"Randy Pitchford Meltdown Over Borderlands 3 Microtransactions"

[kane_magus]

"Randy Pitchford Meltdown Over Borderlands 3 Microtransactions" (Watch on YouTube)

"Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford had a meltdown on Twitter over Borderlands 3 microtransactions."

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(EDIT) And this has also become a Mord's post my comment thing, as a follow up to the below. (/EDIT)

Man, fuck Randy Pitchford. What's with all these diva video game devs having meltdowns and saying stupid shit? (I was going to say "lately" at the end of the previous sentence, but devs saying/doing stupid shit and/or having meltdowns has been happening, off and on, for years.)

And, once again, I agree with Ian 100%. It was such an asinine, petty thing over which to have a meltdown, and if he had handled it properly, it would have been non-news.

Also also, the distinction between "good" microtransactions and "bad" microtransactions... fuck off with that dumbshit. If you've ripped anything out of your game to nickel and dime people with as separate, yes indeed, microtransactions, I don't give a flying fuck what it is, then you can kiss my ass and die in an extremely hot car fire forever, for all I care.

Also also also, I still never got any farther than completing the first Borderlands game. I've tried Borderlands 2 at least three times now, and invariably quit not even halfway through, due to boredom and wanting to play something more interesting to me. So, the odds that I'll ever get Borderlands 3 (especially now, after this shit) is vanishingly small. That said, they already got my money for The Pre-Sequel and Tales from the Borderlands, even though I haven't touched them (yet), so... meh. Double dumbass on me, I guess.

Comments

[owsf2000]

Apparently that guy has a meltdown every other day. If anything he sucks at PR and should get off the internet in the interest of his company. He really doesn't know how to respond to people.

I also agree with the whole ripping out content issue. These days (And for many years now already) it's hard to defend the position of "Oh they just didn't have time to put the game in proper, that's why it's sold separately." excuse. It's painfully obvious that the only reason they "ran out of time" is because the deliberately didn't allocate time to it in the first place. And they have plenty of excuses to go when that doesn't work as well. Like for example when games are localized that were out in Japan, dlc and all, for up to years already before being localized. "Oh well Japanese players had to pay for the DLC, so it wouldn't be fair to to THEM to give it to YOU for free." Amazing how there's always an excuse.

Personally, I -do- split the definition of DLC and micro-transaction somewhat although I hate both. I consider any consumable one-time use DLC to be a "micro-transaction". Lootboxes fall into that, as does paying for virtual money for use in the game, even if the items that fall from the lootbox or are bought with the virtual currency are "permanent". I reserve DLC to being when you're paying an upfront cost for a specific permanent perk. So buying a costume could actually fall under either definition depending on how you're expected to purchase it.

I repeat though, I still utterly hate both. The types of "good" DLC are so vanishingly small and overwhelmingly distorted that it's hard consider any DLC as "good" anymore.

I might just go over to my blog and rant on that...

Anyway back to CEO Baby, yeah he totally fucked up the response he should have given. As Ian said, he should have just clarified himself, apologized for being unclear, and moved the fuck on.

[kane_magus]

The only DLC I even kind of remotely support and would consider to be vaguely "good" is that which used to be called "expansion packs," i.e. full-on story and/or world content and/or game modes that is created and released after the game has been released.

That, as opposed to if the exact same content were to be worked on concurrently with the base game and released on Day One of the base game's release (or pre-sold on [or, worse, before] Day One, even if it won't actually be made available until some arbitrarily agreed upon point in time later). I will always consider this merely to be content that was explicitly planned to be stripped out of the base game, specifically to be sold separately, or was never meant to be included in the base game to start with, which is at least as bad, if not even worse. Or, worst of all, was included with the base game but was simply locked behind a paywall or whatever (e.g. "on-disc DLC"). As such, I will treat that negatively, like with that Witcher 3 shit and the old Batman shit and myriad other such things. (I still to this day have not yet bought The Witcher 3, even when I saw it on some pretty steep sales over the years.)

Honestly, I would have the tiniest bit more respect for game devs and publishers if they just fucking straight up admitted flat out that they were doing this horseshit because they were greedy fuckers who wanted a greater revenue steam, which is obviously the real reason why they do any of it, rather than them getting all huffy and offended and having meltdowns at the merest insinuation that they might be doing something bad and then coming up with all these bullshit excuses and justifications and rationalizations and ways to try to mitigate all of their avaricious dogshit. ("Oh, we don't do those bad microtransactions like loot crates or whatever. We just sell costumes and stuff that used to be in-game unlockables and the like. We're, like, totally better than those monsters who do that loot crate shit, you know? How could you even possibly compare little ol' me with those assholes?! To hell with those shitheels, amirite guys? Guys?")