Agents of Mayhem’s dismal August sales precede reported layoffs - Sensationalist Headlines

[url]https://venturebeat.com/2017/09/27/agents-of-mayhems-dismal-august-sales-precede-reported-layoffs/[/url] [t]https://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/agents.jpg[/t] [quote]Developer Volition laid off more than 30 people earlier this week, according to a Kotaku report. The studio, which is part of publisher Deep Silver, launched its Agents of Mayhem action shooter in August to some praise and some criticism, but indifference from consumers seems like the biggest reaction it produced. Deep Silver has not released sales numbers for Agents of Mayhem, but publicly available data from tracking firms The NPD Group in the U.S. and GfK Chart-Track in the U.K. suggest that Volition’s latest release is — at the very least — a sales disappointment. We’ve reached out to Deep Silver for a comment, and we’ll update this post if it gets back with more information. Agents of Mayhem is one of the marquee releases for Deep Silver in the second half of 2017, but the publisher has reason to feel stronger than disappointed in its sales performance. In the U.K., Agents of Mayhem debuted at No. 4 on the GfK chart that tracks the sales of physical games at retail. That is not necessarily an awful start during a busy time of the year, but Volition’s Saints Row followup launched August 15. That was a slow period, and it wasn’t competing against many other new releases — instead, older games like Fallout 4, Grand Theft Auto V, and Crash Bandicoot N. Sane Trilogy all outsold it.[/quote] Additional sources: [url]https://kotaku.com/big-layoffs-hit-agents-of-mayhem-developer-volition-1818844285[/url] [url]http://www.shacknews.com/article/101502/layoffs-hit-volition-following-poor-agents-of-mayhem-sales[/url] [url]http://www.ign.com/articles/2017/09/27/agents-of-mayhem-dev-volition-reportedly-hit-by-layoffs[/url] [url]http://www.pcgamer.com/agents-of-mayhem-studio-volition-suffers-layoffs/[/url] I remember seeing on steamspy that the game launched with less owners than Saints Row 3 gained in one night off sale a few months before

Honestly, all I wanted was another Saints Row game. I have to admit that Agents of Mayhem looks amusing and such, but it just isn't Saints Row and if they planned it to be the "spiritual succesor" of Saints Row then I'm so sorry, but I'm not interested.

What is it with games getting little or no advertising lately? Maybe people would've given 1% more of a shit had they known this even existed. Lawbreakers had this problem but even worse somehow.

[QUOTE=Sgt. Nikolai;52724030]I'm not interested.[/QUOTE] Sums up my reaction to this game. Saints Row the Third was a fun, zany game to play with friends. Then they released Saints Row IV which, while being more of the same, was somehow (in my mind) worse in pretty much every way. I can't exactly pin it down, but I just didn't have fun with SR IV. Or at least, not on a fundamental level like I did with SR III. Then they released Gat Outta Hell and that's when I just stopped caring about the franchise as a whole. Personally feels like beating a dead horse to me. By the time this came around, I just downright didn't care anymore.

This game was like if the creators of the PBJ sandwich put out a "spiritual successor" and it was just two slices of moldy bread They removed what made saints row good game wise, and ontop of that they made their own new engine that looks like a shitty sr4 and runs like total shit

I have literally never heard of this game until now. It's a shame too, since Saints row III was ok, but after playing SR4 it was pretty obvious that they were taking the "lolrandum" thing too far.

I don't know what they expected.

[QUOTE=New Cidem;52724032]What is it with games getting little or no advertising lately? Maybe people would've given 1% more of a shit had they known this even existed. Lawbreakers had this problem but even worse somehow.[/QUOTE] I genuinely don't think it would have helped much. Agents of Mayhem fucking eludes me as to why it exists. It's in the SR/ Red Faction universe, but it's not Saints Row despite trying it's damdest to capture what made 3 and 4 entertaining. It's a co-op style team shooter...but there's no multi-player options at all. It just doesn't have a reason to exist as it doesn't really appear to do anything new at all. It's not like it's a cash grab or anything, Volition have a good history and so far Deep Silver haven't been awful as a publisher for many of the ex-THQ studios they bought. It just seems like a really wild attempt at doing more with the SR universe, but without making a mainline entry to give them more freedom.

Apparently Nordic got red faction in the THQ auction and not DS so ultor is no longer legally a reference to red faction. It's probably why it seemingly wasn't mentioned on AoM at all

[QUOTE=Gmod4ever;52724038]Then they released Saints Row IV which, while being more of the same, was somehow (in my mind) worse in pretty much every way. I can't exactly pin it down, but I just didn't have fun with SR IV. Or at least, not on a fundamental level like I did with SR III.[/QUOTE] IV and GooH had a few issues in that the super powers really broke the flow of the game. The world is still built as if you weren't able to run faster than any given vehicle, or fly/ glide across basically the entire map in a single leap. Combat itself changed to accommodate that by making enemies spongier to encourage use of buffs and debuffs, but even then you could just shoot and win eventually as you were borderline untouchable. It's kind of a shame as I like what IV was trying to do. It's basically a "greatest hits" game by the end of it with you gathering homies from games long gone and visiting areas that they wouldn't really be able to justify without the whole alien Matrix deal. I had a lot of fun playing through IV, and GooH is okay so far just because it's a bit different. But I've yet to have the same moments of trying to prevent my sides going into orbit I had in 3 just by fucking around in the overworld, as there's less reason to fuck around in the overworld in the later games.

Personally I thought SRIV was a big improvement from SRTT. Still, nothing I've seen of Agents of Mayhem has grabbed my attention. The Saints-as-Cops thing would have been more popular if Volition returned the series to a more realistic direction.

It just looked... meh. Saints Row already did zany characters, over the top action, open world and all the generic bells and whistles that go with it to death. Graphics didn't look that great, the idea of switching between the characters on the fly wasn't interesting enough to sell a game on. Trying to sell the game based on having animated character intro cutscenes also didn't work, because I just got the impression the characters going to be flat because that was all the promotional material had to show and I also figured the story wasn't going to take itself seriously because the Saints Row games didn't before, and they didn't distance themselves from the franchise with this game. All this mediocrity and they wanted to sell the game at a pretty hefty £40/$60. Nah, no thanks.

The main cover of the game doesn't help much I think. If it wasn't for the Saints logo on it and the fact that it's made by volition, I would just assume it's another futuristic shooting game and that type of games are easy to miss. It doesn't have something that grabs my attention or tells it apart from other games, nothing looks rad or intersting or even spark a single bit of curiosity for me to want to click on it.

Saints Row wrapped itself semi-well with their four games (and the hellish expansion, though I haven't bought it out of disinterest), so I wouldn't mind if they never made Saints Row V. Not much they have much else they can do with the plot. Still, the Saints have potential. I'm still convinced the first game in the series is prime material for a remake, either just to finally allow PC players to have the complete series on their hard drive or simply to tweak the experience with what they took away from later titles (plz bring in the menu option to restart side jobs and not make me run all the way back to the trigger spot, for pete's sake!) Besides, it throws the classic fans a bone by going back to the series roots of gang violence as opposed to complete and total comedy insanity. Hell, if they want to take the [sp]alternative timeline plots[/sp] from Gat Out of Hell more creatively (as opposed to the loose featuring of it in Agents of Mayhem's plot), we could do something like a re-imagining of the original games with weird new twists to keep fans on their toes. Something at least to feature Stilwater and its old friends again as opposed to reusing Steelport and various other characters people are mixed on for the memery.

For me personally when I saw this I was watching the trailer while talking to some buddies. I saw the three characters looking all overwatchy and shit and saw Hollywood and was like damn nice "Dibs on Hollywood when we play this guys" then I go to the steam forums and find IdolNinja being a smarmy cocksucker about how they'll [i]never[/i] make co-op for it and I was like this "shit will bomb" [editline]27th September 2017[/editline] what kind of fucking morons make a SAINTS ROW SPIRITUAL SUCCESSOR with an OVERWATCH-INSPIRED TEAM THEME and forget the damn co-op??

They are finally putting saints row to rest? Good, the second game was the best one anyway.

[QUOTE=spectator1;52724086]They are finally putting saints row to rest? Good, the second game was the best one anyway.[/QUOTE] This game's writing was what made you say that dialed to 13

While I had my fun playing AoM, it convinced me even more that Volition doesn't like the Saints Row universe anymore. Literally all Saints Row elements you see in the game are just vague references and fanservice. They could've made everything new from scratch and nothing would've changed. My guess is that they just linked the game to Saints Row to increase the sales. I had this feeling since SR4, which already had barely anything to do with the original series other than fanservice.

saw a stream prior to the release and it just looked outdated, boring and what appeared to look like extremely terrible gunplay. Not entirely surprised about this outcome

[QUOTE=New Cidem;52724032]What is it with games getting little or no advertising lately? Maybe people would've given 1% more of a shit had they known this even existed. Lawbreakers had this problem but even worse somehow.[/QUOTE] Not really, the game sucked. A friend of mine had it and it was a pretty bad experience, even when I tried it I couldn't help but be bored out of my mind. [editline]27th September 2017[/editline] [QUOTE=hexpunK;52724050]I genuinely don't think it would have helped much. Agents of Mayhem fucking eludes me as to why it exists. It's in the SR/ Red Faction universe, but it's not Saints Row despite trying it's damdest to capture what made 3 and 4 entertaining. It's a co-op style team shooter...but there's no multi-player options at all. It just doesn't have a reason to exist as it doesn't really appear to do anything new at all. It's not like it's a cash grab or anything, Volition have a good history and so far Deep Silver haven't been awful as a publisher for many of the ex-THQ studios they bought. It just seems like a really wild attempt at doing more with the SR universe, but without making a mainline entry to give them more freedom.[/QUOTE] They had a real collective brainfart with it. None of the design choices in the game make sense at all and it comes across as a real pain to play because of it.

[QUOTE=ForgottenKane;52724464]Not really, the game sucked. A friend of mine had it and it was a pretty bad experience, even when I tried it I couldn't help but be bored out of my mind. [editline]27th September 2017[/editline] They had a real collective brainfart with it. None of the design choices in the game make sense at all and it comes across as a real pain to play because of it.[/QUOTE] Let me rephrase that post by saying advertising would've [i]helped[/i], but then again so would making a good game.

I remember seeing this being released on Steam's front page. It seemed like an RPG shooter a-la borderlands, but then I thought it was some sort of MOBA thing due to all the characters? I'm not sure if I'm just daft, but it took me to look up gameplay videos to realize it was another open-world game like the other Saints Row games.

everything i hate about saints row and nothing i love about saints row

Lol, didn't even know the game existed until I saw this thread. Advertise your games better.

I wish there was another Saints Row II.

I wish they remade SR2 so it wouldn't run like utter shite. [QUOTE=VenomousBeetle;52724080]IdolNinja being a smarmy cocksucker[/QUOTE] What even happened to that guy? He was supposed to be the link between Volition and the modding community yet all he did was become a colossal cunt when he was hired.

They turned him into a community manager even though he has a history of being a rude cunt and a manchild

[QUOTE=spectator1;52724086]They are finally putting saints row to rest? Good, the second game was the best one anyway.[/QUOTE] I wish they made a HD remaster of SR2. It's such a good game but the PC port was so goddamn awful.

[QUOTE=New Cidem;52724032]What is it with games getting little or no advertising lately? Maybe people would've given 1% more of a shit had they known this even existed. Lawbreakers had this problem but even worse somehow.[/QUOTE] The only way I knew it existed was a quick video by TB covering how terrible it ran on PC.

The co-op is what made Saints Row for me when I played them. 3 & 4 were amazing because of the co-op action. The second I found out this game wouldn't have any multiplayer, I lost interest immediately. I forgot the game even existed until this thread.