Chebucto Regional Softball Club

The regulation needed is: fuck all that. Games make you value arbitrary nonsense. That is what makes them games. Attaching a dollar price to that fiction is a category error. The entire business model is an exploitation of that confusion. This abuse is making games objectively worse. Maximum revenue comes from addiction and frustration. Fun is an obstacle. At best, fun is bait on the hook. The actual goal, *especially* for "free" games, is to grind you down as thoroughly as possible to extract real money over and over and over and over. If you don't think that's you - neither did most people who wondered where all their money went.

Horse armor was above-board, compared to this shit. You got files you didn't have. Modern "DLC" is already on your hard drive, appearing on other people's characters, but *you're* not allowed to touch that file until you pay ten actual dollars.

'I was only endorsing what you're condemning' is a baffling sentiment. > A lot of what I think you’re talking about is based on player trading, is it not? None. ... you know that cost is *cumulative,* yes? Games that somehow trick people into spending a thousand dollars a month don't do it in one great lump.

Any product that can take one thousand dollars from someone, in exchange for what would typically earn a studio twenty dollars, is not differentiated by whether it has a cover charge. The tolerable monetization model is: *just sell games.* They're not services - they're products. You buy them and own them.

Nothing inside a video game should cost real money. Ban the entire business model. Nobody thinks games should cost $1000. Yet that's how much this abusive business model can extract from individual players. For *hats.* You don't even get all the hats! When there's not straight-up gambling, there's still a constant trickle of bullshit, because some schmuck will think a static model with a particle effect is worth the price of several entire video games. The total content of these games, even a decade in, is unremarkable. The least objectionable examples still want $200 to have all the characters, in a 1v1 fighter. Whoop de doo. Defenders can only insist Capcom used to gouge people even harder. The shit y'all put up with might be worse than annual sportsball releases. The far end of that spectrum now needs an installment plan. How fucky does an industry have to get, before people stop going 'but arcades?' This shit is already half the revenue in gaming. It's getting worse, and it's spreading. It's in full-price, flagship-franchise, single-player games. If we allow this to continue there will be nothing else.

The comparison is wrong. If the products *you demand* require continuing revenue - a subscription model allows rational consumer decisions. That's why most consumers look at it and say 'no thanks.' Real-money charges inside games make more money than subscriptions, not because anyone wants to pay $130 for a video game, but because it obfuscates that price. The real question is, if FighterZ has now been funded by all those piecemeal sales, and is - in its current state - your favorite game... why the fuck isn't it $60 to buy it all once?

Doesn't seem to be. The business model's still intolerable. Can you grasp that distinction?

> We’ve been talking about a concrete example, one where you say this example is pReDaToRy

'Stop calling everything predatory, you're killing the word!' I didn't call everything pr-- 'You know what's predatory? *Paying for services!*' I'm out.

'This is the gentle end of a spectrum where the far end is clearly predatory.' *'So this is predatory?'* Fucking aggravating.

Horse armor was above-board, relative to this. I keep telling you the precise shape of the problem, and you keep going 'yeah, something else.'

The DLC is content in the video game. That's why you can see it, even if you haven't paid for it. Welcome to the conversation. For the love of god, do not make me rub your nose in this a seventh time.

> Should the games I know and love be able to exist in the form that made them the games I know and love? Are we still pretending that paying for whole editions doesn't serve the same function? Are we still ignoring subscriptions because they make you feel icky? Are we still not acknowledging games that get updated for years, to keep sales up, and *then* have sequels? > It is not a model that we should ever go back to Well there's one question answered, albeit still on the basis of 'ick.' It existed - it was profitable - but we can't do it ever again because that's the same as a whole existing game being *banned.* Blah blah blah. I understand that compatibility is preferable. I am telling you it's not worth preserving this business model. This is the *gentlest* this business model could *possibly be,* and it has still created a typical 1v1 with a total price that's fucking bonkers. Compatibility is also possible through the just-update-the-damn-game model. Like how nobody charges five bucks for improved netcode. That also costs money to create, and is surely a key part of improving past the initial version. Funny how it's just taken for granted as part of the game you already bought.

I literally didn't. I said it's inseparable from this business model, eight hours later. The comment you're replying to explains how it's all one spectrum - including the things you, personally, would call predatory. The only specific examples *I've* given are skins and skip-the-grind. What I get in response is 'do you still beat your wife?' over the apparent impossibility of updates that already happened, and repeated misrepresentations of how this thread started. You have quoted me directly and then been wrong in the next comment. I sound aggravated because you've been aggravating.

That is what it means, to sell content. That is what actual expansions are. This song-and-dance where you have the whole game, but you're not allowed to *really* have the whole game, is inseparable from everything you would call predatory. It's only a matter of degrees. One of the several alternatives you've repeatedly ignored is that these additions can be added to the game people already bought. Surprisingly, this does *not* involve slave labor for artists, because games that stay popular keep selling more copies. Do they make as much money? No. But it turns out maximum corporate revenue is not a guideline for ethics.

>> Nothing *inside* a video game. That part is not optional. I've dealt with too many cranks who see me arguing - JUST SELL GAMES - and then go 'you want it for *free!*' I'd sound less hostile if you didn't need this explained five separate times. And it's not incidental, because you are now that crank, insisting "you don’t seem to want anyone to get paid to make [content]." Stop fucking that strawman.

"Pay to skip the grind" is weaponized frustration. Free games that somehow make a billion dollars only exist to drag people across their wallet-hooks.

This is trolling. It'd be fine if we never talk again.

I did. I just didn't give you the clean yes-or-no you're prepared to posture about. > The alternative is we either break compatibility, or the content doesn’t get made at all since you don’t seem to want anyone to get paid to make it. Do you have object permanence? Because you keep pretending we didn't go over the obvious alternatives, repeatedly. You forgot your own examples include games that did not have this business model, but still plainly got made, and took a shitload of your money. Do you honestly not know the difference between "nothing inside a video game should cost real money" and "everything should be free?" Because that impossible confusion would explain a lot of this conversation. I know you understand charging money for things inside a game *can* be abusive. You have no trouble calling gambling or FOMO "predatory." Would you respect someone telling you, that just means you don't want those games made? Fortnite, *banned!* Call of Duty, *deleted!* Never made it past 1.0! How much of that shit would you take, from someone insisting "at least it's not pay-to-win?" Pay-to-win is worse, surely. So anything less abusive than that must be fine. And if you don't respect all the money developers get from pay-to-win, you must want them to to *starve.*

We don't have to leave *your stated examples* to find disproof of your pet dichotomy. SF4 had the same kind of evolution while selling versions like they still came on cartridges. It's possible. You just don't like it. Unless you mean one single byte of FighterZ being different would be a completely different game, in which case, just, shut up. You keep trying to treat any change what-so-ever as equivalent to the whole game ceasing to exist. That's horseshit. You need to stop.