Which still should not be illegal, right? And believe me I have no problem when Sony and Tencent go at each other‘s throat. Let them fight. But I remember reading the same type of discussion about Palworld. You can‘t protect a style or a genre. Especially when said genre is as old as the medium. Unless Tencent stole code or use the exact same names it should still be legally distinct enough to be perfectly fine. It‘s up to consumers if they want to buy a blatant ripoff.
Palworld is a different game using similar mechanics. This game looked like the same game. I think the cases are different and I think basically trying to make the same game is not fair.
Sure no one cares about tencent vs Sony but what if it was tencent vs a smaller dev? Derivations are fine but ripoffs really probably should be limited.
Not to mention the original looked like they basically stole designs lol
I didn‘t see footage or screenshots where they literally stole the likeness of a character. It would be bad if they did that but I‘ve seen no evidence of it. As far as I know mixing generic tribe aesthetic with generic sci-fi aesthetic can‘t be protected either. I don‘t want to repeat my previous comment but I don‘t see the issue here. It would open a barrel of worms for the entire industry if vague aesthetics are suddenly protected. The lawsuits would never stop and small dev teams would make concessions left and right to fence off armies of lawyers.
Looking at the amount of money gacha and other “free”-to-play titles of pulling these days, it seems like quite a few people have lots of money to burn on gaming.
You’re probably more correct than not. I’d be curious to see like those people’s budgets. How many are carrying credit card debt or neglecting other parts of their life to spend on digital gambling?
That’s likely what is preventing any new subscription based mmo. Why bother with a reliable and fair price when lootbox bullshit makes you 10x the money.
I forced myself to complete the Diablo 4 campaign because of them.
That would be a lot easier now. The game improved enormously around season 4 I think. Whatever the Loot Reborn season was. And nearly every season has included some QoL improvements.
I honestly love Diablo 4. It’s a great podcast/audiobook companion.
Great article. The entangling web of endless progression systems is one piece, but one thing they failed to mention is time gating and daily quests. It’s very important for these games to force you to play a little bit every day, instead of in large chunks all at once. This helps move the game subconsciously in your brain from “a game” to “a habit/a hobby”, and that makes your purchasing decisions very different.
China started drafting legislation cracking down on engagement bait daily tasks a few years ago and some games (like Genshin and other Hoyoverse titles) dropped daily check-in bonuses and made more things reset weekly in response. I think China later backtracked (IIRC the politician pushing the laws fell out of favor?), but not feeling forced to log in every day made those games so much less stressful.
I haven’t played anything in the genre in years, but I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that crap crept back in again.
I’ve played Genshin almost since the start (took a break for a while) and it’s had daily tasks the whole time. You earn gems and other in-game rewards every day for it. There’s also an additional web-based daily checkin as well.
I’m not sure what you mean. The in-game reward path still has a daily “check in” task for points. And the daily “do 4 tasks” thing is in there, though they’ve opened it up a lot, which I really appreciate. (You can now do quests, open chests, or anything that costs energy to complete them, as well as the standard 4 mini-quests.) And the web checkin is still daily, with only 3 days that you can reclaim by visiting certain pages.
It looks like the game that changed its dailies was Star Rail, not Genshin Impact. Which makes sense: I remember seeing the change in-game but I haven’t played Genshin since around the time of that event in Enk… whatever the underground area is called.
I’m trying to find good articles about it but internet search is abysmal these days, especially for news outside the anglosphere. I did find a forum thread about the Star Rail change as well as a Reddit comment translating and explaining the proposed law though.
The TL;DR of it all seems to be that some time around December 2023, new restrictions were proposed affecting gacha games to curb addicting behavior. The news caused stock prices for affected Chinese companies to plummet, and the person who proposed the law was quickly removed from his position and the proposal dropped.
Ah, yeah, I think I remember that. It was pretty obvious it would be brutal for a lot of gamedev companies there, and I wasn’t surprised at all that it didn’t end up going through.
Wow, if they want to turn Xbox around, they are going to need people. Cut Phil’s pay instead! He likely already gets far more compensation than he needs.
Even clearer now that the neXtbox is confirmed to be a prebuilt PC. They want PC/Windows to be their sole focus going forward with Xbox being a brand/app that runs on anything.
The 70bil USD ActiBlizz acquisition that was championed by Xbox fans is what ironically killed their traditional approach. Line must go up, and Xboxes weren’t cutting the mustard.
Yeah, that’s the reality…Big Business People making choices that will make the line go up. To be fair, it is a savvy move to make software readily available if the hardware isn’t moving; especially in the case of Microsoft’s first party games. Sony, being the consumer hostile and shoddy PSN holder, wouldn’t be my first pick for victor in the console space. Strange things happen when you got a few good exclusives, and pricey consoles, I guess.
It’s good that Microsoft is contemplating how to move forward, but, I disdain the news of more layoffs. They really should keep their core staff and cut pay for CEOs and C-Suites of Xbox instead. Since they are the ones who actually failed Microsoft. The neXtbox (essentially a prebuilt PC) and handheld might be a way for them to reach audiences again. Even though Valve is killing it in the Handheld Market with SteamOS and their Steam Deck; Microsoft better not recoil in fear due to this, as staying the course and making better choices will help.
They are the ones responsible for killing xbox though. Shit games, awful GUI, trash naming schemes, bad series S holding series X and the rest of the industry back, bad marketing and list goes on. If they cared about physical consoles, phil spencer would have been fired by now.
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