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GeoGuessr's Steam Release Hit With Overwhelmingly Negative Reviews For "Completely Pointless" Monetization (www.thegamer.com)
submitted 1 month ago by Fallstar@mander.xyz to c/games@sh.itjust.works
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Welp

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[-] stuner@lemmy.world 130 points 1 month ago

Players can only access the lowest rank of competitive gameplay for free, and access to any higher levels costs a subscription fee of $2.50 a month. That's right, you'll need a subscription to play GeoGuessr on Steam, for some reason.

Not only is this price point bizarre for a game that you can literally just hop into similar browser versions and play for free, but [...]

GeoGuessr has required a subscription to actually play for a while now. I think they had a very limited Free tier until 2024, but it was not a great experience. The developers claim that they need to charge a subscription fee because they need to pay Google for the Streetview API access. To me, that seems plausible and would justify a subscription model (as opposed to a one-time purchase).

On the other hand, OpenGuessr seems to be a free alternative that offers a very similar game. That certainly seems like a better alternative if it's sustainable.

[-] missphant 37 points 1 month ago

I understand the subscription model is required since every player is bound to cost them money for every round, but apparently even if you're already subscribed to GeoGuessr you have to pay again for the Steam version which is absurd to me.

[-] stuner@lemmy.world 12 points 1 month ago

Yeah, that seems quite weird and not customer friendly at all. I was wondering if it has something to do with Steam's in-game purchase conditions (mostly the fee).

[-] missphant 3 points 1 month ago

I'm not sure if it's just because Ubisoft has a special contract but for Trackmania I'm able to pay the subscription either through Ubisoft directly or through Steam.

[-] kuberoot@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 month ago

The steam version of trackmania is quite weird - I looked for a way to pay for it through steam for a while before resignedly going into the Ubisoft payment in the overlay... Only to be directed to steam for payment. I'm not sure if it's even possible to pay through Ubisoft when launching it from steam.

[-] bob_lemon@feddit.org 7 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Geotastic is another great alternative that is funded by donations and ads (which you can remove by donating once)

[-] theoretiker@discuss.tchncs.de 9 points 1 month ago

They also show you how much API calls cost you incurred, which is nice. That way I know how much of my donation only offsets what I use and how much I actually donate to development

[-] BigDaddySlim@lemmy.world 4 points 1 month ago

Yeah I enjoyed GeoGuessr and wishlisted it in Steam when it was announced. Got an email from Steam saying it was available and opened the store page to see the overwhelmingly negative reviews.

I've played OpenGuessr and it's pretty close to the same experience, I never do versus or anything, just a casual player. I did notice it tended to put me in the same countries quite often, like 8 instances of Brazil and 3 in the Philippines in 20 rounds, but still enjoyable.

[-] Gobbel2000@programming.dev 30 points 1 month ago

I think it was obvious that it was never going to be a free game again. The problem is making it look like it's free to play and then hitting the player with a paywall after a few games. Also, the subscription model is shitty. I would readily put down a onetime payment for something that works as least as good as the web version, which is a lot more polished than the free alternatives I've seen. But I refuse to buy into this subscription model.

[-] FooBarrington@lemmy.world 29 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

You can thank Google for that - they are charging for every API call. A one time payment would either have to be ridiculously high, or it could ruin GeoGuessr.

[-] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 month ago

I will thank both for no business with either of them.

[-] Dschubba120@jlai.lu 10 points 1 month ago

I've been starting to use Geostatic instead, it looks like a really nice alternative to Geoguesser, their economic model looks a lot nicer.

[-] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 9 points 1 month ago

I always thought that given that personal use of google street maps os free for the user. It would be really easy to just make a copy of that game for free relying on scrapping instead of api calls.

Insert chad scrapper vs virgin API user meme.

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 8 points 1 month ago

Geoguesser is way too proud of their product to be charging money for it.

[-] untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

society should normalize having crypto-miners in software, like as an official method of monetization that the user consents to

that would actually fix most of our problems, no ads, no subscrption fees

I don't see a downside to this

edit: if you disagree with me on this, reply. I wanna debate this

[-] Proxy@lemmy.imagisphe.re 22 points 1 month ago

My electricity bill would like to have a word

[-] prole 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I bet most of the upvotes are from people who consider crypto mining to be "free money" because they don't pay their own electric bills.

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[-] untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

But would it cost more to pay for the extra electricity or for the product? At least for the electricity you could invest in solar and lower your bill dramatically

[-] superkret@feddit.org 18 points 1 month ago

Counter-point:
crypto-mining should be illegal, period. (and so should AI)
We're on the brink of climate collapse, we as a species can't afford to waste massive amounts of electricity on something that literally creates no value.

[-] untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago

we as a species can’t afford to waste massive amounts of electricity on something that literally creates no value.

its the fault of the miner if they're using non-environmental friendly energy sources. if you don't wanna create emissions, just use solar power.

literally creates no value.

I don't really see how. if it can be sold for something of value, it has value. crypto might be useless to you, but to some people out there a single Bitcoin is worth more than 80 thousand dollars, so if you have a few Bitcoin, even though to you they might be useless, you can sell them for money

[-] superkret@feddit.org 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

if you don’t wanna create emissions, just use solar power.

If you have access to solar power, it would be better to use it for something else, or feed it back into the grid.
As long as we're still burning fossil fuels to create electricity anywhere on earth, wasting any kind of energy is bad.

Crypto has a price (because people believe that it has a price).
It doesn't add any value to anything. It's expensive (in terms of energy cost) and absolutely, 100% useless.

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[-] johntash@eviltoast.org 15 points 1 month ago

That sounds terrible. Also a lot of games use the gpu so you probably don't want to share it with mining at the same time

[-] untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

the randomX hash function Monero uses runs on the CPU, not the gpu

it could just use like 1-2 threads if the game is taking a lot of processing power

edit: if ur gonna mass downvote me, say why 🤦

[-] spacesatan@leminal.space 8 points 1 month ago

You can already mine on your own and use that money to pay for stuff if it's viable. This is just displacing the subscription into your electricity bill.

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[-] sudneo@lemm.ee 7 points 1 month ago

This feels like a technical approach for a solution to a political problem. We shouldn't normalize a solution to a predatory approach that companies have, we should regulate so that the approach can't be taken by companies on the first place, we should foster competition so that those who do are going to be outcompeted etc.

Wasting even more electricity to compute numbers used in an unstable speculative market with no clear future is IMHO a completely wrong approach to the problem.

[-] untakenusername@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 month ago

There still needs to be some way for the devs to pay the server costs and API costs. What I'm suggesting is a way for the user to sell their processing power to them instead of paying an irritating $2 every month. And while the price of cryptocurrencies vary, they don't vary fast enough to make mining profits (if you sell the coins as you produce them) unpredictable

[-] sudneo@lemm.ee 1 points 1 month ago

I understood what you meant, not sure why you would assume otherwise. My point is that there is no need to invent new business models. Your proposal is similar to "pay with your data", a new business model that has negative consequences for the collectivity.

In case of these types of games, a flat rate for the game and potentially a pay-per-use without margin to cover hosting (minimal, can be factored in the initial price) and API calls (gMaps) could be an option. Or none of this, and they factor in the cost already in the initial purchase. Either way, to come back to the topic of discussion, asking a one year subscription for a game sold for free (to lure people in) is IMHO predatory behavior with no excuse.

Anyway, tl;dr money already exists and people can pay for that, we don't need to waste more computing power to find an alternative. The use of crypto incentives the overall crypto market which causes even more people (or companies) to waste energy for nothing.

[-] Rawdogg@lemm.ee 6 points 1 month ago

Nobody wants a shitcoin miner taking resources on their machine

[-] daniskarma@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 month ago

There are several issues with that.

First and foremost. Most people's devices are not powerful enough to make any money mining any cryptocurrency.

Also a cryptominer is not "free real state" it chugs the computer. The user would have a terrible experience trying to do anything with a cryptominer on the background.

And finally, there are many free software out there. Not everything is to be monetized. Some things should just be free. I have done plenty of free things for others to enjoy, it's not the end of the world, quite the opposite is quite rewarding.

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this post was submitted on 11 May 2025
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