Rockstar and Coffee Stain buttin' heads

Coffee Stain Games has been forced to pull a new ad for its upcoming sequel Goat Simulator 3 after Rockstar Games took umbrage to its use of the leaked Grand Theft Auto (GTA) VI development footage.

The commercial saw the supposed four-legged hero of the physics-sim sequel, Shaun, discussing the preparation it takes to really deliver the goods as the premier star of the Goat Simulator series. As we see Shaun practicing his very finest ragdoll efforts, he tells us that he has been keeping busy between games �cutting to a montage of Shaun in action, which includes a clip of the controversial GTA VI dev footage, leaked earlier this year.

While this is not the first time the Goat Simulator crew has referenced another developer for satirical fun, Rockstar Games �as billion-dollar companies are w?ont to do �clearly didn?'t see the funny side. The ad in question has since been pulled from all official outlets, with even reuploads posted to Twitter and other social media sites by members of the public being shut down as quickly as they appear.

Rockstar Games is still shining from the theft and broadcast of the (clearly very, very early) deve??lopment footage. The videos were allegedly stolen in September directly from the company's own Slack channels by a 17-year-old hacker, who, is it also claimed, had planned to extort the publisher, but instead found himself in the bad book??s and black vans of the feds. The suspect is expected to appear in a high court at a later date.

Goat Simulator 3, which does not feature any GTA VI so?urce code , (that we know of) is available now on PS5, PC, and Xbox Series X.

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"The devs actually bothered to make an ending this time"

Goat Simulator 3 entered the world with a Dead Island 2 fakeout parody trailer at Summer Game Fest 2022, and the new game is coming this fall to PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC by way of the Epic Games Store. They're skipping right over "2" for this direct sequel.

//www.youtube.com/watch?v=EKsJYDz70Ts

According to developer Coffee Stain North, Goat Simulator 3 is bringing its do-what-you-feel-like sandbox action to the island of San Angora. Best of all, there's four-player co-op, locally and online. As intentionally dumb as Goat Simulator can be, that part actually interests me! Wacky free-roaming shenanigans ca??n be a lot of fun with a partner.

In Goat Simulator 3, players will "cause all manner of mayhem as you lick, headbu??tt, crash and explode your way across the map, leaving no NPC unannoyed."

The humor and slapdash physics may not feel particularly modern at this point �I sympathize with anyone who thinks this "simulation" has run its course �but there's a world in which I could have some fun playing Goat Simulator 3, I think. Maybe!

I'm less interested in mini-games (there's going to be seven types) and more on bo??ard with the idea of exploring for secrets tog??ether. I'm sure they'll get pretty out-there with unlockable skins and "gear parts" if there are (*checks notes*) oh wow, 300 of 'em.

Sometimes, you need a shut-off-your-brain game with low stakes and the ability to make quick, tangible progress to keep you entertain?ed. I just hope the price is right.

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Goat Simulator Waste of Space expansion

Goat Simulator's latest expansion takes place on a scam, crowdfunded space colony; an Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonator (narrating the trailer); a Star Wars: The Force Awakens joke; a 69 joke; a #MakeSpaceGreatAgain (picking up the mantle from Paradox's Stellaris). I guess this is?? what people mean when they ?say "shitposting," but in video game form? I don't know, but it looks amusing.

The Waste of Space expansion is being made by Gone North Games, the studio that made the GoatZ expansion, and is due out on PC, iOS, Android and Amazon. "Console ports might come in the future."

Following the logic of the Leprechaun movie franchise, the only wild place for Goat Simulator to go post-space? The hood.

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Baa-ring

There's something to be said for games that revolve around a single joke. If you've wrung every possible guffaw out of a game within the first half-hour, you can just close it and move on with your life. In theory, Goat Simulator benefits from this structure. You're a goat! Everything is broken! From there??, it's up to the player to decide whether there are further punchlines to be delivered.

Of course, this does not apply if you're under some kind of obligation to see a majority of the game's content like I was. I spent a good 4-5 hours wringing the game dry, and I was reaching for entertainment around the 20 minute mark. Regardless of whether you find Goat Simulator's core gag ?amusing, it's hard to ignore the price to content ratio.

Goat Simulator (Android, iOS, PC, PS3, PS4 [reviewed], Xbox 360, Xbox One)
Developer: Coffee Stain Studios
Publisher: Coffee Stain Studios
Release Date: April 1, 2014 (PC) / September 16, 2015 (Android/iOS) / April 17, 2015 (Xbox One/360) / August 11, 2015 (PS3/PS4)
MSRP: $9.99 (PC/PS3/PS4/Xbox 360/Xbox One / $4.99 (Android/iOS)

When you start Goat Simulator, the game's four-legged protagonist is dropped into an ordinary town ??and tasked with jumping over a fence. It's a clever subversion of standard game tutorials, and it will be the last time I use the word 'clever' in this review. From there, the game provides the player with little challenges, like pressing the 'Baa' button or running on a wall for a certain period of time. These challenges help boost your score, much like almo?st everything else in the game. Licking people is worth a handful of points, for example. There are unique things to do in the world -- like finding EDM musician deadmau5 and licking him -- that earn both points and an achievement on your platform of choice.

The achievement list can be a help if you're looking for things to do, but some are so obtuse that you're better off trying to explore the world. Herein lies Goat Simulator's Achilles' Heel -- it plays like trash. This is ostensibly part of th?e game's larger gag, there's even a button dedicated to entering a ragdoll state. But the game tries to hav??e it both ways. Collectibles litter the map (including a handful you need for achievements) and some of them would be challenging to acquire in a superior title. Feats of skill in a game with frustrating controls are certainly impressive, but that doesn't make the struggle any fun.

There are a bunch of modifiers, some of which are fun to play with for approximately ten minutes. The jetpack is chuckle-worthy and the VR modifier is an unyielding nightmare straight out of a PG-rated Hellraiser. It is also ?worth seeing. I used the modifiers as ripcords throughout my playthrough -- when things g??ot too dull, I would hit the jetpack button and watch as the goat flew around in slow-motion. It wasn't hilarious, but it was something to break up my numerous attempts at nailing the manual challenge.

(You can perform 'manuals' by flicking the stick back and forth and then trying to balance t?he goat on its front legs. It's awful)

The game's core joke is difficult to criticize because humor is subjective; one man's guffaw is another man's blank stare. I have a vivid memory of watching Wes Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom in a packed theater and being the only person laughing along. The jokes I found so tickling absolutely failed to play with the rest of the audience. And that's fine! I can sit here telling you that Goat Simulator is just not that a??musing for the rest of my life, an??d that won't register with half of my audience.

However, I cannot imagine the people who "get" Goat Simulator will be okay with paying for the experience. Not to keep coming back to movies (comedy games are something of a rarity, so I have to look outwards) but I wouldn't spend full price on a film that gives away its best jokes in the trailer, no matter how funny those jokes were. I played the game on PS4, where it costs $10. That is unconscionable. If one were so inclined, Goat Simulator could go on forever. It's a playground, not a series of objectives, and no high score can hide that. But it's not worth an hour of y??our time, let alone days. The game has two areas and lacks both the MMO and Zombie DLC. There's just so little to do and even less that's worth doing.

Even if the price was right (and that price is free, regardless of platform) Goat Simulator is not worth playing. ??It's a g??ame designed for YouTube, not the average consumer. Reward this shrewd business decision by not buying this game and just watching some clips online instead.

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Also includes boring human zombies

Zombies are coming to Goat Simulator and absolutely no one is surprised. The zombie-filled GoatZ expansion calls itself "the only survival game on Steam that isn’t in Early Access," which is only a little untrue. Either way, this new DLC continues Goat Simulator's tradition of creating beau??????????????????????????tiful satire out of an industry that sometimes takes itself a little too seriously. 

According to Coffee Stain Studios, GoatZ will include most of the same features as other zombi??e survival?? games:

• Mandatory craftin?g system because everyone else is doing it
  
• Zombies that bug out. There’s a pun here about actual living bugs, but we’r??e not going to bother
  
• You can craf??t anything in the world, as long as it’s one of the half dozen weapons in t??he game
  
• Zombies, because this is a zombie game, remember?
  
• A pretty big new map with some stuff in it
  
• Completely realistic survival mode where? you have to eat e??very damn five minutes to survive because Dean Hall & Garry Newman said so

GoatZ will release on Windows, Mac, and Linux on May 7 for $4.99. It will also come to i??OS? and Android devices the same day, but as a separate app. 

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A reason to revisit Goat Simulator

Coffee Stain Studios hasn't stopped supporting its wonky physics sandbox game Goat Simulator, thank goodness. The mobile version didn't entice me, but this fantasy-themed Goat MMO Simulator expansion is exactly the type of weird co?n??tent I want and expect from the studio.

It's releasing this Thursday on Steam and it's free if you own Goat Simulator. I'm unsure what all is in here, but Coffee Stain is cal?ling the update its "bigge?st and craziest thing" yet.

The mermaids are just lanky-??legged fish, which pleases ?me.

This old fantasy trope also pleases me.

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Developer calls the mobile version a succeess

Goat Simulator is now on Android and iOS in additi??on to the PC, and according to Coffee Stain Studios, it's selling well -- very well in fact. So far they've reported over 100,000 sales over both platforms, which they con??sider to be over expectations.

Plans for the future are kind of slim, as the team didn't think it would be this successful. The focus for now is to concentrate on mobile version bugs for a few weeks, then? more updates will be provided on future content.

Goat Simulator iOS and Android - Some more info! [Coffee Stain Studios]

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Where the giraffes are goats, and the goats are skateboards

Coffee Stain Studios' Goat Simulator began as a joke, a secret IP that was never meant to achieve the critical acclaim it has today. Armin Ibrisagic, a game designer that worked on Goat Simulator, stated that due to all the studio's animators working on another project, the graphical assets had to be bought off the internet, with the titular character, the Goat, being bought at 75% off for around $20. That's some kind of baa-a-ad bargain. 

Sales of the game ended up exceeding all expectations and the studio ended up recouping the money put into developing the game in around ten minutes after its ??release on Steam.

Patch 1.2 for Goat Simulator is slated to come out soon and Ibrisagic stated that it will surprise people just as much as when they saw the trailer for Goat Simulator for the first time. I don't know that I was surprised, per se, but intrigued. So I hope I'll be intrigued again. 

The hila?rious success story of Goat Simulator [Gamasutra]

The post All the assets in Goat Simulator were ac?tually bought online appeared first on Destructoid.

Totes mah goats

Coffee Stain's Goat Simulator started as a wacky concept that took off faster than anyone could've ever imagined. After its positive reception on PC, it's heading to a??nother petting zoo where a new audience can fawn over its adorable? zaniness.

At Microsoft's gamescom 2014 press briefing, Goat Simulator was included in a montage of indie games in the ID@Xbox program that are coming to Xbox One soon. Those are all the details at t??he current time, but at least we know there's going to be some silly goat action on the console in the near future. That?'s not a baaahhhd deal.

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The wait won't be so baa-ad

Not too long ago, we announced that Goat Simulator would be receiving a retail release in the UK. A boxed version of the bizarre farm animal simulator was awesome news, but North American gamers were still relegated to the digital release. Now, Deep Silver has revealed that they've acquired the North American distribution rights for Goat Simulator, so the retail festivities can begin. Or continue, I?? suppose. The game's been out for a while.

You'll be able to pick up Goat Simulator for? $9.99 at participating retailers by mid-July, and it will ship with the content from patch 1.1. This includes the ability to ride a bike or a skateboard, a new map, and local four-player split screen multiplayer. In addition, Capture the Flag, Racing Mode, and Ragdoll Hockey are included.

For that price and the additional content, I'd say it's worth purchasing again. ?Especially if you need a quick laugh.

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Patch 1.1 is coming slightly later than expected

Goat Simulator was fun while it lasted but more content to mess around with is sorely needed. Coffee Stain Studios says patch 1.1 is arriving later than previously announced, now?? on June 3, in order to make sure the new ma?p is as good if not better than the original.

But it's not just a new map -- there's also four-player local splitscreen, the ability to wallrun and balance on your front legs, more goats like the Shopping Goat and Repulsive Goat, game optimization, and extra achievements. The patch is going to be? free, by the way.

Also, this: "You will be able to ride?? bicycles and skateboards, and force humans to r?ide you."

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The more Goat Simulator, the better

Fans have been asking Coffee Stain Studios for Goat Simulator DLC and I can see why: what's there is tremendously funny, goofy stuff but there isn't a ton of it. We're in luck. The studio doesn't want to "charge for new content" so it'll have a free patch for us in mid-May.

Patch 1.1 introduces another playable map that's "roughly the size of the original map," local splitscreen multiplay?er, more achievements, and new goats, t?o name a few of the additions.

Mods have helped extend the life of Goat Simulator but they're not all going to meet expectations set by the core game. Another m??ap from Coffee Stain is exactly what I wanted.

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'WASD to write history'

Two seconds. Two seconds into this launch trailer for Goat Simulator and I was already laughing.

It's coming to Steam on April 1, 2014 because that's only fitting. To be clear, yes, Goat Simulator is an actual, real game even if it didn't start out as such. Pre-orderers will get access to the title four days early, so consi??der doing t?hat if you're feeling eager. How could you not be?

This is a game whose sole existence makes me happy. It doesn't even need to be terribly fun, I don't think. That's almost become i??rrelevant. Long live weird-ass games.

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Best song of 2014?!

So when I watched the Goat Simulator trailer I was so focused on the actual gameplay that? I glazed over the soundtrack. Thankfully I came across the extended version of the trailer song and I haven't been able to stop replaying it.

Yes, I know. I'm not right in the head.

The post Listen to 25 m??inutes of Goat Si?mulator music insanity appeared first on Destructoid.

It's coming out on April 1 because of course it is

Sanctum developer Coffee Stain Studios has written about the birth of Goat Simulator, a hilarious thing that at one point wasn't going to be a real game until enough of us demanded it. We needed this. "After a day or two we reached more views on the Goat Simulator video than we ha??d in all our other trailers we've produced over the last few years, combined."

The team held a game jam following its work on Sanctum 2 and the goat concept eventually started to gain traction internally amid more serious ideas. "Some day in January?, goats were in the majority. We reached the point where the studio was like 'OKAY FINE, LETS DO THE GOAT THING!.' After that, things went extremely fast."

As feature requests from fans started coming in, many of them extraordinary and beyond the project's original scope, the studio "placed more people on Goat Simulator,?? made a real project plan for it (seriously, i??t didn't have a project plan), and started looking at how we could add content and make the game worthy of all the hype."

Now, the title will "have a gas station that explodes beautifully, a low-gravity testing facility, a waterpark, and a breakable stonehenge. We're even adding AI for humans that will run away from you." There's also Steam Workshop support for mods, meaning "People are going to make levels filled with 10,000 explosive canisters, headbutt them with a goat, and make the game crash. And that will be glorious." I know what I'll be doing on April 1.

How Goat Simulator really did become our next IP [Gamasutra]

The post Coffee Stain Studios talks Goat Simulator’s origin, release date appeared first on Destructoid.

'Okay Internet, you win'

The thing many of us desperately wanted to happen is going to: Coffee Stain Studios has relented and will turn its humorous Goat Simulator concept into a real game. Or was this -- putting the idea out there and seeing if people were genuinely into it -- the plan all along? I don't even care. Pre-orders are now open on the studio's site, granting early access via Steam.

New fo?r this trailer is the ability to lick objects, tethering them to your tongue. This mechanic allows our goat friend t??o, say, wield an axe. It's not often I can get into pure sandbox games and remain interested for terribly long, but the sheer silliness of this has me feeling hopeful.

Also, I love this description from Coffee Stain: "Goat Simulator is like an old-school skating game, except instead of being a skater, you're a goat, and instead of doing tricks, you wreck stuff. It brings next-gen goat simulation to YOU. WASD to?? write history."

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