When I saw the title, I was concerned.
Upon reading the article, I was really happy to see this.
Now that I actually think about it though, I DO play a gacha game and it would simply be impossible to exist if not for the gacha business style it utilizes. I’m very happy that so many people sink real money into it, as I simply am unable to do so myself.
I’m very happy that so many people sink real money into it, as I simply am unable to do so myself.
I get what you’re saying, but it does also create incentives to develop for whales.
Like, okay. Take Fallout 76. They – unlike with previous games in the series – do not have large, commercial DLC packages that come out. Rather, they have small, free, seasonal releases of content. Howard has committed Bethesda not to doing any commercial DLC for the game.
I was happy with that “large commercial DLC” model, and purchased them. But, okay, as it stands, I get a game that someone else is mostly paying for, right?
They sell a “premium” subscription for $12/mo, which provides some relatively-minor benefits.
And they sell various cosmetic items that people can place in their camp that one could hypothetically spend a pretty much unlimited amount on.
My problem is that financially, this constrains them to have basically no incentive to do anything other than develop new cosmetic items and sell to people who really want to buy them. And in the past, Bethesda has made some excellent large, commercial expansions for games in the series, like Far Harbor for Fallout 4.
This isn’t to argue in favor of or against the law in China, but to point out that the “someone else will pay for the game” model has some problems with it – if you aren’t paying anything, and someone else’s wallet is covering all the costs, it means that the game developer is entirely-incentivized to do development to appeal to whoever is paying for the thing, not you.
This doesn’t necessarily apply to multiplayer games though: the free-to-play part of the playerbase is there to pad the numbers and ensure queues are short (if it’s a match based game), cities are lively (if it’s a MMORPG), etc.
If the developer can’t appeal to those too, then you’re left with a ghost town of a game that can’t appeal to the whales either.
Also, the “whales” are by and large not unharmed rich people - it’s mostly poor people who are at risk for gambling addiction, such as many with adhd, depression, etc. The people who are targeted successfully by this model usually suffer for it.
She says the company abused its dominant position by requiring digital games and add-ons to be bought and sold only via the PlayStation Store, which charges a 30% commission to developers and publishers.
Maybe Nintendo has a similar practice with their Nintendo shop that they could be sued over, but regardless they’re still allowed to price their own games however they want.
Ultimately, I suspect the entire model for digital game delivery on consoles will have to change as a result of this case. Not that those changes would be bad, of course (indeed, they’re sorely needed), but they will occur as a result of console manufacturers having to open up their consoles to…sideloading (not sure this is the word, but it’s all I’ve got right now)?
The best thing about steam is you can buy keys from other sites
The worst thing about those sites is in most cases it results in the developer being ripped off because the keys are either stolen or purchased using stolen credit cards.
Countless devs have said they would rather people pirate their games than buy keys from those sites
This is true for a small category of sites I won’t name, but there’s also lots of sites that have a direct business relationship with the publisher. Ex: greenmangaming, gamersgate.
There’s a lot of things that are like “duh”, but it’s good that someone writes it down so someone else later down the line will have a harder time saying “um acktually video games cause stress and anxiety, not the lower wages and hotter summers” and get a fat cheque from the Heritage Foundation.
Spike Chunsoft also developed the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games and, fairly recently, the new Dragonball game that, as far as I know, got good reception.
Kinda lame that these developers will be locked to PS or (months after release) Steam with PSN Account.
EDIT: And according to comments from Reddit, Kadokawa is a huge corporation that also distributes anime, manga and light novels. This isn’t just about games.
Remember kids, almost all freemium games make their money through manipulating your animal impulses to make you spend money on essentially nothing which you wouldn’t rationally want to spend. Disarming this particular skinner box seems like a positive direction.
I really hoped we would get a PS6 with a built-in stern cartoon Xi blocking the buy button in the PS store, pointing his finger and shouting “No! Finish your backlog first!” but I guess you can’t have everything in life
Kadokawa is a massive publisher of books and media in Japan.
For that reason alone I hope this is blocked. It would make Sony too huge in Japan to reasonably compete with outside of Shueisha and directly incentivize brand exclusivity deals.
Personally, I’ve been enjoying cozy games like Dorfromantik, Rail Route, or even Transport Fever 2 (I just play with unlimited money and build great transit networks that I wish existed in my home country.)
I mean, isn’t “winding down” and having fun a main reason a lot of people play video games to start with?
There’s few things more satisfying than a well tossed stick of dynamite landing in a KKK meeting in RDR2, then cleaning up the leftovers with a shotgun.
That was a shitty website. I don’t even remember why I clicked the link. The page jump around while you scroll down. I thought I was at the bottom PF the page at least 3 time.
reuters.com
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