cross-posted from: https://kbin.social/m/gaming/t/354777
Twitter thread in the link
Henry Schrader:So, to anyone who doesn’t know, Hi-Rez Studios, the people behind Paladins and Smite, have stated that they will be using AI to clone voices and refused to add in any words to contracts that would protect actors from it. More info in the thread. Please share to other VAs.
It sucks that I can’t boycott their garbage anymore than I already do.
Torrent and share their games to affect their bottom line.
They are online only games and free. So there’s no piracy you can really pull.
Torrenting their free-to-play games?
This is what happens when everything on the planet is run by suits who are incapable of seeing anything but the bottom line. Exploit the creatives until they can be replaced by shitty robots that don’t do the job half as well but are cheaper to use.
Our dumb cyberpunk future is now.
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Fuck Hi-Rez for making a really good Tribes game and then abandoning it for Smite. I sure hope they merely licensed the name and don’t hold rights to the entire IP, cuz I want a good, modern Tribes game so bad.
Fuck them even more for this.
Agreed. I miss Tribes :(
Hi-Rez bought Tribes from Sierra back in 2010 so they likely own the IP, unfortunately.
They already refuse to fix their EAC so that the game can run on Linux so I can’t not play their game any more than I already do. I played Paladins briefly when Overwatch was having its China drama and enjoyed it, but I’m done booting Windows to play games.
So sad these guys own the Tribes IP
Wow! Another Tribes-series player in the wild.
I don’t know who’s idea it was to put out the update that overhauled the classes and game modes in Tribes:Ascend (Out of the Blue, 1.3, 2015)… I had lost the niches that I loved with my specific class and it felt like the game I was playing was different compared to the one prior to that patch.
I was a bad shot then (I was but I still am, too), but god damn if I couldn’t rack up those points with my turret placement.
I’m actually a Tribes 1 player, when 2 came out my PC wasn’t good enough to play it. Tried Ascend but I couldn’t get into it, didn’t seem bad tho.
Tribes:Ascend WAS good, for a time imo, but got neglected in favour of MoBAs.
Nice thing is they hosted the Tribes 1 and 2 online for free, if you wanted to see your current PC run it.
I cry every time. I don’t understand why some indie dev hasn’t created a mechanical rip off yet, imagine battlebit but instead of battlefield it’s tribes. I want to believe it would be huge.
It’s not gimmicky enough for modern players. Sure, skiing took skill and you had different armors and loadouts, but aside from that it was still simple.
Hi-rez has always been known for making a good product than ruining it. 8 years later in Paladins and they still haven’t reverted cb12
ah man. I kind of liked paladin’s hussle as the overwatch lunch-stealers. Now who am I supposed to root for? TF2 again? Is that game even still alive?
Ugh. I used to love what Hi-Rez put out. Global Agenda was probably my favorite game by them. From my home state as well. They’ve always made terrible business decisions though. This, of course, is no exception
I will happily continue to not pay for games that do this and I won’t be missing out on anything.
This is on par with restaurants that microwave garbage food. They’re phoning it in to squeeze as much profit as possible out of the product. That tells me you don’t want to make games people enjoy, you want to make games that do nothing but maximize profit. I ain’t here for that shit. I’m willing to pay money for companies that respect art and trades, not ones that worship capitalism and exist to appease assholes in suits.
Never forget the guys who founded hi rez come from ncr a cash register company. They believe in money first.
I loved tribes and they killed it for smite. I actually loved smite a ton and played it a lot.
This reduces the minuscule interest I had in replaying Paladins to a negative number. Smite’s been nothing but frustrating garbage, but I thought that with a bit of polish and a lot more character development, Paladins had promise when it came out. Starting a labor dispute to begin a practice that will degrade the overall quality of the game means it’s not worth my hard disk space to install their products - it’s clear things are only going to get worse for Hi-Rez titles from here.
It will be interesting to see how these kind of things develop over the next few years. Of course, it’s very enticing for developers to use AI voices, as they can probably save massive amounts of money through it. Will the voice actors have any options to stop this?
Unionizing. Voice actors’ union can say no work will be done with studios using ai voices. Similarly to what writers guild is doing towards Hollywood.
Collective pressure and bargaining works.
Will it work 100%? Nope. But it will work well enough.
