81–90 of 120 posts
The main problem with digital game distribution imo is that you still pay the full price, but you can't resell the game later. So you're getting much less value in the end. It would be fairer to price digital copies maybe 10-20% of the physical ones because of how single-use they are.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When people say "greed of game developers" they're clearly not talking about rank-and-file devs, they're talking about development companies. > An album is the work of one or a few individuals for a relatively short period of time with very little cost Kind of ironic that you're saying that.
Majority of "development companies" are also shit poor and go bankrupt in after 1 or 2 projects even if they're moderately successful. Basically it's just hard to make profit in this industry and well over 90% of games never recouperate development costs. Gamedev is just hard and there are very few exceptions like Epic or Rockstar that even get an option to become "greedy".
Fair point, but those are clearly not the ones being pointed out as greedy by most people.
...except for maybe scrappy mobile companies that churn shitty microtransaction games looking for whales, but those are greedy indeed, and I doubt they have the sympathy of you or OP.
> The streaming platforms, for which you pay full price, don’t even let you choose the quality of the movie you want to watch. What you watch today might disappear from all platforms in two months. I have seen so many songs disappear from Spotify lately that I am considering to hoard music again. Gladly I have most of those that disappeared on my HDD anyways, since it's been mostly old songs, but yeah. Was kinda frus…
How do you discover new music? That's been an issue for me, considering how I don't use Spotify.
There is an effort that it takes to get on the airwaves that is not there if just anyone can play music online. The effort acts as a quality filter on the person's taste and passion.
Beyond that, I always check out what Pitchfork thinks is good new music.
The youtube algorithm has also recommended me some of my favorite, more obscure artists but that happens like once every 2-3 years.
I wanted to re-watch Dune Part 1 before Part 2 came to theaters, so I rented the film on Youtube Movies which said it would be HD $3.99. I paid, but when the movie started playing it was NOT HD. The quality selector didn't even let me choose a HD resolution. I tried different browsers, I tried Safari on my Mac, Chrome on my Mac, disconnecting from my 4K display... was it a some bug? Was it a haywire copy protection because I opened the film on a 4K display over Displayport? I have no idea, but I felt cheated. I haven't paid for a movie since.
Having worked in the game industry in the past it's amusing to see people talk about the greed of game developers. You have no idea! You have no idea what an effort it takes to ship a game. An album is the work of one or a few individuals for a relatively short period of time with very little cost. Because of that you can have services like Spotify that allow pretty much access to all the music ever created for a 10$…
When people say "greed of game developers" they're clearly not talking about rank-and-file devs, they're talking about development companies. > An album is the work of one or a few individuals for a relatively short period of time with very little cost Kind of ironic that you're saying that.
The design and blame of microtransaction/gambling is more on the game developer, but even here we keep hearing stories on how such design is being pushed by the publisher (who act as investors) rather than the game developers.
The discussion is not about developers with passion for the profession.
>The streaming platforms, for which you pay full price, don’t even let you choose the quality of the movie you want to watch I wanted to re-watch Dune Part 1 before Part 2 came to theaters, so I rented the film on Youtube Movies which said it would be HD $3.99. I paid, but when the movie started playing it was NOT HD. The quality selector didn't even let me choose a HD resolution. I tried different browsers, I tried…
> The streaming platforms, for which you pay full price, don’t even let you choose the quality of the movie you want to watch. What you watch today might disappear from all platforms in two months. I have seen so many songs disappear from Spotify lately that I am considering to hoard music again. Gladly I have most of those that disappeared on my HDD anyways, since it's been mostly old songs, but yeah. Was kinda frus…
How do you discover new music? That's been an issue for me, considering how I don't use Spotify.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Majority of "development companies" are also shit poor and go bankrupt in after 1 or 2 projects even if they're moderately successful. Basically it's just hard to make profit in this industry and well over 90% of games never recouperate development costs. Gamedev is just hard and there are very few exceptions like Epic or Rockstar that even get an option to become "greedy".
> are also shit poor and go bankrupt in after 1 or 2 projects even if they're moderately successful Fair point, but those are clearly not the ones being pointed out as greedy by most people. ...except for maybe scrappy mobile companies that churn shitty microtransaction games looking for whales, but those are greedy indeed, and I doubt they have the sympathy of you or OP.
Microtransactions in PC games are there for the same reason - because you can't just go and sell your game for $25 if all of the competitors with similar production quality in last 5 years released for $15. Gamers simply wouldnt buy it and nobody care that with inflation $15 back then and $15 now are very different money.
Yet you can put microtransactions in the same $15 game and the same people will pay for them. And you'll reach desired $$$ of profit per copy sold. If everyone refused to pay for microtransactions and would spend more money on buying games without them instead there wouldn't be any microtransactions by now.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
When people say "greed of game developers" they're clearly not talking about rank-and-file devs, they're talking about development companies. > An album is the work of one or a few individuals for a relatively short period of time with very little cost Kind of ironic that you're saying that.
Mostly this is not even about development companies, but the distribution platforms which are even further away from the game developer. It is the distribution platforms that makes policy and generally dictate the conditions on which a game is "sold". The design and blame of microtransaction/gambling is more on the game developer, but even here we keep hearing stories on how such design is being pushed by the publish…
As about distribution platforms neither investors, publishers or game developers have any leverage against Valve, Microsoft or Sony. They just do whatever they want. So you're totally right here. These kind of monopolists can only be regulated by large political bodies like US or EU.