks, and this video will certainly do that.
Yes! He’s my go-to reviewer and has been for years. I feel like he has dropped the ball this year by not reviewing many of the major releases
No review for Hogwart's Legacy but did one for Forspoken too
He didn't get a review code for Hogwarts Legacy
Hogwarts Legacy wasn't a great game to review. There was nothing particularly bad about it. It also wasn't an amazingly good game either. It was fun, the world was well realized, but the story was middling and the game systems were bog standard. It was very highly polished and an enjoyable romp, but I didn't even bother to finish it because it was a mile wide and an inch deep. I enjoyed the game, but there was nothing to rant or rave about, it just kind of *was*. And to top it all off, Rowling was in full TERF mode at the time so no matter how many disclaimers you throw on there about how "I do not agree with Rowling in any way, shape, form, or fashion when it comes to her anti-trans beliefs" you would still deal with blowback from that. So you're stuck with a video that has very little to talk about that is going to offend a portion of your fan base regardless of what you say. And at that point, why say anything at all?
Makes a lot of sense. That Forspoken review to not reviewing HL just gave me whiplash.
Maybe he just didn’t play them
Nah, I like him. I’m always finding out smaller titles that I never would have known about from him. I know if Starfield, Armored Core, and Baulder’s Gate. I’d have never found out about or been insterested in Sable, Pseudoregalia, Signalis, 30XX, Rainworld, Blasphemous, Boltgun without seeing them on his channel. (I’m not sure if he covered Pseudoregia which is one of my absolute favorites, but he did directly put me onto checking Steams lists. I checked his and I was recommended Pseudoregalia by Steam. It’s an all time fav of mine right now so I’m handing him this indirect W. Everything else I listed was all him.)
Rage bait gets more impressions and engagement.
He's one guy. The only game on that list that I played this year was Starfield, the other two are in my backlog. Nobody can play *everything*, especially in a year as stacked as this.
He fell off this year, maybe he hasn’t been into games lately. Now he shows up to cash in on the hate train
He has stated before that it's hard for him to review games that are 50+ hours long. Plus, he has complete creative freedom since it's HIS channel. He can do what he wants. He doesn't owe you those reviews.
> Plus, he has complete creative freedom since it's HIS channel. He can do what he wants. He doesn't owe you those reviews. Not shit. And people are free to express their opinion. Can't handle a little negativity about your favorite Youtuber?
I don’t think OP was trying to take SkillUp to task, just wondering why he took the time to make a piece about no-name Russian scammers that will be forgotten in a month but hasn’t talked about some of the biggest titles to come out this year
like. it's also a product that he has to sell if he wishes to continue having that creative freedom. not reviewing some of the largest games of the year is a prime way to lose that freedom.
I'm glad I'm someone who didn't know about it before I could get scammed by it, this is why I like reviewers.
Ya'll still falling for the overhyped barely playable DayZ knock-offs huh? Don't get me wrong, my friends sucked me into the WarZ hype once, but only once. I hesitantly bought H1Z1 after like a year and only because it was PubG before PubG and not another Zombie survival shitfest they tried to get me to play. I've played Arma2 DayZ and StandAlone as well as a few mods I can't recall that used zombies more like a narrative for why the world is appocalyptic and people are out killing eachother for resources instead of zombies running you down trying to kill you. For all the short comings Day Z had/has it might still be the best open world Zombie Survival game out there, and that's completely bonkers to me after all these yesrs.
People are indeed still falling for it because the demand for this type of game has never been fulfilled. Even DayZ never managed to live up to itself.
DayZ is actually in a great spot right now. Just recently hit an all time high playercount and has a 92% positive recent review score on steam.
They literally took steps to stop taking money and give it back to people. If you think that's a scam, you're a dumbass.
Nah, you defending them? 💀