this post was submitted on 02 Apr 2024
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Yeah, but you're tolerating it. which is good enough for greedy publishers.
If you want it to stop, don't buy it. It's the only option. Otherwise you allow publishers to make your game experience worse for profit.
The reason people like me are disappointed it is selling well is that these anti-consumer practices are not a deal-breaker for most people thus it allows these practices to persist in the game market. That is hardly "nonsense" as you put it.
I'm sure I'll get a lot of "tolerating" people commenting that these "can be easily ignored", but I doubt I will get a single person that says their experience was enhanced by these microtransactions, which could have simply been a cheat code instead.
It isn't about tolerating it. I haven't even found the microtransactions yet. I'm not tolerating them at all, they just aren't a part of the game that I'm playing.
Problem is that these will always be a thing because of whales. Am I supposed to not buy a game because of a micro like this? So basically quit gaming? Because they're everywhere now, and as long as whales exist, micros will exist. You need to pick your battles. I stopped buying multi-player games all together. I'm not limiting myself on single player games because of a minor micro that changes nothing about my single player experience.
Everyone could boycott this game except for the whales, and that handful would still be considered a win for them. Don't be disappointed in a single games sales, be disappointed in the current state of gaming.
Apathy is worse than the whales.
Let's do some theoretical scenarios for microtransactions:
-apathy with whales: "we need to ensure a good monetisation model to extract value from the whales, even if the normal players are missing out"
-apathy without whales: "let's try adding microtransactions to extract more value per player, it won't hurt our sales!"
-No apathy with whales: "no one is buying our game! And our whales have no one to play with! Are the whales even enough to fund this on its own? We got to undo the microtransactions soon!"
-No apathy no whales: "why did we even add microtransactions! Every business knows that only quality games and good marketing can help sales!"
A little hyberbolic but surely you see my point.
My experience is not enhanced but also not diminished, so it's fine. The moment I have a worse experience, then I'll complain, but right now, it's complaining about theoreticals.
Ah. The "I'll just tolerate this until it gets worse" mindset. Never backfires!
Surely even you can admit that slipping this in on release was a scummy move.
It's "theoretical" only because there is no non-monetised version. They could have created a cheat shop with the items for free. Even if you choose not to use them having that option means it is a better experience, so it would still be a "diminished experience".
If someone can pay extra money to get a different game experience from you then the publishers have denied you the chance at that experience which is "diminished".
This isn't even mentioning the performance issues on lunch that would be tolerated because "surely they'll fix it later!".
Sure you don't care. Many people don't care. And surely someone is going to try and highlight this apathy as a virtue somehow. And so publishers get to continue experimenting with how to milk franchises for every dollar it can instead of making an optimal game experience, overall making the game industry worse.