A couple of days ago, THQ Nordic released Darksiders: Warmastered Edition on Steam. In an interesting and kind gesture, THQ Nordic offered this remastered version of Darksiders for free to all owners of the original Darksiders. And according to the publisher, this felt like a fair thing to do.
As THQ Nordic’s Reinhard Pollice tweeted, THQ Nordic is not making a lot of money by doing such a thing, however it felt that it was fair to offer it as a free game to all owners of the original title.
we arent making a lot yeah but we think its fair to all the fans and players
— Reinhard Pollice (@ElMegalomator) November 29, 2016
Kudos to THQ Nordic for doing such a thing.
For those interested that do not own this game yet, Darksiders Warmastered Edition comes with a massive 80% discount on Steam until December 2nd!
John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
Contact: Email
I thought it was quite fair, especially since back in the day, such changes made to a game were simply patched in like every other update and they were given for free. It’s only with the recent gen and last gen of consoles where devs caught onto the idea of charging for slightly updated games and how that also ended up washing over to the PC side of things. Still it’s nice to see some pubs/devs that hand out their remasters for free, it’ll earn them goodwill and respect in the long run from me anyway.
Case in point – State of Decay Year One Scam Edition. Undead Labs & Micro$oft stopped selling and supporting the game and 2 dlcs, patched in a couple of cosmetic features and expected the previous owners to buy it a 2nd time. Sad thing is, some did, and worse, some are even defending this practice…
Respect to Thq Nordic for treating their customers fairly, I will definetely buy the next games they release.
I remember staying far away from YOE, the original held such promise, but was cobbled together rather poorly, become repetitive over time. It’s also a shame that they are going to go with the sequel and limit it to he damn Windows store. it’s bad enough they tried to scam Steam users, but to limit their total audience to just the X1 and the Windows store is so stupid.
I’ve been boycotting YO$E & UL ever since it released and they had a 33% discount for previous owners. For a glorified patch!
I didn’t know they are limiting the sequel to the Win store. Heh, good luck with that Micro$oft. Most win store exclusives ended up on Steam if I’m not mistaken, due to abysmal sales on Win10, and so will this one. But I for one won’t buy it.
All you need to know, right here; “Undead Labs is an American Seattle, Washington-based game development studio, which was founded in 2009 by Jeff Strain, a former Blizzard employee.”
Yeap.
Other than that, since State of Decay isn’t made by a Microsoft-owned studio, this is probably just another timed-exclusive deal, honestly – not that I give a sh*t either way.
Not only a gesture of fairness, I consider it as a gesture of respect, which means a lot to me. 🙂
Also another gesture of respect, the fact that is available DRM free on other stores.
YOU HEAR ME JOHN?
Not the remastered version though, I’ve got these on GOG.
Warmastered Edition isn’t available, (yet?).
It is. 🙂
Now, it wasn’t as I wrote it, for the Installer at least, but knowing GOG has to make their own installers, which takes more time, is why I added the (Yet?), at the end.
Oh, I was checking through the Galaxy, I assumed the installer was available at the same time.
I don’t use Galaxy, but it gets the release, then GOG has to make an installer, so that takes a while longer.
If we ever get a Darksiders 3, it’ll be a day 1 but for me (provided it’s good).
It’s more than fair.
THQ nordic has my respect and with that usually comes a bit of money.
With Fury and her whip. So we can do some hardcore bdsm play with the enemies.
You peaked more than just my interest.
Someone should tell them that the second game is broken on PC.
is it?i was going to install it, never played it before
lol?
59-60 fps on 1080p for me.
You cant play the definitive edition because all the damn control prompts are blacked out. have you even tested the new version? The old original version works great on PC.
Huh. I thought they’d fixed it?
I don’t know, the game runs fine for me and my GPU is kind of old at this point too. Put shadows to medium though to get a consistent 60 FPS. I use a controller BTW and the control prompts for it appear to be fine.
I’m also going thourgh NG+ mode after I finished it on Deathinitive Difficulty (got the achievement for that too), which is Nightmare Difficulty without the “you start from the beginning if you die once” penalty. Going through the Crucible and off to face Wicked K (you get an achievement for beating him). Also intend to 100% this game too, but man it can be tiring. So far, I’m at 75% with 48 hours logged in.
Nice, they are going to publish SpellForce 3 & The Guild 3 as well, yay.
I request to every member of this site to buy this game if haven’t bought already. Its a great franchise, and they deserve the money and may be more purchase would encourage to make DS3
Darksiders is a great game. Great action, great platforming, great puzzle solving. The Warmastered version is even better.
Just beware if you have an AMD GPU… you might… ahem… you might want to wait out for a bit longer…
Amazing stuff. Now this isn’t something you see everyday. I’ve been very keen on this publisher since the days of THQ’s demise. The more I read about them the more they convinced me that they aren’t gonna mistreat all those great and nostalgic IPs they managed to get a hold of. It somehow surprises me till this day that a company almost completely unheard of manages to grab the rights, not only to a few key titles, but the entire THQ logo. The way I see it anyway is that they’re continuing on their legacy and hopefully they’ll do a fantastic job at it. THQ were actually one of the last decent mainstream publishers when it comes to the early days of gaming in my honest opinion… A lot of cheap movie tie-in games but in between all that pile of junk were some true jems 🙂
well its fair, i got the game for free,but the only thing i saw better than the original, was shadow resolution,and heavier contrast,thats it
I just noticed the cutscenes have been redone to be rendered in-engine at 60 FPS rather than FMV’s like the original at 30 FPS.
The game for me runs horribly ATM… because AMD… but the cutscenes run good and look good too, so that’s nice :). And also very odd… I’m switching to the Warmastered version to see the changes the devs made rather than gameplay.
But the cutscenes in the Warmastered version have horrible sound mixing, really horrible… The voices are very loud and everything else from the ambient sound to the music is very low by comparison.
Seriously, I love the guys at Nordic games and I love Darksiders to bits and it’s awesome that the Warmastered version is (or was) being sold for free for those who had the original. You don’t see any company doing this… But now I’m questioning if this Warmastered version is actually better. For me it sure isn’t…
Hopefully they patch it up shortly. AMD user here as well and it definitely performs horribly. But it’s a pretty well known fact that it is having issues with AMD cards right now and will most likely be fixed.
At least I hope so.
Hell, even with this AMD issue I still love the game and respect the devs. I will even upload some more Darksiders gameplay on my channel, showing off some stylish gameplay and combo potential, just to show my support for the devs.
Seriously, I just found an awesome technique with the air dash and gun. Shooting the gun while in an air dash kills your momentum and makes you readjust your position in air. Say, if you air dash back then shoot and hold forward during the dash animation, you cancel the animation and then go forward while shooting. It looks a lot more cooler than a simple comment can convey… Makes for some sick looking combos if you know how to integrate it.
Also, there is the triblade reset, which let’s you reset a combo mid-air. Example, lauch enemy, do an aerial rave, imediately shoot with the triblade, then as soon as the triblade animation kicks in, you can do another aerial rave, schythe or gauntlet move in the air.
This is how you’ll look at games if you play too much Devil May Cry. :))
Nothing to do with fairness, or those owning PS3/360 versions would also get them free, on XB1/PS4.
Simple fact is, the vast majority of PC gamers will not pay for updates to a game they already own, and ones they can always mod to a higher quality, than what’s resold.
As can be seen in this thread, the goodwill generated, is garnering pledges of support for future releases, regardless of quality, or even existance of them.
If we’d bought the remasters, like many console gamers do, we’d not get them for free.
However, if console gamers didn’t buy them, they wouldn’t exist, so don’t tell them.
Probably why they’re doing these in the first place; shoring up interest & goodwill (the free bit) for Darksiders 3, considering how long it’s been since the last release.
Either way, it’s a cunning move – one that other publishers *cough cough* should pick up & learn from, though I doubt they will, really.
Its fair to congratulate those guys for this, in a world full of greedy this makes me feel less upset with the world.
they could have made it an upgrade for 3-5$ or something
They did…. kind of….it’s $4 right now.
well i meant to previous owners which is free
It’s just a bloody graphical upgrade. Am I the only one who thinks this stuff should be free? Why even question how they haven’t charged original owners.
No one’s questioning that. If anything their move is being praised because they’re implying that they could of made a lot of money from reworking on the entire visuals. Which I’m sure takes a lot of time and effort to do, given how small the publishing team are it’s a big deal man. Haven’t you noticed that pretty much all the biggest publishers out there are charging people so much just to get a complete package, let alone for singleplayer games? It’s simply a nice gesture to show that they do care about the franchise and want people to get the best possible experience, without having to fork out a lot cash or any.