He’s right. It’s despicable. Trading card games, too. The thing with Valve is that, outside of this monetization of online games, they’ve unquestionably had an enormous positive impact on all sorts of things in this medium just by way of sheer market forces. They’ve done a lot of great open source work, and they’ve helped create a viable exit ramp from Windows. Despite claims of monopoly on PC, they’ve created more market competition than we could have ever hoped to see otherwise. A lot of what they do is informed by what they would want to pay for if they were the customers. That stuff can be true, and at the same time, they have directed their online games in a data-driven way toward whatever creates the best results, and that result is legalized (mostly, for now) gambling for children and other addiction-driven spending behavior via battle passes. The worst part is that if they ever arrived here by accident, they’re not remorseful enough to stop, since it makes so much money.
Rejecting monetization strategies that look, function, and feel a lot like gambling doesn’t mean players will always appreciate their alternatives, however. Hall said that even he is frustrated by the “Paradox model” of paid expansion and DLC packs his studio RocketWerkz chose for its survival game Icarus after moving away from a free-to-play scheme.
It’s been years, and I still scoff at the criticism. The Paradox model is to ask a price for a good that they produced. If you don’t feel it’s worth it, you don’t buy it. They don’t obfuscate the details of what’s in the expansion; they don’t make things available for a limited time only; they ask what they feel is a fair price for a product. It’s the only method of monetizing a video game that doesn’t feel scummy to me. If Hall doesn’t like monetizing Icarus that way, he needs to scope his projects down so they can put a bow on the last one and move on to the next one more quickly.
Im sympathizing with both sides of the conversation. Grand strategy games are so complex and can be supported for 10+ years so it makes sense that they regularly make DLCs to support development.
But they’re not totally optional/unnecessary. The problem is that many games are balanced around the new DLCs that sometimes you’re at a disadvantage if you dont buy them. I remember some drama around crusader kings where some mechanics don’t make sense unless you buy some DLCs
I agree. Strategy game do occupy a weird space, EU4 was a go to game for me for like 10 years. I appreciated the support for the game and did buy the DLC that changed mechanics (skipping most flavour packs). I remember people complaining about janky mechanics without DLC, but I know others would rollback to previous versions.
Funny thing is that despite playing EU4 for years and really enjoying the game. I feel little urge to upgrade to EU5.
That’s like 10 development years worth of additional content. There’s not many games that get that much post release dev time without a valid monetization strategy.
You have a point but the cost of Paradox DLCs FAR exceeds the development time most of the time. You really have to do your research before buying anything
I feel like doing research shouldn’t be an issue for people playing Paradox games, where it takes hours of research in the tooltips just to understand the mechanics.
That said, my research for new Paradox DLC usually consists of hovering over it in the store, ignoring anything with reviews less than mixed, taking interest in those with positive, and reading the first dozen reviews of the mixed ones, and that works well enough.
I think that’s a fair critism, but also it’s not like people get a dlc buying addiction. It’s not necessarily predatory (although it could be if the base game was incomplete and needed to be fixed by DLCs) like gambling is
The price is off-putting because we can see the sticker in order to get sticker shock. But lootboxes and gambling have no upfront sticker, the true cost is obfuscated and extended over years. In that regard, Paradox is much more transparent than Valve.
That being said, my beef with them is their "subscription for DLC" model, at least the version I saw being rolled out for EU4. That and the free updates tend to be fairly unbalanced if you don't also buy the corresponding DLC for that update. That seems skeevy... but still not as skeevy as lootboxes.
The thing with Valve is that, outside of this monetization of online games, they’ve unquestionably had an enormous positive impact on all sorts of things in this medium just by way of sheer market forces. They’ve done a lot of great open source work, and they’ve helped create a viable exit ramp from Windows.
I don’t know about the exit ramp for a casual user, if you mean ditching Windows altogether, since that’s not really happening. But what did happen - Microsoft didn’t get to own the central position in gaming on their own platform, and Steam is a program that installs other programs uninterrupted - just to take a sense of what rights it has there for almost two decades. They had GFWL, now MS Store, integrated with XBOX, and they still aren’t mentioned as a PC marketplace anywhere besides having a monopoly on Minecraft. There hasn’t been their IE for games, and it’s awesome. I can’t say Valve and MS even compete there, but having eggs in two different baskets is better than having them in just one. Two different monopolies instead of one.
We are basically getting a casino shoved in our faces most online games we play now. Not sure why this isn’t outlawed, it is absolutely having an effect on the population, not the mention the growing population specifically (growing as in kids being shoved this in their face while they grow up).
The only time I ever tried loot boxes was with TF2 and Dota2 back in the early to mid 2010s.
I very quickly realized that this wasn't what I was looking for in gaming. These days I mostly play indie games where monetisation is not issue. Even gave up on Paradox because I am not okay with their DLC approach. I don't mind paying for DLC, but one has to look at their release of Cities: Skylines 2 to see that they've really become the "EA of Europe".
The current government strategy of illegal use of copyrighted materials, often with the full understanding that the artist/IP owners will not consent to it should really have a harsher punishment to it. The DHS social media pages in particular keep using songs without artist permission because they know it will be taken down but by that point it doesn’t matter and they just steal another song. Given that the use of these songs implies tacit approval from the artist, this should absolutely count as the rights of the artists to free speech are being infringed upon.
Yeah it almost reads like Microsoft has endorsed the Trump administration and its marketing. Like a forced brand crossover. These things aid in the far right pipeline. Has young men thinking hating immigrants is as cool and mainstream as Halo.
It’s quite literally the least bad thing they’ve done across two terms in office.
Given that the use of these songs implies tacit approval from the artist
Who seriously believes that? We’re so beyond “Death of the Artist” at this point. FFS, I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard the chorus line of Bruce Springsteen’s “Born In The USA” played full on patriotically, without a tinge of irony or self-reflection.
If an artist consents to the use of their song in a specific way, it’s not a matter of belief at all. It just is tacit approval. So when the government does this without consent, until the moment the artist responds, the implication is that the artist has approved it. Which isn’t as big a deal if a private entity does it, but it’s a much bigger deal when the federal government does it.
Fuck! Fuck fuck fuck. I have SOOOOOO MUCH SHIT BLOCKED and I still have to see this invasive fucking shit fucking EVERYWHERE IN FUCKING LEMMY. fuck you fuck everyone fuck all this endless fucking fellatio you give this fucking twat. Just shut the fuck up and stop sharing the images and name and giving it attention. Holy fucking shit it’s god damn inescapable.
Man. I’m sorry you are experiencing reality. But like, maybe you should be aware of what is happening?
The fact that you are more mad about reading an article from PC gamer than that hundreds of thousands of people are being abducted says a lot about you.
Some of us used to care and the endless exhaustion is too much. I simply am a person trying to exist, and I only continue to shrink how much bullshit I consume more and more and more since it infects everything.
Not wanting to see horrible shit constantly doesnt equate to not caring.
Sont worry. I’m getting fucked hard. By my government that hates me and by people like you who think they don’t need to even be informed of current events.
The apathy and inaction from you and your ilk is fucking me hard, and has killed many.
Japan’s attitude to e-sports is so bizarre. between this, Nintendo constantly shutting down fan tournaments, and other companies acting like e-sports don’t exist until it becomes big enough not to capitalize on..
How the fuck do they think it’s going to work if they keep gatekeeping the few people interested in esports?
As one Reddit commenter put it: “I thought Capcom organised this circuit as a marketing tool for the game. Makes no sense to charge viewers to watch it. And esports is, unfortunately, still way too niche for that to be profitable.”
It’s shooting themselves in the foot, not their audience. Their audience has plenty of Street Fighter tournaments to watch.
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Aktywne