who is actually buying these? I thought having disposable income would preclude someone from thinking a live service grind that’s dead in a couple of months is a good use of time
There are lots of people poking at them with sticks. Every time someone does it they post who’s doing it and show it as proof that they’re being oppressed.
At this point, I’m convinced that most developers have forgotten how to make a multiplayer game that isn’t live service. Larian still remembers, but you’d think some people who make action games would remember too.
I don’t think the developers have forgotten, they just can’t get permission from management to make one because management demands MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue) as part of the business model because that is valued at 7x EBITDA.
No, that’s not it. Single player games still get made. You can monetize multiplayer much the same way, but basically no one makes a multiplayer game that you just sell once, maybe with an expansion or two, like they do single player games. Naughty Dog threw their hands in the air and said, “These are the only two options, and we choose single player!” instead of just selling a Last of Us multiplayer game for a single purchase.
Idk… I just played Phasmophobia yesterday with friends and had a lot of fun. 🤷🏻♂️ So its only about people decision for what they want to spend their money.
In order to be efficient, it assumes people will act at least mostly rationally. It’s one of those things where it’s both true and false at the same time, somehow.
Yet they constantly create products that require consumers to be irrational enough to fail to see through their greedy ploys. Almost like it’s all BS lies the greedy fucks tell themselves…
No, they tell a lot of those same lies to their consumers, too, so the market is acting somewhat rationally related to what they’re told. It’s why you still have a “buy” button on store pages instead of “purchase temporary license” or “rent”.
it assumes people will act at least mostly rationally
People generally do act rationally, just not optimally. The difference is rooted in availability of information and accumulation of priors.
“The Marshmallow Test” is a great example. People who are predisposed to distrust authority figures and experience chronic hunger will “fail” the test, because they rationally assume they better take the marshmallow now rather than put their trust in a second marshmallow later. This same group happens to underperform long term, not because they are short-sighted or dim-witted, but because they continue to experience the same psychological reinforcements - unreliable social services, inconsistent access to basic necessities, predation by private industry and law enforcement, notably higher rates of social murder - that lead them to take what’s in front of them rather than waiting patiently for a bigger reward.
The next big market crash will produce this kind of person in spades, just like 2008 and 2001 and 1987 did. As people experience retirement accounts as a scam and schools as a prison pipeline and professional careers as economic dead ends and police as occupying invaders, they stop engaging with these institutions innocently and start dealing with them adversarially.
These rational responses result in a vicious deteriorating cycle of distrust and division. Any individual action rationally follows from the prior experiences. But the system isn’t optimal - people suffer disproportionately the longer these rational actions continue.
Another thing I’d like to add, not that your comment wasnt very well argued but just to expand, the rationality of a decision to each individual is still coherent even when talking about sadistic and selfish decisions like those made by the oligarchs and corporate executives. Those actors are not irrational, they are rationally motivated by a completely different structure of stimuli, like you explained.
Capitalism is rational, the issue arises from the fact that a rational decision for someone with billions of dollars is universally irrational to anyone else. You cant expect a system of individualized economic success to allow rationality to be egalitarian.
That’s how we end up in these situations where millions must suffer the failures of a system they never benefitted from while the beneficiaries actively pursue the further dismantling of the system to increase their personal benefits from it.
You cant map the needs of millions and the needs of billionaires onto the same resource pool. The rational actions required to be taken in that environment is what leads to the inconceivable outcomes that make us question actors as irrational. They are personally acting in a rational, self preserving way, which just happens to be the most oppressive and dangerous to the masses.
I think you covered the mindstate of the masses pretty well in your comment, so I wanted to give some exposition towards the other side of the coin. In equal proportion, “Any individual action rationally follows from the prior experiences” applies both to those exploited by the system and those benefitting from it.
The problem with “good games” is that you can only make them a few times before people stop getting excited.
Mario was a good game. A cloned, reskinned Mario knock off is derivative and hack.
At some point, you need to incorporate new technology, new art, and new game mechanics in order to draw in the crowds. Otherwise, why would I feel the urge to put down money for Starcraft 35 when I’ve got Starcraft 1 & 2 back home?
As a Canadian, American Express most certainly exists here. A quick google search shows that it exists in the UK as well. I’m going to guess it exists in other major countries as well.
No idea about Discover though. Barely even knew it existed at all.
Discover is on the JCB, UnionPay, Troy and RuPay. (japan, China, turkey, and India respectively). Probably many more.
Similarly, a JCB card should work wherever Discover is. It’s a billateral alliance.
Oh, and all Discover cards work on Diners Club International because those two networks completely merged.
Alliance members are not 100% acceptance. It seems like 95%+ acceptance though (most JCB will accept most Discover cards and vice versa, though you will get confused looks from the locals). It sounds like there’s a lot of old equipment around the countries that break compatibility but cities and other urban areas with new equipment shouldn’t have any problems.
I’ll probably get a Discover card and start testing this out. I already have Visa and Mastercard but this new censorship issue seems serious enough to make me start supporting a 3rd place competitor.
Between Discover vs AmEx, it seems like AmEx is about elite club / customer service / returns etc. etc. nice features but I’m not sure if it’s worth the price.
Discover is free of annual fees, reasonable cash back, mediocre costs for the merchants (better than AmEx anyway and comparable vs Visa) and a surprisingly huge offering of international compatibility (RuPay, JCB, UnionPay, etc Etc). It seems like the winner to me as a 3rd card to experiment with.
Have you played any of these sexual violence games? You aren’t comparing apples to apples here, and there are plenty of books that are much more graphic than acotar or haunting Adeline.
Leaving aside how gross it is, and separate from whether corporations should be the arbiters of morality:
Incest between parent and child, even if the offspring is of legal age of consent, would imply an insurmountable power differential as well as likely grooming. Incest between siblings would depend on the age differential and authority structure of the family. It’s not a case of incest=abuse, but of how likely it could imply abuse. The challenge is nuance. The goal is harm reduction
I understand that for some incest porn is enjoyable, not because they would commit incest themselves, but because incest=forbidden=naughty=sexy. Maybe that’s you? In any case, you asked how violence is implied, and that’s my take
Yo I’m NGL I’m usually really passionate when I feel my rights are infringed but I do not feel like my rights are being infringed. This isn’t the same thing as requiring ID to view NSFW content; this issue is not a legal one.
It’s not even like porn is js inacessible now, most of it is found on Patreon, which is both unaffected and literally accepts cryptocurrency. I will admit im suprised to see itch.io take action cos it has a reputation as a porn service, but who tf consumes porn on steam? I do not believe “what they define as NSFW will expand!” Or “next, games featuring a gay character will be banned!”, either. You are fucking bugging if you think Valve would let that happen. All they would need to do is lean heavier into steam giftcards, potentially selling them digitally, and start accepting crypto 'till the processors wanna play ball.
I don’t understand why people are bitching that the companies that they choose to use have so much power over their purchasing decisions. “First this, next sex toys! Then contraceptives!” Like Jesus fuck bro have you not heard of cash?
Your point is sound because I usually use a credit card for this, but most of my Steam purchases come from buying gift cards. However, I could easily buy those gift cards with cash.
So it requires the effort and capability to go to a place that happens to have those cards. In some areas, that is more difficult and unlikely than others, and can be more difficult for the less financially fortunate.
Thus there’s added utility cost to the person when otherwise the existing digital payment model would be more accessible.
i.e. it’s a regressive solution and less ideal.
I liken it to the utility or economic tax that is attempting to vote in some areas where they make it more difficult to actually do it.
In Australia at least, those cards are everywhere in populated areas. Supermarkets and department stores pretty-much all stock them. I’d say that over 90% of Australians live within 3km of a store that sells Steam cards and takes cash. Most of us even closer than that.
No one will lament the removal of No Mercy from sale on Steam, but whenever a net like this is thrown over an entire area of perceived problematic content, there will be well-intentioned games caught in the net too. Specifically, LGBTQ+ games are under threat - games that don’t align with the Christian values underpinning the pressure group Collective Shout.
I do not believe “what they define as NSFW will expand!”
And that’s the core of your problem, puritan activists don’t generally have the capacity to think “actually, the thing i wanted other people to not be able to see is gone, i think I’ll leave it there” because the censorship isn’t the goal, the goal is control.
It’s even worse with organised puritans , because even if a few hang it up you’ll always find a few willing to just go a little further or have differing opinions on what is “acceptable”.
I would lay good money on this not actually being as far as they originally wanted, it was just what they could get for now.
I don’t understand why people are bitching that the companies that they choose to use have so much power over their purchasing decisions. “First this, next sex toys! Then contraceptives!” Like Jesus fuck bro have you not heard of cash?
Firstly, it’s the payment processors, you know the monopoly of companies that you need to take payments from regular people.
Secondly, payment processors can and will stop providing payment services for shops that carry physical goods they deem unacceptable.
(yes crypto exists, no it’s not equivalent yet) (yes steam cards exist, no it’s not equivalent and unless i’ve missed something itch.io doesn’t have an card system)
As far as cash goes, is there a new slot where you can put the cash monies directly in to the pc/console and it credits your account ?
Or do you mean, go to the store and buy a physical copy of the hundreds of thousands of games that don’t have physical editions ?
Yes, I understand that if these people could have it their way, any kind of mature content would be completely illegal. The reason I don’t feel strongly about this is strictly because this isn’t a legal threat, and I don’t think it has that capacity to become one. Lobbying is expensive, and I don’t believe that an Australian organization has the capacity to seriously affect global/western culture more than this. Quite frankly, its impressive they were able to pull this much off, and I fully expect ts to blow over in 3 years tops.
Don’t get me wrong- its not that I don’t care about censorship, its that I don’t really view this as censorship because the consumption and purchasing of the “censored” product is still completely possible. Contrarily, if this were signed into law I would have a big fucking problem with it.
With regards to the “companies they choose to use” point I made, I was in fact referring to payment processors, hence why I proposed crypto, cash and giftcards; as in purchasing a steam giftcard with cash from a store. Obviously I don’t expect people to not have credit cards, but the anonymity and security cash provides is almost never used because people find it less convenient.
The reason I brought this up is because I have seen it proposed that this issue will expand beyond the scope of digital marketplaces, which I find downright laughable. People WILL stop using visa cards if you can’t use it to buy condoms and there’s an ATM in the gas station.
I firmly believe that if this issue is pressed further, at the very least Valve will js stop accepting payment directly through payment processors.
I’d argue that it not being a legal threat doesn’t matter too much in this case because they aren’t looking for legal control, so much as “effective” control.
If they can stop you without needing for it to be signed in to law, then they’ll take that, if they can get a law as well, then I’m sure they’ll take that too.
Don’t get me wrong- its not that I don’t care about censorship, its that I don’t really view this as censorship because the consumption and purchasing of the “censored” product is still completely possible. Contrarily, if this were signed into law I would have a big fucking problem with it.
Censorship isn’t a binary, but we can agree to disagree on that one i suppose.
To this part though
purchasing of the “censored” product is still completely possible
Not really, there are numerous titles available exclusively on itch.io and steam, those are effectively censored by your rationale as you can no longer purchase them at all.
Honestly steam gift cards don’t work at all here because it’s not a ban on buying the games using a card, it’s a ban on steam listing the titles at all, on threat of losing the payment services.
Crypto cash and gift-cards are great if you have effective access to them.
Crypto is out for most people for obvious reasons (technical knowledge, dearth of places that actually accept crypto)
Cash works until it doesn’t and governments and big tech are trying their hardest to make it as difficult as possible, there is a big push to go cashless.
It’s not that people find cash less convenient because they are lazy (some are i suppose), it’s because it’s being purposely deprecated as much as possible, or just straight up doesn’t apply to the paradigm, such as online purchases.
The reason I brought this up is because I have seen it proposed that this issue will expand beyond the scope of digital marketplaces, which I find downright laughable.
As i said, this already happens, it’s weird in how it’s applied tbh, but that’s neither here nor there.
Mastercard just says : “brand-damaging Transactions” and doesn’t elaborate, at a quick glance.
A good example of this is casino’s and other gambling related physical locations, there are a lot of hoops to jump through to get a payment processor to work with gambling, assuming they even give you the time of day.
People WILL stop using visa cards if you can’t use it to buy condoms and there’s an ATM in the gas station.
Sure for that specific thing, hard to pay cash at amazon or other online only retailers.
I firmly believe that if this issue is pressed further, at the very least Valve will js stop accepting payment directly through payment processors.
That i’d be interested to see tbh, because as i said there isn’t an equally available alternative to card payment processors (and it’s not even close).
If they did go crypto only for instance, there’d be a big move to crypto for some, but that’d be a significant loss to take on principle alone.
I don’t understand why people are bitching that the companies that they choose to use have so much power over their purchasing decisions. “First this, next sex toys! Then contraceptives!” Like Jesus fuck bro have you not heard of cash?
Because that’s what groups like Collective Shout do, sparky. They think just acknowledging that LGBT people exist is “too adult”.
When was the last time you paid cash for a Steam game?
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