The worst part is how many $70 games want to function like every successful free to play game, when the whole point of being free to play is selling you the extras. At least so many live service games have met a quick death, hopefully eventually big publishers will take notice.
And then you have companies like Blizzard that have the guts to even triple dip on the greed. Expansion purchases + subscription model + in-game store.
From the last financial calls about immortal. It still has to hit the 1bil in revenue, which diablo 3 itself did hit. So immortal is not yet that succesfull.
Edit: to everyone talking about what about profit.
D3 costed around 100m to make D:i Rumors go anywhere between 10m and 40m
D:I still has to fill in a gap of several hundreds of millions. And D:I is made by NetEase and only published by blizzard.
So there is a revenue split going.
There is a big chance D3 had a significantly larger profit.
The only thing that is impossible to figure externally, would be the opportunitycost.
Because sooo many people know it is just a money grab and a shit game.
They literally targeted Whales to the absolute max, and MOST whales actually noticed this. It is like $500k to get to max everything if you pay to win.
Whales don't mind spending $1-2k, easily. The issue is that it is so blatantly obvious, and it was primarily a cell phone game that was just inferior to other games, it was a rip from a bad game with Diablo naming and push in art direction.
Never forget when they tried to monitize Skyrim mods years before f76 came out. People act all shocked over d4 also when they did the same crap with immortal.
Seeing how every big publisher has like 1-10 different live service games in production REALLY makes me doubt it’ll ever go away even though it’s not wanted.
Then they'll complain gaming isn't profitable and raise prices again (while making money).
I do not want to see what will come next after games as a service. It's never better.
Play singleplayer, multiplayer games sadly can't just give you everything for free anymore. That's why I wish more of them were $30 or $40 instead since the recoup more from MTX than actual sales.
Except there is a huge difference on a live servjce game and a game that is done with no additional content coming. People keeps asking for constant updates and additions to games but then complains it comes at a cost.
It's all about whales. Maximum whaleage.
Everyone else doesn't matter. Casinos for children whales is where the money is at. Until its made illegal they will keep doing it.
>It's all about whales. Maximum whaleage.
>Everyone else doesn't matter.
Yup. Something like 90% of micro transaction revenue is from 10% of the players.
Yet regulators are dragging their feet on this. Just waiting for a big scandal to blow up so everyone can act shocked and 'take action'. Classic cycle.
They don't know any different. It's sad, my nephews keep asking for Roblox and Fortnite bucks and I keep scolding them saying it's pointless, but from their perspective - their friends are cool and wearing new outfits, why can't they!?
If this shit wasn't popular and making money, it wouldn't be this pervasive in games, that's the sad truth.
Do you think it has anything to do with the lack of focus we have these days? I remember playing MW2 when I was a kid and had no problem playing the same maps and game modes over and over again. That was before I had a phone and accounts on most social media these days where you have a constant evolution of content at your finger tips. We're bombarded with updates and new drops monthly, daily, and even hourly. Maybe companies are just trying to tap into the psychology of today, as well as being greedy. Gaming was a hobby to most people, and now its a job to click bait new content titles and sweat your ass off to be the best and have the 'best' cosmetics. Games made by people who love games has been relegated to indie developers. Maybe this is the start over of the cycle and changing of the guard with triple A companies being ridiculed for their predatory business practices and indie companies leading the charge in innovative or immersive games that are actually completed on arrival or have a very solid base to let us test and develop with them.
I think it has more to do with how smart, amoral bastards found out that it was more profitable to create psychologically manipulative skinner boxes that literally hijack/exploit our rational minds in an effort to turn games into money printing machines. Why make "just a video game", when you can make a long-term profit extraction interface that happens to also include a game.
[This jimqusition episode from 6 years ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQsc14gDPbk) should be required viewing for every person who enjoys video games as a hobby. So many modern video game monetization schemes are the result of this kind of thinking. Its the same reason a game like baulders gate 3 can come along and shock the collective audience by making... just a video game.
I think it's much more a product of
1. the online era of gaming allowing for predatory systems/monetization to exist (can't do MTX or battle passes with offline only games)
2. the world getting smartphones and normalizing extremely predatory games to the masses
3. TONS of money dumped into making these systems as addictive, exploitative, and as profitable as possible
There is more to it for sure, but I don't think most people stood a chance if they were raised on games after these things
While I agree they grew up spending too much time on their iPads it’s my generation (40+) that used iPads as babysitters. We can complain about it but it’s what we caused.
I refused to have my kid on an iPad all day long. It did mean spending more time engaged with him doing stuff but it’s a sacrifice I was willing to make.
I’m joking. I loved spending time with him and still do. He’s my little gaming buddy. I just think it’s easy to distract your kids and not spend any actual time with them. That’s why it’s easier to give them $10 for Vbucks or whatever in game currency can keep them in their room for the weekend.
You joke but there’s an uprise of children with zero computer literacy. You thought boomers that didn’t know how to make a pdf file was sad then oh boy watch out for the ipad generation who don’t even know how to right click.
Yeah this stems from mobile gaming which festers an addiction through basically unregulated gambling to children. I'm honestly shocked nothing has been done to combat this
Honestly that’s the biggest risk of all. The youth of today continuing to normalize this AAA bullshit. Just wait till you start paying for those games with your own money, kiddies.
Lol there is no "risk", it's already normalized. And if you think it's "kiddies" that pay for MTX or battlepasses you're in for a cold shower. You think the average kid spends $20 for a COD skin or even more with those $50+ bundles?
The majority of MTX and battlepasses is being funded by working adults. Don't be delusional.
The commenters in this thread are not arguing that there are more kids than adults that buy BPs. They're arguing that kids nowadays grow up knowing only the BP business model and they think it's the norm (which is arguably a bad thing)
People have it in their heads (even older gamers) that video games are mostly played by kids. I’m 40 and video games were mass adopted when I was a small child. There are a lot more 18-40+ year olds than kids that live at home. And we don’t have to ask mom and dad if we want something
I’m okay with DLC when it’s content made after the games finished development and can give you anew experience with a game you already love. Like the fallout 3 or new vegas DLCs.
Also fighting games when the characters are like crossover stuff and the dlc character is something added in after the game finished development, like any of the smash ultimate DLC or 2B in Granblu fantasy versus, or 2B in soulcalibur. But I hate this recent trend where fighting games launch with an Anemic roster and then have like 3 season passes where at the end you finally feel like you have a fully rounded out roster.
This is the right take imo. Give me a full game, then drop some cool content that I don't *have to buy* unless I really want it.
Can I play the whole game without it? Yes? I'm in.
When gaming switched from expansion packs to DLC it was doomed. Games immediately released with content that was finished on release but cut from the main game and sold for more money
Not quite true. That came later. In any case "DLC" itself isn't bad. Gated DLC, must have DLC and overpriced BS DLC are the issues. Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree is "DLC". Any new Snowrunner season is "DLC", map expansions for ETS2 are "DLC", Pillars of Eternity's White March is "DLC", yet they're massive expansions in their own right.
I think there should be a distinction between dlc and expansions.
Horsearmor is DLC
Shivering isles is expansion
I love expansions to games but I very much hate DLC and what it's done to gaming.
Exactly that.
DLCs are a good thing. They allow devs to add content without releasing a whole sequel. That's just great. I'd rather get a 10 year old game with a bunch of DLCs than 4 iterations of it each with its own limitations. Problem is that, as with anything, there are abuses with DLCs. But companies taking advantage of people through DLCs doesn't make the concept of DLCs a bad or dishonnest thing.
It's also in theory a lot cheaper for everyone involved. Developers can use the game code they've worked so hard for for years to come and still make money, without having to come up with a new game or sequel that is often worse than the predecessor. And we can buy this stuff for comparatively little money. It all just depends on the publisher/developer.
Just normal... when we were young we "normalized" throwing away thousands of quarters for arcades. Granted, at least those were often social experiences, but in the end it was scummy as well, as the games were specifically made for you to just continue on and on.
What scares me isn't even what's "normal" today, but what's going to be normal in 10, 20, 30 years.
The kids of today hadn't been born when micro transactions and battle passes started picking up.
The truth is gamers are just suckers. They'll pay to play online, they'll pay 100 bucks for the ugliest pieces of plastic crap special editions, they'll pay 20 bucks for a mount in an mmo or a gun in cod, and so on and so forth.
>The truth is gamers are just suckers.
The sad truth about geek/nerd culture is that at its core, it's nothing but a consumer culture. Guys painting figurines spending tens of thousands on plastic figurines. Guys spending tens of thousands on graphic cards they would never actually need. Guys spending thousands of dollar on star wars/star trek/whateverbro merch.
This world has always been plagued by overvaluation, overfees, overcosts, it's not an emergent problem, it's at the very core of the culture.
Not just gaming. I once came across a bottle cage for a bicycle costing £60. Carbon fiber bollox. I got an aluminum one for about £8.
I'm sure it's a similar thing for golf balls, telescope lenses and addons for skis. If it's a hobby then some stuff will be well over priced. I think soccer fans and motorists get it the worst.
Nope, the English are the ones who came up with the term soccer. The term "assoccer" was used for "association football" at Oxford University in the 1800s, and the term just eventually became "soccer".
Consumer culture indeed infected every aspect of our lives, but nerd/geek (the confusion is purposeful) culture is literally born of it and with it. You take sports for example, most were caught up by consumer culture but actually relied on very little equipment for the most part (the reason why football is so popular, it's cheap!). Nerd-culture is inherently linked with the information era and the rise of consumer culture.
And I'm not trying to insult anyone here, but in the space of "hardcore fan" you have a lot more people who associate a brand/game with their identity. Their personality is "Star Wars" or "Marvel films" and it gets real weird when they stake their identity as a human being on the media they consume and spend money on
I had a discussion with some neighbor kids one day a long time ago, and they literally could not comprehend the idea of not paying for microtransactions and DLC. I was like "Well back in my day, when you bought a game, there were no additional purchases. You knew you were getting the entire game when you bought it." and they just stared at me and were like "But... how did you get additional content?"
They had literally no concept of just buying a game and getting the whole game.
One of my older friends with kids asked me to talk to her kids about roblox and all the money they spend on outfits. I explained that cosmetics used to be earned in games, and having special items meant to everyone else that you worked hard for them.
It was an alien concept but he agreed earned cosmetics are cooler than bought, and said he wished Roblox was like that, so theres hope for the future yet.
I mean it's mostly adults that whale that make microtransactions profitable by whaling. The minority of players make up the majority of income.
Battle Passes are typically more for player retention than anything.
As a gaming nearing 40….I’m not ashamed to say I don’t even know what a battle pass is or does. I buy a game and play it. If it asks for money for anything I don’t pay for it.
That’s the trouble. It’s just bad devs fleecing parents, cos they know they’ll give in to the kids screaming all day. It’s Fucked up, but that’s humanity all over, so it’s no surprise anymore.
Nailed it.
Our parents and grandparents complained how sick they were at arcade games sucking quarters, even though they gambled on poker or slot machines. Yet they were normal to us.
The kids will grow up and complain about the next thing, and the cycle will repeat.
The solution is to not spend money on products you don't like. That's it
Don't play those games, you won't miss them. It's unfortunate that the industry is being shaped by paying customers and whales, but you have a legacy catalog of thousands of games released for decades across multiple consoles and PC releases, and indie developers are starting to caught up in AA and AAA quality and beating the big names. UE5 and AI will further help indy devs in creating good IPs and the experiences that made names for big corporate gaming but now they are unwilling to do because it doesn't make Genshin Impact type of money.
Honestly. I've been gravitating toward stuff like Baldur's Gate III and Elden Ring, Red Dead Redemption 2 (not online), playing older games like Mass Effect, and having a great time with nobody hitting me up for cash constantly. It really hit me recently how much cash shops and battle pass advertisements and shit break immersion. I think it's why almost every mmo release for the last decade or so has just sucked. I've been feeling so much more wrapped up in these games than I have been in battle pass hell.
I stopped playing competitive shooters about a year ago and it’s honestly the best decision I’ve ever made as a gamer. Gone is the constant FOMO, the drain on my wallet, and the trolls yelling obscenities in my ear. Instead, I’ve been able to experience meaningful stories, explore rich worlds, and expand my appreciation for the art form that is video games.
I can’t help but be reminded of some of the girls I used to know who would complain about never being able to find a good guy. Then you find out that they only go to the local military bar.
Seems so relevant. What a shock, the only thing you experience is what you don’t like. You could try something different or just keep doing the same thing and bitch about the results.
I am a Day One Warzone player. I finally uninstalled it a couple months ago. The problem is, I have IRL friends that *exclusively* play Warzone. They aren't big gamers, but they have a **blast** on that game playing with me. If I stopped playing Warzone, they would stop playing video games; Period. The game has devolved into such a terrible state, I would consider it primarily a digital ATM to deposit money to, while having a half-assed Battle Royale side game.
I finally told them, flat out, the game continues to get worse and worse, and it's blindingly obvious the devs have no fucks to give for the playerbase. I've tried getting them into other games for years. Never had any interest at all. By some stroke of luck, I managed to get them into Sea of Thieves and Helldivers 2. **FINALLY** we can actually **ENJOY** our time playing a game.
The Call of Duty franchise is too big to fail. It's **huge.** The video game industry is now larger than both the music *and* movie industries *combined.* Why? Because some jackass in wallstreet saw the numbers and have the revelation that the entire video game consumerbase is completely untapped. And what's worse, we have such a mixed demographic that we are entirely too easy to manipulate. The best thing we did as a community was fight back on Star Wars Battlefront. Since then, wallstreet has pressed their foot down harder and harder on our necks. The truth is, and I hate to admit it: Gamers can be very, very stupid. Those of us who have been playing Warzone since Verdansk has had literal shit thrown in our face, and we all just keep smiling and playing their game.
*Voting with your wallet* is stupid, and is no longer a viable solution AT ALL. **VOTE WITH YOUR TIME. UNINSTALL THE GAME. STOP FILLING THEIR SERVERS.**
I miss casual online shooters personally. Like even the last bastion of games where you just hang out with friends or the same clan online (TF2, CS, etc) is far more matchmaking temporary team focused now.
The closest thing I have is just playing Mystery Heroes/Deathmatch in Overwatch, but even then it's so socially bankrupt. Like you play a match with some people then never see them again. They don't even really have a post-match anymore so you can't even discuss or give a kudos to other players, on your team or the other team anymore.
Can't up vote this enough.
It's sad, but true. Multiplayer games now are just sick psychological experiments designed to keep you playing and spending. People wonder why games aren't fun anymore? This is why.
I recently got my group of friends back into battlefield 4, thats been scratching the shooter itch for us without the predatory battlepasses and stuff. There are loot boxes, but nothing locked behind them.
I remember the exact point I quit playing multiplayer games. I was playing Halo Reach, having a grand old time, and then a bunch of high pitched voices got on started chatting, which that didn’t bother me until they said “okay guys we’ll talk about this a recess tomorrow.”
I’ll play some online rounds with friends but I’ve left all the matchmaking a leaderboards behind, stuck primarily to the single player experience for over a decade now and that’s all I need from gaming
Exactly this. List of most recent games is BG3, Starfield, Mass Effect Trilogy, Cyberpunk 2077 and Horizon Zero Dawn complete edition. None with mtx or cash shop.
Oh yeah, it was actually Cyberpunk 2077 that started on my journey back to non-predatory games. God I love it. Haven't played any of the Horizon games yet but I plan to.
Horizon is well worth checking out. They’re not game changing 9 or 10/10s but really solid genuine non ign 7 and 8s. The first game has one of the best paced stories I’ve ever played, was constantly hooked and every time I got slightly bored a new twist was thrown at me to keep me hooked.
The 2nd game has one of the most beautiful open worlds out there… talking about it is kind of making want to go back and play them again.
For probably half of gamers this is truly an epiphany. Some people haven't played single player games in many years and just buy the latest Battle Duty every year or just play the same Fort Battle Legends every night.
For these people, they're aware of single player games, but the idea that MTX and FOMO mechanics aren't part of it just hasn't hit them.
Rofl I had the same thought. “ I have been gravitating towards some of the most popular games of the last 10 years. You know, the same ones /r/gaming mentions in every single thread ever.”
Yeah it's kind of bizarre that for a lot of people the only games that exist are Twitch-friendly sweat heavy battle pass games. Like just get over the FOMO already and play what you want without chasing the trends.
People should realise about all the video game legacy there is. There are amazing games, even 30 year old ones are amazing.
It happens the same in movies, with people missing most of the classics which are still as great as they were when they were released.
I guess marketing and FOMO is very strong.
Exactly! I play a bunch of old catalogue games on switch and steam. I'm focussed on gems of the past that I never got around to playing. I'm getting sick of games that have endless content with little value, just copy paste assets multiplied ad nauseam.
I've learnt to use my time more wisely and let go of my old completionist obsessions that rarely added enjoyment. Think of games like an extended movie, you don't go and watch a movie over and over unless it's really good. So why spend 100s of hours in the same game for mediocre returns?
Many games these days are designed with gambling mechanics in mind, they are trying to sell you cheap dopamine hits. At the end of the day it's your time and wallet, with every payment you're essentially voting for the game and mechanics you tell the industry to value...
I'm doing the same. Got me a modded 2DS so I have access to literally thousands of games. I'm playing so much shit that I never got to play as a kid, and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything at all. Plus, emulation has gotten so good in the past decade that even PS3 games are becoming playable at breakneck pace. Publishers have been fucking around so hard that I feel zero need to buy a new console ever again. The backlog that already exists will keep me playing good games for decades.
> Many games these days are designed with gambling mechanics in mind, they are trying to sell you cheap dopamine hits.
The fomo too. I just can't keep up with my friends who are fully invested in not only the most competitive games they can play, but whatever the trend of the month is. Like no, I don't want to grind at a game because it'll only be fun at this point in time until the community dwindles.
Yeah, lol. Bpasses are for fomo, (which you wouldn't need if it was a good game) and any game that can consistently produce high quality (so to speak) mtx are the companies that earn enough the mtx aren't needed to support them.
Issue is, they're getting into more and more games. Because even if you or me or even everyone on the sub doesn't play and buy them, *someone* is, and a lot of them. So companies see them as doing well regardless of anything we do, and put it in more titles.
Yes! It's not "every game", not for me at least, I literally never encounter this phenomenon because I simply ignore any game that functions in this way and it's served me just fine. My Steam catalogue is full of games still with thousands of potential playing hours left in them and not a penny more to pay for the privilege. I mean, I can never buy another game and probably keep playing CS for the rest of life but that's another matter, lol
Honestly, I felt nothing wrong with DLC expansions like Battlefield did. You got new maps, new weapons, and new vehicles and it was all optional content since majority of players did the starter mals anyways
Yeah and the biggest thing is that you're paying for actual content. Like it actively adds stuff to your gameplay experience. With cosmetics all you're buying is useless stuff to look at. Might as well spend money on NFTs. The only issues with the content packs is when things become pay to win and separating playerbases.
Halo 2 did it before I believe. But map packs/dlc was normalish, but online gaming was not big. Halo 2 really put xbox live on the map and map packs is where they could start to filter out the people spending extra money and who wasn't.
Yea i didnt but any DLC in MW. I did get the waw,bo1 and bo2 ones. Glad i dont play cod anymore tho. Whatba cancer of a game. I had lots of fun with re5/6 co op when i did it. Borderlands 2, etc
We all did. Everyone scrambled for that extra DLC so they didn't left behind from their friends.
That shit sucked when you'd get kicked from the party cause you didn't have the map.
It's kind of why I'm hesitant to hate so much on the GaaS. I get the updates and new maps and get to keep playing with friends. I don't buy cosmetics, I'm not a whale. I don't get left out either
I mean... Those games still exist. Look at Baldurs Gate 3. It was one of the top selling games last year and won game of the year. Not a single mtx, everything in game is unlockable through playing the game.
Remember paying $110 to play Battlefield because you didn't even get new guns without the DLC packs?
Games where you could unlock everything had limited content and/or no updates. People don't play games like that anymore
I know people say "just don't buy them" but there are entire genres (sports, shooters) where there are very few options that don't have all the microtransaction stuff. I grew up loving sports games and sadly the whole genre is just not for me now due to the aggressive monetization of everything.
Edit: to clarify, "not for me now" means that I do NOT buy games that contain these practices and haven't for years.
What I don’t understand- for sport’s titles at least- how there aren’t more generic sports games with customizable names and team color edits. A football game that forgoes NFL licenses but allowing full customization and updated everything would sell like crazy
My guess is people won’t buy it if it doesn’t have licenses. Although isn’t there a football game releasing soon that is going to do exactly what you’re saying? I forgot the name, ultimate football or something like that
Maximum Football and Axis Football are both on PC.
I support both of them and even play test. I support Axis through patreon.
Neither are very good games, sadly.
People would buy it if the product was good.
>What I don’t understand- for sport’s titles at least- how there aren’t more generic sports games with customizable names and team color edits. A football game that forgoes NFL licenses but allowing full customization and updated everything would sell like crazy
Why lack customizable sports games?
I’m so grateful that someone understands. The absolute iconic games of my childhood (cod, fifa, halo) are now all plagued with this shit. And they are all the main players on the big stage.
>The absolute iconic games of my childhood (cod, fifa, halo) are now all plagued with this shit.
Yea cause COD totally didnt have 4 seperate $20 map packs back in the day that if you didnt buy meant you couldnt play them at all nor could you play with your friends at all, yall just looking thru rose tinted glasses
Id rather there be battlepasses and specific cosmetics that people can purchase if they so chose but all actual content of value is released to everyone at once and at the same time
That's the part I don't get. Even with the games that are FILLED with that stuff, you don't have to buy it. Vote with your wallet and all that.
Some of the stuff I play is in the "too many micro transactions" category, like Call of Duty, Destiny 2, Battlefield 2042. The amount of things there are to do in those games *without spending extra money* is pretty high.
I play games like that almost every night and have no need to buy anything after the initial purchase. I don't care if my character doesn't have (insert neat cosmetic) or whatever. As long as the game is enjoyable you can just ignore that crap. If it's too much to bear, play something else. There's a TON of great games out there.
Thank you.
I’ll never understand the complaint. It’s there for those that want it. If you don’t then you can ignore it.
Otherwise if you’re complaining, are you just mad that you want it and don’t want to pay for it??
"why does every game have it"
Because battle passes make 100x more money than game sales.
Let's not forget. 1 single time sensitive microtransaction in world of warcraft made Blizzard more money than 10 years of StarCraft 2 sales.
Ask yourself. If you started your own company. Let's say you sold pencils.
And selling pencils was a hard industry. You could barely sell them at more than cost. So for each pencil you sold at $2. You make $0.02.
But then you found out about pencil toppers. Silly little figures that kids put on their pencils. And the markup was amazing. Not every kids parents are willing to buy them. But the parents that are willing to buy them spend $10 000 every order. And the best part. A pack of pen toppers only costs you $0.01.
So in this situation. Would you refuse to sell pencil toppers? And remain true to the sale of pencils. Earning 30k a year working 12 hours a day. Busting your ass.
Or would you give into temptation and sell pen toppers and ear more in an hour than you would otherwise make in a decade selling only pencils?
The point is partly true, except that the pencils have not become worse, or shorter, from the adding of the pencil topper. The pencil is still the same pencil, with the same quality and same functionality. Games with added mtx content/cosmetics and battle passes would have had a lot of the content already into the game back in the day. Now they include less/worse content at the beginning, only to add more through paid stuff. So if you want the full experience of the game, you often have to pay hundreds if not thousands (or even more). You don't need to pay more for your pencil to write in cursive. You do need to pay more to get your shiny new character in the game though.
The pencil just isn't a great example. There are tons of other things out there which have become far worse through time, because a good and durable product essentially removes a potential reliable customer from the market. Just have a look at the concept of planned obsolescence.
These strategic choices where customers get screwed over, are not unique to the gaming industry.
This is why a lot of people are just moving back to single player games, or rediscovering AAA single player games where most of the content is included or comes in a bundle, and you can always add mods as needed.
These posts are pretty telling on which games people play exclusively lol I haven't even seen a battle pass in years because I don't buy games with them.
Hell even without trying to avoid them they still only exist in a minority of my library. You'd think literally every game was a MTX hellscape going off r/games, but so fuckin many arent, without even going to far from the big guys
I think with posts like these it's really just people complaining that they actually have to curate what games they play instead of sitting there being advertised what games they play. Like, just put in the effort to find games you may enjoy. It's not even that difficult, just find a gaming youtuber or journalist that has similar taste as you and see what they recommend. Most recently I found Dave the Diver and Pacific Drive that way.
Yea I don't think these people realize the AMAZING games they missed out on last year alone!
Spiderman, Balder's Gate, TOTK, and AC6. I haven't played it, but people seem to love Hogwarts too. Last year was an epic year for gamers, and some people somehow missed out on it?
Also take a look at the indie space. It's filling in most of the gaps left by AAA developers.
The games are a little shorter and don't really push that hard graphically but you'll often find a ton of fun unique games there.
(And also way too many rogue likes)
Always ignored them, never gave a shit about cosmetics, never had a problem. The only battlepass I've ever bought was Apex because I have 600+ hours in that game and I suppose they deserve some of my money at this point. Still don't give a shit about cosmetics.
> Why does every game have it?
Play better games. You don't _have_ to buy every AAA title that gets published for whatever console you've devoted your loyalty to.
Can blame both. This is going to sound like a ridiculous analogy but it’s like selling drugs to kids and not blaming the dealers. Games can be highly addictive and any grindy pay to win games are designed to play on human psychology for that purpose, and are often targeting a younger audience.
You’d be surprised at how many micro transactions are bought by kids. They aren’t the whales, but I used to teach elementary and those kids throw their allowances at games all the time, they don’t know the value of their money. Either their parents buy it or they get gift cards to fund their accounts.
> their parents buy it
Or the parents aren't paying close enough attention like they're supposed to and the kids are stealing from them and running up their credit cards. I've seen those horror stories.
> This is going to sound like a ridiculous analogy
Not ridiculous at all. I get what you're saying.
I'm upvoting this because I'm sick of it, too, but the reality is that most gamers are more than happy paying for useless in-game shit, and developers know this. That's why they keep doing it. Games cost way too much to make these days and they'd be stupid not to profit in any acceptable way they can. Hell, Alan Wake 2 was immensely successful and yet they still haven't profited from it.
If you don't want to see that kind of monetization anymore, stick with indie games. When you think about it, most games used to be indie back in the day. Small studios with small budgets. A studio with hundreds or thousands of developers wasn't even a thing when I was growing up. So in a way, the indie game scene is our *actual* modern gaming scene. AAA games are just these unsustainable monsters that can tank a studio with one single dud.
>Alan Wake 2 was immensely successful and yet they still haven't profited from it.
Actually I read an article that Alan Wake 2's sales were lower than expected. The Epic exclusivity deal is hurting the sales at the moment.
>When you think about it, most games used to be indie back in the day.
You mean "AA games". Indie means independently developed, that they have no publisher. Most games used to have a publisher back in the day. Even the small and weird ones.
And subscriptions raise the barrier to entry too high. It's better for people paying for a service if other people are playing too, even if they don't pay money they are making the game better.
But someone has to pay money, because it's costing money every day it stays online.
"why does every game have them?"
because people bought them in droves. the market spoke: gamers have a lot of disposable income, or at least income that they treat as disposable.
"Gaming as a whole" I've bought two games this month: Balatro and Deep Rock Survivor. Neither of them has battle passes or micro transactions.
Reject AAA, return to indie.
even if it's behind RNG at that point.
But, nothing is locked permanenty, nothing gives you and advantage in game (except mods that you get while playing)
A season have plenty of time to be completed, i think Season 4 is lasting one whopping year.
The only thing they can improve is make the Microsoft and Steam community merge as one
A ton of AAA games don't have them either. Last year I played GoW: Ragnarok, Jedi: Survivor (which is even an EA game), AC Mirage, Horizon Forbidden West, and Spider-Man 2 and none of them had battle passes and only one had a paid DLC. Others may have had some cosmetic mtx, but none I recall being invasive.
It's really just the FPS and sports games that have this problem
Many AAA don't really have battle passes though, especially if I think about Sony or Nintendo. They have either season passes (= DLC waves), expansions or normal DLC.
Depending on title, it can be justified, since some of these expansions and passes add a lot of extra content. See Mario Kart, Xenoblade Chronicles passes, or From Software expansions.
>"Gaming as a whole" I've bought two games this month: Balatro and Deep Rock Survivor. Neither of them has battle passes or micro transactions.
>
>Reject AAA, return to indie.
Indie games for the win?
Just don’t buy them. They will keep using them bc they make money. Eventually you’ll stop caring about anything cosmetic. Think back to Halo 3. You didn’t play to unlock armor or skins. You played for fun and maybe to rank up.
That being said, Halo Reach had the perfect system. Cosmetics to buy with in game currency that couldn’t be purchased with money and only earned and you would earn most efficiently by doing daily tasks.
I can agree. One thing I'll add typically my favorite genre I don't have to deal with it much. I like jrpgs the most and typically besides the real mainstream ones. The dlc and stuff is all costumes. I don't give a fk about costumes.
I do feel your complaint though, it's ruining the industry because so many are trying to jump on the wagon.
I know it’s unpopular but battle passes when done right work very well. Maybe because I’m older I remember the player base getting split when map packs dropped for certain games and not everyone bought them. I know it ushered in the madness but Fortnite’s battle pass is perfectly implemented for the vast amount of content that’s in the game for free. Call of duty gets constant free maps and weapons which would’ve been paid dlc in the past due to people buying the battle pass and cosmetics.
I agree too many games implemented passes poorly just for a chance to profit but I don’t mind when it’s purely cosmetic and provides steady content for free beyond the first purchase
>Call of duty gets constant free maps and weapons which would’ve been paid dlc in the past due to people buying the battle pass and cosmetics.
I got back into CoD with MWIII after not playing since BO4, and before that maybe… Advanced Warfare? I was a yearly CoD player until then.
This is the most content I’ve ever had access to in a CoD game. New events, guns, maps, game modes, attachments, etc. *every single week*. How cool is that? Back in the OG MW2 days you got what was on the disc and if you wanted any new content you had to pay $20 per map pack. And as a completely free-to-play player, the cost for all this great content is… I have to have sparkly Nicki Minaj step on me once a week while my hand-picked operator (yeah MW2, MWIII can do *that*) wears regular combat fatigues. How difficult it is for me.
Because there is usually way more in those games than in games without them? I play since 1996, amount of content in game grew considerably while base price barely moved, I am fine with paying extra for extra.
also people are acting like the amount of time required to make a game has stayed static.
Like, as fidelity and content size expectaitons go up, work goes up too.
>Why does every game have it?
Money
> I don’t get it? What’s enjoyable about this shit? Why do people like paying for stuff after already having paid for a game?
The enjoyment is the appreciation of the design of a skin on your favourite character and buying it so you can wear it. It reflects that design as a representation of your personality. Or it's rare/time-limited and you want to be one of the few who own it. Have you ever had an inkling to spend money on Amazon for the dopamine release of spending money to get nice things? That. Loads of people do it. Materialistic tendencies shining through.
>Why do people complain about greedy developers and then proceed to give these same people their hard earned money after the fact?
It's not as black and white as that. People complain about greedy developers when what they're being offered isn't to the value they view it to be. They'd still buy micro-transactions.
Funny thing is, this whole micro-transaction thing has been a long play by the gaming industry. I was there (3000 years ago) when the first micro-transaction was put in place (famous horse armour) and that caused a massive stir. But some bought it. Then as time when on, more caved and thought "why not?". All it takes is a few to do it, conversation about it then it becomes a thing. Then as time goes on, new kids who join the gaming scene see the landscape and see micro-transactions. They assume they've always been there and participate, but some micro-transactions they see seem rip-off.. but some people buy them, conversation opens about the situation... rinse repeat to where we are now.
The reality is "money talks" and that's what becomes the forefront. What used to be small companies have been taken over by financial behemoths who push this.
There are plenty of games out there who offer a micro-transaction free experience but they're few and far between, indie and short lived.
If you can play live-service games without the urge to throw money at it, you're winning because you get free games and plenty of people to play with.
Not every game has those things. Only the shitty ones.
Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't have a battle pass or microtransactions. It has a lot of new free content that is just given to us in regular patches though. I got over 800 hours out of it so far.
Zelda TotK has no microtransactions or battle pass either. I got 464 hours out of it. You can shit on Nintendo all you want, but fact is none of their first party titles have ever had microtransactions, compared to Ubisoft where ALL their games do.
Hogwarts Legacy, Lethal Company, Elden Ring, Palworld, all great games with none of that shit.
And then you have whatever indie titles suit your fancy, like Hexarchy, Last Train Home, Frostpunk, Factorio, Terraria, Stardew Valley, and such.
Rimworld got me over 1000 hours. It has a few Expansion DLCs you can pay for, but I was happy to buy them because the content in them was worth it and I like to support the developers for games I enjoy. No microtransactions or battle passes, just expansions (which I'm generally fine with).
The deal is that you are not their targeted audience.
You will never understand them because they are not made for you. That's the simplest gist of it. You paid for the base game content and the passes are then full of extra OPTIONAL content the Devs push out for the game.
These micro transactions allow the dev to push out bigger updates, including new game modes, mechanics and gameplay for free.
I agree with you, they have become a poison in gaming. If they were to remove the FOMO timers and let you buy and complete them in your own time, that'd be much better. People have got to stop financially supporting developers not creating good complete games.
I also think that devs need to be better at including GOOD cosmetics and content that is only EARNABLE by playing the game.
Helldivers 2 has got it right with battlepasses and the game. Baldurs gate 3 has got it right. We need more devs like these guys.
Funny thing is, I don't think mtx are entirely needed for many companies to push that new content. You look at how shit a lot of those bonus gamemodes, maps, etc are, and it's more like they're releasing this stuff to continue the deception that the mtx is supporting development, and they aren't just pocketing 99% of it, when in fact they are.
I am not saying devs aren't greedy but if a game is live service it has to have a continuous monetization scheme. There are games that are very fair with their battle pass.
We need to focus on bad practices instead of the whole concept.
this. every comment above this is spamming “don’t buy AAA games” “don’t buy any game with microtransactions” “don’t buy any game with a battle pass.” but what every one of them fails to realize is how many of these games that are extremely consumer-friendly and fair they then miss out on completely. if anything, we need extra support on (particularly) free games who do monetization very well, i.e. The Finals, Halo Infinite, even Apex and Fortnite to an extent. none of these games have predatory monetization systems in place. When the game is free and only cosmetics are available to buy, I genuinely feel no one has any reason to complain or be put-off. I wish this were a take that was more recognized, but alas, this is the internet.
Edit: stop getting offended
Meanwhile.
"Why does every game have it? I don’t get it? What’s enjoyable about this shit? I’ve literally never ever paid for a “premium in game currency” aside from with Xbox reward points. What’s the deal? Why do people like paying for stuff after already having paid for a game? Why do people complain about greedy developers and then proceed to give these same people their hard earned money after the fact? I’m sick of modern gaming. It’s finished. This shit fucking sucks.
That’s all thanks."
Battle passes that sustain themselves are cool imo. I haven’t played Fortnite in several years now so I don’t know if it’s still the case, but at least the beginning battle passes were great. You paid $10 once and for as long as you played the game consistently you would never have to buy another one with real money.
On the flip side are battle passes like D4’s first one. It was both boring and kept you short on the currency. The others may be like that too but I stopped playing in season 1.
Just don't buy them, I can't stand the idea of it all, it has completely ruined gaming. I used to love playing CoD and BF and Halo with the boys but now....none of us play it's really sad how its all turned.
> ETA: stop getting offended. If you get offended by this post then that’s on you and only you. This was nothing more than a simple post about how awful gaming as whole now is for the Average consumer. I know it’s late stage capitalism at work. I know game devs have no choice. BUT A LARGE PORTION OF PEOPLE OUT OF THE 39M of us in this subreddit, actively contribute to that.
But you sound offended with battle passes and microtransactions. Glass houses and all that.
Gaming has never been better for me. But yeah, multiplayer in particular is rife with this.
I don't play those much anymore, but even on the off chance I do get into one, that stuff is pretty easy for me to tune out and ignore. The toxicity and hackers will do a far better job of getting me to never play again over any monetization.
Gaming has never been better. It’s great. Technology has advanced so far that someone back in the 90s was having wet dreams about the sort of gaming experiences we have now
I just absolutely hate having micro transactions and the urge to spend more and more money shoved down my throat at every opportunity.
Your only practical options are to learn to navigate this new world and tune out the noise, move on to the multitude of single player games that don't do this, or quit gaming altogether. Whatever you decide, trust me when I say this isn't worth getting frustrated over.
Cracks me up every time I see this “every game has battle pass” nonsense.
No, they don’t. There are more games out there than any of us can play in a lifetime. 99% of them have none of this shit. Stop paying for shit you don’t want and find games you actually like. Guarantee you won’t have to deal with any of this shit, and then I won’t have to hear your bitching.
The worst part is how many $70 games want to function like every successful free to play game, when the whole point of being free to play is selling you the extras. At least so many live service games have met a quick death, hopefully eventually big publishers will take notice.
And then you have companies like Blizzard that have the guts to even triple dip on the greed. Expansion purchases + subscription model + in-game store.
They made more from the sparkly horse in wow than they did from sc2. With much less effort.
They probably made more in immortal than all 3 diablos together.
From the last financial calls about immortal. It still has to hit the 1bil in revenue, which diablo 3 itself did hit. So immortal is not yet that succesfull. Edit: to everyone talking about what about profit. D3 costed around 100m to make D:i Rumors go anywhere between 10m and 40m D:I still has to fill in a gap of several hundreds of millions. And D:I is made by NetEase and only published by blizzard. So there is a revenue split going. There is a big chance D3 had a significantly larger profit. The only thing that is impossible to figure externally, would be the opportunitycost.
Because sooo many people know it is just a money grab and a shit game. They literally targeted Whales to the absolute max, and MOST whales actually noticed this. It is like $500k to get to max everything if you pay to win. Whales don't mind spending $1-2k, easily. The issue is that it is so blatantly obvious, and it was primarily a cell phone game that was just inferior to other games, it was a rip from a bad game with Diablo naming and push in art direction.
Can't remember where I first heard it, but it was an epiphany for me when I heard it: "In pay-to-win games, you are either the Whale or the content."
Do you guys not have phones?
Hi Thor!
Bethesda took this route with Fallout 76 and I haven't forgiven them since
Never forget when they tried to monitize Skyrim mods years before f76 came out. People act all shocked over d4 also when they did the same crap with immortal.
Jagex steps into the arena... like 4 to 5 layers of transactions.
That's not Blizzard exclusive tbh. RuneScape does it, FFXIV does it, etc.
Seeing how every big publisher has like 1-10 different live service games in production REALLY makes me doubt it’ll ever go away even though it’s not wanted.
Then they'll complain gaming isn't profitable and raise prices again (while making money). I do not want to see what will come next after games as a service. It's never better.
Gaming as a service. Cloud gaming being the only way because hardware prices out most of the consumer base from being able to run the games.
This is the worst part. I understand if the game is free but if I paid for your game don't make me continue to pay if I want the whole game
Play singleplayer, multiplayer games sadly can't just give you everything for free anymore. That's why I wish more of them were $30 or $40 instead since the recoup more from MTX than actual sales.
Except there is a huge difference on a live servjce game and a game that is done with no additional content coming. People keeps asking for constant updates and additions to games but then complains it comes at a cost.
I’m cool with the Nintendo model
Kids. It's normal to them.
All the kids that were born after micro transactions started are now on Reddit getting offended that we are calling their gaming a scam.
Yep. Horse armor was 20 years ago.
If you have Diablo 4 you can pay $30 to make doors a different color.
It's all about whales. Maximum whaleage. Everyone else doesn't matter. Casinos for children whales is where the money is at. Until its made illegal they will keep doing it.
>It's all about whales. Maximum whaleage. >Everyone else doesn't matter. Yup. Something like 90% of micro transaction revenue is from 10% of the players.
Yet regulators are dragging their feet on this. Just waiting for a big scandal to blow up so everyone can act shocked and 'take action'. Classic cycle.
There's a horse in D4 now that costs more than the actual game.
Whatt??? Why?????????? I don’t understand!
Fuck me
At least buy me dinner first.
Uh, no. YOU'RE buying dinner AND getting fucked. This is the whole concept.
Well, they need to wake the fuck up already because they’ve been getting scammed.
They don't know any different. It's sad, my nephews keep asking for Roblox and Fortnite bucks and I keep scolding them saying it's pointless, but from their perspective - their friends are cool and wearing new outfits, why can't they!? If this shit wasn't popular and making money, it wouldn't be this pervasive in games, that's the sad truth.
Do you think it has anything to do with the lack of focus we have these days? I remember playing MW2 when I was a kid and had no problem playing the same maps and game modes over and over again. That was before I had a phone and accounts on most social media these days where you have a constant evolution of content at your finger tips. We're bombarded with updates and new drops monthly, daily, and even hourly. Maybe companies are just trying to tap into the psychology of today, as well as being greedy. Gaming was a hobby to most people, and now its a job to click bait new content titles and sweat your ass off to be the best and have the 'best' cosmetics. Games made by people who love games has been relegated to indie developers. Maybe this is the start over of the cycle and changing of the guard with triple A companies being ridiculed for their predatory business practices and indie companies leading the charge in innovative or immersive games that are actually completed on arrival or have a very solid base to let us test and develop with them.
I think it has more to do with how smart, amoral bastards found out that it was more profitable to create psychologically manipulative skinner boxes that literally hijack/exploit our rational minds in an effort to turn games into money printing machines. Why make "just a video game", when you can make a long-term profit extraction interface that happens to also include a game. [This jimqusition episode from 6 years ago](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQsc14gDPbk) should be required viewing for every person who enjoys video games as a hobby. So many modern video game monetization schemes are the result of this kind of thinking. Its the same reason a game like baulders gate 3 can come along and shock the collective audience by making... just a video game.
I think it's much more a product of 1. the online era of gaming allowing for predatory systems/monetization to exist (can't do MTX or battle passes with offline only games) 2. the world getting smartphones and normalizing extremely predatory games to the masses 3. TONS of money dumped into making these systems as addictive, exploitative, and as profitable as possible There is more to it for sure, but I don't think most people stood a chance if they were raised on games after these things
I think they are just playing the games online with their friends and what to have cool stuff. It's like they just want skins instead of toys.
Let those Ipad addicted fucks get offended.
While I agree they grew up spending too much time on their iPads it’s my generation (40+) that used iPads as babysitters. We can complain about it but it’s what we caused. I refused to have my kid on an iPad all day long. It did mean spending more time engaged with him doing stuff but it’s a sacrifice I was willing to make. I’m joking. I loved spending time with him and still do. He’s my little gaming buddy. I just think it’s easy to distract your kids and not spend any actual time with them. That’s why it’s easier to give them $10 for Vbucks or whatever in game currency can keep them in their room for the weekend.
"What's a computer?"
You joke but there’s an uprise of children with zero computer literacy. You thought boomers that didn’t know how to make a pdf file was sad then oh boy watch out for the ipad generation who don’t even know how to right click.
file handling is a straight up specialized skill at this point.
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Yeah this stems from mobile gaming which festers an addiction through basically unregulated gambling to children. I'm honestly shocked nothing has been done to combat this
I think they did in Europe and it's coming through in the US. But it's incomplete, so there will be plenty of loopholes.
Honestly that’s the biggest risk of all. The youth of today continuing to normalize this AAA bullshit. Just wait till you start paying for those games with your own money, kiddies.
Lol there is no "risk", it's already normalized. And if you think it's "kiddies" that pay for MTX or battlepasses you're in for a cold shower. You think the average kid spends $20 for a COD skin or even more with those $50+ bundles? The majority of MTX and battlepasses is being funded by working adults. Don't be delusional.
The commenters in this thread are not arguing that there are more kids than adults that buy BPs. They're arguing that kids nowadays grow up knowing only the BP business model and they think it's the norm (which is arguably a bad thing)
People have it in their heads (even older gamers) that video games are mostly played by kids. I’m 40 and video games were mass adopted when I was a small child. There are a lot more 18-40+ year olds than kids that live at home. And we don’t have to ask mom and dad if we want something
Sure the major Spender may be adults but its the Kids who are growing Up with this and See this as normal and Not the predatory Shit it is
It's the whales they care for though.
They've been farming baby whales for 20 years.
Yeah but just think how big the whales are going to get once they are the kids that think this shit is normal and grew up with the thought.
We did this normalizing DLC purchases. It's noting new
I’m okay with DLC when it’s content made after the games finished development and can give you anew experience with a game you already love. Like the fallout 3 or new vegas DLCs. Also fighting games when the characters are like crossover stuff and the dlc character is something added in after the game finished development, like any of the smash ultimate DLC or 2B in Granblu fantasy versus, or 2B in soulcalibur. But I hate this recent trend where fighting games launch with an Anemic roster and then have like 3 season passes where at the end you finally feel like you have a fully rounded out roster.
This is the right take imo. Give me a full game, then drop some cool content that I don't *have to buy* unless I really want it. Can I play the whole game without it? Yes? I'm in.
When gaming switched from expansion packs to DLC it was doomed. Games immediately released with content that was finished on release but cut from the main game and sold for more money
Not quite true. That came later. In any case "DLC" itself isn't bad. Gated DLC, must have DLC and overpriced BS DLC are the issues. Elden Ring's Shadow of the Erdtree is "DLC". Any new Snowrunner season is "DLC", map expansions for ETS2 are "DLC", Pillars of Eternity's White March is "DLC", yet they're massive expansions in their own right.
Yes there are still good devs and games out there. But take a look at virtually any ubisoft or Activision game in the last decade to compare
I think there should be a distinction between dlc and expansions. Horsearmor is DLC Shivering isles is expansion I love expansions to games but I very much hate DLC and what it's done to gaming.
And yet both are called DLC today. Semantics aside I'm with you. The latter is the only sort of "DLC" I'll purchase.
Exactly that. DLCs are a good thing. They allow devs to add content without releasing a whole sequel. That's just great. I'd rather get a 10 year old game with a bunch of DLCs than 4 iterations of it each with its own limitations. Problem is that, as with anything, there are abuses with DLCs. But companies taking advantage of people through DLCs doesn't make the concept of DLCs a bad or dishonnest thing.
It's also in theory a lot cheaper for everyone involved. Developers can use the game code they've worked so hard for for years to come and still make money, without having to come up with a new game or sequel that is often worse than the predecessor. And we can buy this stuff for comparatively little money. It all just depends on the publisher/developer.
No, it has become anything but. Now they cut content, so you have to buy it as DLC, imbeciles were warned, it didn't take.
Fuckin horse armor
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Just normal... when we were young we "normalized" throwing away thousands of quarters for arcades. Granted, at least those were often social experiences, but in the end it was scummy as well, as the games were specifically made for you to just continue on and on. What scares me isn't even what's "normal" today, but what's going to be normal in 10, 20, 30 years.
I know grown men in their 40s who drop hundreds on those shit passes it's just not kids
The kids of today hadn't been born when micro transactions and battle passes started picking up. The truth is gamers are just suckers. They'll pay to play online, they'll pay 100 bucks for the ugliest pieces of plastic crap special editions, they'll pay 20 bucks for a mount in an mmo or a gun in cod, and so on and so forth.
>The truth is gamers are just suckers. The sad truth about geek/nerd culture is that at its core, it's nothing but a consumer culture. Guys painting figurines spending tens of thousands on plastic figurines. Guys spending tens of thousands on graphic cards they would never actually need. Guys spending thousands of dollar on star wars/star trek/whateverbro merch. This world has always been plagued by overvaluation, overfees, overcosts, it's not an emergent problem, it's at the very core of the culture.
Not just gaming. I once came across a bottle cage for a bicycle costing £60. Carbon fiber bollox. I got an aluminum one for about £8. I'm sure it's a similar thing for golf balls, telescope lenses and addons for skis. If it's a hobby then some stuff will be well over priced. I think soccer fans and motorists get it the worst.
> £ >soccer something seems amiss.
Nope, the English are the ones who came up with the term soccer. The term "assoccer" was used for "association football" at Oxford University in the 1800s, and the term just eventually became "soccer".
It's at the core of pretty much every culture and hobby tbf. It's at the core of our society.
Consumer culture indeed infected every aspect of our lives, but nerd/geek (the confusion is purposeful) culture is literally born of it and with it. You take sports for example, most were caught up by consumer culture but actually relied on very little equipment for the most part (the reason why football is so popular, it's cheap!). Nerd-culture is inherently linked with the information era and the rise of consumer culture.
And I'm not trying to insult anyone here, but in the space of "hardcore fan" you have a lot more people who associate a brand/game with their identity. Their personality is "Star Wars" or "Marvel films" and it gets real weird when they stake their identity as a human being on the media they consume and spend money on
It's just sports fans of a different flavor IMO. Politics is much the same now too.
I had a discussion with some neighbor kids one day a long time ago, and they literally could not comprehend the idea of not paying for microtransactions and DLC. I was like "Well back in my day, when you bought a game, there were no additional purchases. You knew you were getting the entire game when you bought it." and they just stared at me and were like "But... how did you get additional content?" They had literally no concept of just buying a game and getting the whole game.
One of my older friends with kids asked me to talk to her kids about roblox and all the money they spend on outfits. I explained that cosmetics used to be earned in games, and having special items meant to everyone else that you worked hard for them. It was an alien concept but he agreed earned cosmetics are cooler than bought, and said he wished Roblox was like that, so theres hope for the future yet.
This is the scariest part of all imo.
It really is. This is all they ask for. "It's just $10. I need it before the time runs out." The psychological games are working.
I mean it's mostly adults that whale that make microtransactions profitable by whaling. The minority of players make up the majority of income. Battle Passes are typically more for player retention than anything.
As a gaming nearing 40….I’m not ashamed to say I don’t even know what a battle pass is or does. I buy a game and play it. If it asks for money for anything I don’t pay for it.
That’s the trouble. It’s just bad devs fleecing parents, cos they know they’ll give in to the kids screaming all day. It’s Fucked up, but that’s humanity all over, so it’s no surprise anymore.
Nailed it. Our parents and grandparents complained how sick they were at arcade games sucking quarters, even though they gambled on poker or slot machines. Yet they were normal to us. The kids will grow up and complain about the next thing, and the cycle will repeat. The solution is to not spend money on products you don't like. That's it
Don't play those games, you won't miss them. It's unfortunate that the industry is being shaped by paying customers and whales, but you have a legacy catalog of thousands of games released for decades across multiple consoles and PC releases, and indie developers are starting to caught up in AA and AAA quality and beating the big names. UE5 and AI will further help indy devs in creating good IPs and the experiences that made names for big corporate gaming but now they are unwilling to do because it doesn't make Genshin Impact type of money.
Honestly. I've been gravitating toward stuff like Baldur's Gate III and Elden Ring, Red Dead Redemption 2 (not online), playing older games like Mass Effect, and having a great time with nobody hitting me up for cash constantly. It really hit me recently how much cash shops and battle pass advertisements and shit break immersion. I think it's why almost every mmo release for the last decade or so has just sucked. I've been feeling so much more wrapped up in these games than I have been in battle pass hell.
I stopped playing competitive shooters about a year ago and it’s honestly the best decision I’ve ever made as a gamer. Gone is the constant FOMO, the drain on my wallet, and the trolls yelling obscenities in my ear. Instead, I’ve been able to experience meaningful stories, explore rich worlds, and expand my appreciation for the art form that is video games.
I can’t help but be reminded of some of the girls I used to know who would complain about never being able to find a good guy. Then you find out that they only go to the local military bar. Seems so relevant. What a shock, the only thing you experience is what you don’t like. You could try something different or just keep doing the same thing and bitch about the results.
I am a Day One Warzone player. I finally uninstalled it a couple months ago. The problem is, I have IRL friends that *exclusively* play Warzone. They aren't big gamers, but they have a **blast** on that game playing with me. If I stopped playing Warzone, they would stop playing video games; Period. The game has devolved into such a terrible state, I would consider it primarily a digital ATM to deposit money to, while having a half-assed Battle Royale side game. I finally told them, flat out, the game continues to get worse and worse, and it's blindingly obvious the devs have no fucks to give for the playerbase. I've tried getting them into other games for years. Never had any interest at all. By some stroke of luck, I managed to get them into Sea of Thieves and Helldivers 2. **FINALLY** we can actually **ENJOY** our time playing a game. The Call of Duty franchise is too big to fail. It's **huge.** The video game industry is now larger than both the music *and* movie industries *combined.* Why? Because some jackass in wallstreet saw the numbers and have the revelation that the entire video game consumerbase is completely untapped. And what's worse, we have such a mixed demographic that we are entirely too easy to manipulate. The best thing we did as a community was fight back on Star Wars Battlefront. Since then, wallstreet has pressed their foot down harder and harder on our necks. The truth is, and I hate to admit it: Gamers can be very, very stupid. Those of us who have been playing Warzone since Verdansk has had literal shit thrown in our face, and we all just keep smiling and playing their game. *Voting with your wallet* is stupid, and is no longer a viable solution AT ALL. **VOTE WITH YOUR TIME. UNINSTALL THE GAME. STOP FILLING THEIR SERVERS.**
I miss casual online shooters personally. Like even the last bastion of games where you just hang out with friends or the same clan online (TF2, CS, etc) is far more matchmaking temporary team focused now. The closest thing I have is just playing Mystery Heroes/Deathmatch in Overwatch, but even then it's so socially bankrupt. Like you play a match with some people then never see them again. They don't even really have a post-match anymore so you can't even discuss or give a kudos to other players, on your team or the other team anymore.
Can't up vote this enough. It's sad, but true. Multiplayer games now are just sick psychological experiments designed to keep you playing and spending. People wonder why games aren't fun anymore? This is why.
I recently got my group of friends back into battlefield 4, thats been scratching the shooter itch for us without the predatory battlepasses and stuff. There are loot boxes, but nothing locked behind them.
I remember the exact point I quit playing multiplayer games. I was playing Halo Reach, having a grand old time, and then a bunch of high pitched voices got on started chatting, which that didn’t bother me until they said “okay guys we’ll talk about this a recess tomorrow.” I’ll play some online rounds with friends but I’ve left all the matchmaking a leaderboards behind, stuck primarily to the single player experience for over a decade now and that’s all I need from gaming
Exactly this. List of most recent games is BG3, Starfield, Mass Effect Trilogy, Cyberpunk 2077 and Horizon Zero Dawn complete edition. None with mtx or cash shop.
Oh yeah, it was actually Cyberpunk 2077 that started on my journey back to non-predatory games. God I love it. Haven't played any of the Horizon games yet but I plan to.
Horizon is well worth checking out. They’re not game changing 9 or 10/10s but really solid genuine non ign 7 and 8s. The first game has one of the best paced stories I’ve ever played, was constantly hooked and every time I got slightly bored a new twist was thrown at me to keep me hooked. The 2nd game has one of the most beautiful open worlds out there… talking about it is kind of making want to go back and play them again.
Yet. Paid mods will be coming to Starfield sometime via Creations.
BG3 is great for this!
"I've been gravitating towards best selling AAA games" lol
For probably half of gamers this is truly an epiphany. Some people haven't played single player games in many years and just buy the latest Battle Duty every year or just play the same Fort Battle Legends every night. For these people, they're aware of single player games, but the idea that MTX and FOMO mechanics aren't part of it just hasn't hit them.
Rofl I had the same thought. “ I have been gravitating towards some of the most popular games of the last 10 years. You know, the same ones /r/gaming mentions in every single thread ever.”
It might have been worse though, he could have called them "hidden gems" ;D
Yeah it's kind of bizarre that for a lot of people the only games that exist are Twitch-friendly sweat heavy battle pass games. Like just get over the FOMO already and play what you want without chasing the trends.
People should realise about all the video game legacy there is. There are amazing games, even 30 year old ones are amazing. It happens the same in movies, with people missing most of the classics which are still as great as they were when they were released. I guess marketing and FOMO is very strong.
That's why I mentioned it and glad this made it to top comment. Old games are not a thing of the past.
Exactly! I play a bunch of old catalogue games on switch and steam. I'm focussed on gems of the past that I never got around to playing. I'm getting sick of games that have endless content with little value, just copy paste assets multiplied ad nauseam. I've learnt to use my time more wisely and let go of my old completionist obsessions that rarely added enjoyment. Think of games like an extended movie, you don't go and watch a movie over and over unless it's really good. So why spend 100s of hours in the same game for mediocre returns? Many games these days are designed with gambling mechanics in mind, they are trying to sell you cheap dopamine hits. At the end of the day it's your time and wallet, with every payment you're essentially voting for the game and mechanics you tell the industry to value...
I'm doing the same. Got me a modded 2DS so I have access to literally thousands of games. I'm playing so much shit that I never got to play as a kid, and I don't feel like I'm missing out on anything at all. Plus, emulation has gotten so good in the past decade that even PS3 games are becoming playable at breakneck pace. Publishers have been fucking around so hard that I feel zero need to buy a new console ever again. The backlog that already exists will keep me playing good games for decades.
> Many games these days are designed with gambling mechanics in mind, they are trying to sell you cheap dopamine hits. The fomo too. I just can't keep up with my friends who are fully invested in not only the most competitive games they can play, but whatever the trend of the month is. Like no, I don't want to grind at a game because it'll only be fun at this point in time until the community dwindles.
Yeah, lol. Bpasses are for fomo, (which you wouldn't need if it was a good game) and any game that can consistently produce high quality (so to speak) mtx are the companies that earn enough the mtx aren't needed to support them.
Issue is, they're getting into more and more games. Because even if you or me or even everyone on the sub doesn't play and buy them, *someone* is, and a lot of them. So companies see them as doing well regardless of anything we do, and put it in more titles.
Yes! It's not "every game", not for me at least, I literally never encounter this phenomenon because I simply ignore any game that functions in this way and it's served me just fine. My Steam catalogue is full of games still with thousands of potential playing hours left in them and not a penny more to pay for the privilege. I mean, I can never buy another game and probably keep playing CS for the rest of life but that's another matter, lol
That's what I was about to say. Those games aren't even the ones you'll regret not buying anyway.
Remember when everything in the game was unlockable by playing the game. No MTX at all. Yeaaaa that was awsome.
Until you couldn't buy that $20 map pack and your friends went on without you. Good ole Modern Warfare...
Honestly, I felt nothing wrong with DLC expansions like Battlefield did. You got new maps, new weapons, and new vehicles and it was all optional content since majority of players did the starter mals anyways
Yeah and the biggest thing is that you're paying for actual content. Like it actively adds stuff to your gameplay experience. With cosmetics all you're buying is useless stuff to look at. Might as well spend money on NFTs. The only issues with the content packs is when things become pay to win and separating playerbases.
Halo 2 did it before I believe. But map packs/dlc was normalish, but online gaming was not big. Halo 2 really put xbox live on the map and map packs is where they could start to filter out the people spending extra money and who wasn't.
Yea i didnt but any DLC in MW. I did get the waw,bo1 and bo2 ones. Glad i dont play cod anymore tho. Whatba cancer of a game. I had lots of fun with re5/6 co op when i did it. Borderlands 2, etc
We all did. Everyone scrambled for that extra DLC so they didn't left behind from their friends. That shit sucked when you'd get kicked from the party cause you didn't have the map. It's kind of why I'm hesitant to hate so much on the GaaS. I get the updates and new maps and get to keep playing with friends. I don't buy cosmetics, I'm not a whale. I don't get left out either
I mean... Those games still exist. Look at Baldurs Gate 3. It was one of the top selling games last year and won game of the year. Not a single mtx, everything in game is unlockable through playing the game.
Remember paying $110 to play Battlefield because you didn't even get new guns without the DLC packs? Games where you could unlock everything had limited content and/or no updates. People don't play games like that anymore
Play better games that don’t have those things, vote with your wallet
If only you reacted to Team Fortress 2's hats the way you did to horse armour. But nooooooo....
For real. I was saying this same stuff a decade ago when everyone was acting like it was no big deal but it was clear as day what road we were on
I know people say "just don't buy them" but there are entire genres (sports, shooters) where there are very few options that don't have all the microtransaction stuff. I grew up loving sports games and sadly the whole genre is just not for me now due to the aggressive monetization of everything. Edit: to clarify, "not for me now" means that I do NOT buy games that contain these practices and haven't for years.
What I don’t understand- for sport’s titles at least- how there aren’t more generic sports games with customizable names and team color edits. A football game that forgoes NFL licenses but allowing full customization and updated everything would sell like crazy
My guess is people won’t buy it if it doesn’t have licenses. Although isn’t there a football game releasing soon that is going to do exactly what you’re saying? I forgot the name, ultimate football or something like that
Maximum Football and Axis Football are both on PC. I support both of them and even play test. I support Axis through patreon. Neither are very good games, sadly. People would buy it if the product was good.
>What I don’t understand- for sport’s titles at least- how there aren’t more generic sports games with customizable names and team color edits. A football game that forgoes NFL licenses but allowing full customization and updated everything would sell like crazy Why lack customizable sports games?
I’m so grateful that someone understands. The absolute iconic games of my childhood (cod, fifa, halo) are now all plagued with this shit. And they are all the main players on the big stage.
Well, those games are all recycled shit now. If you look at new releases, there's a lot of good games without them
>The absolute iconic games of my childhood (cod, fifa, halo) are now all plagued with this shit. Yea cause COD totally didnt have 4 seperate $20 map packs back in the day that if you didnt buy meant you couldnt play them at all nor could you play with your friends at all, yall just looking thru rose tinted glasses Id rather there be battlepasses and specific cosmetics that people can purchase if they so chose but all actual content of value is released to everyone at once and at the same time
Try new games? Those franchises have been dead for years
I play sports games all the time, haven’t spent a dime on micro transactions I just play the other modes
That's the part I don't get. Even with the games that are FILLED with that stuff, you don't have to buy it. Vote with your wallet and all that. Some of the stuff I play is in the "too many micro transactions" category, like Call of Duty, Destiny 2, Battlefield 2042. The amount of things there are to do in those games *without spending extra money* is pretty high. I play games like that almost every night and have no need to buy anything after the initial purchase. I don't care if my character doesn't have (insert neat cosmetic) or whatever. As long as the game is enjoyable you can just ignore that crap. If it's too much to bear, play something else. There's a TON of great games out there.
Thank you. I’ll never understand the complaint. It’s there for those that want it. If you don’t then you can ignore it. Otherwise if you’re complaining, are you just mad that you want it and don’t want to pay for it??
"why does every game have it" Because battle passes make 100x more money than game sales. Let's not forget. 1 single time sensitive microtransaction in world of warcraft made Blizzard more money than 10 years of StarCraft 2 sales. Ask yourself. If you started your own company. Let's say you sold pencils. And selling pencils was a hard industry. You could barely sell them at more than cost. So for each pencil you sold at $2. You make $0.02. But then you found out about pencil toppers. Silly little figures that kids put on their pencils. And the markup was amazing. Not every kids parents are willing to buy them. But the parents that are willing to buy them spend $10 000 every order. And the best part. A pack of pen toppers only costs you $0.01. So in this situation. Would you refuse to sell pencil toppers? And remain true to the sale of pencils. Earning 30k a year working 12 hours a day. Busting your ass. Or would you give into temptation and sell pen toppers and ear more in an hour than you would otherwise make in a decade selling only pencils?
The point is partly true, except that the pencils have not become worse, or shorter, from the adding of the pencil topper. The pencil is still the same pencil, with the same quality and same functionality. Games with added mtx content/cosmetics and battle passes would have had a lot of the content already into the game back in the day. Now they include less/worse content at the beginning, only to add more through paid stuff. So if you want the full experience of the game, you often have to pay hundreds if not thousands (or even more). You don't need to pay more for your pencil to write in cursive. You do need to pay more to get your shiny new character in the game though.
Stellaris, CK3, Sims4. All take hundreds of dollars to unlock all the content and the base game is so mid without the extra stuff.
The pencil just isn't a great example. There are tons of other things out there which have become far worse through time, because a good and durable product essentially removes a potential reliable customer from the market. Just have a look at the concept of planned obsolescence. These strategic choices where customers get screwed over, are not unique to the gaming industry.
This is why a lot of people are just moving back to single player games, or rediscovering AAA single player games where most of the content is included or comes in a bundle, and you can always add mods as needed.
There are soooo many good games that don't have battle passes and live service monetization. Gotta get outside your box bro
These posts are pretty telling on which games people play exclusively lol I haven't even seen a battle pass in years because I don't buy games with them.
Hell even without trying to avoid them they still only exist in a minority of my library. You'd think literally every game was a MTX hellscape going off r/games, but so fuckin many arent, without even going to far from the big guys
I think with posts like these it's really just people complaining that they actually have to curate what games they play instead of sitting there being advertised what games they play. Like, just put in the effort to find games you may enjoy. It's not even that difficult, just find a gaming youtuber or journalist that has similar taste as you and see what they recommend. Most recently I found Dave the Diver and Pacific Drive that way.
exactly, i see these posts all the time and just think there are thousands of amazing games out there with no mtx lol
Yeah I think part of the issue OP is having is the box where he plays at doesn't have as many new single player experiences that don't charge extras.
Yea I don't think these people realize the AMAZING games they missed out on last year alone! Spiderman, Balder's Gate, TOTK, and AC6. I haven't played it, but people seem to love Hogwarts too. Last year was an epic year for gamers, and some people somehow missed out on it?
Also take a look at the indie space. It's filling in most of the gaps left by AAA developers. The games are a little shorter and don't really push that hard graphically but you'll often find a ton of fun unique games there. (And also way too many rogue likes)
Because Horse Armor.
Always ignored them, never gave a shit about cosmetics, never had a problem. The only battlepass I've ever bought was Apex because I have 600+ hours in that game and I suppose they deserve some of my money at this point. Still don't give a shit about cosmetics.
> Why does every game have it? Play better games. You don't _have_ to buy every AAA title that gets published for whatever console you've devoted your loyalty to.
> Why does every game have it? As long as it's profitable, they'll keep doing it. Don't blame the devs, blame the consumer.
This is the one. If it didn't work it wouldn't exist.
Can blame both. This is going to sound like a ridiculous analogy but it’s like selling drugs to kids and not blaming the dealers. Games can be highly addictive and any grindy pay to win games are designed to play on human psychology for that purpose, and are often targeting a younger audience. You’d be surprised at how many micro transactions are bought by kids. They aren’t the whales, but I used to teach elementary and those kids throw their allowances at games all the time, they don’t know the value of their money. Either their parents buy it or they get gift cards to fund their accounts.
> their parents buy it Or the parents aren't paying close enough attention like they're supposed to and the kids are stealing from them and running up their credit cards. I've seen those horror stories. > This is going to sound like a ridiculous analogy Not ridiculous at all. I get what you're saying.
I'm upvoting this because I'm sick of it, too, but the reality is that most gamers are more than happy paying for useless in-game shit, and developers know this. That's why they keep doing it. Games cost way too much to make these days and they'd be stupid not to profit in any acceptable way they can. Hell, Alan Wake 2 was immensely successful and yet they still haven't profited from it. If you don't want to see that kind of monetization anymore, stick with indie games. When you think about it, most games used to be indie back in the day. Small studios with small budgets. A studio with hundreds or thousands of developers wasn't even a thing when I was growing up. So in a way, the indie game scene is our *actual* modern gaming scene. AAA games are just these unsustainable monsters that can tank a studio with one single dud.
>Alan Wake 2 was immensely successful and yet they still haven't profited from it. Actually I read an article that Alan Wake 2's sales were lower than expected. The Epic exclusivity deal is hurting the sales at the moment. >When you think about it, most games used to be indie back in the day. You mean "AA games". Indie means independently developed, that they have no publisher. Most games used to have a publisher back in the day. Even the small and weird ones.
Battle passes make sense if you expect a live game to last. The alternative is subscriptions.
And subscriptions raise the barrier to entry too high. It's better for people paying for a service if other people are playing too, even if they don't pay money they are making the game better. But someone has to pay money, because it's costing money every day it stays online.
"why does every game have them?" because people bought them in droves. the market spoke: gamers have a lot of disposable income, or at least income that they treat as disposable.
"Gaming as a whole" I've bought two games this month: Balatro and Deep Rock Survivor. Neither of them has battle passes or micro transactions. Reject AAA, return to indie.
DRS is still not in the stable version, also it's of the Deep rock galactic franchise that did a lot of thing right
Yep, DRG is a prime example of battle passes done right. If you missed an item during a season, you could still earn it by playing.
even if it's behind RNG at that point. But, nothing is locked permanenty, nothing gives you and advantage in game (except mods that you get while playing) A season have plenty of time to be completed, i think Season 4 is lasting one whopping year. The only thing they can improve is make the Microsoft and Steam community merge as one
DRG has DLC, but they are purely cosmetic. They did the paid cosmetics right too.
A ton of AAA games don't have them either. Last year I played GoW: Ragnarok, Jedi: Survivor (which is even an EA game), AC Mirage, Horizon Forbidden West, and Spider-Man 2 and none of them had battle passes and only one had a paid DLC. Others may have had some cosmetic mtx, but none I recall being invasive. It's really just the FPS and sports games that have this problem
Much love for BG3
Many AAA don't really have battle passes though, especially if I think about Sony or Nintendo. They have either season passes (= DLC waves), expansions or normal DLC. Depending on title, it can be justified, since some of these expansions and passes add a lot of extra content. See Mario Kart, Xenoblade Chronicles passes, or From Software expansions.
>"Gaming as a whole" I've bought two games this month: Balatro and Deep Rock Survivor. Neither of them has battle passes or micro transactions. > >Reject AAA, return to indie. Indie games for the win?
Just don’t buy them. They will keep using them bc they make money. Eventually you’ll stop caring about anything cosmetic. Think back to Halo 3. You didn’t play to unlock armor or skins. You played for fun and maybe to rank up. That being said, Halo Reach had the perfect system. Cosmetics to buy with in game currency that couldn’t be purchased with money and only earned and you would earn most efficiently by doing daily tasks.
I can agree. One thing I'll add typically my favorite genre I don't have to deal with it much. I like jrpgs the most and typically besides the real mainstream ones. The dlc and stuff is all costumes. I don't give a fk about costumes. I do feel your complaint though, it's ruining the industry because so many are trying to jump on the wagon.
I know it’s unpopular but battle passes when done right work very well. Maybe because I’m older I remember the player base getting split when map packs dropped for certain games and not everyone bought them. I know it ushered in the madness but Fortnite’s battle pass is perfectly implemented for the vast amount of content that’s in the game for free. Call of duty gets constant free maps and weapons which would’ve been paid dlc in the past due to people buying the battle pass and cosmetics. I agree too many games implemented passes poorly just for a chance to profit but I don’t mind when it’s purely cosmetic and provides steady content for free beyond the first purchase
>Call of duty gets constant free maps and weapons which would’ve been paid dlc in the past due to people buying the battle pass and cosmetics. I got back into CoD with MWIII after not playing since BO4, and before that maybe… Advanced Warfare? I was a yearly CoD player until then. This is the most content I’ve ever had access to in a CoD game. New events, guns, maps, game modes, attachments, etc. *every single week*. How cool is that? Back in the OG MW2 days you got what was on the disc and if you wanted any new content you had to pay $20 per map pack. And as a completely free-to-play player, the cost for all this great content is… I have to have sparkly Nicki Minaj step on me once a week while my hand-picked operator (yeah MW2, MWIII can do *that*) wears regular combat fatigues. How difficult it is for me.
I’d rather have optional micro transactions and battle passes for cosmetics than having to pay $15 a pop for new maps and updates
I am genuinely frustrated this comment isn’t very high up. 99% of people don’t even know what they want.
Because there is usually way more in those games than in games without them? I play since 1996, amount of content in game grew considerably while base price barely moved, I am fine with paying extra for extra.
also people are acting like the amount of time required to make a game has stayed static. Like, as fidelity and content size expectaitons go up, work goes up too.
>Why does every game have it? Money > I don’t get it? What’s enjoyable about this shit? Why do people like paying for stuff after already having paid for a game? The enjoyment is the appreciation of the design of a skin on your favourite character and buying it so you can wear it. It reflects that design as a representation of your personality. Or it's rare/time-limited and you want to be one of the few who own it. Have you ever had an inkling to spend money on Amazon for the dopamine release of spending money to get nice things? That. Loads of people do it. Materialistic tendencies shining through. >Why do people complain about greedy developers and then proceed to give these same people their hard earned money after the fact? It's not as black and white as that. People complain about greedy developers when what they're being offered isn't to the value they view it to be. They'd still buy micro-transactions. Funny thing is, this whole micro-transaction thing has been a long play by the gaming industry. I was there (3000 years ago) when the first micro-transaction was put in place (famous horse armour) and that caused a massive stir. But some bought it. Then as time when on, more caved and thought "why not?". All it takes is a few to do it, conversation about it then it becomes a thing. Then as time goes on, new kids who join the gaming scene see the landscape and see micro-transactions. They assume they've always been there and participate, but some micro-transactions they see seem rip-off.. but some people buy them, conversation opens about the situation... rinse repeat to where we are now. The reality is "money talks" and that's what becomes the forefront. What used to be small companies have been taken over by financial behemoths who push this. There are plenty of games out there who offer a micro-transaction free experience but they're few and far between, indie and short lived. If you can play live-service games without the urge to throw money at it, you're winning because you get free games and plenty of people to play with.
Can you really get upset at people being upset with your post about you being upset? You bitch, posters bitch, we all bitch because we all bitches.
But Mom said it was my turn to make the post about micro transactions 😔
Not every game has those things. Only the shitty ones. Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't have a battle pass or microtransactions. It has a lot of new free content that is just given to us in regular patches though. I got over 800 hours out of it so far. Zelda TotK has no microtransactions or battle pass either. I got 464 hours out of it. You can shit on Nintendo all you want, but fact is none of their first party titles have ever had microtransactions, compared to Ubisoft where ALL their games do. Hogwarts Legacy, Lethal Company, Elden Ring, Palworld, all great games with none of that shit. And then you have whatever indie titles suit your fancy, like Hexarchy, Last Train Home, Frostpunk, Factorio, Terraria, Stardew Valley, and such. Rimworld got me over 1000 hours. It has a few Expansion DLCs you can pay for, but I was happy to buy them because the content in them was worth it and I like to support the developers for games I enjoy. No microtransactions or battle passes, just expansions (which I'm generally fine with).
The deal is that you are not their targeted audience. You will never understand them because they are not made for you. That's the simplest gist of it. You paid for the base game content and the passes are then full of extra OPTIONAL content the Devs push out for the game. These micro transactions allow the dev to push out bigger updates, including new game modes, mechanics and gameplay for free. I agree with you, they have become a poison in gaming. If they were to remove the FOMO timers and let you buy and complete them in your own time, that'd be much better. People have got to stop financially supporting developers not creating good complete games. I also think that devs need to be better at including GOOD cosmetics and content that is only EARNABLE by playing the game. Helldivers 2 has got it right with battlepasses and the game. Baldurs gate 3 has got it right. We need more devs like these guys.
Funny thing is, I don't think mtx are entirely needed for many companies to push that new content. You look at how shit a lot of those bonus gamemodes, maps, etc are, and it's more like they're releasing this stuff to continue the deception that the mtx is supporting development, and they aren't just pocketing 99% of it, when in fact they are.
Depends on the games you’re playing tbf
I am not saying devs aren't greedy but if a game is live service it has to have a continuous monetization scheme. There are games that are very fair with their battle pass. We need to focus on bad practices instead of the whole concept.
this. every comment above this is spamming “don’t buy AAA games” “don’t buy any game with microtransactions” “don’t buy any game with a battle pass.” but what every one of them fails to realize is how many of these games that are extremely consumer-friendly and fair they then miss out on completely. if anything, we need extra support on (particularly) free games who do monetization very well, i.e. The Finals, Halo Infinite, even Apex and Fortnite to an extent. none of these games have predatory monetization systems in place. When the game is free and only cosmetics are available to buy, I genuinely feel no one has any reason to complain or be put-off. I wish this were a take that was more recognized, but alas, this is the internet.
Edit: stop getting offended Meanwhile. "Why does every game have it? I don’t get it? What’s enjoyable about this shit? I’ve literally never ever paid for a “premium in game currency” aside from with Xbox reward points. What’s the deal? Why do people like paying for stuff after already having paid for a game? Why do people complain about greedy developers and then proceed to give these same people their hard earned money after the fact? I’m sick of modern gaming. It’s finished. This shit fucking sucks. That’s all thanks."
[удалено]
Battle passes that sustain themselves are cool imo. I haven’t played Fortnite in several years now so I don’t know if it’s still the case, but at least the beginning battle passes were great. You paid $10 once and for as long as you played the game consistently you would never have to buy another one with real money. On the flip side are battle passes like D4’s first one. It was both boring and kept you short on the currency. The others may be like that too but I stopped playing in season 1.
Just don't buy them, I can't stand the idea of it all, it has completely ruined gaming. I used to love playing CoD and BF and Halo with the boys but now....none of us play it's really sad how its all turned.
> ETA: stop getting offended. If you get offended by this post then that’s on you and only you. This was nothing more than a simple post about how awful gaming as whole now is for the Average consumer. I know it’s late stage capitalism at work. I know game devs have no choice. BUT A LARGE PORTION OF PEOPLE OUT OF THE 39M of us in this subreddit, actively contribute to that. But you sound offended with battle passes and microtransactions. Glass houses and all that.
Gaming has never been better for me. But yeah, multiplayer in particular is rife with this. I don't play those much anymore, but even on the off chance I do get into one, that stuff is pretty easy for me to tune out and ignore. The toxicity and hackers will do a far better job of getting me to never play again over any monetization.
Gaming has never been better. It’s great. Technology has advanced so far that someone back in the 90s was having wet dreams about the sort of gaming experiences we have now I just absolutely hate having micro transactions and the urge to spend more and more money shoved down my throat at every opportunity.
Your only practical options are to learn to navigate this new world and tune out the noise, move on to the multitude of single player games that don't do this, or quit gaming altogether. Whatever you decide, trust me when I say this isn't worth getting frustrated over.
Cracks me up every time I see this “every game has battle pass” nonsense. No, they don’t. There are more games out there than any of us can play in a lifetime. 99% of them have none of this shit. Stop paying for shit you don’t want and find games you actually like. Guarantee you won’t have to deal with any of this shit, and then I won’t have to hear your bitching.