[1] https://www.ign.com/articles/remedy-has-recouped-most-of-the...
To be actually successful a game needs to capture the target audience (gamers).
Problem is there seems to be a huge disconnect between critics and gamers gamers nowadays
It's hard for me to gauge whether this is normal for modern game studios or they're desperately hanging on by their fingernails. But the disparity between you saying "no one bought it" and it being the company's fastest-selling game makes me suspicious of everything. Either way, times have changed since my only interaction with Remedy, the original Max Payne :D
I imagine Remedy was overall fine (as in payroll) thanks to Epic's bankrolling, but few studios get that privileged.
Gaming critics are irrelevant. Their opinions on games is not more relevant than your opinion or my opinion. It's not like they got a PhD from Game Criticism University.
They're just average joes who give each other clout online to practice access journalism and are bought and paid for by the big studios to parrot opinions favorable to drive sales for their games.
Games studios should listen to the gamers who actually buy the games, not to the journalists who don't.
It's not just accusations, it's the truth. Sweet Baby Inc CEO came out in public talking about how they're blackmailing game studios with social media mobs in order to create demand for their services on censoring games, and recordings of SBI employees in video presentations saying their jobs is to "burn the games industry to the ground" and that game devs principles are rooted in "white supremacist patriarchal values".
How can one call it a conspiracy, is beyond me.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iq86DnmX2xY
> If you're a creative working in AAA (which I did for many years), put this stuff up to your higher-ups, and if they don't see the value in what you're asking for when you ask for consultants/research, go have a coffee with your marketing team and terrify them with the possibility of what's going to happen if they don't give you what you want.
This is advice to employees about how to push for change from within. It's kind of aggressive, and the word "terrify" is OTT, but it's legit to say "if we don't do this we're going to get roasted on social media". Unless I'm missing something, there's no suggestion that Sweet Baby themselves would be the ones whipping up social mobs.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sweet_Baby_Inc.#Online_backlas...
[1] https://www.imdb.com/news/ni64471459/