The issue though is that Chinese companies have the ability to tap into the massive domestic market in China in addition to international markets, while non-Chinese companies are locked out of the Chinese market unless their Chinese competitors get a cut. So the Chinese developers who get that additional profit from domestic Chinese players end up with a lot more financial weight to throw around than non-Chinese developers, who easily end up getting bought out or pushed out.
£30m is basically pocket change to Amazon and Microsoft, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they drain the fund anyways before closing the studios the funds were intended for.
Honestly, I’m not even a fan of this take. This essentially boils down to “I don’t care if a company has shitty business practices as long as only people dumber than me fall for them.”
Cosmetic and P2W MTX needs to go in all cases. The only thing people should be asked to pay for is additional game content (actual gameplay content, not just cosmetics) developed after launch.
As someone who never has much time to play games these days, honestly just seeing your posts has helped keep the passion alive. I love seeing all of these games I enjoy still being appreciated today. Thank you!
In the US at least, they actually do, in many cases. If you are in a drought region, your water utilities can be shut off if you’re wasting it all on watering a lawn or filling a swimming pool, for example. ISPs cut people off all the time for torrenting, sometimes even if it’s not pirated content (though it was ruled not long ago that ISPs aren’t utilities anyways).
They’re saying that is the reverse argument, not the state of things today. As in, the only solution to the above would be to force payment processors to do business with anyone and everyone.
Night and day difference between game Bill and show Bill, too. Both characters are interesting explorations of attachment vs isolation in their own ways.
Agreed, I think it also hurts the games trying to even have a singular “villain” in the first place. Halo 1-3 had villainous figures, but I don’t think anyone was under the belief that just killing the 3 Prophets would solve the problem of the Covenant, or that killing the Gravemind would mean that the Flood would never be a problem again. The Halo series relies on having compelling factions with clear purpose and ideology to act as antagonists in a more general sense.
The Prometheans in 4 weren’t bad, but outside of the Didact, they had no real purpose or personality. They were just an obstacle. I was really looking forward to the premise of 5 with the concept of going rogue and tackling the underlying themes of fascism at the heart of the UNMC, but then it just rapidly pivoted to some other garbage with Cortana and the Guardians which led to nothing in the end anyways. And so I didn’t even bother to play Infinite.