Horse armor was above-board, compared to this shit. You got files you didn’t have. Modern “DLC” is already on your hard drive, appearing on other people’s characters, but you’re not allowed to touch that file until you pay ten actual dollars.
‘I was only endorsing what you’re condemning’ is a baffling sentiment.
A lot of what I think you’re talking about is based on player trading, is it not?
None.
… you know that cost is cumulative, yes? Games that somehow trick people into spending a thousand dollars a month don’t do it in one great lump.
Which could have been the weirdest tangent on a Wikipedia page. Jim Henson, Muppets, Sesame Street, retired characters, Big Bird, oh was that an early version of Abelardo?, Challenger shuttle dis-- what. What? What the fuck?!
When the guy who played Mr. Hooper died, they worked that into the show. The cast, sincerely grieving, had to explain to a seven-foot-tall canary that he wasn’t coming back. That’s not really he same kind of intrusion from reality, as acknowledging the same giant fowl fucking exploded on national television.
The only possible comparison would be if some show had a gimmicky live episode that happened to be scheduled for 9 AM, on a Tuesday, in September of 2001.
Same. I think that episode was shown in-class, too, so I came alarmingly close to the XKCD.
Any product that can take one thousand dollars from someone, in exchange for what would typically earn a studio twenty dollars, is not differentiated by whether it has a cover charge.
The tolerable monetization model is: just sell games. They’re not services - they’re products. You buy them and own them.
Nothing inside a video game should cost real money. Ban the entire business model.
Nobody thinks games should cost $1000. Yet that’s how much this abusive business model can extract from individual players. For hats. You don’t even get all the hats! When there’s not straight-up gambling, there’s still a constant trickle of bullshit, because some schmuck will think a static model with a particle effect is worth the price of several entire video games.
The total content of these games, even a decade in, is unremarkable. The least objectionable examples still want $200 to have all the characters, in a 1v1 fighter. Whoop de doo. Defenders can only insist Capcom used to gouge people even harder. The shit y’all put up with might be worse than annual sportsball releases.
The far end of that spectrum now needs an installment plan. How fucky does an industry have to get, before people stop going ‘but arcades?’ This shit is already half the revenue in gaming. It’s getting worse, and it’s spreading. It’s in full-price, flagship-franchise, single-player games. If we allow this to continue there will be nothing else.
Zoe: “I dunno, Captain. There’s something I just don’t like about him.”
The comparison is wrong. If the products you demand require continuing revenue - a subscription model allows rational consumer decisions. That’s why most consumers look at it and say ‘no thanks.’ Real-money charges inside games make more money than subscriptions, not because anyone wants to pay $130 for a video game, but because it obfuscates that price.
The real question is, if FighterZ has now been funded by all those piecemeal sales, and is - in its current state - your favorite game… why the fuck isn’t it $60 to buy it all once?
Like, you don’t want the Street Fighter IV model where each normally-priced game is a tiny upgrade. But you can buy whatever the last version of SF4 is, at a normal price, and it’s the whole goddamn game. If FighterZ doesn’t seem to be getting any more updates or content, why is it still priced for excuses about development costs?
Doesn’t seem to be.
The business model’s still intolerable.
Can you grasp that distinction?
We’ve been talking about a concrete example, one where you say this example is pReDaToRy
I have repeatedly, specifically, and explicitly pointed out this is a lie.
You don’t care.
You don’t get to sneer about a word choice I’ve told you over and over that I did not use, in the context you’re sneering about.
‘Stop calling everything predatory, you’re killing the word!’
I didn’t call everything pr–
‘You know what’s predatory? Paying for services!’
I’m out.
‘This is the gentle end of a spectrum where the far end is clearly predatory.’ ‘So this is predatory?’
Fucking aggravating.
Horse armor was above-board, relative to this.
I keep telling you the precise shape of the problem, and you keep going ‘yeah, something else.’
The DLC is content in the video game.
That’s why you can see it, even if you haven’t paid for it.
Welcome to the conversation.
For the love of god, do not make me rub your nose in this a seventh time.
Should the games I know and love be able to exist in the form that made them the games I know and love?
Are we still pretending that paying for whole editions doesn’t serve the same function? Are we still ignoring subscriptions because they make you feel icky? Are we still not acknowledging games that get updated for years, to keep sales up, and then have sequels?
It is not a model that we should ever go back to
Well there’s one question answered, albeit still on the basis of ‘ick.’ It existed - it was profitable - but we can’t do it ever again because that’s the same as a whole existing game being banned. Blah blah blah.
I understand that compatibility is preferable. I am telling you it’s not worth preserving this business model. This is the gentlest this business model could possibly be, and it has still created a typical 1v1 with a total price that’s fucking bonkers.
Compatibility is also possible through the just-update-the-damn-game model. Like how nobody charges five bucks for improved netcode. That also costs money to create, and is surely a key part of improving past the initial version. Funny how it’s just taken for granted as part of the game you already bought.
I literally didn’t. I said it’s inseparable from this business model, eight hours later. The comment you’re replying to explains how it’s all one spectrum - including the things you, personally, would call predatory. The only specific examples I’ve given are skins and skip-the-grind.
What I get in response is ‘do you still beat your wife?’ over the apparent impossibility of updates that already happened, and repeated misrepresentations of how this thread started. You have quoted me directly and then been wrong in the next comment. I sound aggravated because you’ve been aggravating.
That is what it means, to sell content. That is what actual expansions are. This song-and-dance where you have the whole game, but you’re not allowed to really have the whole game, is inseparable from everything you would call predatory. It’s only a matter of degrees.
One of the several alternatives you’ve repeatedly ignored is that these additions can be added to the game people already bought. Surprisingly, this does not involve slave labor for artists, because games that stay popular keep selling more copies. Do they make as much money? No. But it turns out maximum corporate revenue is not a guideline for ethics.
Nothing inside a video game. That part is not optional. I’ve dealt with too many cranks who see me arguing - JUST SELL GAMES - and then go ‘you want it for free!’
I’d sound less hostile if you didn’t need this explained five separate times.
And it’s not incidental, because you are now that crank, insisting “you don’t seem to want anyone to get paid to make [content].”
Stop fucking that strawman.
“Pay to skip the grind” is weaponized frustration.
Free games that somehow make a billion dollars only exist to drag people across their wallet-hooks.
The regulation needed is: fuck all that.
Games make you value arbitrary nonsense. That is what makes them games. Attaching a dollar price to that fiction is a category error. The entire business model is an exploitation of that confusion.
This abuse is making games objectively worse. Maximum revenue comes from addiction and frustration. Fun is an obstacle. At best, fun is bait on the hook. The actual goal, especially for “free” games, is to grind you down as thoroughly as possible to extract real money over and over and over and over. If you don’t think that’s you - neither did most people who wondered where all their money went.