Castle Magus

"Ubisoft's annual financial report includes claim that monetizing games with microtransactions 'makes the player experience more fun'"

I'll give them this much credit, I certainly have way more fun playing other games that aren't Ubisoft games, so I'm glad that they make the choice so easy for me by monetizing their "premium" games with microtransactions.

More seriously speaking, I guess they're not entirely wrong. Well, I mean they are wrong, because the whole damn thing is nothing but wrong. However, they wouldn't be putting all that horseshit in their games in the first place if people weren't spending oodles and oodles of money to buy it. So I guess somebody must think it's "worthwhile." The people who buy the shit are roughly on par with the people who sell the shit, as far as being the cause of the problem. But then, the fact that people still buy Ubisoft games at all is like... whatever. *spins finger around at side of head*

Saying "Our monetization offer within premium games makes the player experience more fun by allowing them to personalize their avatars or progress more quickly, however this is always optional," is completely asinine, though. But then, this was meant for sHaReHoLdErS.

"...or progress more quickly..." Selling worthless cosmetic crap is already bad enough, but they're admitting to literally selling the equivalent to cheat codes. Of course, it's not as if they're the first company to ever straight up sell as DLC what used to be cheat codes freely built into the game already, not by a long shot. Hell, it's not even the first time that Ubisoft themselves have done this bullshit.

"...however this is always optional." As owsf2000 first said probably a decade ago by this point, it's "optional" in the sense that, sure, you certainly don't have to buy the microtransactions... if you're willing to tediously grind for weeks or months on end. But assuming that you're a normal-ass person who doesn't want to waste your time doing that, then hey, guess what? Ubisoft has some "optional" microtransactions available to help you "progress more quickly" and speed up the process! In other words, the games are explicitly designed to be tiresome chores unless you cough up some (more) real world money to make the game you already paid for be less of a dreary slog to play. Isn't that "more fun"? *eye roll*

Come ooooonnnnn, modern video game industry crash. Come oooooooooonnnnnnnnnn, modern video game industry crash.

Everything Pat talks about in this video, particularly from around roughly the halfway point and onward, is why I will never knowingly and willingly play a "live service" game, ever. To fucking hell forever with "live service"/"Gaa$" games. Not even if it's free, but especially not if it's fucking "pReMiUm."

And Woolie, no, Tarkov is absolutely not goddamned free to play. Jesus Christ is it so not free to play. Thanks for blighting my mind with the (hopefully blessedly brief) memory of Tarkov again, Woolie. *weary sigh*

Full headline, because just look at that gargantuan monster: "Steam has changed its policy on DLC content and season passes, so now players are entitled to proper compensation if future plans fall through: 'Customers will be offered a refund for the value of unreleased DLC'"

As just one example, the article mentions Stellaris. The main reason I have never bought anything to do with Stellaris is because every time I see it go on sale for 75%/$9.99 USD or whatever, I'm inevitably reminded that that's just for the "base game," and the DLC will still be way too expensive, even at half off or more. Like, right now, with just the very basic 10% "bundle discount," the "Stellaris Ultimate Bundle" is fucking $290.49 USD. All the DLC separately (some of which isn't, amazingly, in the "ultimate bundle") is $359.74 USD. And that $359.74 doesn't even include the "normal" $39.99 price tag for the "base game." The DLC/season pass situation of Stellaris is completely asinine.

Anyway, good on Steam for doing this, I guess.

Full headline: "Don't like $70 games? Monster Hunter Wilds and Dragon's Dogma 2 publisher Capcom says wait 5 years and they'll all be $5"

"Price reductions are always on horizon... unless it's a Nintendo game"

That gets a hearty "No shit, Sherlock" from me. I've been doing that for twelve years now, and I've had very little problem with it at all. If a game that used to be in the $50-$100 range falls to the $5-$10[1] range, that's way more palatable to me than if it was, you know, still in the $50-$100 range, even if it takes five-plus years to get there. And some games hit that threshold within a fraction of that "five years" figure. But even then, that's not a guarantee that I'll definitely buy it.

With that said, though, I'm not sure what Capcom is actually on about, because as of right now, six year old Monster Hunter World is still $29.99 USD on Steam, and that's just for the basic "base-game" level shit, with the actual full game (i.e. including all DLC, presumably) still at fucking $69.97 USD. (It is, admittedly, currently on a Steam sale, for the moment, with the "base-game" at $9.89 USD and the most expensive "full game" version at $24.77 USD, but still.) Also, there are literally 200 separately listed DLC items on the Monster Hunter World Steam store page, almost none of which are on sale, that total a whopping fucking $508.27 USD, though most of that dumbfuckery is probably rolled up into the "Master Edition Digital Deluxe" shit with the $70 USD price tag. In any case, I have not bought any version of Monster Hunter World as of yet. Maybe if that "Master Edition Digital Deluxe Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" version ever hits sub-$10, I might bite on it.

Also, though it is no longer the case now, Monster Hunter World originally shipped with fucking Denuvo, same as just about every other Crapcum game these days (the newer of which are still infected by that shit), so I don't care if the game costs $700 or $70 or $7 or $0.07 or $0.0007, I will not knowingly/willingly buy anything with that shit infesting it.

[1] - For only a very rare few games would I be willing to buy even at the initial "$20-$30" range that I noted in that 12 year old post there. For me, now, today, with 99% of games, it's "either get down to $5-$10 or less or else continue to fuck off."

Full headline, because Dreamwidth's subject field length is still inadequate: "PSA: If you are unhappy with a game due to predatory microtransactions and DLCs, stop complaining and stop playing them"

I agree with this in part, but not fully. I already don't buy/play games like that[1]. However, I'm sure as shit not going to stop complaining about such things. The guy is absolutely right, though, in that complaining about this stuff does not accomplish a single goddamn thing at all (beyond providing a [dwindling] sense of catharsis).

It's like I have said many times in the past, myself. As much as I hate the modern video game industry for all the dumbshit it spews on a constant basis these days, I hate modern video game buyers/players at least as much, because if they weren't down there, with their gaping maws perfectly lined up with the sewer outflow pipe, the modern video game industry would not be up there, diarrhetically spewing all that dumbshit into the toilet for all these morons to blithely suck down. "Vote with your wallet" never works, and the people who say it know it never works, because far too many fucking idiots far too often "vote with their wallet" explicitly against their own best interests.[2]

To restate: Shit producers thrive on shit consumers. Shit consumers (often militantly) support shit producers. Circle of life.

On the one hand, telling people to "stop complaining and stop playing them" is laudable common sense. Because people should stop playing them. On the other hand, it would be best to keep in mind that quote that is misattributed to Albert Einstein: "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting to get different results." Telling people to (yes, indeed) boycott games like that is worthless, because people are simply not going to boycott games like that, or at least not enough to matter at all. It never works. It's probably never going to work. That's just all there is to it.

And telling people to stop complaining about this shit is not going to work either, because fuck you, John Papadopoulos of website "Dark Side of Gaming," I'll complain about whatever I want, whenever I want. ¬_¬

For me, the order of annoyance probably goes like this, in ascending order from least to most annoying:

1. People who complain about modern video game industry dumbfuckery, such as me and owsf2000.
2. People who complain about people who complain about modern video game industry dumbfuckery, such as Mr. Papadopoulos here.
3. People who complain about modern video game industry dumbfuckery while still actively giving money to the modern video game industry, such as roughly 99.9% of all people who buy/play video games.

Anyway, I'll just say it again:

C'moooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon modern video game industry crash.

[1] - Well, in the specific cases of Tekken or Calluhdoody or most of the other games mentioned by name in this article, I didn't care about any of that shit even before they were drowned in a deluge of modern video game industry dumbshit. Well, maybe aside from the earlier Mortal Kombat games, I guess. And The Elder Scrolls, of course, because even though he never mentions that by name, the header image on the article is of that asinine Oblivion Horse Armor bullshit (which, despite my post there, actually wasn't the first video game to ever have paid DLC, since MechAssault predated that by a few years[3]).

[2] - See also: giving campaign contributions to Donald Trump (or the GQP in general).

[3] - Not only that, but that MechAssault game was apparently one of the first known instances of on-disc DLC, too. Shit.

For clarity's sake, the headline for this article on the Google News app on my phone (as well as on the browser tab in Firefox/Chrome/etc.) shows as "Dragon's Dogma 2 gleefully rejects modern game design rules," which conjures a vastly different initial impression than "All the ways Dragon's Dogma 2 will fight against you" does.

So... let's see, then.

Draconian DRM in the form of a Denuvo malware infestation? Check.

Worthless, predatory DLC? Check.

Game-breaking, progression loss bugs? Check.

Bad optimization/performance, even on high-end computers (which is very likely at least partly the fault of Denuvo)? Check.

Dubious design choices? Check.

So... no. Looks to me like Dragon's Dogma 2 gleefully embraces modern game design rules, not rejects them. In fact, Dragon's Dogma 2 looks like a perfect storm of the absolute worst of modern game design. A textbook example of what not to do. (At least if you don't want to be perceived as incompetent, greedy asshats, anyway, which Crapcum seems to not really care about anymore, I guess, like so much of the rest of the modern video game industry. *shrug*)

...

...

<sarcasm> Oh, wait, they were talking about the actual game that's hidden under all that huge pile of garbage listed above? Well, then. Never mind, I guess. </sarcasm> *eye roll + smdh + weary sigh*

Out of all the really asinine dumbshit rotten things that have been excreted out of the malign asshole of the modern video game industry over the past three decades or so, this is certainly one of them. Take that previous sentence there and plug it into your GameScent machine, GameScent machine creators.

Also... "DLC scents." ಠ_ಠ

(Disclaimer: only a very small part of the above video is about the disgusting DLC prices. I couldn't have cared less about the "lack of lobbies is weird" thing or the "new game should have just committed to 2v2" thing.)

Yeah, and this is why I haven't cared about Mortal Kombat since MK9 (aka Mortal Kombat) which came out in 2011, 12 years ago. Well, that and the fact that most of the games since then have been contaminated with the Denuvo malware on release, with MK12 (aka Mortal Kombat 1) being no exception to that. Modern day Mortal Kombat is a textbook example of everything wrong with the modern video game industry. (Not that Capcom/Street Fighter or any other fighting game devs/series is any less guilty of this horseshit these days.)

The only interaction I've had with the Mortal Kombat series since 2011 has been to occasionally watch Youtube compilations of the various games' story mode cutscenes, which typically (thankfully) leave out the fighting game bits in between, and I figure the same will be true of MK12's story mode, as well, whenever such compilations become available.

"Disney owns the LucasArts catalog, and Disney only calls you if it needs to."

I despise that fucked up, broken aspect of capitalism in which an entity that had fuck all to do with creating a thing can end up owning a thing, because money. And I don't mean like buying a car you didn't build or a loaf of bread you didn't bake or whatever, obviously. I'm talking about giant corporations buying up smaller companies just to get their piggy hands on said company's intellectual property, which then gives them the right to do whatever the fuck they want with said IP. It's bullshit, but it's capitalism, and... that's a pretty redundant statement right there.

Ron Gilbert did not work for Disney when he created Monkey Island. I'm not sure that Ron Gilbert has ever directly worked for Disney at all. (Though, I suppose Ron Gilbert making Return to Monkey Island involved "working for" Disney to some extent, at least.) However, he did work for LucasArts when he made Monkey Island, and because of that, LucasArts, not Ron Gilbert, owned Monkey Island. And because of money, Disney now owns what's left of LucasArts, and because of that, they can do whatever the fuck they want with Monkey Island and anything to do with Monkey Island, and there's not a damn thing Ron Gilbert can do about it, yay or nay. And that sucks ass.

Ron Gilbert has even offered more than once to buy the rights for Monkey Island back, but of course, why the fuck would Disney do that, when they can make more money licensing out Guybrush Threepwood for shitty DLC for shitty MMOs?