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CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

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Re: CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

#121

Post by villasv »

ArkanExplorer wrote: post #117
villasv wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And the evidence for that diagnostics is...? Got any reference that links margin to company culture? The few people I know from the mobile gaming industry tell me the margins are insanely high. They’d spend x on ads and get back 2~5x in microtransactions. Also development costs were even lower than marketing costs.

This is the conclusion of the American Federal Trade Commission... https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-01-08-ftc-wary-o... ""heavy taxation" by Apple and Google means developers are forced to use monetisation models that "rely on surveillance, manipulation and other harmful practices.""

This is a suggestion from someone from the FTC, not a study. It would be nicer to have data instead of opinion.

For instance, PC games have microtransactions too. Many top-toxic companies are are mostly in the PC ecosystem and don’t have to pay to be on PC.

Yet you still listed Microsoft as one of the companies squeezing developers.

Re: CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

#122

Post by swebs »

martimarkov wrote: post #19
NetOpWibby wrote: post #12

Ironic

Please explain how a company being hacked is ironic?

They recently released a game called Cyberpunk. I haven't played this game myself, but the genre usually involves hackers as protagonists fighting corporations as antagonists.

Re: CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

#123

Post by [deleted] »

shultays wrote: post #119
ArkanExplorer wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the conclusion of the American Federal Trade Commission... https://www.gamesindustry.biz/articles/2021-01-08-ftc-wary-o... ""heavy taxation" by Apple and Google means developers are forced to use monetisation models that "rely on surveillance, manipulation and other harmful practices.""

Seems a stretch, publishing was costly pre steam as well and there were always a cut

[deleted]

Re: CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

#124

Post by adnzzzzZ »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #109
tomash wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Factorio is awesome. It's kind of funny-ironic that a counter-example to "making games as addictive as possible" is an indie game addictive enough to be called "cracktorio" by its fans.

It's a different kind of addiction. Factorio is the ultimate nerd-snipe[0] for a large class of people who enjoy flexing their brains. The addictiveness is a side effect the developers maximizing having fun (for the aforementioned subset of the population). When people talk about "making games as addictive as possible" in the general and pejorative sense, they usually mean something else: they mean that the optimizat…

I disagree with this notion. The primary reason why Factorio doesn't feel unethical or exploitative is because the kind of addictiveness it exploits is one that uses your brain, whereas the kind of addictiveness these "unethical" games exploit is one that feels more dumb and low brow. It has nothing to do with it being win-win like you mentioned.

There's this bias where games that are extremely addicting but that appeal to intelligence, the perceived most important trait in our society currently, are OK, whereas games that are addicting and appeal to other traits, like the ability to do the same thing over and over, are morally wrong. Both types of appeal are manipulative in the same way, but one is cast as morally wrong because it doesn't appeal to what the elites in our society (such as you, dear HN reader) value.

Re: CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

#125

Post by swebs »

bspammer wrote: post #22

I know it’s unethical, but I’m kinda excited for the source release. When was the last time we saw the source for a AAA game?

There were the huge Nintendo leaks last year, but those were mostly for firmware and older games.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_Nintendo_data_leak

Re: CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

#126

Post by lentil_soup »

Netcob wrote: post #52

Reading the replies there tells me I did the right thing when I decided against a career in game development over a decade ago. It looks like a constant war between developers and gamers now. Developers are investing a lot of time into making their games literally addictive in the worst way possible, and not even remotely by making it fun - it's all about overpriced DLC, gambling and weird reward systems. Which has r…

As a game developer I can tell you that while there are problems in many companies and part of the industry can be toxic it is not always the case. Not sure even if it's that much different to other software development industries. I understand that there's a lot of interest in the industry which places it in the spotlight in the press but the truth is way milder than people think. Most of the people I work with have a normal 40hr a day job with a normal life.

Re: CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

#127

Post by wongarsu »

Netcob wrote: post #116
TeMPOraL wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a different kind of addiction. Factorio is the ultimate nerd-snipe[0] for a large class of people who enjoy flexing their brains. The addictiveness is a side effect the developers maximizing having fun (for the aforementioned subset of the population). When people talk about "making games as addictive as possible" in the general and pejorative sense, they usually mean something else: they mean that the optimizat…

Yes, exactly. I just played a mobile game, and as usual it has a hundred different in-game currencies that you can buy with real money. Every time I finish a level there's an endless parade of meaningless "rewards", and I see some coins going into a piggybank. When it was full, I clicked it, and the game congratulated me for now being eligible to buy the contents. The game is a clone of puzzle bobble. Like you said,…

I think a tell-tale feature of manipulative games is Farmville-style time-gating. They structure their progress around meaningless actions like clicking upgrade buttons, but you can only press that button every couple hours. So playing optimally isn't so much about strategy or skill, but more about incorporating the game into your daily routine.

The intent is of course to form a habit, so that players habitually play the game no matter if it is still fun. Combine that with a good reward system that gives you positive reinforcement at random intervals, and you get something that is designed to addict you to the game.

Re: CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

#128

Post by eswat »

RGamma wrote: post #62
Netcob wrote: post #52

Reading the replies there tells me I did the right thing when I decided against a career in game development over a decade ago. It looks like a constant war between developers and gamers now. Developers are investing a lot of time into making their games literally addictive in the worst way possible, and not even remotely by making it fun - it's all about overpriced DLC, gambling and weird reward systems. Which has r…

I find it disturbing to see how sour gaming has turned. If you would've asked me 15 years ago I would never have been able to imagine this outcome. It's befitting of the economic extremism and pessimistic zeitgeist of our time :( Hope there'll be a corrective force to this sometime soon before gaming turns entirely into a soulless commercialized husk. For all the talk there is about CP2077 superficial mistakes there'…

If we're talking about the ransomware attack specifically, nothing has really changed. We're just shy of 18 years from the Half-Life 2 source code leak.

But in other ways, yes, the gaming zeitgeist does seem more toxic than what I had remembered being engrossed in it as a teen (or I could just looking at it with rose-tinted glasses).

Re: CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

#129

Post by bathtub365 »

me_me_me wrote: post #115
meibo wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: Supergiant also sold out to Epic Games, one of the game industry harbingers of doom and workplace abuse(together with Activision-Blizzard). Might not want to give those any money.

I waited and got it on steam. You can't blame them for taking time exclusive money, they are a business afterall. And its not like they support their practices.

They absolutely support their practices by doing business with them. Not only did they list their game for sale on their store, they took their money (earned via those business practices) to give them the exclusive right to sell the game on their store for a period of time. This has the goal of driving even more customers to Epic. They don’t do these deals out of benevolence.

Re: CD Projekt Red has been subject to a cyber attack and ransom demand

#130

Post by s_dev »

Netcob wrote: post #52

Reading the replies there tells me I did the right thing when I decided against a career in game development over a decade ago. It looks like a constant war between developers and gamers now. Developers are investing a lot of time into making their games literally addictive in the worst way possible, and not even remotely by making it fun - it's all about overpriced DLC, gambling and weird reward systems. Which has r…

The mobile industry tries to make addictive "games" but I've a friend who asked Valve to remove Civilization VI from his account. Thats an addicitve game -- just like Scorcese dismisses the avengers as "Theme Parks or Rollercoasters" and not cinema. I'd dismiss many mobile games as "games" and more like digital slot machines.

It doesn't help that the gambling industry chooses to use the euphemeism "gaming" as in "gaming laws".

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