He was the CEO of Electronic Arts when the controversial loot box monetization was added to FIFA 09. He made news when he called developers “fucking idiots” over some developers’ reluctance to introduce monetization schemes earlier in the development process. There’s also the infamous clip of Riccitiello talking during a shareholder call about charging Battlefield players a dollar to reload their guns.
Look at this guy...I couldn't read all of the Bloomberg article due to paywall, so I don't know if this jackass actually provided proof of these "death threats."
While I don't condone them, it seems awfully convenient that an executive who's known to stir controversy with his monetization strategies received "alleged" death threats. I have a hard time believing it without proof because this guy is a sleaze ball greedy mofo.
In any group of people there will always be a tiny subset of the population who will pull this unhinged bullshit. It's unfortunate, but now the CEO gets to play the victim, and anyone who's against his bullshit gets to be painted with the same brush as the unhinged guy.
I never understand freaking out about death threats. If someone actually wanted to murder you, they’d be quiet and methodical about it, not grandiose. To be fair, I’ve never received a death threat so perhaps I’m not theeeeeeeeeeeee
I mean you are assuming the person who is trying to murder you is a rational actor but you can't really be a rational actor if you are threatening death to someone because of their shit monetization policies on your entertainment. Hell some people throw "Death threats" at people because they decide to change a reload speed by a fraction of a second. So yeah "gamers" can be quite unhinged. Hell you had idiots in Jan 6 who loudly stated their intention and beat a cop to death. Hell we have seen situations of weirdos getting close to celebrities (in their heads) then trying to kill them, and I imagine cases like that will only get worse with parasocial relationships getting a bit out of hand with modern influences and streamers.
That's the fallacy of trying to understand criminal acts. For the most part, if someone were as smart, logical, and thoughtful as you are when you imagine the best way to commit murder, the kind of person to actually try and commit the murder would not be as smart, logical, or thoughtful to have gotten into that situation in the first place.
There are exceptions, of course, but it's enough of a possibility that it's probably better to take them seriously than not.
Edit: typed all that, scrolled down, some other dude already said it
For comparison, best I could find is Xbox Series X|S selling 21M units. Link. This means Sony outpacing Xbox by a 2:1 ratio, or market share is 66% vs. 33%.
I really liked 2. The story is very strong and they definitely don’t sit on their laurels. There’s one sequence in particular I wish I could talk about that just blew me away like 2/3rd of the way in
Netflix getting in on the streamed video games wasn’t all that crazy. I flirted with it initially, as they had a few good Steam titles on there that I was effectively getting handed for free.
But the marketing approach of jamming “Play this clickbait garbage game, you stupid idiot!” install button into my face every time I visited the site ultimately lead me to cancel my subscription. Like so much else in modern streaming, the website’s admins do not want you to have any control over your front page. The end result is utterly alienating.
the website’s admins do not want you to have any control over your front page. The end result is utterly alienating.
This is one of the biggest things. Back when I would netflix often, I would constantly be annoyed when the ‘continue watching’ dialog was not the first one. Stop moving it around! Now I just watch everything locally. It’s so much nicer.
There is no reason streaming should be such a pain in the ass, and it amazes me the industry has made basic, paid access to shows a chore. And they wonder why viewership is not great*.
*Also the writing generally sucks ass and assumes I’m not paying attention. No, seriously, they assume you aren’t paying attention and write shows as such now. It makes so many things unwatchable.
*Also the writing generally sucks ass and assumes I’m not paying attention.
I’ve seen the articles dealing with the phenomenon of “Standard Netflix Show” and how it has become so painfully formulaic that it can only be described as background noise.
Really not a great sign when your premium service is treated like elevator music. But hey, they’ve got a near-trillion dollar valuation, so clearly I’m dumb and their C-levels have earned every penny.
I can’t understand what fucking market research “geniuses” came up with the idea that making streaming less accessible/more annoying was a good idea and would net more profits.
But then again, the mass general population is fucking dumb
But then again, the mass general population is fucking dumb
That’s a lazy explanation. It neglects that Netflix did have a lot of accumulated goodwill from ease of access and quality content.
But now its in the enshittification era. All the streaming services are behaving like this. There’s no alternative that doesn’t suck with a comparable library.
Not a bad idea on paper. The games are not actually on Netflix. You just download an alternate version of the app (with no DLC or iAP), and login to your Netflix account to access the game. Some solid indie games on there.
That said, I would never in my life pay for Netflix, but my family has it, so ya know, free mobile games when I’m bored.
Good idea waiting on Firebreak. I’ve dabbled thanks to it being included in the PS+ Extra tier and have some thoughts. It’s clearly a Double-A or even Single-A if that exists game that feels like a fun side project while Control 2 is in the works. There is fun to be had in it especially if you can get friends involved but it isn’t a game with staying power. I feel like I’ll keep it installed for a while and play a few rounds every now and again, checking on the patches, and just using it for a fun romp with no commitment. It is certainly light on content and buggy though so a few patches wouldn’t go amiss.
I keep playing it just because it’s something to do, but I feel it really misses the mark of what the Control franchise should be about. The world is interesting. It told interesting stories within the confines of a single player game. Firebreak doesn’t seem to have a story at all, and the action is pretty average with the same mininal enemy variety as Control. It also does not feel like a game from a company like Remedy; it’s half-cooked and janky. It works but it’s not quite polished.
The second time my save games got messed up after doing the first mission for the janitor. Seemed my old cloud save games fucked it up. It became a mess.
The third time I deleted every cloud save, and it worked. Then, after ten hours the game crashed. And I lost three missions. And a lot of progress. None of the auto saves fixed it.
Dear Remedy, I have a PC. With a hard drive. I have room for thousands of save games. Let me fucking save my game myself!!
I had good memories of Control, but now my memories consist only of frustration. Why don’t Devs put in a reasonable save system in their games?
I had the same complaint about Deathloop. If I’m playing the single-player only version, then why do I have to restart the loop if I suddenly have to quit? And why does the game warn me that I will lose all unsaved progress? You literally can’t save!
God, I hate shit like that! When it makes you wonder if you can quit the game because it’s late for example. Does it save? When did it save last? That’s just asshole design.
I’m playing Prey at the moment, it has quick saves aside of regular manual saving. It’s so comfortable!
It’s been a while since I played deathloop but I seem to remember you can only save the game certain times, I think only when you’re in the tunnels and time has passed.
Yes, when you make it back into the tunnels, the game considers it a finished loop and advances to the next day segment, which is sort of like a save point but you can’t save your progress during a loop and come back to it. When you make it back to your “save point” at the tunnel and the day advances, if you hit escape and exit the game, the game is all “Are you sure you want to do this? All unsaved progress will be lost” - as if there were some further action you could take, but there isn’t. It’s like they had a save function in at one point but decided against it, then never fixed the exit verbiage.
Gog, it has cloud saves there. Also I should have written a script to copy the save files every twenty minutes or so in the background. Would have saved me after the crash I guess…
And yet, they still think they’re too good to put track pads on it.
I don’t think these companies are aware that what made the deck popular was it knew what it was and that it had a lot to prove, and so it featured a very focused design that differentiated it from PCs as a worthwhile form factor, but also provided methods for adding compatibility to just about any game, and thus allowed it to compensate for being in a form factor that is just sometimes inherently inconvenient for PC gaming. It wasn’t just a gaming pc with an Xbox controller taped to it, which this is.
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