Profile of Hannibal

There's nothing spot on with cobras post. His posts are unfortunately often pretty incoherent rambling with no backup. Not all, but quite some.

Before we break it down, let's define that the main claim is that ESG (environmental, social, governance focused) investment leads to SEGA/Relic defining their products according to these values, which is the reason why the companies are not "healthy" in a classic economic way and ultimately why CoH3 is bad.

Point by point:

FYI;
According to multiple insider sources and the latest rumors are expecting ESG funds (stakeholder capitalism) to collapse/dissolve in 2023.

That means layoffs across the entire tech sector and the entire video game industry.
Sega/Relic is reliant on ESG funds such as Blackrock and Vanguard.

Two claims in here that have no backup, no source, not even a vague one claiming that's the case. For the amount of memes that are posted down below, why is there no source to the central two claims of the whole post?
Where's the analysis of how much investment firms have invested into Sega and or Relic under ESG rules? The last sentence can even be misread that BL and VG only invest according to ESG "guidelines". That's complete nonsense.

Next question:
Even without data, are these claims correct? The first one we can't tell yet, but it's also only April. There's no ESG related big downfall of the economy. For the time being, this is "waiting for happening" at best.
We've indeed seen layoffs in the IT industry, but without direct relation to ESG investments.

Show Spoiler

I'll collapse this since all of this is just throwing in the point that Relic ignored "red flags" followed by a lot of memes and a link to Wikipedia about "Malinvestment", which in turn is not linked to ESG investment. It proves nothing, it's just making the post longer and fakes some data or "being informed" about the topic. I'll jump to the last bit of actual content:

Why ESG Is the Biggest Scam of the 21st Century | Vivek Ramaswamy;

Is that true? To be honest, I don't know. It's a 1,5h youtube video/podcast. You can get basic insights into goals and problems of ESG based investment in a normal article read that takes 5-10 minutes. Read a couple, get opinions from multiple people in the financial industry. These could have been linked.
Instead, here's a 1,5h video where I get the opinion of 2 people only. Why? No one is going to watch it, and even if I watch it I have the opinion of exactly 2 people. It doesn't make sense, especially since Cobra assumes that he needs to explain what a malinvestment is. Why not link more basic stuff instead?



There indeed are problems with ESG funding.
Cobra claims, but can't link any of it to Relic or SEGA with the stuff he provides. It's just rambling for rambling's sake.

snip

My post was not particularly about why CoH3 has issues, but why Relic has to patch sooner rather than later with a view on the whole franchise.

Previously, CoH2 had 9-10k players at peak (depending on the "phase" of the game and which time frame, but this was roughly the state in 2022). Now, CoH2 and CoH3 combined have 11-12k players. That's roughly a 2k gain in total player numbers, but now split roughly evenly between both games with CoH2 getting influx and CoH3 getting eflux. CoH3 gets further patches and players will continuously check in how much the game has improved after each patch. The hardcore fans will play either CoH2 or CoH3, whichever one they deem the better product at any time.
The problem is: If Relic keeps on with smaller patches only fixing a couple of features (not talking about short term meta or balance, but stuff that will actually make the game feel good to play) per patch, the player base will stay split. The lower player numbers however decrease the quality of matchmaking (which I can personally anecdotally confirm for CoH2). This could cause what I termed "intermediate fans" to leave the franchise entirely, because now both CoH2 and CoH3 are not as fun to play anymore and another game is better.

I doubt Relic will abandon CoH3 that quickly, the game is not in a great state but not horribly failing either, and player numbers still go down but apparently stabilize for the time being and not indicating a complete failure as well. The most likely way forward is that Relic keeps supporting and patching at least for the next months.

Those need to be big patches. After failing to gain a new audience, Relic needs to move most players to CoH3. The other option is that CoH3 completely fails and the community goes back to CoH2. But keeping both games only half-alive will hurt both in the long run.

Not necessarily. It's a pretty random example I know, but in another, popular game I play called "Dead by Daylight", a premium cosmetic skin for one character costs 11€ on average while a new chapter -which includes two new playable characters and 6 new playable perks- costs 7€


Wait for the new CoH3 battlegroups and see how much they cost, and then let's complain afterwards if it's a rip-off

What you describe is really an exception. Most games shit their games with MTX. I don't see why I should pretend Relic would be the rare exception, given that everything - releasing a half finished game, prioritizing store over game fixes, fake currencies, token freemium model, similar behaviour in CoH2, even the publisher being SEGA - that they did so far points towards heavy monetization. There is no reason to give Relic the benefit of the doubt.

I'd almost bet that Relic intentionally overpriced their store to then go "whoops, we listen" while setting the pricing to the originally intended value. Would not be the first time we'd see this in the gaming industry.

But I really don't get where people are coming from with this "they prioritized the store over fixing the game or adding features!", like how exactly do you come to the conclusion that they pulled manpower & resources away from balance patches and features so that they can rush the store out? In fact, it is very likely that it's completely separate teams working on those things.

Whoever was put on "develop the store" could have been doing some other task. Some engine development, bug squashing, making the interface properly usable, working on proper friend invites and menu features, even making those shield icons and exchanging art that they embarrassingly reused from CoH2 (you don't need any programming or other vast technical skills for that) or whatever they're good at. There's enough missing and wrong in CoH3, they'll find a spot that needs work urgently for any developer in the company. I don't believe that they have a group of devs that have completely finishes their targeted milestones and have no better use than developing the shop.
And even if we stick to your "they're in completely separate teams" argument: Relic knew already half a year ago that the game is not ready and in a poor state. They made their business plan, they decided that the engine, UI, sounds, graphics, art, effects etc are all in good condition and that more money needs to be directed to develop further monetization and hired more people with the additional skill set of developing their shop. Problem is: Few things of the first parts have been well done. Even with this argument: Relic made a shitty business plan, shitty project planning, shitty money allocation. They should have hired anyone else instead the person that finally made the shop. They could have realized this problem surely one year ago, at the very least half a year ago when they realized the game won't be ready for the intended November launch. They did not change any of their plans substantially enough to release a game that you could call finished. If your project planning is so rigid that you cannot reallocate resources to fit your needs half to one year before reaching completion, you're really bad at project planning and really bad at setting correct priorities.