this post was submitted on 01 Apr 2025
133 points (93.5% liked)

Games

39021 readers
1123 users here now

Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.

Rules

1. Submissions have to be related to games

Video games, tabletop, or otherwise. Posts not related to games will be deleted.

This community is focused on games, of all kinds. Any news item or discussion should be related to gaming in some way.

2. No bigotry or harassment, be civil

No bigotry, hardline stance. Try not to get too heated when entering into a discussion or debate.

We are here to talk and discuss about one of our passions, not fight or be exposed to hate. Posts or responses that are hateful will be deleted to keep the atmosphere good. If repeatedly violated, not only will the comment be deleted but a ban will be handed out as well. We judge each case individually.

3. No excessive self-promotion

Try to keep it to 10% self-promotion / 90% other stuff in your post history.

This is to prevent people from posting for the sole purpose of promoting their own website or social media account.

4. Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts

This community is mostly for discussion and news. Remember to search for the thing you're submitting before posting to see if it's already been posted.

We want to keep the quality of posts high. Therefore, memes, funny videos, low-effort posts and reposts are not allowed. We prohibit giveaways because we cannot be sure that the person holding the giveaway will actually do what they promise.

5. Mark Spoilers and NSFW

Make sure to mark your stuff or it may be removed.

No one wants to be spoiled. Therefore, always mark spoilers. Similarly mark NSFW, in case anyone is browsing in a public space or at work.

6. No linking to piracy

Don't share it here, there are other places to find it. Discussion of piracy is fine.

We don't want us moderators or the admins of lemmy.world to get in trouble for linking to piracy. Therefore, any link to piracy will be removed. Discussion of it is of course allowed.

Authorized Regular Threads

Related communities

PM a mod to add your own

Video games

Generic

Help and suggestions

By platform

By type

By games

Language specific

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
top 41 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] simple@lemm.ee 72 points 2 months ago (2 children)

There are some confused people in the comments, it's industry standard to sponsor streams/have brand collaboration/twitch drops. Every company does it, and 2 million dollars is not much at all. their advertising budget is at least 20x that much, probably more.

[–] Prox@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago

For real. EA spent north of $10M on streamer sponsorships for the Apex Legends launch and that was like 7 years ago.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 14 points 2 months ago (2 children)

This is true, but one thing I noticed with AC Shadows is that there were a LOT of no-name streamers posting reels with fake hype over the game. It was a little egregious and came off as more than a little desperate.

[–] XeroxCool@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Without seeing what you've seen, that honestly sounds more like a symptom of the platform, current internet trends, and algorithm gaming than it sounds like a cheesy viral marketing campaign

[–] Quetzalcutlass@lemmy.world 5 points 2 months ago

Or just excitement at getting "exclusive" early access as a small streamer. If you don't know there are thousands of others, it'd feel like an opportunity to make it big.

[–] EncryptKeeper@lemmy.world 4 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Generally speaking, algorithms on these sites don’t serve me a ton of videos with no views from creators with no followers, en masse. With AC shadows, I was suddenly inundated with these videos, on multiple sites, without ever having looked anything up about it, exclusively by streamers that nobody is watching.

[–] Lv_InSaNe_vL@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

My buddy is a little streamer (gets maybe a few dozen viewers) and he got early access to it as well. Although he doesn't add any fake hype, he's just a very good hype man.

[–] absquatulate@lemmy.world 21 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I know it's cool to hate on this game, especially with it being so mediocre, but to me the number is fairly meaningless by itself. I wonder how that 2 million budget compares to other large releases ( say Starfield, since it's pretty clear that bethesda also pumped a lot of money into the "gaming press")

[–] Kelly@lemmy.world 15 points 2 months ago (1 children)

I believe its production budget was pegged at between $250m and $350m.

So this particular item in the marketing budget is less than 1% of the development costs.

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

I haven't found a source for this number when I looked for it. The best I got was a finance blog saying "experts say" without saying that they were progenitors of the reporting or not. Valhalla had a budget about half of this, so it would surprise me if Shadows was that much more expensive.

[–] Fiivemacs@lemmy.ca 18 points 2 months ago

I just wish companies would stop releasing games to streamers only. It does nothing but piss me off when I see someone playing a game, find it interesting then find out it doesn't even exist to buy yet .. no demos, no test play versions no nothing..just coming soon.

Makes me not want to play it anymore

[–] Aliktren@lemmy.world 12 points 2 months ago (4 children)

You could cry couldnt you, what a colossal waste of money. Just make a good game, spend the cash there, word will get around.

[–] duchess@feddit.org 61 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Really good games flopped before because they weren't marketed well. Marketing is budgeted for productions of any size, and influencer marketing in general is very effective for something like videogames. Larger amounts were spent on TV ads, or printing campaigns.

[–] innocentpixels@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago

I agree! I mean why would coke still produce ads if they weren't working. Everyone knows about coke, but they still have ads everywhere

[–] ampersandrew@lemmy.world 24 points 2 months ago

The industry is full of dead studios that made good games. Marketing does work and is necessary, but I'm not sure much you can say this marketing campaign was successful given the heavy lifting Assassin's Creed as a brand was already doing.

[–] jonathan@lemmy.zip 3 points 2 months ago

Given the vitriol against Ubisoft (I'm not commenting on how justified it is), obviously they need to do something to counter it. The anti-woke crowd are an incredibly noisy minority.

[–] ZeroHora@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Good games can still fail, great games can have the luxury of let people do the marketing for them.

[–] PieMePlenty@lemmy.world 8 points 2 months ago

So marketing? What's the problem here? Should they have spent it advertising on radio?

[–] KingThrillgore@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Money well spent: Grummz got told the fuck off on twitter lol


I think the only influencers that would matter in terms of direct sales would be Streamers and VTubers

[–] mox 3 points 2 months ago
[–] sirico@feddit.uk 3 points 2 months ago

Schedule 1 paid...