- cross-posted to:
- pcgaming@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- pcgaming@lemmy.world
And have we come full circle to god damn horse armor.
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It’s crazy how far micro-transactions and monetizing games have come since Bethesda charged $2.50 for cosmetic armor to put on your horse. If you’d told someone back then that one day an in-game mount would cost more than the game itself they would have laughed you out of the room.
I’m so sick of this revisionist bs. Plenty of us were outraged then and warned of EXACTLY this. Y’all reaped what you sowed. Now micro transactions and paid early access are the norm. We screamed and yelled to “vote with your wallets”, and by god, you did. “It’s just a few bucks” is the most common one I hear. Well, now EVERYTHING is “just a few bucks”.
You won.
This. That’s why I gave up on arguing with people a long time ago. There is a shimmer of hope in me that this industry still comes crashing down at some point. I would celebrate it. But by the looks of it, it won’t happen anytime soon.
The best I could do is not buying anything on release, early access or riddled with microtransactions, mostly indie games and maybe one AAA title a year, also avoid certain studios. Oh, and also don’t really care at all when these kind of news come up. I cared back then, I voted with my wallet and still do, but the other side won. Shit happens. There is nothing I can do other than get angry, but that’s not worth the hassle.
A crash is impossible at this point, the market is too big and vast, if AAA dies, mobile will live on like nothing happened, and guess where lootboxes and gacha started…
In casinos, that are (were until recently) government regulated?
I’m with you. I buy almost exclusively on-sale games. I try to buy the super-premium editions about a year after release so I can get lots of content for less than the original game costs, and I avoid any p2w or lootbox games altogether.
Do I miss interactions with some friends who only play the latest titles? Absolutely. I have primarily been a single player gamer anyway, so maybe it just doesn’t impact me as terribly.
The market has spoken, and it said some real stupid shit. I’ve given up on gaming as a hobby, and good riddance.
If we trusted the Market to make it good for us, we’d still have children working 16 hour shifts until they get their arms chewed off by machinery and get thrown on the streets to starve.
“Vote with your wallet” is just something business say to try to convince us that regulation isn’t needed, conveniently forgetting to mention that the fattest wallet in the room is the CEO’s.
Also let’s not forget the horse armor was the free patch, Microsoft allowed 1 free cosmetic patch on the x-box, then everything else they required Bethesda to put a price on. It just so happened to be win -win for both Bethesda and Microsoft
No.
Unless you were in MBA school, at which point they’d hail you as their king.
Yeah I remember saying that that Bethesda’s horse armor bs would lead to gamers being nickeled and dimed to death and was soundly called a overreacting whinger.
And like you said here we are now and gamers are being outright exploited and you still have people saying it’s all still blown out of proportion like these companies aren’t hiring psychologists to manipulate us to buy this bullshit.
But they’re not being nickled and dimed. They’re being Lincolned and Hamiltoned.
“But it’s only cosmetic!!”
Some people would have laughed you out of the room. A lot of people, myself included, warned that this was the kind of shit we’d spiral into with these microtransactions. It was basically confirmed within a year or two with the absolutely insane amount of money mobile gaming was seeing where the base product was just addictive crap with as many microtransactions shoveled in as possible. These games just completely blew the revenue of actual AAA titles would out of the water. It was basically inevitable and we’re now in a situation where we’ve got a generation of consumers raised on this trash.
It’s a slippery slope. Money talks. They are accountable to their shareholders. So when they saw that people were paying for them, they started to monetise more and more.
Every time this comes up (which is too often) I’m like “Who is buying this?” How can we make them stop? Do they need help?
People with poor fiscal responsibility skills, such as children, people with ADHD, and people with mental health issues like depression.
They literally hire psychologists to make this stuff as enticing as possible by pushing the right buttons in your brain.
Don’t forget the people with more money than sense. Whales are what keep the microtransaction mechanic alive and well.
Except the whale narrative is largely a false narrative created by the game industry to avoid saying that the money comes from kids and gambling addicts.
Those people with more money than sense do exist and they make up a portion of the mtx money, but the vast majority is from people who probably can’t afford to make purchases like that (but do anyways because their brain can’t say no).
The industry has been honing these skinner box techniques for decades now - it’s what they used to get people to pay a monthly subscription for an mmo they only play when they log in to do their dailies.
Jesus. I’m extremely ashamed that I’ve never questioned the whale narrative before…
Thank you!
Yeah man I know a lot of guys who drop money on shit like this. None of them are “whales”, but i know they’ve dropped hundreds if not thousands on this mtx bs. None of them own homes (which is kinda normal as we are in our 20’s), but only a few of them are even living on their own at all. Something is clearly going on psychologically there, if someone is willing to forego their own needs for cosmetics (that they will later replace with new cosmetics they bought!!)
I never really thought about it beyond the obvious loot box gambling addiction thing, but after I saw somebody talking about how daily quests in games like WoW do the exact same thing as daily login bonuses and keep you logging in every day to create a habit that’ll keep you logging in whether you still enjoy the game or not, and how battlepasses and rotating cosmetic stores are designed to prey upon FOMO and people with poor impulse control, I can’t stop seeing how the industry runs on exploiting vulnerable people at every turn.
The term whale even came from actual casino gambling originally, so that definitely doesn’t help the moral purity of their business.
Yes.
People who spend 10s of thousands of dollars on micro transactions do need help.
Said help probably needs to come at a government level banning things that were designed in a computer lab to be digital Crack.
It’s such a shame that the OW1 discussion about loot boxes went nowhere in regards to giving ingame gambling the same legal framework as IRL gambling.
Also kind of crazy that loot boxes were far less predatory than the current ow2 system is. It was very possible to never buy boxes and get everything. Nowadays? No chance
I mean, they also freed me from my pain wanting to play that game, only with their shitty update, so i have to thank Blizzard.
It was possible to get everything but lets not overlook the inherently manipulative framing of either paying or making the game a second job, which cultivates a sunk cost mindset, which might once again make the player pay out of FOMO.
There are reasonable amounts of grind that can make games fun for some people, but the length of grind and the limited timeframes for obtaining items are all geared to feed into the same monetization cycle. All of that artificially, because it’s not like any digital game has to clear their storeroom and shelves to make space for new collectibles.
Game companies have been very sly about how they use physical real world metaphors to create justifications for their manipulative systems. Lootboxes too, because you can’t guess what’s in a closed pack… except the game keeps perfect track of what is available, what you have and what you don’t have. The only reason why anyone would get repeated lootbox items, is to lead them on and get them to waste money.
Well, I’m of two minds about that.
To a healthy person, the current system is pricier and more aggressive. Things are constantly being shoved in your face, but they’re all purchase-only, and 20€/skin is just absurd.
But, I disagree that it’s more predatory. To a vulnerable person, the new system doesn’t elicit an addictive response, which loot boxes due to their gambling nature do.
I think FOMO is quite a strong motivator for a addictive person. At least loot boxes were obtainable via playing the game. I wouldn’t say I am an excessive gamer, but I still managed to basically get everything over the span of 6 years playing the game. But now you HAVE to spend money to relieve FOMO pressure. Forcing you to spend money is quite predatory.
I agree with this. Overwatch 2 is FOMO galore. It stressed me out.
With Overwatch 1, most content came back later, with exceptions for the charity skin and a few small things.
Anything that costs money to use with a randomised result should be considered gambling.
Yes, it’s high time we shut down the kinder surprise gambling dens.
I mean, yeah. Showing what Kinder toy is inside is a small price to pay for a broad stroke gambling law.
It’s going to take all kids products with the idea as kinder surprise. All campaigns where you might win something for buying a product you’re going to buy anyway. All trading card games. I think there’s even an argument to be made that it would make looters, battle royales, even Minecraft as gambling because the end result of your gaming experience is random. Broadstroking all random away simply doesn’t work.
Not all random events. Just anything that requires payment to activate a randomised event / prize should be forbidden for children.
Might be the people that play only one game. I used to play WoW and then Diablo III exclusively like it was a full time job, and wound up in social bubbles with people who were equally invested. I never spent money on cosmetics or in-game items or anything but at that point it’d be pretty easy to rationalize since it’s something someone is spending 20-80 hours a week playing.
Back in WoW we used to sell one slot on our Algalon raid (hardmode only raid boss) and pay for our Ventrilo and website with that lol
Grubby is a good example of someone who was recently reformed. In one of his early Dota 2 videos (some time last year), he admitted that he didn’t know that games outside of Blizzard had gotten so good - he actually only played Blizzard games and nothing else. It’s been pretty wholesome watching someone learn the wider gaming world.
I find it bizarre that someone would ever pigeonhole themselves into one developer. I don’t even know who makes games half the time. There’s only one that I have blocked on Steam.
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Whales, idk if we can make them stop, often times yes they need help
The fact that this meme misattributes horse armor to Skyrim instead of Oblivion is bothering me way more than it should
Kids these days don’t know shit man. Skyrim had been out long enough to concieve a kid and watch him graduate. Oblivion might as well have been a DOS title to them.
Skyrim has only been out for 13 years. It’s not that old :)
It worries me that you think a 15-year-old is able to watch their child graduate.
It worries me that you assume video games reproduce and raise offspring and develop and receive education at a rate that matches their human analogues.
It worries me that everyone is worrying so much.
I feel like everyone else worrying about everything let’s me relax.
Thats… worrisome.
They’re a child prodigy.
I’ll say, look how much money they’re making.
So I put a boot on my disk, which was the style at the time
A while back in some discord server I was in someone posted a meme that had a siltstrider in it and they didn’t even know what it is. Someone said it looked like a half finished HL2 model.
After so many re-releases of Skyrim, I kind of forgot there were TES games before it…
Morrowind is still dope.
I seriously doubt it, but I really hope they keep their word about no more ship sales after the official 1.0 release…
I can get behind the idea of “you want to support the game at high dollar amounts since you have that kind of cash, go for it.” But I can’t get behind “well people keep buying ships so let’s just keep selling super fucking expensive ships after we’re already “done” with the game.”
As if they’ll keep their word about anything, the game’s only 8 years past their initial launch debut.
“But but but S42 is done and now they’re making the PU more quickly!”
Yep, and I’m sure they’ll reach their 100 star system goal (lol) in about 40 years. Orrrr they’ll just release 5-10 solar systems and then shrug when people ask why they stopped.
We’ll have real space travel before they finish.
Damn close.
If youre still playing D4, I dont know what to tell you. Most people who pay attention to industry news and the game design philosophy of Blizzard knew well enough to pass it over.
i only played it because it came free with my xbox. then starfield came out and i completely forgot about d4
I was hoping in vain that Blizzard might pivot even a little when they saw the backlash but nah people continue to throw money away on bullshit so of course Blizzard wouldn’t
Now I feel all the more right for skipping over it. To be honest, I didn’t mind Diablo 3 once it had all its content and was no longer a dual-wield credit card simulator. It was a pretty fun game by the end IMO. Diablo 4 didn’t feel right to me so I just skipped it.
D4 really isn’t that different from current D3. In some areas it’s actually better. But of course both of those suck compared to D2 or PoE.
I love the “blame the consumer” mindset so much! It always leads to change and reform
If consumers as a whole keep buying overpriced skins then yes, I will blame the consumers for enabling this behavior.
These companies are using dark design patterns to manipulate kids and young people into a pattern of behaviour. You can blame consumers, but it’s not exactly a fair fight. These big companies have behaviour specialists employed and tons of data, used specifically to get people to act dumb in a way that benefits these companies. Heroin pushers are more honest.
When it’s as obvious of a scam as this post shows, I don’t really I have any sympathy. There are other games where it’s more cleverly implemented but even then I still lean towards the fault of consumers.
I am not going to blame the chocolate factory for getting someone obese. Sugar is addictive yes, but everything can be to a certain point and it’s a person’s responsibility to manage these potential addictions.
I’m all for personal responsibilities. In fact I believe all drugs should be legal. But if alcohol companies began heavily advertising drinking for kids or young people, making it look like fund and cool and make it easily accessible, I think regulation is needed. People have the right to be stupid and do with their money and body whatever they want, but companies should not be allowed to promoted this behaviour. They should simply offer it and nothing more.
If casinos need to be regulated and strictly scrutinized to prevent children from engaging with them, so should all games that resort to lootboxes. Researchers have made it clear that the psychological effects are identical, and that early engagement with lootboxes tends to lead to issues with gambling.
I would want regulations only if we were talking about opening crates or other forms of gambling. But this is as upfront and crystal clear as possible where you pay money and you get a skin unlike opening crates. We can all agree that the horse cosmetic is a ripoff but it’s open and upfront about it’s shittiness with no aspect of gambling. Unless I’m forgetting something, gambling microtransactions are the only case where I think regulation is needed.
Edit: The reason why I think gambling should be regulated more so than the other addictive substances (sugar, alcohol, the horse cosmetic) is because gambling doesn’t give you a concrete product. Unlike the others, gambling is getting the chance to obtain your desired product while the others guarantee a product to use.
That´s why I blame both, the company and the consumers.
I mean I do blame the consumer. Specifically for not voting in harsh consumer- and worker-protection laws curbing corporate abilities.
I think the issue is only blaming the consumer and especially when pointing to the cause of the issue.
Is it naive to vote for someone who obviously tells you all you want to hear but has a record of taking advantage every time they get your vote? Absolutely.
But so is walking in a city at night. All kinds of bad things can happen there but someone who hasnt seen evil firsthand will not recognize it easily.
I grew up in a very rough part of a big city. I knew you cant go outside unarmed at night and especially not linger there. But I cant expect friends from other places who havent seen this to act „wisely“ without telling them. This why we advocate without looking down on people.
Have a good one.
I think I understand, but how do you deal with the unending desire to feel superior over others?
The unending desire for superiority as alfred adler describes it doesnt appeal to me. Maybe its just me but I find our constant focus on hierarchical order disturbing. Games are competitive, school is competitive, from a very early age we get that spoonfed. I‘d like to find research about this.
This whole attitude of “its not their fault they can’t help but hand over their money and buy overpriced shit” has got to stop
Economics is very simple here: there is supply, there is demand. If demand outstrips supply, the price will rise. This includes when is artificially restricted (or the market is flooded with alternatives by the same vendor to give the feeling of scarcity).
The demand for streaming services is the same. People will take the hit, so the price goes up until they can’t anymore.
The generation is contributing to inflation because of inability to restrain themselves from buying frivolous shit for extortionate amounts of money, because they can’t psychologically cope with doing without something, then complaining that no jobs pay enough while they try to launch an onlyfans career. Every generation has it’s flaws.
This then makes prices rise for everyone. The infantilzation to suggest they cant help themselves is astonishing. Companies are not going to stop making profit without intervention.
Did you seriously just write that zoomers buying horse armor caused my groceries and rent to get more expensive
They really did. The victim blaming is insane. These companies spend money to leverage psychology in their favor to get people addicted to the dopamine rushes from things like microtransactions and loot boxes. Not everyone is able to resist that kind of conditioning on such a large scale.
You clearly have very little experience in the real world. People need to do better, because the freedom of the press and the propensity of businesses to provide goods and services isn’t going anywhere.
Just like being responsible for who you vote for, and a vehicle that you drive, you need to take some responsibility for the things you do, and what makes you act.
This is a common argument used to blame victims in rape cases - “she was wearing something provocative and I couldnt control my impulses”.
Your reaction to certain things is within your control. It is up to you to do something about it. If you aren’t in control and you are addicted to something, then get help - it’s that simple.
This adolescent infancy must stop if anything is to move forwards.
I can tell I have more experience in the real world just from your comment. Nothing is black and white and you not being able to understand others doesn’t change their reality or the world’s reality. Have a nice day and hopefully are able to grow and gain more experience and knowledge of the world moving forward.
“Nothing is black and white”
Or in other words, you have no point to make and just wanted to try and have a closing comment, offering nothing of substance to the point or the discussion other than a sarcastic “have a nice day” and some vague virtue signalling/insult. Well, thanks for wrapping up the discussion for me I suppose…
I understand people very well, I have had a long career of doing so. To suggest that people have no responsibility for what they consume is incel-level pathetic. Touch some grass and grow up.
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Yup, and watch them downvote it because they don’t like it
There’s no vote with your wallet when the supply is infinite and intangible, me not buying the microtransaction is one person, but a single whale will buy several, getting multiple votes in “yes please continue to shove shit down my throat” this isn’t voting at all.
One thing I have heard stuck with me fiercely.
“When you vote with your wallet, those who have more money get more votes”.
And you know who got the most money? No, it’s not the whales. It’s the corporations.
You really think boycotts work? Is that for real? Do you have evidence? Like any example, at all, of boycotts working in gaming?
Boycotts aren’t Boycotts, they are just an underperformed product due to bad reviews. This happens every single day on every single platform.
So if boycotts don’t work, what can the consumer do? Just not play the game at all? Even if the developer put effort in, and its a labor of love, but the publisher forced mtx in anyway? Like, what if the game is good and boycotts don’t work? What’s gonna stop greedy publishers?
You are doing that thing where you are replying to something that you made up in your mind instead of the message that I wrote, because you were really hoping that I would say boycotts don’t work because your whole argument is based on it
Customers leaving bad reviews somewhere that is visible and influential to future potential customers works. It stops people buying the game and demonstrates discontent to the vendor. That’s it.
You still believe boycotts work and are describing them and doing that thing where you make up something in youhr head without any proof. I.e., boycotts working in gaming
Stop 👏 playing 👏 games 👏 that 👏 rip 👏 you 👏 off 👏
Or just stop playing games that exist as shitty GACHA vending machines.
It isn’t even the cost per-say. Its the fact that mounts were implemented in D4 as a practical afterthought. They barely affect gameplay, you can’t take them into dungeons, they don’t have any kind of skill progression or character synergy on their own right. Barely more than a TF2 fancy hat.
I got D4 at base price on release, played the main act, and shelved it months ago. I can’t imagine still playing a game that’s been nothing but bloody runs since that initial release. Nevermind paying $60 for a fucking cosmetics improvement while I grind mobs for incremental stat increases at the level cap.
TF2 fancy hats are relevant to the game. They provide an entire economy and allow for style, when finding ever new or enjoying old ways of hilarious frags.
They are not an after thought, but a solid part of the games progressed development. However they are not providing an advantage in the core play, so everyone can still enjoy the game.
Selling hats also got me an index!
At least Diablo is easier to quit than games that literally condition players into a gambling addiction. But all this is easier said than done.
I mean Diablo is pretty addicting too lol, one of my friends dropped out of school for Diablo. Then again, one of my friends almost dropped out of school for Modern Warfare 2 - not that it wasn’t fun of course (most fun CoD imo).
Yeah, but grinding loot for free doesn’t cause the same amount of harm as compulsively spending on lootboxes.
Also stop pre-ordering games that aren’t complete.
Do you guys not have phones?
Meanwhile, Helldivers 2’s armor is like 2 bucks, and you can find the currency in-game.
Its nice to see a low cost microtransaction, and nice to see that you can get the currency in game but really thats just the same as it was a few years back before it went full 100 dollar for a reskin mode.
You are defending a game by pointing out that its money grabbing methods are less greedy than another company.
Games wont make the billions and billions they make now if they move away from the in game purchases models but they also evidently dont need billions and billions to operate.
Some of the best games on the market were made on small budgets by indie developers and sell well because the are fun and people actually want to play them.
I would argue that on online game kinda needs a stream of revenue that’s doesn’t only come from the first purchase, since that will stagnate.
Maybe we don’t make every game a live service. Remember halo 2, game was fantastic and no micro transactions in sight if you don’t count xbl.
For Democracy!
What happened to the micro part of microtransactions? This is why I only bought one skin in Genshin Impact since they give you extra funny money for your first time to get it, but a second skin will double than the first so I’m never buying one ever again.
Macrotransactions.
I will only pay if I get Robin Williams. This is the hill I will die on.
Dumb fucks kept giving shitty publishers like Activision and Ubisoft money for microtransactions, so those companies did what any good capitalist would do: see how much you can fleece the idiots.
I saw a post a couple years back in the Red Dead subreddit where someone posted a screenshot of their character. They had something like thousands of gold bars, and when someone asked how he had so many, the OP actually said that they spend $100 a month on the gold packs. Each month.
see how much you can fleece the idiots.
I’ve got good news for you, the bonuses reset every anniversary (around September).
I think they stopped that after fontaine. HSR didn’t reset theirs iirc.
HSR didn’t have their anniversary yet, it’s supposed to be on April 26th. GI did reset their top up, I know because I bought some again for Furina C2.
Oh you said anni, for some reason my mind read it as every x.0 patch
At least Genshin Impact had a fucking plot, too. I can stomach dropping an extra $30 on a game after the first 100 hours. But D4 just stopped being a story after release. I was having fun exploring the world and plot in Genshin for the better part of two years (thanks, COVID!) I cleared D4 in a month. Cleared it again with another class. Got bored and shelved it.
Genshin is good in some aspects, but it shows how desensitized we are that we accept the egregious gambling and the endless grind that only exists for the sake of retention. Can Genshin players really talk shit about this when in average it takes around $200 to get one single 5* character? Even if you are not paying that yourself, the game is built that way to exploit those who do.
we accept the egregious gambling and the endless grind that only exists for the sake of retention
The world was big enough and rich enough that I could mostly ignore the dungeons and never really feel like grinding. I just kinda wandered around chasing quest-lines and having fun. I didn’t sweat the 5* heroes and never really had a problem with the PvE aspect of the game. Admittedly, I wasn’t doing end-game content or playing anything remotely competitively.
Even if you are not paying that yourself, the game is built that way to exploit those who do.
Sure. Its a game full of psychological landmines. And if you’re in your 30s and you’ve learned how to dance through the bullshit, then its easy. But if you’re playing this game as a twelve year old and constantly getting spammed by the Wallet Inspector to give up another $20, less so.
But… I can’t do anything about that. What really gets me is that the country where this game is produced (China) has better and more comprehensive regulations to limit exploitation of end-users than the countries where the majority of players come from (Japan, Korea, USA). I believe there was even some amount of controversy in how hard the western-oriented interfaces sold in-game purchases, relative to the domestic versions.
You can avoid the grind at first since the game is PvE, but the further you go the more the game demands you to increase the World Level, and the more grind you need to do to get each character playable at that level.
I didn’t max out my World Level because at some point it felt like undoing my work of powering up the characters, but the game definitely pushes you that way. Not only story quests, but doiing Abyss levels for more free currency requires high level characters.
That’s not even mentioning Artifacts which have so many layers of randomized stats that you could be basically grinding forever to get one which has exactly the stats you want.
I can never shake off the feeling that if Genshin wasn’t gacha, if you could get characters from quests and weapons and artifacts from exploration, it would be a much, much better game, even if it was smaller and shorter. But more and more, this seems to be the kind of game that companies want to make.
China seems to be showing a bit more pulse than many countries as far as reining in lootbox games goes, but it’s still not enough, and it doesn’t seem the benefits of these efforts can be seen worldwide.
I mean, enough would be loading these senior executives and marketing directors into a cannon and firing them into the ocean. But I agree, even the most stringent rules always seem to be attacking the edges of the problem.
I buy the monthly cards in advance and use the gems they give you from that, best value way of getting them
I need to make a game for rich suckers.
Step 1: make some genuinely top shelf, genre-defining games in the 90s and early 2000s
Step 2: Sell out
Step 3: Become shittier than anyone could ever imagine
Step 4: Charge 1 kidney for a shitty in app purchase
Step 3.5: Use psychology to “convince” children and those with certain mental health issues that they need the in app purchase.
While simultaneously convincing parents not to vote for regulation because “its optional”
What, dont you all have kidneys?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but weren’t people warned about this before the game even came out?
This should fall under the purview of “fools and their money.”
Such that laws are created to protect people from scammers? Because that is what really should be done. With the rise of this "buying is not owning’ bulshit, it has been a long time coming.
i got plenty of hate when i said years ago this is where the mtx slippery slope would get us
This sort of thing is exactly why I mostly just play retro games.
Indie games ftw!
I did that for a while, but I discovered my local library has a great selection of games. I went from spending a few hundo on games a year to buying two a year - Christmas and birthday, and doing the rest of my gaming exploring their catalogue. It’s been great on my wallet. Hooray libraries.
There are a lot of solid indie titles you can get for $10
Somehow that’s not surprising, which is sad.
And it looks like the result of a transporter malfunction involving Baron Rivendare’s Deathcharger and Butt Stallion.
Holy information density batman! That’s a fucking mess to look at there’s so much going on it stopped being cool looking
Hahahaha! I hadn’t seen it before! And people are expected to (and some do) spend money on that?
