It's crazy how far micro-transactions and monetizing games have come since Bethesda charged $2.50 for cosmetic armor to put on your horse. If you'd told someone back then that one day an in-game mount would cost more than the game itself they would have laughed you out of the room.
I'm so sick of this revisionist bs. Plenty of us were outraged then and warned of EXACTLY this. Y'all reaped what you sowed. Now micro transactions and paid early access are the norm. We screamed and yelled to "vote with your wallets", and by god, you did. "It's just a few bucks" is the most common one I hear. Well, now EVERYTHING is "just a few bucks".
You won.
This. That’s why I gave up on arguing with people a long time ago. There is a shimmer of hope in me that this industry still comes crashing down at some point. I would celebrate it. But by the looks of it, it won’t happen anytime soon.
The best I could do is not buying anything on release, early access or riddled with microtransactions, mostly indie games and maybe one AAA title a year, also avoid certain studios. Oh, and also don’t really care at all when these kind of news come up. I cared back then, I voted with my wallet and still do, but the other side won. Shit happens. There is nothing I can do other than get angry, but that’s not worth the hassle.
Unless you were in MBA school, at which point they'd hail you as their king.
Yeah I remember saying that that Bethesda's horse armor bs would lead to gamers being nickeled and dimed to death and was soundly called a overreacting whinger.
And like you said here we are now and gamers are being outright exploited and you still have people saying it's all still blown out of proportion like these companies aren't hiring psychologists to manipulate us to buy this bullshit.
But they're not being nickled and dimed. They're being Lincolned and Hamiltoned.
Some people would have laughed you out of the room. A lot of people, myself included, warned that this was the kind of shit we'd spiral into with these microtransactions. It was basically confirmed within a year or two with the absolutely insane amount of money mobile gaming was seeing where the base product was just addictive crap with as many microtransactions shoveled in as possible. These games just completely blew the revenue of actual AAA titles would out of the water. It was basically inevitable and we're now in a situation where we've got a generation of consumers raised on this trash.
Every time this comes up (which is too often) I'm like "Who is buying this?" How can we make them stop? Do they need help?
People with poor fiscal responsibility skills, such as children, people with ADHD, and people with mental health issues like depression.
They literally hire psychologists to make this stuff as enticing as possible by pushing the right buttons in your brain.
Don't forget the people with more money than sense. Whales are what keep the microtransaction mechanic alive and well.
Except the whale narrative is largely a false narrative created by the game industry to avoid saying that the money comes from kids and gambling addicts.
Those people with more money than sense do exist and they make up a portion of the mtx money, but the vast majority is from people who probably can't afford to make purchases like that (but do anyways because their brain can't say no).
The industry has been honing these skinner box techniques for decades now - it's what they used to get people to pay a monthly subscription for an mmo they only play when they log in to do their dailies.
Yes.
People who spend 10s of thousands of dollars on micro transactions do need help.
Said help probably needs to come at a government level banning things that were designed in a computer lab to be digital Crack.
It's such a shame that the OW1 discussion about loot boxes went nowhere in regards to giving ingame gambling the same legal framework as IRL gambling.
Might be the people that play only one game. I used to play WoW and then Diablo III exclusively like it was a full time job, and wound up in social bubbles with people who were equally invested. I never spent money on cosmetics or in-game items or anything but at that point it'd be pretty easy to rationalize since it's something someone is spending 20-80 hours a week playing.
Back in WoW we used to sell one slot on our Algalon raid (hardmode only raid boss) and pay for our Ventrilo and website with that lol
The fact that this meme misattributes horse armor to Skyrim instead of Oblivion is bothering me way more than it should
Kids these days don't know shit man. Skyrim had been out long enough to concieve a kid and watch him graduate. Oblivion might as well have been a DOS title to them.
Skyrim has only been out for 13 years. It's not that old :)
It worries me that you think a 15-year-old is able to watch their child graduate.
It worries me that you assume video games reproduce and raise offspring and develop and receive education at a rate that matches their human analogues.
I love the "blame the consumer" mindset so much! It always leads to change and reform
I mean I do blame the consumer. Specifically for not voting in harsh consumer- and worker-protection laws curbing corporate abilities.
I think the issue is only blaming the consumer and especially when pointing to the cause of the issue.
Is it naive to vote for someone who obviously tells you all you want to hear but has a record of taking advantage every time they get your vote? Absolutely.
But so is walking in a city at night. All kinds of bad things can happen there but someone who hasnt seen evil firsthand will not recognize it easily.
I grew up in a very rough part of a big city. I knew you cant go outside unarmed at night and especially not linger there. But I cant expect friends from other places who havent seen this to act „wisely“ without telling them. This why we advocate without looking down on people.
Have a good one.
If consumers as a whole keep buying overpriced skins then yes, I will blame the consumers for enabling this behavior.
These companies are using dark design patterns to manipulate kids and young people into a pattern of behaviour. You can blame consumers, but it’s not exactly a fair fight. These big companies have behaviour specialists employed and tons of data, used specifically to get people to act dumb in a way that benefits these companies. Heroin pushers are more honest.
Stop 👏 playing 👏 games 👏 that 👏 rip 👏 you 👏 off 👏
Or just stop playing games that exist as shitty GACHA vending machines.
It isn't even the cost per-say. Its the fact that mounts were implemented in D4 as a practical afterthought. They barely affect gameplay, you can't take them into dungeons, they don't have any kind of skill progression or character synergy on their own right. Barely more than a TF2 fancy hat.
I got D4 at base price on release, played the main act, and shelved it months ago. I can't imagine still playing a game that's been nothing but bloody runs since that initial release. Nevermind paying $60 for a fucking cosmetics improvement while I grind mobs for incremental stat increases at the level cap.
At least Diablo is easier to quit than games that literally condition players into a gambling addiction. But all this is easier said than done.
Meanwhile, Helldivers 2's armor is like 2 bucks, and you can find the currency in-game.
Its nice to see a low cost microtransaction, and nice to see that you can get the currency in game but really thats just the same as it was a few years back before it went full 100 dollar for a reskin mode.
You are defending a game by pointing out that its money grabbing methods are less greedy than another company.
Games wont make the billions and billions they make now if they move away from the in game purchases models but they also evidently dont need billions and billions to operate.
Some of the best games on the market were made on small budgets by indie developers and sell well because the are fun and people actually want to play them.
For Democracy!
Do you guys not have phones?
What happened to the micro part of microtransactions? This is why I only bought one skin in Genshin Impact since they give you extra funny money for your first time to get it, but a second skin will double than the first so I'm never buying one ever again.
I need to make a game for rich suckers.
Step 1: make some genuinely top shelf, genre-defining games in the 90s and early 2000s
Step 2: Sell out
Step 3: Become shittier than anyone could ever imagine
Step 4: Charge 1 kidney for a shitty in app purchase
Step 3.5: Use psychology to "convince" children and those with certain mental health issues that they need the in app purchase.
While simultaneously convincing parents not to vote for regulation because "its optional"
i got plenty of hate when i said years ago this is where the mtx slippery slope would get us
Somehow that's not surprising, which is sad.
And it looks like the result of a transporter malfunction involving Baron Rivendare's Deathcharger and Butt Stallion.
This year‘s CK3 DLC package is also very close in price to the „base game.“ Naturally, it provides nowhere near as much content and I refuse to believe it requires nearly as much work to make either.
Paradox DLC policy is why I don't play Paradox games anymore.
If I were to only play 1 game ever, then the DLC system might be ok, it's basically a subscription system. But since I'd only play a campaign every other year or so, I'm not going to fork out that much money for 1 campaign. And it's way too annoying to play some game with obvious parts missing + in game ads, so now Paradox gets no more money from me.
Game journalism these days...
Listen, I don't play nor like Diablo 4 but is this headline not a little bit misleading since you get the mount skin as a bonus for buying 70€ worth of their stupid premium currency? So you actually pay for the currency and not the mount...
Again the disclaimer that I do not play Diablo 4, nor do I defend Blizzard or microtransactions and I'm a true supporter that the coolest looking stuff should be exclusively achievable by actually playing the freaking game and not fucking pay for it!
If you excuse me now, got to continue playing Last Epoch which is even in its early access fucking amazing.
The issue is that the mount is only available in this way. So if you want it you have to buy the "bundle", making it a $65 purchase either way.
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