He does deserve that, but I wish the single biggest modding hub on the internet and a load bearing pillar of an entire gaming culture wasn’t sold off to an unnamed party with no transparency and only vague reassurances that “nothing will change”.
What with the late stage capitalist society we’re living in, I’ve been conditioned to think that good things being sold off rarely amounts to good things.
At the very least the entity that bought it will not rely on donations and revenue from upgraded download speeds, so it will definitely enshittify further to some degree.
The problem is not capitalism, it’s really us expecting shit to be free and rewarding good development and maintenance effort with thoughts and prayers.
Great. Yes. Under some kind of egalitarian free-energy tech utopia such as you’re describing, websites like Nexus mods would be even better. Sadly there are no such systems already operating for us to move to, and we do not yet have the technology to try creating a new one.
So any other political systems that are more real-world?
You don’t need full communism, just make sure companies are owned by the workers, suddenly they will have more money, free time, they will cut down the working hours, and that will help passion projects like these and many more.
A collective can be a great way to run a company, for some cases. I lived with a girl who worked at a cafe that was run as a collective - it meant that people had a fair say in decisions that affected them. They could vote on their own wages, working conditions, and no one was barking out orders bossing them around. The owner was an old-school left-winger who was doing this out of pure idealism. He was still the one with the financial risk, he dealt with banks, ensured taxes were dealt with, and all the other tasks involved in running a business such as that.
The problem is not capitalism […] it’s really us expecting shit to be free
No, “we” are not the problem. “We” donated and participated (by making mods) and “we” are responsible for giving the site what value it had. If it had no value, then it couldn’t have been sold.
You make it sound like the site has been destroyed and enshitefied. Do we have any proof of such so far? Or can we put our trust in the guy who made it to hand it off to someone he trusts to do good by it? Everyone is freaking out about a possibility, which isn’t without cause since we’ve seen what can happen with other companies, but so far there is no need to pull out pitchforks.
Yeah, the doing it in secret can definitely be worrying and flame rumors, I agree. I’m being optimistic that the new owner is someone close to them and they’re still working out details before announcing who they are
Corporations and companies parasitically destroy everything human in the name of money. If it’s not a non-profit dedicated to the purpose of providing access to mods, it’s just a question of time. Best to just get a new thing started.
It may not be the work he wanted, but it was a positive direction. I know nothing about his other works, but new-kratos is a much expanded character and successful continuation on the original work. Not a hamfisted cash-in like so many sequelizations do.
Honestly seeing kratos grow up is what makes the new games that much more impactful. The series when taken as a whole just really makes kratos’s character that much better. Imagine 2018 GoW without the original trilogy, it would not be nearly as close to perfect of a game as it was
The original Kratos was basically one big long revenge story. Almost all of it justified and satisfying, but basically wiping out the Greek Pantheon was his ultimate goal.
His actions were reckless and fury driven, but often went over the top, both in violence and in actions.
My favourite example is from GoW: Ragnarok, when certain characters are reflecting on Kratos’ past, and how the one story of him killing the Sisters of Fate must truly be myth, then he corrects them saying it was true and how they deserved it. The third character then shines a present light on the fact that he did that in the past and says, “that’s the most dangerous and irresponsible thing I’ve ever heard.”
I guess it’s mostly old fellows that are way past their teenage years of angst and thus had lots of time to reflect, rather than pretentious gamers. But hey, I’m just an internet rando
There were innumerable opportunities for kratos to develop character beyond raging angry guy of rancorous fury. Every betrayal and every reconciliation was so bland after a while. The originals were one long soap opera.
Worked for the first two games then went steadily downhill. It’s honestly incredible how they managed to ressurect that franchise as GoW was just a boring crappy series of sequels by 2017.
What made them successful was marketing and copying and simplifying devil may cry. GOW’s voice acting and tactility of gameplay were far above the norm, which brought people back for a sequel. Its story was par for ps2, which is to say tolerable.
Meh. Not everything need to be deep. It’s a video games. Nobody is asking what the DOOM character backstory is. He’s there to shoot some hellspawns and that’s fun.
Sure, but when someone whines “Why did they give this character depth? They could have made them shallow and boring!” I’m not going to give that person much credit.
Also, DOOM guy does have some backstory for those that care to look for it in the games. Easily ignored for those that don’t.
Like they don’t need any deep lore dumps or in depth explainations. The simple and casual disregard of Samuel Hayden for the lives of his employees and everyone else on Mars is in direct contrast to how deeply it’s immediately obvious that Doomguy DOES care about those same dead scientists and colonists just from a few simple actions.
No long-winded explanation necessary. Those 10 seconds were a masterpiece of visual storytelling.
Really? I enjoy the lore very much, but it seems more than easy enough to ignore - most is told through collectibles, so you can just breeze through everything without reading pretty much anything.
Not every franchise needs to be deep
I kind of disagree - I like it when a lot of thought has been put into things. I’d rather have it available and be able to ignore it than not have it available at all.
Like they don’t need any deep lore dumps or in depth explainations. The simple and casual disregard of Samuel Hayden for the lives of his employees and everyone else on Mars is in direct contrast to how deeply it’s immediately obvious that Doomguy DOES care about those same dead scientists and colonists just from a few simple actions.
No long-winded explanation necessary. Those 10 seconds were a masterpiece of visual storytelling. It lets us know the stakes, it shows us that Doomguy cares about the lives lost far more than any ostensible greater good or Hayden’s justifications.
100% my biggest issue with modern games right now is there’s too much damn lore. I need to know a hundred different things to understand the game, and I generally don’t know those things.
I’m a huge fan of Doom Eternal, and it’s one of the few single player games I’ve finished in the last few years. Too many games now end up needing to spend half my play session in conversations or cut scenes, and I realized I don’t have fun playing games like that.
A buddy of mine got me to play Dark Tides and I had fun, but he kept telling me I needed to look into the lore of the Warhammer universe.
Looked into it and realized I don’t have the time or interest to get into such a fictional universe that feels like it has more depth than most religions. I feel like there could be a degree track for Warhammer historians…
Not hating on people who are into it. But it’s too overwhelming for someone like me who just wants to play games to clear my mind and distract myself. Also socialize.
I have friends that are deep in the tabletop 40k universe and know all the lore. I couldn’t give two shits about the story and have still enjoyed many sessions, plus the computer games: vermintide, darktide, etc.
Oh yeah, I was doing just that. I wasn’t saying the lore interfered with the gameplay at all. I was just relating to feeling like I can’t be bothered by extended universes.
Modern Kratos wouldn’t be nearly as impactful or enthralling if we didn’t intimately know his past and what he is capable of. Replacing him with another character who acts identical and had a similar background revealed in flashbacks would just undercut how Kratos acts now.
We see him show restraint his younger self was incapable of, and how when hes holding back, its not for his benefit, but for those who are antagonizing him and his friends. HE knows he is a monster, doesn’t view himself as redeemable in the slightest, but has no intention of returing to his old ways while he has the ability to help those he’s come to care for, and also show his son a better a path than the one laid out for him.
So while yes, ps2/ps3 kratos had all the depth and bredth of a puddle, modern Kratos is built entirely off that puddle and wouldn’t hold its own weight without the previous foundations.
Who are these fucking complete garbage people who can conceive of a world where there are elves, dwarves, Qunari and darkspawn, but trans people are a bridge too far?
I have no idea what woke even means anymore. It seems to mean “social awareness”. Black lives matters kind of a thing. Equal rights for trans people too of course. That doesn’t mean that everyone should support games being forced into having all genders, or races, or include trans people. Or all books or movies should be forced to have those things.
If you create something, it’s up to you how you want that to be. You are the artist.
This is not equal to hating trans people, and anyone with some iq points realizes this. We can’t turn every creation into a vehicle for trans rights.
That’s the anti-woke propaganda the text you’re quoting is complaining about. If you listen to anyone right wing long enough this is what they’ll bring up eventually. it’s “fake news” basically – very dangerous fake news.
yeah, I think there’s been a terrible miscommunication somewhere. It might help if you clarify – do you yourself believe that there is a sizeable contingent of people who want to force games to include all walks of life?
I have no idea. I don’t read about games very much and don’t follow what’s happening. I guess games are like movies, we like to identify with the characters to feel the game is good. Sometimes it’s hard if they are very different from us, and then the movie / game is very boring or even annoying.
There’s a few, very vocal idiots every now and then who believe that every group/minority should be represented in every piece of media. A lot of the time they don’t even belong to any of those minorities. And then there’s the people who comply to cater to that audience, because they appear bigger in numbers than they are.
Don’t wanna get “canceled” on Xitter, you know? /s
Anyway, I don’t care personally. I haven’t really seen a lot of examples in media where the creators made characters part of a minority, maybe even retroactively, just to please a certain demographic. The closest I can think of is J.K. Rowling’s Xitter account. That was interesting to watch, to say the least lol
And when the artists chooses to include all genders, or races, or trans people; what would you call the effort to force the artists from removing this from their art?
That is what the culture war is. The effort to create an environment where publishers and artists have a harder time including aspects labeled “woke” because of a loud minority will harass the people involved, review bomb the products, dominate the discourse with bad faith arguments, and generally minimize the potential enjoyment of anyone who is the intended audience. This is what forcing an agenda upon artists looks like.
I think I’m on the other side - I think it’s way too much woke agenda in a lot of popular TV shows we watch. Disney competely wrecked a lot of shows because they kept pushing in gender/race related things that felt competely out of place.
I couldn’t even watch the acolyte. They wrecked it competely. Many web pages have described what’s wrong with it so won’t repeat that here, but hopefully you already know what I mean.
If you don’t like something, that’s fine. They made the product they want, they’re free to do that, and you’re free to not like it.
Just know that art has always driven social discussion, and it’s always been met with heavy social opposition, just usually in the form of outright censorship. So historically artists had to be subtle in order to be critical without being censored. In order to see more edgy stuff you had to go to small, barely funded art house shows.
But then the internet happened, and suddenly artists weren’t beholden to a small number of elite entertainment corporations. Art containing more openly progressive ideas can now be shared directly with the masses, the masses are now preferring progressive ideals more than ever before, and naturally corporations making entertainment products now have a financial incentive to cater to that demographic (often called “virtue signaling”). Today you see a mix of corporate pandering and actual art, even within the development teams of a mainstream product like Dragon Age or Disney. Some messaging feels honest, others feel ham fisted because it’s pride month.
But the censorship of the pre-internet days existed for a reason. A lot of people feel uncomfortable seeing things that challenge their status quo. People tend to seek comfort, and they just want their entertainment to leave them be. But now that corporate censors are less of a barrier, and now that progressive ideals are proliferating, the people themselves are backlashing. They say things like, “it’s way too much woke agenda, I’m tired of it. I want to watch a show without having the story be about woke issues.” I think that’s also normal.
I think the backlash is two fold: On the one hand, real art challenges the viewer, which can be exhausting when you just want to be entertained before you get a few hours of sleep and go back to work in the morning. But on the other hand, you do have what offen feels like a disengenuous layer of progressive pandering coming from corporations that you never saw before. And no one likes being pandered to, let alone not being pandered to.
I think this corporate pandering towards progressive ideals is new, the terms we use to describe everything are definitely new, but the tendency for art to expose people to progressive ideals and the tendency for the masses to be conservative and resist change are as old as humanity. And I view the two as a social evolutionary yin and yang, keeping each other in check.
They made the product they want, they’re free to do that.
But they aren’t free – Disney has total executive control. This is nothing new though; they used to use this power to censor queerness in shows before (e.g. Gravity Falls). They may still perhaps, and may do so again. Disney in general reigns in everything to make it a sterile corporate product and the artists involved have to swim upstream to make something they want.
We should all boycott Disney and take its capitalist grip off our culture. Then we can have vastly more diverse media, certainly with more queerness.
Out of curiosity, did you like Andor? Because it had all that stuff too but it was well written instead. Just think about how many women are lead roles on Andor for a second.
Dude I’m trans and hate the acolyte. It’s cause it’s shit not “woke”
There’s plenty of “non woke” media that’s shit too
Turns out if you write nothing but shit you get nothing but shit. This is a capitalism putting restrictions on the artist not our society.
It’s happened time and time again they force trends and focus tested ideas into the writing room instead of true passion. It will happen no matter the context. Shit media will just be shit media regardless of “wokeness” that’s just a current symptom of how we create media. It’s all for profit not for the sake of art.
I thought I’d never meet a trans person and very few gay people in the agricultural college I attended when I went back to college. Turned out every damn one of the friends I made was somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum. So as the other person said “as far as you know”
Acceptance of gay and trans rights has allowed so many people to realize they’re not so straight or not so cisgender and that’s wonderful. People are finally finding the freedom to be who they are!
I support their rights, they are people, the genitals only mader in bed. I just don’t want aliens in the far future watching our shows and thinking “god damn, it was femboy paradies!”
These things are very tied together. Supporting people being who they are means supporting them if they want to publicly show their identity
I just don’t want aliens in the far future watching our shows and thinking “god damn, it was femboy paradies!”
What does that matter at all? Who cares what people in the far future think? What matters is what people think today, and representation helps people find their own identity and know that they’re included in society
Enough creators I follow are coming out as trans that I wonder if I’m missing something about myself. I don’t think it’s me… but if not, I sure can pick 'em.
Admittedly the rate among webcomic artists is through the fucking roof.
I used to think that. But the amount of people hiding it, or just coping, is probably higher than you think.
Like I live in a pretty small city with an average gay community, and all it took was one person coming out as trans for a bunch of others to go “oh you know what me too - let’s do this,” so now we have like a whole posse of trans men that I see at the gym all the time (with their gains and their cool names lol).
I’m not saying this is always the case by any stretch, but if someone is super butch or super femme, they might not be cis.
That doesn’t mean that everyone should support games being forced into having all genders, or races, or include trans people. Or all books or movies should be forced to have those things.
Literally no one is being “forced” to add diversity. This is just plain ignorant.
Besides, no one bats an eye when a character is a white cis hetero man, but the moment something slightly different from the normativity appears, suddenly it is forced and unrealistic.
Fuck that, LGBT people exist and we deserve the bare minimum of at least having proper representation in the media we consume.
This is not equal to hating trans people, and anyone with some iq points realizes this. We can’t turn every creation into a vehicle for trans rights.
Keep your bullshit IQ points talking point. Put yourself on someone’s shoes for once and try to imagine what it might be like for a trans person to experience seeing a character like them. And stop with this bullshit of “making every character trans”, that’s literally not happening.
Simplicity to access the content is important, but I’d argue just as important is they’ve tried to make the games simple and appealing to everyone, and they end up not really appealing to anyone. Make an interesting game for the people that want it. Don’t make a game no one wants.
It genuinely feels like the notion of a pure triple AAA RPG is slowly being torn down by publishers chasing the wide audience of action game fans who will ultimately not care that much for the end product.
Yep. Just look at Bioware. BG3 would have been theirs if they didn’t go the action game route. In the past they made BG and SWTOR, but then they made DA: Origins (not an action game, but moving that direction) and then Mass Effect. At that point they never went back from that direction. They’ve been successful most of the time, but I feel it can only last so long, because it isn’t really made for anyone anymore. I think we can see that now.
Dragon Age’s drop in reputation had nothing to do with launchers, given many if not most players were on console.
“Simplicity” is arguably what killed it, because they had an excellent formula with Origins, and “simplified” it to the point it lost its identity as a true RPG.
Wasn’t it dragon age 2 where the level design got super repetitive though? It felt like they kept reusing the same exact level design in ways that didn’t really make sense.
I’ve heard that, and it’s reasonable however I found the level design in the first one could be a little repetitive as well so I thought some of the criticism was somewhat unwarranted.
Yes, 2 had a lot of re-used locations. Some of them did make sense, as the story was almost entirely set within a single city, so certain locations are bound to pop up multiple times, especially as the game takes place over a decade or so.
But the real reason, 2 was developed and rushed out the door in like a year or something? It was a ridiculously short amount of time to develop a sequel to a game as big as DA:O. Unsurprisingly, this led to a LOT of re used assets and locations.
But though it obviously had failings, I, like some others, would probably put DA2 as the high point for the series telling really character driven stories with the most compelling cast of characters.
Oh yes, I played a mage in both and the difference was startling. In the first part you have immensly powerful spells, that could also backfire hard because the game had friendly fire. At high levels you could wipe everything on the screen, including your party. In the second, friendly fire was gone so you could blast away and suddenly you spun around like a kung-fu master for some reason.
I will agree that the asset reuse in 2 was bad. But I loved the game for putting me in completely different shoes from the norm. The settiing of the character as refugee was unique
Aye, let’s agree to respect each other’s opinion. No matter how wrong yours might be.
(joking of course, I actually like 2 a lot despite how clearly unfinished and rushed it was, although I really really disliked 3 except for the romances and the character interactions)
I always enjoyed the story of 2. Origins and 3 both fall for the same story beats aka “You are the Chosen One. Only you can save the World.”
Origins, you are the last of the Grey Wardens in Felderen. Only you can reunite everyone to stop the Blight.
3, only you can close the rifts, reunite everyone, and stop the Big Bad guy.
In 2n Varic actively mocks that in the beginning. Hawke is portrayed as the Chosen One. When challenged, Varic admits that he made it up. Hawke is a nobody in beginning, only kicks start the mage and templar war because of the people that they associated started everything. Cough Anders Cough Hawke really just stumbles from adventure to adventure because of their companions.
It’s a story about unintended consequences and how small events can lead into big events.
2’s biggest failure was the over use of the same assets. The is cave/house/ruin is the same layout all the other cave/house/ruin. It was fine when it made narrative sense however that it is only for a minority of the time.
It’s always weird to me when people talk about video games as if story is the single most important aspect.
Personally I think 2’s biggest folly was abandoning the deep RPG in favor of overly-simplistic hack and slash. A mistake 3 somewhat attempted to correct, and for that, I’ll take its weaker story because I enjoy playing it much more. And if course 1 blows them both out of the water in terms of RPG gameplay.
Inquisition wasn’t quite as bad, I actually enjoyed it because it made an attempt to walk back some of the “streamlining” from 2, though obviously they both pale in comparison to Origins.
I was kind of hopeful they’d rediscovered their identity somewhat with Inquisition, but 4 looks like that hope was misplaced. They doubled down on abandoning the RPG in favor of the overly simplistic button masher with a smattering of RPG elements that are more or less meaningless.
For me I loved Dragon Age 2 beacuse I came from Mass Effect and the streamlined effect totally felt like an ME game to me. Also loved the idea of setting things in one city it was something different. Totally get why people don’t like it tho.
Ehh, h’s not wrong. If this David Jaffe guy is a pro-revenge type, of course he has the right to be unhappy: the writers for the new games blatantly said in interviews they completely changed the story around to oppose revenge, completely against the wishes of this Jaffe fellow apparently. Which is ironically a vengeful act.
People don’t have the right to just change stories to suit their personal opinions and the new writers need to learn to respect that.
Lest the writers after that change it back to a pro-revenge story with depth and good writing just to spite them.
Blatant anti-revenge stories are bland, predictable, preachy and uninteresting.
You don’t have the right to do whatever you want simply because you like it.
Yes… Yes you do? Lmao brother have you experienced any story or art in the last, I dunno, ten thousand years? Everyone is just retelling an existing story with their own little tweak or twist.
Look, it seems like you didn’t like the creative direction of the new games, and that’s fine. But getting mad at the writers and claiming they didn’t have “the right” to write the story as they saw fit (in a brand new series of video games btw, not remakes of the existing ones) is weird.
You can certainly write fanfiction and create fanart all you want to. People have done it for thousands of years. But it’ll never be the original story no matter how much you want it to be.
You are not the original creator of the franchise. Grow up and get over it.
Getting mad at me for telling you the truth won’t change that fact, and it won’t make Jaffe any less correct in his complaint that the writers deliberately destroyed his creation and his original intent. Because they did, and they admitted they did it because they didn’t want a pro revenge story in media.
Go look up the interviews with the recent GoW writers. Go actually do some research instead of throwing a temper tantrum here because I won’t let you do what you want.
Objective reality is a thing whether you want it to be or not. You don’t get to decide what the truth is.
Dawg where have I claimed to be an original creator of the franchise? You’re being koo koo for cocoa puffs right now lmao. And the writers didn’t destroy anything. The original games are still there. If Jaffe wanted the new games to be different, if he wanted to preserve his “original intent”, he should have written them himself.
Jaffe writing the original story doesn’t give him the power to dictate how new stories based on his work are written, and that’s objective reality, not whatever fantasyland you’re living in.
When your dumbass looked at me telling you you can’t just do whatever you want, and you responded, “Actually yes, I can”. Like a fucking child.
When you devolve into insults instead of responding with anything substantive because you know I am right and you are wrong.
And when deep down inside you felt the pit in your heart grow like a fucking maw when confronted with the fact that reality exists independently of your whim and whimsy.
Now you don’t get a say in what is canon and what is not. Only original creators can do that. Other people’s works are derivatives at best. That’s the reality you have to learn to accept because reality won’t change simply because you don’t like it.
Now when you grow up and actually become an adult, we can continue this conversation. I am not gonna waste any more time arguing with a child.
I understand Jaffe not being happy that the games are going in a different direction than he imagined, but he’s also the guy who thought Drawn to Death needed to be made.
Here is a monetization “cheat sheet” that the CEO posted on LinkedIn which is linked on Chosen’s main page if you scroll down: i.imgur.com/ztjS4K7.jpeg
In the CEO’s LinkedIn profile it says this:
Working closely with teams at NexusMods and beyond to build meaningful, sustainable experiences
If I had to guess the acquisition details are under some sort of NDA right now
Really? I onyl use VPN for reddit and don’t have an issue. But then again there is a lot of VPN’s out there, they would have to find each endpoint to block.
As someone who has played from the beginning, and seen the entire storyline unfold through the multiple directors, I was so disappointed…in nothing absolutely at all whatsoever about the new games.
I thought it was really cool how they stitched the story back to GoW3 and developed the new character so thoughtfully. Christopher Judge seemed to take the character much further while adding depth, and being thoughtful too.
If Jaffe doesn’t like that Kratos isn’t a mindless rage machine, different strokes I guess. He’s definitely in the minority and I think every subsequent game director did an overall better job than he did in GoW 1. *shrug
Parts of 2018 and Ragnarok and the ending of both actually had me tear up a bit, not many games accomplish that. It was very heartfelt and emotional I enjoyed seeing a proper character arc for Kratos and his kid and watching them develop.
I also really liked the themes of redemption and trying to be better not just for yourself, but for the people around you, I liked that Kratos has to reflect on his actions and actually come to terms with how he was for all intents and purposes, a monster.
I liked that even enemies where made more complex and given good character arcs. 2018 and Ragnarok are so well done and I love them. The old GoW trilogy was also fun and had good writing in it’s own merit and direction, but the new games are something else entirely in a good way and I vastly prefer the character and relationship focused writing in the newer games.
They’ll probably implement a daily/hourly download limit like MEGA does. So, for example, you can download 1000000000 small mods of some kbs, but the limit is 5 GB, so the mod bundle for big games is virtually limited to premium users.
They’ll probably try to change the lifetime subscription(the biggest sin in capitalism, how do you make infinite money without doing nothing if people can buy subscription once?), making it useless compared to the premium premium subscription.
Paid mods I think are unlikely, why bother to make a change so unpopular? Milk this shit for a decade and press this button only when shit hits the fan.
Is a enshification process not so painful so the vast majority will not bother to look for alternatives.
Paid mods I think are unlikely, why bother to make a change so unpopular? Milk this shit for a decade and press this button only when shit hits the fan.
Unfortunately, I think this will be likely because Nexus has almost entirely cornered the market on mods. It is the place people get their mods from if not the Steam Workshop.
People would have to actually abandon the convenience and go back to scrolling a bunch of games specific forums for their mods. I don’t see that happening unfortunately and I’m pretty sure the executives at the new company know this. It’s a common marketing tactic to exploit the sunk cost fallacy.
Nah there’s some games that still only have stuff on moddb, thunderstore is the main place for v rising and a few other popular titles, and for Minecraft there’s curseforge and modrinth, and GOG is adding mods now too. The community is more fragmented than you’d think
? Same reason people use shit platforms? I can’t barely watch Twitch with 3 ads in a row every 30min and they still are the biggest streaming platform even when is shitty to the users and streamers. It’s a community based platform unless the community move to other place they still be big because people is there.
I think a lot of the hating on Gamepass is justified, but I’ve just gotta say as a partially blind gamer it has been a godsend for me.
I used to struggle with whether or not to buy a game every single time because in most cases there is no way from descriptions and reviews for me to know how any given game will work with my vision and fine/gross motor impairment.
With gamepass I can try things and if I can’t play it? I move on and try something else.
Kinda sad that we can’t find some middle ground between making games accessible for disabled folks without bankrupting developers and ultimately hurting consumers.
Tacit Collusion: a type of collusive behavior where firms coordinate their actions without explicitly communicating or reaching an agreement. Instead, firms may signal their intentions through various actions, such as pricing behavior or output levels, in order to coordinate their behavior and achieve higher profits.
If that were the case, companies would go down left right and center. What do you think the gas stations are doing? Landlords? Companies hiring devs? Everything is becoming lockstepped and thats why we are losing.
We need to break up businesses above 999 mil in assets (including other companies) and break up entry barriers for new businesses. Amend the laws to exclude large companies from any securities so it is actually too risky to become this big.
Its not really hard to do but people need to stop working for a day every month to push this. Take to the streets and unionize en masse.
Everyone who is not part of a union is part of the problem at this point.
No recorded direct link of communication. The CEOs and half the board will individually go to company paid lunches with competition, members of the board are straight up members of a competing board. Or even lobbyists and lawyers of competing companies going to events together that happens daily.
“But I pinky promise we don’t talk about our competing business plans while we eat lunch and golf together”
I think most conspiracy theories are bullshit. Especially things that require mass government, academic, and/or inter-industry coordination just cannot happen easily due to the fact that large scale coordination of people is very very difficult.
But in a market with 2-4 long-standing players in an oligopoly with offices right by each other, you bet your ass there is in-person collusion… it has been caught many times and likely the extreme vast majority of cases are not caught. Price adjustment is extremely easy to collude on and has mountains of excuses of plausible deniability and “just following the market” bs. So far, there has yet to be a market that has remained competitive and hasn’t turned into an oligopoly. Monopoly is the steady state of a capitalist system without strict anti-competitive regulations.
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