Destructoid Checkpoint: The lines we draw in the sandbox

It’s a week of news, no doubt about it. Things have occurred in the gaming industry that are both surprising and familiar. Against it all, a massive gaming community is figuring out how to process the grief of losing their shared space, and some of them are failing to do it in a healthy way. Let’s dive deeper.

The Steam Deck Price Hike

Valve has increased the price of its handheld, the Steam Deck, with the hike coming in at around 40% across the models in various regions. It’s a hell of an increase, with Valve stating it's due to market factors like component costs. 

We’ve talked about Valve and hardware pricing in the past, as the Steam Cube, their upcoming plug-and-play computer system that some folks refuse to call a console, has been delayed while they figure out the supply and pricing of important parts. Well, the good news is that they appear to have figured out the pricing issue by increasing it a lot. 

A similar price increase from Sony, Xbox, or Nintendo would rightly cause some uproar, but things are pretty muted on social media for this one, as the Valve Defense Force is once again riding out to protect anything related to the company.

Now, realistically, the Steam Deck just isn’t as important a player in the console/handheld market, but it’s still funny to see Valve’s Immunity Bubble spread out to cover even this. People largely just view Gabe as the “good” billionaire who lets them have cheap games and forums to post questionable gifs on, so they ignore the fact that Valve is a major reason why microtransactions are now so prevalent in gaming (along with Bethesda, EA, and some others), wanted to do paid mods, refused to offer consumers the refunds they were entitled to for years until they were sued into having to do it, and is currently tied up in numerous lawsuits for flexing their influence to negatively impact game pricing for consumers. 

Outside of all that, people still are not seeming to arrive at the most likely reason for such a large price increase for these items, and it’s not having the Steam Deck be too much of a value proposition when the Steam Cube price is finally confirmed. 

This could be yet another sign that the Steam Cube will be an expensive prospect and likely will not compete on price with Xbox and Sony consoles, as people had hoped. Those companies rely on the console itself being a loss leader, then making it up over the lifetime sales of games to the unit owners. Valve is not silly enough to get caught up in that noise, and is probably right to avoid it, but it does mean less attractive hardware pricing. 

More Geralt is on the way

In welcome and surprising news, The Witcher 3 is getting a new expansion. Expected in 2027, Songs of the Past will give us another adventure with Geralt. The Witcher 3 really was a wonderful game, and an excellent moment of a medium-sized developer maturing into a studio that was capable of producing something truly engaging and exciting. Sure, CDPR kinda fluffed it a few years later with a terrible launch for Cyberpunk 2077, but they did manage to turn that around in time. 

There are no huge details available on the expansion at this moment in time, but it is being co-developed by Fool’s Theory, a team that includes former The Witcher 3 staff. This is also the studio that is handling The Witcher Remake. We are likely to see more developments like this over time, as smaller, essentially cheaper studios are provided with the opportunity to work in established games, adding to already established worlds with proven interest. It keeps major IPs earning over long development periods between bigger projects, and stops sidetracking more expensive core talent onto less financially rewarding projects.

Destiny 2 players are struggling

There has been a predictably varied slew of reactions within the Destiny community to the news that Destiny 2 is getting one last update and then going into maintenance mode. There have been heartfelt tributes from major community members that have resonated well with passionate players, evoking all the fun and joy that we had with the game. Others have been less graceful, with some even declaring war against Bungie’s newest game, Marathon.

This is a good example of arrested development, as the people who had more access and influence on Destiny than any others outside of the dev team, and who worked hard to turn it into a conveyor belt for content rather than a fun game for the average gamer, are now wondering where all those players went, and the best way to monetize being mad about that. 

Most folks, it has to be said, are just kind of sad about how it has all turned out, and are worried about the fate of the development team. Gamer grief is complex, and we’ve never really watched a game like Destiny curl up and die before. Yes, lots of games have ended, but the Destiny ride has been pretty unique, for a multitude of reasons. It was, arguably, the market leader in the looter shooter genre; it has intense moments of incredible writing, and while I would argue that it narratively lost its way as time went on, it really did manage to rise above the restraints of product and into the rarified air of art on more than a few occasions. 

The shock for most people seems to be the idea that all the time and money they spent on the game now has no value. People in rooms they can’t enter, with access to numbers they can’t see, have weighed up the cost of keeping it going, and it hasn’t come down in our favor. It’s a tough pill to swallow, and people are struggling with that, which is understandable. 

That said, some of the behavior from some people is undignified at best, and bordering on criminal at worst, and maybe, as a community, we should be policing ourselves better than we are.

What’s happening, Destructoid?

Andrej Barovic has been playing 007 First Light. - “There’s everything you expect from James Bond: cars, explosions, fancy gadgets, sexy women in distress, sexier women causing distress to the protagonist, evil masterminds, and political commentary. Emotions run high, the stakes are absolute. The game asks you to invest yourself and delivers a complete rollercoaster of a story, but not one without catharsis. Every investment pays off in the end, whether at the closure of an individual chapter or at the game’s very last moment.”

bowie Knife99 is the kind of thing that you can’t program; it can only come from the place where player intent meets a game feature that leads to more than people expect. Tiago Manuel can tell you all about it. - “Bowie Knife99 has been described via too many different expletives to list here. Still, all accounts shared the same sense of fear when talking about this player, who, at his best, would drive like an absolute maniac. And, at his worst, would seemingly display the ability to come straight at you at the highest speed from the best possible angle to achieve the highest possible level of destruction.”

And that’s it for this week.