Denuvo is the apex of a long history of bad choices.
Maybe actually sell us the games in a way we really own it, without any sort of online activation/account/telemetry/data-gathering like when we could buy a disc and just use it, and it should all be ok.
I feel like a dinosaur every-time I think this nowadays, but what is so problematic with the “own as in physically own” that is so hard to implement? If they want to provide a service, sell a service.
In the past I used pirate versions of games I bought just to be able to play them offline, or because I did not agree with the terms of service. It is so much for our info, it goes beyond just knowing you are the real owner of the software copy: it comes to the point where it looks like it’s to guarantee we are not its’ owner.
Now some DRMs even destroy gaming performance and its just faster to use 'ked versions. I hope it changes somehow.
Is it really possible to own them properly? If in almost all cases we lack the source code and there are even proprietary requirements for both software and hardware, what chance do they have of working halfway well in a few decades?
I mean, now that the video streaming industry has shown us how the endgame looks like for subscription models, you'd have to be crazy to want that for the videogame industry.
Whatever short-term gains you can get in convenience or price by buying into their penetration stage are not worth contributing to leading the hobby down that road even an iota.
It’s not even about what we want, but what the stakeholders and decision-makers push for in order to rack in more profits.
The gaming industry was at its highest in terms of fun and variability and innovation when the industry was still figuring out best ways to make mad money, no matter how ethical or morally bankrupt - now they know they can use fear of missing out and predatory tactics to lure people into essentially gambling in a free-to-play online game, or pad out a singleplayer one with mechanics that contribute nothing to the gameplay, but manage to fool game journalists (the ones that weren’t already paid) into praising the game for its deep and branching loops, attracting more investor money or something.
A lot of people accuse us gamers of being a whiny crowd that cares too much and doesn’t like to have fun, but I guess yeah, we do care a little too much and that’s why so many of us try to actively influence the industry to go into a better direction when we vote with our wallets or write reviews or discuss games and practices in ways that can be hopefully seen by the industry’s decision-makers.
Not to say there isn’t just as many (if not more) gamers that don’t care enough and still pour money into games and practices that are ultimately making the industry worse, only to make the stakeholders and CEOs wealthier.
Calling Devolver Digital the “Cult of the Lamb publisher” is like calling Pixar the “Toy Story 4 creators”. It’s not untrue, but they’re also known for publishing a lot of other things. But I get why they picked this game for the headline, it’s in vogue right now.
I think the issue is only blaming the consumer and especially when pointing to the cause of the issue.
Is it naive to vote for someone who obviously tells you all you want to hear but has a record of taking advantage every time they get your vote? Absolutely.
But so is walking in a city at night. All kinds of bad things can happen there but someone who hasnt seen evil firsthand will not recognize it easily.
I grew up in a very rough part of a big city. I knew you cant go outside unarmed at night and especially not linger there. But I cant expect friends from other places who havent seen this to act „wisely“ without telling them. This why we advocate without looking down on people.
The unending desire for superiority as alfred adler describes it doesnt appeal to me. Maybe its just me but I find our constant focus on hierarchical order disturbing. Games are competitive, school is competitive, from a very early age we get that spoonfed. I‘d like to find research about this.
These companies are using dark design patterns to manipulate kids and young people into a pattern of behaviour. You can blame consumers, but it’s not exactly a fair fight. These big companies have behaviour specialists employed and tons of data, used specifically to get people to act dumb in a way that benefits these companies. Heroin pushers are more honest.
This whole attitude of “its not their fault they can’t help but hand over their money and buy overpriced shit” has got to stop
Economics is very simple here: there is supply, there is demand. If demand outstrips supply, the price will rise. This includes when is artificially restricted (or the market is flooded with alternatives by the same vendor to give the feeling of scarcity).
The demand for streaming services is the same. People will take the hit, so the price goes up until they can’t anymore.
The generation is contributing to inflation because of inability to restrain themselves from buying frivolous shit for extortionate amounts of money, because they can’t psychologically cope with doing without something, then complaining that no jobs pay enough while they try to launch an onlyfans career. Every generation has it’s flaws.
This then makes prices rise for everyone. The infantilzation to suggest they cant help themselves is astonishing. Companies are not going to stop making profit without intervention.
There’s no vote with your wallet when the supply is infinite and intangible, me not buying the microtransaction is one person, but a single whale will buy several, getting multiple votes in “yes please continue to shove shit down my throat” this isn’t voting at all.
They really did. The victim blaming is insane. These companies spend money to leverage psychology in their favor to get people addicted to the dopamine rushes from things like microtransactions and loot boxes. Not everyone is able to resist that kind of conditioning on such a large scale.
So if boycotts don’t work, what can the consumer do? Just not play the game at all? Even if the developer put effort in, and its a labor of love, but the publisher forced mtx in anyway? Like, what if the game is good and boycotts don’t work? What’s gonna stop greedy publishers?
You are doing that thing where you are replying to something that you made up in your mind instead of the message that I wrote, because you were really hoping that I would say boycotts don’t work because your whole argument is based on it
Customers leaving bad reviews somewhere that is visible and influential to future potential customers works. It stops people buying the game and demonstrates discontent to the vendor. That’s it.
You still believe boycotts work and are describing them and doing that thing where you make up something in youhr head without any proof. I.e., boycotts working in gaming
Isn’t that what sca- uhh, I mean super legit game devs normally do? Suddenly the scope was neeeever that big! You just think you remember all’ those claims that are still visible! No one actually said things you can prove they did!
I feel like this has happened numerous times already and somehow it surprises people every time. Like, there are channels on YouTube that only cover this sort of thing and have days of content.
Like CDPR changing Cyberpunk from RPG to Action-adventure. At least the game didn't release at that point though, but still. I mean Destiny even gets called an MMO when it isn't. Genre is kind of misused a lot, people just need to stop buying or getting invested in games that haven't even released.
I saw that announcement video when it first came out and was super hyped for The Division. I didn’t end up playing it until around 2019 and I was really impressed with how close to the trailer the actual gameplay was. I know it had some controversy, but I guess I’m easy to impress lol
Ah, that’s fair. I’m a pretty casual player and didn’t really go deep beyond the medium skill levels, so I didn’t really appreciate the cut-corners beyond that. I hardly even played much multiplayer TBH, I played and loved the single-player campaigns, which is what I tend to do on most games :D
No, you are saying that you are entitled to an developers code if they leave a project just because they let you test it. You are acting/being entitled as fuck.
Engywuck ( @Engywuck ) True… It amazes me when people become so entitled online, especially in the FOSS community. It looks like they think devs owe them something.
jarfil ( @jarfil ) They got free testing for the promise of releasing the source, then failed to fulfill that promise, so… yeah, they do owe those people something.
You are saying that getting people to do work for you by promising them something in return, means nothing, that you can break that promise whenever you want.
No, I’m a foss dev, and I speak for all of us when I ask you to please not join any of our communities.
Also I’m calling you out. You need to put up or shut up evidence of where that developer said that he would release his code as open source. And that he would do it in return for you testing it.
The promise I’m referring to, is to “release the code”.
(long version)I understand the thought process of people not wanting to show how messy their pre-production code is… but that’s why, following semver rules, you mark it as a version “0.x.y”. It’s not an exam, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, anyone who’s written code knows that’s how things work, and it’s on the community to be understanding of this, so the “initial dev” of an open source project should feel confident in releasing a tangled mess, no less no more.
Promising the code, then disappearing without giving a community that’s invested in the project a chance to take over, is what I find fishy.
I’ve nothing to say more on topic. Off topic, people may be quite different and even if objectively there should be nothing bad in releasing pre-production, they may find it sensitive + there might be someone to actively offend for that. I only encountered the former, luckily
So I just ran across this, after leaving a comment in that same thread. Posting it again here to try and add some sanity back to this discussion:
Okay, but there’s a line here somewhere. Pushing for new features and complaining in the issue tracker that a bug hasn’t been fixed soon enough is absolutely entitlement. Expecting someone to follow through on their word and release the source code is another thing entirely. Especially if they make the decision to stop working on it.
Go check out this EoL statement from the developer of Nomie. He open-sourced the code without even being asked too.
As far as I know the developer never actually said he would release the source. That is purely hearsay from @jarfil. He seems to think that if an app or program is free then it also must follow that it’s open source.
@Scary_le_Poo and @jarfil: if the two of you have a disagreement on another thread, please work it out between the two of you like adults there; don’t spill it over into other, unrelated threads.
@Scary_le_Poo, these types of personal attacks are not acceptable on beehaw. It is possible to disagree while still being kind and without resorting to angry or abusive language. Please try to remember beehaw’s guiding principal when interacting with others in the future.
Yeah, this seems to be using the Xbox play anywhere system. So people who have a PC and an Xbox have thier saves synced. I’m sure it will not work steam.
I still won't buy stuff there, but this is a far better way to make a storefront interesting than Epic. Instead of locking everything behind exclusive deals to try to force people to use your platform, they're adding actual meaningful benefits to using their storefront. Cross ownership is nice. Game pass is nice. That's how you provide competition.
Nothing about Lemmy would suggest people would like Epic anymore than any other place on the internet. Their exclusivity deals have the potential to upset anybody regardless of what website they post on, so while there's absolutely a degree of hivemind hatred, it's rooted in understandable reasons.
That being said, it's disingenuous of that person to imply that Epic never gives any good reasons to use the platform, the biggest being the waves of free games they put on "sale" from time to time, though you could go down another rabbit hole of whether thats really something that would make gamers want to use the platform, or if it's just a nice bonus people pop in to claim while still spending their money on Steam when it comes to actual purchases.
I wasn’t being completely serious about leaving for lemmy for that one particular reason. However, one of the biggest problem I found with gaming spaces on “that site” was a variety of dumb circlejerks and tribalism, which is something I was hoping this site would be free of due to a perceived level of maturity. This includes “le epic sucks” discourse.
It's hard to outrun that kind of human interaction anywhere that there are enough users and the anonymity of usernames, I do think it's not as bad on the Fediverse still, I hope it stays that way
Just because you disagree with someone doesn’t mean it’s automatically a circle jerk. People do have valid reasons for not choosing to spend money on the epic platform.
Oh it does? So you need two copies of the game, but cross save works on steam? That’s actually kinda useful for folks with steam libraries and game pass.
Yeah, but the SEO rewards anything with the word “Starfield” in it at the moment and there’s enough people seemingly invested in putting down the game at every opportunity that they’ll share this around and drive clicks.
My google news feed is like all Starfield now - getting ridiculous and i’m expecting by tomorrow will be like “Should you make french toast and eat it while playing Starfield?”
I don’t understand the people who spend a hundred hours on a game to then give it a bad rating, calling it boring. Why don’t they just quit much earlier and play Chrono Trigger or something?
I have about 30 hours in it now. I wouldn't say it gets any better over that time, if you didn't like it at the beginning you won't like it after 30 hours.
With some games after 20+ hours the honeymoon phase is over. But I want to finish it so that all this time doesn’t feel wasted. And there’s hope that the game will get better. I mean everybody else loves it so it must be a great game right?
However, often it just feels like work and it makes the flaws of the game even more obvious. And I just end up despising it.
This is the best answer, players are invested after a certain point, but the realization that they don’t like the game comes later in the process. The more you play the game you don’t like the more you’re frustrated with it and the more likely you are to give it a poor rating, especially when the things that are your biggest complaints feel like obvious bug fixes that should have already happened, but continue to exist.
That is a great question! I’ve certainly asked myself the same thing and the only answer I can come up with in 2 parts.
1: The game is compulsive. While you are playing you want to keep playing. And while the moment to moment interactions are dull (imo) but not so dull as to drive me away. There may be plenty of Oblivion nostalgia keeping me playing.
2: Many of the games problems appear in retrospect. The dumbing down of the subsystems, for example. Much like Outer Worlds; it feels fine while you’re in there but once you stop and step back you realise how crappy they are.
Yes, this was exactly how I felt when playing Fire Emblem Engage. God. I hated how the hub world basically sucked an equal amount of time for each map I cleared. Sure, the mini-games are optional,But so is brushing your teeth.
I may be getting older but it feels like a lot of games are just padding their runtime with gameplay that doesn’t mesh well at all.
To be fair, the game is so massive, any review (positive or negative) done on less than 60 hours probably won’t do the game justice. It’s entirely possible to hold hope for redeeming qualities only to be a bit disappointed in the end.
Customers aren’t professional reviewers. Paying customers are entitled to have their opinion at any time. Tiny Tina’s Wonderland immediately put me off with that lame overworld. I think I clocked around 3 hours and then uninstalled it. Never ever would I spend dozens of hours in a game where a significant portion massively annoys me.
IDK, I think 10 hours is plenty for any game, and 2 hours is enough for most. By two hours, you’ve likely discovered the core gameplay loop and seen how it handles progression, and by 10 hours you’ve seen whether that core gameplay loop changes throughout the game.
I don’t like negative reviews for games when they’ve spent double the time HLTB gives for a playthrough. I don’t expect to play much more than “main + extras” on any game, so any review that’s expecting content beyond that just isn’t useful for me.
But it doesn’t excel at any of those play styles. It’s the classic case of “Jack of all trades, master of none.”
I guess it’s fine if it’s the only game you play, but if you have choice, I don’t see why you’d pick Starfield over other games you could get. It’s kind of like the cult around Minecraft, you can play pretty much any style you want with mods (e.g. soccer, Pokemon, roller coaster, etc), but every style is done much better in a standalone game.
So I give Starfield an 8/10 or a B, it’s pretty good, but it doesn’t really stand out in any particular way.
Honestly, the games that take the most time I often have more negative opinions about. The Assassin’s Creed games, for example, purposefully waste your time. They shove a bunch of junk in and try to make you interact with it when I could be doing something enjoying with my time. Enjoyment per hour should be the measure of a good game, not hours alone. If the game takes me 300h to complete and I only enjoyed 10h of that, it’s a bad game.
Games are meant to entertain. If they aren’t fun or force you to do unfun things, then why waste your time on them?
I got the same with collectibles in games. Chasing collectibles is boring to me, and you will never see me going for one that isn’t directly on my path. It is meaningless fluff.
Chrono Trigger was the first example of a game that came to my head that’s just great. I replayed it a few weeks ago as well. It’s time better spent than playing a shitty game for 100 hours.
IDK, I bailed around halfway through. I got to the Magus fight, and it felt really RNG dependent. If he attacked in a certain order, I would lose a team member and eventually lose because I couldn’t keep up with healing.
Maybe I was too low level, or maybe I didn’t have the right items equipped, IDK, but I completely lost interest when I failed several times without knowing what to do differently except hope that he attacked in a different order. So I bailed.
Maybe I’ll try it again sometime. I originally played on my phone, but maybe I’ll have more patience on my Steam Deck. I really enjoyed the game up to that point, but I just couldn’t bear the RNG. I have no problem failing over and over (I love the early Ys games and some bosses took a dozen tries), but I need to see some sort of progress.
If a narrative-heavy game takes 60 hours and then fucks it up on the third act, it deserves the hate. Games having a bad payoff 200% warrants bad reviews.
Wait you think danganronpa fucks up it’s third act? I was absolutely hooked from start to finish for danganronpa 1 and 2. Not yet had the time to play 3 properly yet though but I’ve looked what I’ve played so far.
If a narrative-heavy game takes 60 hours and then fucks it up on the third act, it deserves the hate. Games having a bad payoff 200% warrants bad reviews.
2 hours doesn't let you experience even 10% of what a game like this usually offer, less alone giving you time to tinker with the systems and see if they actually work, and furthermore if they are actually fun once you're good at them.
Of course I agree. But it’s still not that great game design, if you are bored for hours. It’s like people telling me about tv show that gets good after first season. What should I do until then… :)
How else do you explain to someone what dwarf fortress is, for example? You need dozens of hours just to get the grasp of mechanics and UI, less alone to figure out whether you even like the game. Same goes for many bigger games, for example mount and blade (bannerlord) starts off strong with a promise of you establishing and leading a kingdom but once you actually reach that part through tedious grind, you realize it was all for nothing and the game's a badly designed, shallow, unfinished sandbox with absolutely no vision or execution in that regard. Good luck getting to that conclusion without already investing at least 50 mediocre hours in it though.
You need dozens of hours just to get the grasp of mechanics and UI, less alone to figure out whether you even like the game
The problem with this thinking is that you split the game in 2 parts: first a tedious learning process of dozens of hours, and then an enjoyable experience once you know how to play, and imply that you need to get over the first part before being able (or allowed) to rate the game. But the learning part is the game, even more so if you need to invest dozens of hours.
Many players will simply enjoy the grind of Mount and Blade, because they don’t care about the endgame. Many players (maybe the same) will uninstall Dwarf Fortress after half an hour, because they will estimate that the learning curve isn’t worth their time, even if it was the greatest game ever.
I understand your point. But, if I take your example of mount and blade. If it’s starts off strong with 50 hours of fun, that’s a win in my book. But yes, in this regard steam ratings fail, because of binary recommend or not recommend voting. On the other hand, you can see how many hours did the user that posted a review played, so you can kinda make your own decision.
Also, I would like to add that games like dwarf fortress, rimworld, factorio and similar, all start of fun, if you’re into this genre….at least for me, they did. Thinking back, I think I never experienced playing a game for X hours having a horrible time, and somewhere in the middle changing my mind. At least from the gameplay standpoint. Maybe sometimes story had some unexpected bump in quality (thank god), but not really core gameplay.
Overall, I agree with you, 2 hours is too little for a complete review of a video game. But these are user reviews that can be helpful as well. For an example, for someone who hasn’t that much time to invest in a game to get to the good part. Professional reviewers (or people who have themselves as professional) should play the game for a suitable amount of time, before making an informed review.
If I game can't keep you engaged while doing that for the first 2 hours it's not a good game, at least for that person. You don't need to know everything the game has to offer if it's bored you for 2 hours.
I think there are too many exceptions to this that the best way to truly know is to play it for yourself. I hated Death Stranding, Control, Days Gone, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, Fallout 3 and many other games in their initial few hours, but as they opened up they quickly became my one of my favourites. I’ve started my first playthrough of Witcher 3 and in the first 3 hours I’m not yet impressed, but I’ll give it a good chance before dropping it. Not sure if Starfield is any good but given its systems, it’ll probably need some buildup time I guess.
It’s such a bizarre, but real issue. I’ve always been boggled by the idea that you can’t offer your opinion on some games without first giving them a full work week. “I know you just sat there for the length of 5 movies and didn’t like it, but it doesn’t really get good until you sit through another 10.”
If you give it 2 hours, a game should have made it worth your time.
I’m all for improving consumer rights in the videogame industry, but I’m more than a little amazed anyone’s willing to put up a fight for The Crew of all things.
Seems more to do with the way things line up–it’s a perfect example of a physical and digital game getting permanently shut down without any sort of refund or compensation to the buyers of the game. It sounds like it’s about setting precedent so people will have a better idea of how this kinda stuff is going to work in the future.
He just likes driving around and nothing more, it’s his podcast/tourism game, but also the perfect one since it happened after he started this fight for preservation and it’s not sold as service but as a product, unlike MMOs.
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