this post was submitted on 29 May 2026
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Gamedev
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It'll be fun when gaming companies see this as a viable marketing strategy.
"Our CEO said they wouldn't pay us if this didn’t sell well... plz buy game"
They already do, and more. Some contracts have significant pay dependent on Metacritic scores. Whether or not the whole team is gutted between projects instead of just most of the team is generally dependent on review metrics, sales, and ROI.
It's openly been an absolutely awful industry to work for at least a decade now.
The Obsidian devs who made Fallout New Vegas famously lost their bonus because they were supposed to have a minimum Metacritic score of 85 at launch. They got an 84. That was the last good entry in the series.
Note that almost no one would have cared if the first game wasn't already a great game.
So you have to have a good indie game out of the gate first... At which point you are already doing better than 99% of the market.