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this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2023
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Any game taking real money is a scam.
(No that doesn't mean buying games. No that doesn't mean subscriptions. No that doesn't mean expansions. No that doesn't mean card games. No that doesn't mean arcades. Jesus Christ, do people find a lot of ways to get mad about nonsense, whenever I say this.)
Nothing inside a video game should cost real money. Absolutely fucking nothing. All possible forms are abuse, built on how games by definition invent value for worthless elements that can be arbitrarily granted or withheld. That is what makes them games.
The business model is intolerable - and if we allow it to continue, there will be nothing else. It's the dominant strategy. Your disgust and non-participation will never outweigh some tiny fraction of people getting taken for obscene quantities of real money in exchange for incrementing a variable. It's in free mobile trash. It's in $80 "AAA" flagship-franchise titles. It's in single-player, multi-player, subscription MMOs - it's in everything. There is zero incentive for them not to try robbing you like this. Companies that don't rob you will make less money than companies that do.
Only legislation can fix this.
While absolutely too many things are charged for in gaming today (exp boosts? skip potions? cheat armor that was already fully developed at launch? all ways to get your company on my high seas list).... in the specific case where (1) new content is continuously being developed AND (2) the game is not asking for mandatory spending to continue playing (e.g. no expansion pack to purchase, no subscription fees), I don't think the concept of charging for in-game content at all is abusive.
If I buy once and then a year later some optional paid cosmetics or other goodies are added, I think that's permissible. And if I'm in a free to play live service game, I recognize the ongoing dev costs need to get covered somewhere.
I do vastly prefer those companies that give their games TLC and updates for free, and I'm not saying the standard pricing for optional purchases in the modern market are reasonable. But I think the existence of in-game purchases, if not their current state, can make sense sometimes.
"Free to play live service games" are a scam. They're built on an abusive business model, where addiction and frustration are the only way the game makes money. Fuck their costs. They spend that money because they know they can squeeze it back out of you, if you let them keep subtly disappointing you and dangling the option to open your wallet.
What you want is like saying casinos are okay if they just had better odds. It is an optimistic misunderstanding how this garbage works. All incentives point toward making you less happy, so you can pay them to fix that, but keeping you unaware and unwilling to quit. Charging real money doesn't just cost more for less content - it is making games objectively less enjoyable.
Maximum profit cannot come from a good game that's fun to play for an entire year. It comes from day-one fuckery, either gouging gentle enough to keep people from running scared, or gouging hard enough that their boycott counts for nothing.
You're writing all live service games as being based on frustration when that absolutely isn't the case, so I have to think you have too many preconceived notions on this subject to actually be open to a conversation about it.
Oh well. No game is for everyone and sometimes the pay content is worth it just because it's damn awesome.
Frustration is the only reason people give them money. Fear of missing out, forced waiting, rolling the dice in vain - there's endless ways to make people want something and not get it. Directly monetizing that manufactured desire is an abuse of why anyone plays games.
If you're having fun without paying them, they're losing money. Or at best - you're the AI for paying players to treat like chumps.
I guess 'you just don't like it' goes on the list of reasons people make up instead of addressing the argument.
Lol, instead of addressing what argument? Your argument is entirely "nuh-uh, you are frustrated. I know you are because my argument would fall apart if you weren't, so you are. It's just that you like being frustrated."
It's just not the case. There are rare good ones out there, and if that frustrates you into claiming I'm some masochist and therefore my enjoyment is somehow invalid, that's your own whole subscription of issues.
I named three unambiguously commonplace examples of what I'm talking about. Every single game that squeezes money out of people, over and over, uses some equivalent tricks. That's what squeezes the money out of people. If you can't deal with that and want to make up a conversation, have it with yourself and leave me alone.