Nintendo has spent decades building an extremely loyal, multigenerational consumer base. They also release very popular, high quality games. I have no interest in owning a Switch, but I get why so many people do.
Ah yes, the one Nintendo IP that has gone to shit. Not fully by the way, as Legends Arceus was fantastic, and even my mom who hasn’t given a fuck about Pokemon since Yellow loved watching me play it. If Gamefreak would finally make another side game like Mystery Dungeon (or the more forgotten cult classics like Pokepark, Ranger, Conquest, Rumble, etc.) we wouldn’t be trolling them so hard. It’s also more of a Gamefreak problem than anything, as other companies that did Pokemon games (Chunsoft, Genius Sonority, etc.) did fantastic.
Anyway Zelda and Mario are still making bangers, Kirby Air Riders is coming back, Metroid fans are fed, Splatoon is getting a whole new game for Switch 2 (fuck me…), people are still relatively happy with Animal Crossing NH, we’ll see how Donkey Kong’s new game does, and while FE’s newest entry wasn’t so hot you can’t ignore how Three Houses brought in a brand new wave of loyal FE fans.
Literally everyone knows Pokemon mainline has been going to shit (and not the characters, designs, music, etc. imo, just the animations and story writing). Pick another game, even Nintendo (and Pokemon) fans make fun of it.
The vast majority of Steam games can be easily cracked and played offline if they ever go rogue. Modern console games are much more difficult to jailbreak like that.
Honestly compared to other handhelds and current-gen consoles, the price seems OK for what you're getting. The problem for me has always been how expensive Nintendo's games are, $80 seems way too much.
As if, the console’s a scam and the game pricing is just the cherry on top. Half committing to caring about how much things cost is a waste of time, either acknowledge they’re both garbage or stop spreading this half assed attitude.
The steam deck doesn't come with a dock, has a worse screen at 800p/60Hz compared to the S2's 1080p/120Hz, is way larger and thicker, doesn't have detachable controllers so if you do buy the dock you'll have to bring your own controller. It also can't play in a kickstand mode which is a negative if you're wanting to play with friends outside which is something I do often with my Switch 1.
I like the Steam Deck, really, but it's not a 1:1 comparison and I think the average person will still really prefer the Switch 2.
The Switch 2 being a bad deal and Nintendo having a VERY strong history of anti-consumer behavior has nothing to do with console wars. The person you are replying to is equally allowed to have a nuanced take.
What, are you expecting every comment critical of Nintendo to also include criticism of how terribly Xbox has managed it’s game studios just so we can be “fair and balanced”?
The comment I replied to believed that both the console and the game price is a scam, that is their valid opinion.
They criticised OP for “half caring about the rip off pricing”. OP didn’t think the console had ripoff pricing. Why is that a character flaw of op like is suggested by the commenter?
The truth is that literally everything costs too much. $399.99 (switch 1 launch price in 2017 USD) is $524.57 in USD today (source so $499.99 bundle with Mario Kart World is actually cheaper than Switch 1 with no game.
Blame the system that fucked your currency, and refuses to raise your pay appropriately.
So apparently they had a bit asking players to not share info about the game, but you could technically back out of it without agreeing so legally they can post whatever they want. It feels like a case of “this is legal to do but maybe kinda shitty and valve might be upset”. Basically the agreement was informal and not enforceable and the verge just said fuck it. They did get banned afterwards, but I think that and not working with them in the future is all valve can do.
Edit: didn’t even require agreement, so honestly it’s kinda fair game. I was a bit hostile calling it shitty, I felt like it was a loophole or something but it’s more Valve just saying “hey pls don’t” and the verge replying “no thanks”, and eating the game ban since that’s all valve can really do.
This isn’t some grand conspiracy it’s a closed beta for a video game. It’s pretty normal to have an NDA or embargo agreement to get access. It sounds like valve just goofed the implementation. So yeah it’s totally legal for them to post it, valve just might avoid giving them early copies in the future.
Polygon is Vox’s gaming site and I imagine the shitlist will extend to all Vox properties. So the editors at Polygon now have another department to blame for their woes.
There is no NDA for Deadlock, and anyone in it can invite anyone they want, as often as they want. It’s not like Valve has no idea how to privately test their game. I think they made these decisions deliberately.
A bit of the eula says not to share info about the game, but you can literally back out without accepting the eula, and still play. So I don’t know if I’d call it intentional, but there’s definitely no legal reason they can’t post whatever they want. They just got banned for it and might have damaged their relationship with valve somewhat. Depends on how much valve cares tho.
Edit: it wasnt even a eula apparently, just a “pls dont tell people ok?” Pop up. Thanks to the folks clarifying <3
Don’t know why you’re getting crushed for this. It’s not even just about this particular game; one of the major players in the largest entertainment industry on the planet is doing something highly unusual. That’s in the public interest.
Lemmy users should know better, too, as The Verge was one of the leading reporting outlets on what happened on Reddit last year. Adversarial tech journalism is part of what they do.
Yeah that’s a fair point. I was mistaken thinking it was an actual eula they bypassed because valve didn’t make it so you couldn’t just close it, but it’s not in any way legally enforceable. I thought at least it was one of those grey “technically correct but obviously an unintended loophole” kind of things, but they literally just said “pls don’t tell”. I’m mostly thinking that risking the connections you might have to valve aren’t worth a scoop on a game still in what seems to be alpha or closed beta, but if I were valve I really don’t think they can be that mad, everything the verge did was basically fair game if they were fine with a game ban.
I guess when I think of public interest I think of stuff like reddit selling user data without consent, or games using manipulative tactics. It’s hard to feel like it makes sense to be aggressive with something as benign as “game we don’t know much about yet, smells of dota/moba” But then again I’m not a game journalist, and I stand corrected.
There isn’t even an informal agreement. It simply says not to share anything. Not even “by playing this, you agree not to share anything”. It’s just “please don’t share anything”.
Yeah, gaylord_fartmaster let me know. I thought the message was one of those “scroll down and click agree on this eula” things but its just a pop up box, so it’s def not enforceable.
Nobody is saying it’s enforceable. It’s just a shitty thing to do when someone shows you something in confidence, asks not to share it, and you publish an entire news article about it. It’s just a dick move. Obviously nothing illegal about it.
Bullshit. The actual reason will be that this is far better marketing once you’re at a level of Valve. Shit gets leaked anyways, might as well make it intentionally so to fuel the hype cycle.
Yeah, that statement is so dumb. Even if it’s hugely successful, a game of this type is made for a niche audience. That niche audience does hate microtransactions but they’re in no way representative of the mainstream.
I think, with 700k concurrent players, we need to recognize cRPGs may not be as niche as we previously thought. However, your point stands: this isn’t going to hurt anyone’s revenue from MTX.
I heard that game has a really bad problem with cheaters. Addressing that seems like it would take precedence over getting the game on Steam. You only get one shot to make a first impression and all.
there are no online games that don't have a cheating problem. but there are many online games that don't have anywhere near as bad of a cheating problem as EFT.
Is that not just a reflection of how popular it is and the incentives that players have to not lose and not just the desire to win? As opposed to a deathmatch or ranked game, you actually lose stuff when you lose in this game, right? Is there anything you could reasonably ask of this developer that isn’t just inevitable for this game design?
Install a singleplayer mod that allows you to progress at your own pace and know that all of your faults were not because of cheaters (SPT), but I don’t think those changes could be rectified in the PvP game.
There’s not a cheating problem at all in Rocket League. Literally the only multiplayer game I’ve never seen or even heard of someone cheating in. Not even sure how you would when client side things won’t even help play the game (even an aimbot for the ball would end up being a hindrance) and everything important is handled server side.
I'm too lazy to look it up right now but there have definitely been cheaters in Rocket League. The fact that it isn't a shooter is actually made it easy to cheat in; when there's no precedent for what cheating even looks like, how do you spot it? I remember a few years ago there was a whole scandal where it turned out someone who was famous for making trickshots had some kind of bot that was able to calculate exactly how to hit the ball midair and send it into the goal.
There are several exposé videos on cheating in Rocket League. Here's one by Sunless Khan on "Jimmy" who was on trick shot team but he was actually editing the data of replay files to produce his clips.
Another one by Wayton Pilkin on account boosting, DDoSing servers to cause legit players to have their connection dropped allowing the cheater to win by forfeit, and cheaters using invisible cars.
The clip thing doesn’t affect anything in a game ever, at all. I didn’t question boosting or DDOSing the servers; that shit has an effect on the game. The first thing doesn’t. Not even remotely.
You boost yourself to a level you can’t actually compete in and just fuck up the game for your team mates. It’s the exact opposite problem smurfing creates.
Right. The guy who faked clips boosted his skills to a level he couldn't actually compete in. He was scouted to be part of a pro team and was kicked after they realized his videos were faked.
That was the point of my question, to be honest. I don't understand. Cheating in a single player game to experience it I get. Unlimited ammo, all unlocks, that kind of thing - it lets the game be played differently. But against other players it seems completely pointless from my perspective.
I agree with you, but there are people who enjoy moving over others’ sandcastles more than making their own. Some people enjoy ruining things for others. Others believe everyone else is cheating too, and their cheating is evening the playing field. The latter is a very common defense when asked directly.
Several content creators lose to cheaters and manage to interview the blatant cheaters who admit to it. There are also relatively popular YouTubers whose entire channels are accusing pro players and streamers of cheating in COD and games. Lots of people assume good players are all cheating, and that it’s approved (if not facilitated) by the developers. (Which is a necessary belief for them, considering these players will also often perform very well on LAN tournaments against other pros.)
There’s a pretty massive item market for this game to use real money for in-game items, where the seller will meet you in a match and drop the gear. So there’s a big financial incentive for people from third world countries to hack so they can quickly acquire valuable items to sell on that market.
There isnt actually a way to make functional anticheat as long as its playable on your own device. Its pointless to try and a waste of money. The only way is banning offenders and premium/custom matchmaking.
The cheating problem is off the charts. There was a really good video of someone who investigated how bad it was, and found that about 50% of players were using wallhacks. of matches will have a hacker.
I played it for a couple months. The gunplay was pretty impressive, but the cheaters made it incredibly frustrating, and after seeing that video, I uninstalled and never looked back.
It’s likely around 30% total player base, and out of ten man raid your going to have likely 1 to 3. As cheaters like to squad up. It’s very common for large cheat discords to have fuck loads of people grouping up
The game is very fun and the loop is quite addictive, but PvE is probably the best thing that has happened to it in a long time. The AI needs minor tweaking, but not playing against other people and cheaters is so great. Being able to play with friends makes it fun.
Till it hit steam, you have to go to a Russian website. Pay Russian company using a sketchy payment processor on a barely functional website with extremely poor security measures to use. A Homebrew janky launcher that barely works.
Out of a lobby of 10 people 3 likely are cheating. Every person who’s ever cheated to show videos of their games has this experience. My own first hand try at cheating shows this.
The game literally is one of the most cheated in shooters there is.
I don’t understand why the game would get played at all if it was full of cheaters like this. how could that be fun? especially with something that requires as much patience as an extraction shooter
The game has a really bad problem with incompetent developers and project leaders who have shitty moral and ethical principles, and no I don’t think they are fixing that any time soon lol
"breaking news: a czech man known only as kovarex has rocketed to the top of the most wealthy men in the world list. Legislation is currently being drafted to regulate the use of the drug ‘factorio’ with several legislators describing as ‘extremely addictive. Like, so addictive. Really guys.’ "
Last time I played I got curious hit up a buddy who cheated and grabbed walls. I haven’t used cheats in a shooter since I was 14 I’m fucking 34 now. I’ve gotten kappa twice legit and had basically quit the game over being pissed about the cheaters.
And holy fuck playing around for a few weeks was absurd. I was mostly just questing, no farming or killing for the most part.
But there were so many obvious cheaters that I didn’t even have issues finishing the kill quests doing a HvH only rule.
I was worried I would mistake people who are actually good for cheaters but no. Not even remotely, it’s so absurdly obvious it’s funny.
Honestly HvH was more fun then normal tarkov just because it actually was a level playing field. Definitely a different experience.
Tarkov REALLY is one of the most cheated in shooters there is.
The industry can’t learn this lesson from their customers, because they didn’t get the bad idea from their market. It’s a society-wide trend, a symptom of a whole economy under the control of a narrow coproate elite that knows little to nothing about the industries they control or the products they produce. They contribute nothing to the productive process. They only work to streamline the parasitism that infests our society.
I have experienced this on the production end, as well. I used to work in pest control. For a brief period of my career, I was lucky enough to work for a midsized regional company, grown from a small family business, that was focused on solving actual customer problems. We did tons of one shot work. We did do quarterly and bimonthly service, but there was no particular pressure to subscribe, or to cajole customers who wanted to cancel service (because we’d successfully dealt with the problem) into continuing service.
Then the elderly couple that owned the company sold us to a global megaconglomerate (one of the “Big Three”). Over the course of a year, our focus changed. “Recurring revenue” was now the watchword, which is a tough fit in an inherently seasonal industry. And the reason they do this, in pest control, in game development, in every industry that can potentially produce any kind of surplus wealth, is because the owners (“investors”) neither know nor care about any of the details of the industries they control. All they want is regular and ever-increasing revenues, in exchange for nothing at all. You can’t even say it’s in exchange for access to their savings, because though there is a little actual savings in the system, that’s chump change compared to the ever growing wealthy elite that controls our society and devours our productivity.
Beautifully written and entirely spot on. The question is whether we will do anything about it. We probably have 10-30 years before this elite will entrench themselves forever with some kind of robot police that truly can’t be overthrown. (And it’s not like anyone is rising up now, even though the power is clearly with the workers)
And then this elite will Habsburg-jaw themselves into oblivion and all that remains of humanity are machines built in the name of shareholder profits. What a sad way for things to end.
Or, alternatively, they’ll ruin the earth’s climate in their selfishness and greed and either find a way to leave the planet and abandon the plebs to die, or more likely, die right alongside us as the climate collapses and ecological disaster wipes out the human race.
I see a different future. The tendency of wealth to be drawn upwards as position comes to replace labor as the primary means of gaining wealth ultimately puts a cap on progress. It’s a soft cap, meaning it might happen sooner or happen later, but it will happen sooner or later. Eventually, the imbalance reaches a tipping point, where the slightest jolt to the system sends the entire thing crashing down. Maybe people get pissed enough that general rebellion breaks out. Maybe the population becomes sufficiently stressed and undernourished and, therefore, immunocompromised that a global pandemic goes well beyond COVID into Bubonic Plague territory. Maybe peoples faith in the system becomes so thoroughly damaged that law breaks down generally, forcing those ultra rich to devote so many resources to security the people providing the security become the new elite. Allowing “position” (in Classical Economic parlance, “Land”) to be in itself a source of private revenue sows the seeds of destruction for a progressing society.
Of course, once enough people die and enough capital is destroyed, society starts over again, going once again through an age where labor is in the drivers seat, until population and capital base recovers.
Earning revenue by caring for your customers and the industry takes strategic direction, time, money and effort, and the kind of effort needed is different between industries.
Earning revenue by sucking the living shit out of a company works (at least temporarily) for any industry and a multinational C-suite executive can employ it to any industry to give themselves the guise of success.
It’s like instead of cooking and following a recipe, just take all the ingredients and stick it into a blender and call the smoothie a meal. You’ll get sustenance but you ruined what made food interesting.
Isn’t the whole point of pest control to kill ‘em [the pests] dead? Like, to have recurring business from the same customer one would have to not actually solve their problem. Barring any reintroduction of pests with seasonality as you suggested, or otherwise.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is certainly the latest and most prominent example, but Elden Ring, both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. The Witcher 3. The Last of Us Part 1 and 2. No cash shops, substantive DLC, if there is any.
And what do all those games have in common?
They're solo games.
It's PvP and MMOs where you can purchase an advantage, show off your bling, or purchase expansions to get a head start on the competition. That is where the microtransaction infestation occurs.
Yup, this is why the last two Diablo games have been always online, no one is going to spend $25 on a skin macrotransaction when nobody else can even seen it.
I have wondered what percentage of gamers don’t purchase any mtx in those type of games. We get revenue numbers, but I’ve wondered how many gamers avoid that aspect while playing the game.
Oh yes. Well aware of that. Just more wondering how much of the userbase never actually spends money. Curious as to either how much of a majority or minority the active users who don’t buy any mtx is.
I've been an MMO gamer for a VERY long time and I would say the whaling thing is a perfect analogy. I often pre-order expansions to MMOs like WoW and FFXIV but I have never bought cosmetics other than two race changes for FF, which would make me a "dolphin".
I noticed in WoW and FFXIV that if someone has one mount you can only get from the cash shop, they are VERY likely to have bought TONS of other cosmetics from the cash shop. If they don't have any cash shop mounts, they won't have any cosmetics from it either. It seems like most people are either "all in" or nothing, people like me are very rare.
I’m a lot like you as well. I’m one of those players who buys cosmetics from cash shops when I see something I really fall in love with, but I don’t feel the need to buy everything. I look at it as an occasional treat: sure I won’t own it when the game shuts down at some point in the future, but if I spent the money on, say, a takeaway meal or a night out, that lasts a couple hours and then it’s gone. I’m definitely a dolphin, not a whale.
But I wouldn’t spend a vast fortune on trying to get everything if I have to spend real money. In some MMOs I’ve bought cash shop cosmetics from the auction house, though. I think that can distort the impression of how much someone has spent in the cash shop, making it look like they’re “all in”, when in reality, they’ve just been playing for so long that they have more in-game currency than they know what to do with.
I reckon the “dolphins” are more common than you think.
Is there any actual concrete sources? It’s what I believe to be true too, but would be nice to see something concrete. It is fascinating how a small percentage of gamers change the landscape for a huge majority of gamers.
I don't want the lesson to be learned that devs should only make single player games either. Baldur's Gate 3 itself is co-op, for instance, and Elden Ring has substantial online components for multiplayer and otherwise.
No, you’re right, it’s all of them. Ubisoft is one of the worst perpetrators of this shit actually. Far Cry games having an online shop is so unnecessary.
Edit: In fact, they’re so bad they attempted to implement NFTs in Ghost Recon. Like… what?
That didn’t last though.
the nft implementation in breakpoint was so bad that it seemed like it was missing the point on purpose. It was just different serial numbers printed on a helmet and the rarer the helmet the more play time you had to have on your account to actually wear it. So the nfts were barely unique, didn’t look cool and you couldn’t just buy whatever to show it off. Respect to the devs that managed to pull this off when execs asked for nfts.
I’ve never thought about it before, but I wonder if the companies with games containing microtransactions can ask PSN for compensation for lost income due to long outages.
I tried this in the first place I lived at where I paid for my own internet, which was Comcast at the time.
They said (paraphrasing because it was a long time ago) their contract specified they were not responsible for any outages, nor any income lost due to same. I don’t know if that’s true, but I was young and naive and accepted it at face value.
Outages are a thing of the past since I switched to 4G. If you asked me in 2010 if 4G of all things would be better than a wired connection I would never have believed it.
It’s fast enough and never had an outage. Once in the past year I rotated the antenna to point at a different mast because it was being a little slow. I assume cell towers are a higher priority of infrastructure as they serve more people, and as there are multiple I can connect to there is also redundancy.
This was back in 2006 or so. I don’t recall if 4G was around then, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t available as an internet provider. If it was, I wasn’t aware.
I’m pretty happy with my current internet solution, but I’ll keep your suggestion in mind. Thank you!
My first reason for going 4G was general distaste that all the wired providers leave me with. Awful pricing models where they charge less for 4 months then more for 20 and then loads indefinitely kinda thing and I just decided fuck that. I think there is a bit more competition for the 4G side of things too.
When I worked at a web host, we had people like that. Being support sucked. Like, yes, it sucks that your e-commerce site that uses horrifically outdated software is offline but, we don’t offer quad nines, especially not on a $35/year shared hosting plan. And, honestly Drew, your site gets single-digit visits per month and sells erotica based upon the premise of Edgar Allen Poe being transported to 1990s Brooklyn and working as an apartment building super. At best, you’re breaking even on that hosting bill.
As bad as the customers I deal with are I am so glad we only work with real companies. The smallest are a few hundred staff. At least 99% of the time they can be professional. The exception so far have been pretty funny though, shame I don’t go on calls with them anymore tbh.
It is basically just a web form these days (just google “xfinity outage” or whatever).
They cut you off after a certain number of outages per quarter. And they decide how much money you get per outage. So if your next door neighbor has never reported an outage and you report every single one, they’ll get more for that one report.
forbes.com
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