The whales will buy it and satisfy the management who approved this piece of shit price
It’s honestly sad. The whales are just a different form of gambling addicts, the wasted money isn’t even a factor for some people.
I had a roommate who was absolutely a whale, and he would buy expensive skins in multiplayer games because they were expensive and he literally wanted to feel better than others who he thought couldn’t afford the skin. When in almost all situations it’s that they just weren’t idiots like him
Yeah your anecdote doesn’t catch the vast majority of people that this shit exploits though. Seriously, blaming the whales isn’t a useful argument to convince people this shit is cancer, it’s just a oh we can’t do anything about it cop-out.
How is this similar to gambling? I really do not see any parallels.
I guess they meant the addict part rather than the gambling part, unless this is some kind of loot-box situation
Oblivion’s Horse Armor dlc has more worth than this
Oblivion’s Horse Armor DLC also didn’t cost more than Oblivion either.
You can get the whole MCC on sale for less…
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Nah. Things like this aren’t meant to have a large appeal. It aims to expoilt the few customer with lack of financial control. ‘Just not buying’ doesn’t really hurt the company since it didn’t really cost anything in the first place. It is (like a scam) designed to filter out financially irresponsibile people and extract as much money as possible from them.
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You’d have to convince the diehards, casuals, and especially the ones that are willing (regardless of being able to) to spend money on whatever the company throws their way of this. Way, waaaay easier said than done, unfortunately.
Can’t speak for everyone else, but due to the company’s track record, i didn’t even look at Halo Infinite’s direction since it was announced. Then again, as soon as I heard the multiplayer was Free to Play and seperate from the campaign, yeah…not surprised they pulled something like this.
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As strange as the idea of regulations needing to come to the rescue might be to some, that’s a decent way for it to go…seriously, so many problems we deal with on the daily just need a bit of regulations for them to not be as out of control as they are (because, as you said, a LOT of people are stupid/ignorant. Or are taking advantage of said people). Now, this just needs to get as bad as lootboxes–which, IMO, it’s practically there, but maybe it needs to get worse, god forbid–for a legislator to look this way.
Your non-participation counts for nothing, versus the minority of people suckered into throwing in arbitrary quantities of money for fuck-all.
Only legislation can fix this. This business model is a scam. Maximum revenue comes from addiction and frustration. If we allow this to continue, there will be nothing else.
Only legislation will fix this.
If we allow this to continue, there will be nothing else.
What kind of legislation, though? Loot boxes seem like an easy one to write: gambling is illegal already in a lot of places. When it’s just exploitative greed, I’m not sure how it’s technically so different from charging exorbitant rates for swag at a baseball game or something. Or charging a few thousand bucks for a purse at some high-end fashion retailer.
To be clear: I loathe the FOMO trends in game development, overpriced skins, micro/macro-transactions, and all the “credit/XP boosters” type bullshit. Turning money into ingame currencies to obfuscate actual prices, the general design of games frontloading fun and then squeezing dollars out of you to feel that same high again…I’m just skeptical that there’s anything to do about it from a legal perspective that doesn’t apply to most of the rest of the capitalist enterprises out there. Please though, I want to be wrong about this, so any examples of how to curb some of these excesses would be great.
Stop letting games take real money.
(Not: stop charging money for games. Not: end subscriptions. Not: make games free. I will not be tolerating any bullshit today from people who refuse to acknowledge how “microtransactions” are the topic and the problem.)
All forms of this are just lootboxes with more steps. We all finally admit lootboxes are bullshit, right? Even the most diehard kneejerk ‘but it’s cosmetic!’ yeahbutts are quick to say some it’s not awful, like lootboxes. But they’re all just gentler ways of taking unlimited quantities of your actual money.
Nothing inside a video game should cost money.
It’s a fucking game. It’s not real.
The game itself can and should cost money - the rise of allegedly-free wallet siphons proves how lucrative that bullshit is. They don’t need your money up-front; they’ll get more from wearing you down. But the fact the same bullshit is in flagship AAA games, including some which want to charge ninety goddamn dollars up-front, and have a subscription, proves they can take you both ways, because you don’t really have a choice. This shit is in everything. It is infecting the entire medium, and making the path to maximum revenue a matter of addiction and frustration. We were never going to shop our way out of it. We have to tell the whole industry it’s simply not allowed.
Why? Don’t buy the armour. Let the whales pay to keep the lights on.
These things exist exactly because whales pay for it. Letting them keep whaling is not a solution nor a workaround, it’s just being complacent to the issue.
You don’t think game development catered specifically for whales is a problem?
A problem? Yes. Not one worth legislating over, though.
The issue is, it will eventually kill mainstream gaming as an artform, and keep funneling our economy towards the enshittification of everything.
Maybe it isn’t worth legislating over, but something should be done, lest humanity will lose most of what is dear to us, and everything will be just about money. I’m already uncomfortable enough with how commodified nearly everything in society is. The commodification of everything is very much not something we want. It’s literally what the cyberpunk genre was warning about.
Not to even mention the sort of mentality such a consumerist culture instills on us, especially in regards to whales, and the sociological consequences of this.
eventually kill mainstream gaming as an artform
oh boy, do I have some sad news for you
Yes, I am aware we are already basically there. At least in comparison to the past. But it can always get worse. Sure, indie games will stay (though likely still very much affected), but AAA games? Yeah.
True art has and will survive worse. Honestly, imo, nothing “mainstream” can really be considered an artform in any meaningful sense. Art can sneak through, but anything made with profit as the main motivator just isn’t going to be pushing any envelopes.
I agree. And that’s was also my point! I feel like older games were chasing that profit motive much less (well, at least some of the big ones, arcades used to be a thing after all). And you can often quickly see when every franchise started falling off a cliff once it was tried to capitalize on them.
It’s exploitation for money. Of course it’s worth legislating over.
This is a collective problem where abusive nonsense makes far more money than selling goods and services to allegedly rational consumers. All excuses have failed. It’s not just in “free” games, it’s not just in shovelware, it’s not just “cosmetics,” it’s not-- it’s fuckin’ everywhere, okay? The quantities of money involved are obscene. No off-the-shelf game should be capable of taking thousands of actual dollars in one sitting.
Even if there’s no dice being rolled - that is plainly the same manipulative valueless pit as gambling. Not even for a game part of the game. For hats. For a model that’s already in the game you paid for, deliberately looking like a twenty-year-old ten-kilobyte file in a game you also already paid for.
This is a real problem.
There’s only one real solution.
If someone can figure out a reasonable way to legislate against FOMO, then by all means, go for it. I already agreed it’s a problem, but it’s pretty much the base of capitalism - make something, put a price on it, and if someone deems it worth the price, they buy it. So aside from a complete restructuring of what at this point is the main economic system of the world, I’m not really expecting much to be done about expensive cosmetics in video games.
As if ending microtransactions means destroying capitalism. Jesus fucking Christ, do people get weird about this topic.
This business model did not exist fifteen years ago. Games did fine. What we can do about dumb shit in video games costing obscene amounts of real money for no reason, is… stop that.
It is that simple.
Yes, actually. Because there’s nothing different about microtransactions than anything else being sold today, and realistically, microtransactions in video games are just about the least important problem with our economic system. We have much more serious problems that still can’t get regulation. Nobody with an ounce of authority is gonna bother specifically with video game costumes.
So if you actually want government mandated change on this particular problem, the only real way that’s happening is a wholesale revision or rejection of capitalism itself by the government, which, yeah, is pretty far fetched.
Our real options are just…not buying these things. Don’t support it, ever, even for things that appeal to you. Advocate for others to reject it as well. It’s probably not gonna work well or quickly, but it’s gonna be the most effective thing we as consumers can actually do.
Only legislation will fix this.
Legislation can’t fix stupid. We have to let people be able to hurt themselves or we are no better than slaves. Because at that point gov is dictating every aspect of our lives. Freedom isn’t free from consequences, but it’s worth it.
Victim-blaming, dehumanization, and libertarian twaddle, all in one comment. Aren’t you a winner. Shoo.
Avoids commenting on the actual issue and resorts to name-calling. You’ve convinced me!
Two of those are reasons, troll.
Victim blaming? You consider people who willingly pay for game cosmetics victims? You have a pretty low bar, huh?
Only legislation will fix this.
You say this for everything, holy shit man.
“Only legislation will fix this” was your response to WoW charging extra for early access, to Mortal Kombat having paid fatalities, to a Disney game not being free-to-play when it leaves early access, to a translation error from a developer who does not speak English and/or the developer adding paid DLC to their $20 game, to a free mobile game having in-app purchases.
I’m really starting to think that you truly believe game developers should perform unpaid labor.
‘You say this every time a product is treated like a service! Make up your mind!!!’
Most of those aren’t even different situations - they’re all blatantly about charging real money inside video games. Just like this. “Microtransactions” are intolerable bullshit, and they’re in fucking everything.
I say this a lot because IT’S IN EVERYTHING. Hello, and welcome to the point! This greedy exploitation is the dominant strategy. It sucks for everyone, customers and developers alike, because you can either become this kind of (eugh) “live service,” or make less money than the suits expect. So every genre, every price point, fuckin’ single-player games, will grow this rot, and then try to soak you for unlimited quantities of real-life currency.
This needs to stop. There is only one way that happens.
Oh and fuck anyone still going ‘yOu wAnT iT fOr FrEe!’ when what I want is for companies to SELL GAMES, AS PRODUCTS. I am the one saying Genshin Impact should cost $60 and include the whole game, at time of sale. You are the ones who want it for free.
Wow dude, you really need a hobby.
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Exec: People need to take the story of Halo srs, I’m told that means something to your silly game about space fascists fighting robots or whatever.
Dev: Okay, how about you unlock them after completing the campaign once?
Exec: I don’t understand. Where did we make money that way?
looks at final fantasy xiv’s cash shop >.>
Or frankly any online game, live service or not.
This model is not new or unusual and these prices aren’t out of line with industry comps.
I don’t really like it, but it’s barely news that game companies continue to adopt this monetization strategy.
Anime and mmos almost always seem to have their specific whales who WILL dress up their avatar.
Combined? 🫣😬
Bro it’s cosmetic who gives a fuck. Just play the game and buy the reasonably priced skins. Better yet, just don’t buy the skins at all. People are so fucking entitled holy shit.
People are tired of being subjected to psychological manipulation to throw endless quantities of money at the products they already fucking bought, just so they can look slightly different. A feature that used to be taken for granted, and is the bare fucking minimum of developer effort.
How you look in a video game should not cost real money.
Nothing inside a video game should cost real money.
Psychological manipulation because my guy can only be bright green not dark green.
These are just different ways the company would profit from their game. You play the game for the gameplay and that’s all that matters.
Besides, what if you really like the game and just literally want to donate to the company? I know I did for rocket league, and bought a skin for like $20 when I got the game itself for like $15 or some shit. I thought the game was worth way more with how much fun I had with it. Same for games that let you “buy” the OST. Everyone knows this is bullshit just ignore it.
Manipulation by games comes from astral projection, so ‘just play and don’t worry about it’ makes perfect sense.
Besides, what if you really like the game and just literally want to donate to the company?
Send them a check. If you want to give them money, out of the blue, you don’t need a leash they can yank.
It’s impossible to ignore this - it’s in fucking everything.
It’s becoming the entire industry.
It only works because it gets under your skin!
Manipulation is when the game gives you the illusion that you can get something if you work hard enough on it without paying. Similar to how battlefront did with their characters when you pretty much can’t unlock the characters without paying unless you grind like a million hours. It’s similar in games where you use real money for stuff that give you an advantage and you can pretty much guarantee a loss if you don’t buy their shit.
There is no illusion here. You just play the game and get everything the others are getting without paying. You only pay for the cosmetic skin. How is that manipulation?
Manipulation is the game making you want to work for it. And that’s fine - that’s what games are. Video games necessarily make you value arbitrary nonsense which they can hand out at any time. The illusion is that there’s anything special about selecting how your guy looks.
But there’s no ethical form of monetizing that that invented desire. Any value beyond a knee-jerk “neat” is created and controlled by the game. It’s made-up. There is no real-world price for flags captured, or murlocs skinned, or goals scored. A conversion rate between dollars and scoreboard points is a category error. They cannot have value, in the sense that money has value.
The clearest proof of this is that working hard usually works. Items allegedly worth real-world money - some priced higher than the whole game! - will be given to you, if you play a bunch. As if dicking around in Blood Gulch is productive economic activity. Like it’s labor. When the game rewards you some obscenely-priced cosmetic guff, how high would you have to be to ask for cash instead?
Sure acheivements don’t have inherent value, but the skins do. The idea of a captured flag or whatever is how good you are at the game and the fact that you had fun doing it. Skins are the same as clothes. You don’t have to get the best, but people pay obscene amounts of money to get some bullshit they think looks good and shows off status. It’s the same here. But you don’t see people advocating for the shutting down of LV or Gucci or whatever.
Not even the game itself has inherent value. Why would I pay $60 for a Mario game that I don’t like and it lasts like 50 hours when I can play the $20 Binding of Isaac (masterpiece) that could easily last me hundreds of hours. Other people would say the opposite.
Every sentence in that comment is a distinct kind of wrong. I’d be impressed if it wasn’t just depressing.
In reverse order: games are products. They have utility-value, for you, a human person. Even if you think they suck. A bad pizza is still a pizza, and a perishable good which can be manufactured and sold, as a textbook example of commerce.
Veblen goods like Gucci products are priced primarily for sign-value, where the cost is high to show off how much you can afford. But they still function. A Gucci purse only has the same utility as any other purse, but both purses are obviously products.
Exclusionary bullshit like paid skins are nothing but sign-value. You pay money to say you paid money. That is a scam. You are goaded into desiring some empty peacocking nonsense versus everyone else, where the only practical mechanism is to throw money at the people who let you say you have a skin. It’s not a product - you already have the content, on your hard drive. You must, to see other people using it. It’s not a service - can only see other people using it because you’re already on the server. It’s a completely made-up money sink.
That bullshit is becoming the entire industry.
Scams like this are so lucrative, companies can give games away, just to sucker in more peacocking chumps.
Exploitation like this takes unlimited quantities of money from an arbitrary number of people, for the same fucking game they already paid full price to play. No kidding every company’s shoving that into every game. The actual part where you play the game is just bait on that hook. The high-level goal of every company doing this becomes addiction to keep you from leaving, frustration to keep you forking over thousands of dollars, and just enough socialization to make you feel superior to the idiots who only forked over hundreds of dollars.
The only consistent argument for this infection is ‘but it makes money, so it must be ethical.’
