this post was submitted on 18 Jul 2024
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The entire business model is a scam. Just ban it. It costs almost nothing to add, it makes games objectively less enjoyable, and boycotts demonstrably cannot work. It's unbeatable because it tricks people into paying for nothing.
Games make you want arbitrary worthless nonsense - that is what makes them games. Directly monetizing that is an exploitation of humanity's predictable irrationality. Your brain cannot cleanly separate kinds of value. On some level you are wired to pursue cheeseburgers and enchanted scimitars in the same way.
This exploitation started in "free" mobile trash and is now in full-price flagship titles. It's in subscription MMOs. It's in single-player games. Publishers can shove it in after-the-fact.
This is the dominant strategy. You were never going to shop your way out of it. If we allow this to continue, there will be nothing else. Only legislation will fix this.
I don't think live services need to be banned.
CSGO, Fortnite, Hunt Showdown, Apex Legends, etc are all long running multiplayer games that just don't work outside of some version of the live service model. Only the top of the top games have the numbers to keep people buying a new version of basically the same game over and over again without fragmenting their player base to the point where the series dies.
Live service games (when done right) effectively let those that have more money pay for stuff they want and people that don't want to pay more than an initial entry fee (if anything at all) don't have to pay.
I think the better thing to legislate is that if you have a live service game (like Hunt Showdown) if you shut it down, you must make it possible for third parties to continue to offer service. i.e. you must at least provide a server browser, private server executables, and disable any anti tampering software that prevents the game from being modified.
That would be pro-consumer in that it would keep the game (in some form) working for many many more years. For game developers that do run successful, profitable, live service games that people like, they can keep doing what they're doing for years to come. For game developers that keep pumping out live service as a way to milk extra money from players that already bought a full priced game ... they might think twice.
Counter-Strike existed for over a decade before this business model was even feasible. Mostly by doing... what you're suggesting... immediately. Like, as part of the software you bought. When people like the game enough, they'll host their own communities and keep playing.
Good.
Not every game deserves to become an undying zombie, buoyed by shark testicle cards or whateverthefuck. Especially not if what those slouching relics deliver for their billions upon billions of dollars are tiny changes to exactly one map, or an endless parade of stupid hats, or deleting the entire game and replacing it with Game 2: Pay Harder.
This business model is an abuse. There is no tolerable form of it. Nothing inside a video game should cost real money. The obscene examples, the $400 special pants, the $50,000 purple drops, are the exact same con as any $1 pack of "gems." Only the number is different. And nobody has to "like" it. Your preference is not asked. This infection has hit every genre, platform, and price point. It is in $70 single-player games. It has been added to games people already bought. The skeeze factor does not matter, because of how much money this abuse makes. Calling it "extra money" is bewildering. This is the only reason most of these games exist. The games were developed to funnel people toward these systems. This is the hook - you play the bait.
Baseless insulting hypocrisy, cool cool cool.
How would you know? Nothing has truly been boycotted.
... if your standard for the term is that literally nobody buys it, boycotts do not exist.
If not, yes they've obviously happened, including over this specific issue, and even the biggest and loudest only dented the obscene profits from doing this shit.
My standard would be having enough people behind it to actually make a difference and not just a handful of angry people on a forum who may or may not actually stick to their guns.
Boycotts have worked for things. But only when they had enough people actually boycotting the thing that it hurt someone's bottom line. I've not seen this happen with any video games since the crash of '82.
With a game like GTA, that at one point was the most sold video game in history, you're gonna need a lot more people on board with a boycott than the entirety of Reddit to actually make a dent.
Like a dent in profits? As previously mentioned?
Star Wars Battlefront II had a massive consumer backlash, leading to apologies and concessions, but it still posed no risk whatsoever of killing that specific game, let alone the business model. Hence the original point: boycotts here can't work.
Half the issue is that a tiny fraction of players get pantsed for thousands of dollars apiece, in exchange for imaginary hats. The fuck does a boycott even look like when a game is "free?" Even the people playing it mostly aren't buying it. It's still half the video game industry, by revenue. Only legislation will fix this.
Boycotts are relevant because every third dingus replying to "only legislation will fix this" scoffs, "just don't buy it." Or, marginally better, blames it on consumers "encouraging this behavior." Both are glib denials of a systemic problem. This is is the dominant strategy. Every business is either doing this shit... or not making as much money as they could. We were never going to shop our way out of it.