PC Gaming

Game developer. Not Steam developer.

Malmehed mostly seems bewildered about what might be happening with After Hours players.

Awesome, thanks for this thorough and conclusive article.

C'mon, guys. Like I understand saying "we've identified this phenomenon and we don't understand it" but we're not talking about the behavior of black holes here. It wouldn't be hard to do some actual journalism and interview some of the people who played the game and sent an email.

Sure, people are more and more ignorant and incapable of basic though every single day, but that's just the system working as intended, producing a population that'll be as easy to exploit as possible without even noticing it, and who wouldn't be capable of doing anything about it even if they were aware.

That's horrible and monstrous and we need massive reform and to euthanise the ruling billionaire class if we are to survive as a civilisation.

That said, however, if your game relies on hints in order to be playable IT'S A BAD GAME.

Sure, back in the good old LucasArts and Sierra days you could call a helpline if you were stuck, but the games were designed to be solvable without doing so, and a high percentage of players having to call would have been seen as a serious design failure.

I'd say this developer is another example of the decaying capabilities of the average human. As is whoever wrote the “article”.