Why Did Agents of Mayhem Flop?

Report: layoffs at Saints Row dev Volition

>Saints Row and Agents of Mayhem studio Volition has laid off about 15% of its employees this week, according to a Kotaku report citing three unnamed sources. While layoffs after a big game launches aren’t uncommonas studios become far less busy (Agents of Mayhem came out last month), reportedly Volition general manager Dan Cermak was among those let go – and that is a touch more rare. Or so the reports say. Supposedly parent company Deep Silver was unhappy with sales of Agents. That’s not surprising, as it hasn’t made much of an impact and our John’s Agents of Mayhem review just didn’t like it that much.

steamspy.com/app/304530

>Owners: 76,681

And this is after numerous cheap sales - meanwhile Homefront Revolution has sold 453,781 according to Steamspy

What happened?

Those are the worst sales figures I've ever seen for a AAA game. RIP Deep Silver

>What happened?

It's not very good?

If it's anything like Saints Row 3 and later games, then my guess is that it's because it's a dull open world game with repetitive side missions, absolutely nothing fun happening outside of the short story and story itself being unfunny shit carefully sterilized to make it safe and politically correct.

Saints Row, but in a somehow more boring setting, without the character creator so you have to use their shitty characters.

Can't think why

I haven't even heard of this game until now

THQ Nordic has them now I'm actually expecting great things to come from that. The new THQ has been pretty cool.

Dropped it the moment it started shoving political shit writing down my throat for no reason whatsoever.

It’s a game that nobody asked for - Saints Row without customization or coop, and at least in videos it looks like a last-gen game in a bad way. Not just talking about the graphics, it looks weirdly clunky and badly animated. And with the onslaught of open world games we have seen during this decade, why would anyone bother with a subpar one like Agents of Mayhem?

...

Yeah, but it's SO WACKY ECKSDEE

Did it even do this?

Why is there no multiplayer in a game where you play as three different characters?

DESU I feel that asking ”why didn’t it sell” is the wrong thing to do, it would be better to ask ”why would it have sold at all”? There’s just nothing that makes it stand out of the generic open world bullshit that the market is already full of, probably in more polished form too.

It is not a good game and they didn't market it.

Marketing saves even the shitiest of games

I heard something about a gay couple but I never played this trash so hopefully he can answer

It also doesn't help that they lost favor with their fanbase releasing the same game three times.

Generic open world games are now facing the same thing as generic CoD-clone military shooters faced the last gen - everybody has played so fucking a lot of them, so that mediocre ones have no room to sell anymore. Hell, even Ubisoft had to give Assassin’s Creed an extra break after everyone started to feel so tired of the series after Syndicate.

>The new THQ has been pretty cool.
Absolutely a smarter publisher. Shocking how bad Agents and Homefront were pushed out on the back of such terrible marketing.

I don’t remember anything like that, the only gay stuff is one of the unimportant side characters has a crush on the main leader girl

I only watched the cutscenes online though

I know there's some screenshots around, I didn't take any myself. Can't be bothered to look for them, just look up the game's name in an archive and you're bound to find them in one of the very few threads there have been.

Partially this. I own it, it's enjoyable, but it misses a lot of the things that made SR good.
>The map is fucking forgettable
>The missions are barely ok, but you don't feel like progress at all, they could have copied SR2 territories, for specific villains and focus missions on their personal arcs, and that would have been great, instead, you just go to another underground lair, kill some mob, and face the boss
>Equipment assigned to specific heroes, which again, makes sense, but removes a lot of the customization, and the skins don't make up for that
>Vehicles are not fun in the least, and the driving is worse than it was on SR 3 and 4
>Speaking of vehicles, no air transportation
>The enemies are so samey, after a while, you just get bored of mowing them down
>The hero swapping is a good idea on paper, but they made some too damn OP and some too damn useless, once you main three, you won't touch the others
>Persephone is not playable

Its basically watered down saints row combined with hero shooter elements also combined with very little advertising.

I've played the game and that's a perfect summary.

When I first heard about it few months back I thought it was months hell next year away from being released. I honestly didn't know it was out.

Nevermind, found em. Here you go.

Part deux.

I don't know anything about it. Is it a team based shooter or moba?

Please don't get triggered by jokes anons

I don't know mate, i'm reading this as irony, seems to be a critique of the overly politically correct SJW movement.

It's a spin off no one asked for. Gameplay was shit, open world was tedious and just meant to make you travel A to B, combat was just bull sponges combined with shitty platforming, driving was awful and annoying, game was glitchy as fuck, etc

Same. I'm reading it like they're trying to find a way to capitalize off SJWs, you know, like businesses are actually doing. But then, I don't know the context. Friday could be the surname of a CEO like Dane Vogel, who they're using as a parody of opportunistic businessmen, or Friday could be the codename of their group leader, who is being genuine.

If I gave two shits and a sundae I'd actually look into it, but I don't.

Somewhere along the line people lost the ability to detect sarcasm. Clearly if you're calling multiculturalism "great for the brand," you're making a fucking product out of it. Which means they're making a joke of inclusiveness. I don't know why people don't get that.

>we're ironically progressive

This is exactly how SomethingAwful fell so low. People pretended to be SJW retards and the actual ones began moving in.

There are plenty of examples of the game being overly safe and unfunny, but that one is actually joking. If you want a serious one look at any time Braddock or Hollywood speaks.

Why does Friday care about Hollywood and his crazy ideas? Must be a joke because I know Persephone and the others thinks he is a retard.

Great character that WENT NOWHERE. Things like the crazy fan or looking for a cure for a sickness decimating India get no real follow up.
Also, was Oleg really that popular? I get Kinzie and Gat, but I'd have thought they'd have picked Matt or Pierce coming back.

The concept did not appeal to me at all.
It seemed like another Saints style game but with less customization.

Instead of making your own character, you must choose from a handful of preset characters. Instead of equipping whichever weapon/ability, you must choose from what are effectively a handful of presets. Instead of cycling through your weapons/abilities, you must press a button to immediately change which character you're playing on the spot to a different preset character... via teleportation.

Like, why restrict players that way? Did they think that's what people wanted? Less variety?

I've never heard of this game before this very thread
that's probably why

How much are they paying you for the market research, OP? At least change the posts a little, you astroturfing cockwipe.

PENIS lol

they fell for the hero shooter meme lmao

I got for 5 bucks from a RedBox a while back. I really like all the characters, which I think was their focus, but no real co-op and everything else feels reallllly weak.

I wish the SFM porn dudes would tap the models though. They fine as fuck.

It put Red Faction and Summoner back in Volition's hands as well. If only they could get the rights from Marvel to do The Punisher again