Let's put the marketing cope for the absolute flop aside (marketing can get anyone to install a game on gamepass for "free", we've seen with HiFi Rush and Veilguard that mimdgame is complete trash at predicting anything).

I like games, what I don't like is being advertised a deep RPG from one of the old greats, paying 70€ and refunding because I was not served an RPG but a middle of the road first person fantasy shooter with a static world and a bunch of numbers on weapons, that are even more insignificant that the RPG elements of destiny. Logically that creates antibodies towards what was supposed to be a great game and, conversely, ended up as a mindless shooter that would not be out of place among steam greenlight projects.

Avowed is not a good game, it's a C, painfully mediocre and unimaginative. Coming from Obsidian, with 6y of development and after the ad campaign they did, together with asking for 70€ upront!? Fuck that noise, that is unacceptable. Of course, Microsoft has a great marketing team, so they created a culture war around the game, if you like it, you're woke, if you don't, you're a chud. This poisons the well and destroys the discussion about how one of the dearest RPG developers in the West is now writing characters that sound like they were written by chat GPT. There's a reason the best RPGs of the past few years come from independent European devs and the best Action games come from Japan... So, keep your dearest mediocre game and your culture wars, Obsidian lost yet another fan and because of people burying their head in the sand, they won't know about the very large amount they lost... Well, they kinda do, looking at Grounded (not a masterpiece but a mediocre game like Avowed that conversely did not promise the wprld), priced at max 39€, and already for a long time on gamepass, 30k peak, current 3,5k. Avowed, the deep RPG, 19k peak, 2,8k current. Avowed flopped hard. Keep your feelings about the game however you want, it's quite obvious for anyone with two neurons avowed flopped and is yet another symptom of the "mobile game" trajectory a lot of US American devs are taking due to the subscription model becoming ubiquitous. Strap in for the slop avalanche à lá Netflix.