this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
581 points (97.2% liked)
Games
16745 readers
701 users here now
Video game news oriented community. No NanoUFO is not a bot :)
Posts.
- News oriented content (general reviews, previews or retrospectives allowed).
- Broad discussion posts (preferably not only about a specific game).
- No humor/memes etc..
- No affiliate links
- No advertising.
- No clickbait, editorialized, sensational titles. State the game in question in the title. No all caps.
- No self promotion.
- No duplicate posts, newer post will be deleted unless there is more discussion in one of the posts.
- No politics.
Comments.
- No personal attacks.
- Obey instance rules.
- No low effort comments(one or two words, emoji etc..)
- Please use spoiler tags for spoilers.
My goal is just to have a community where people can go and see what new game news is out for the day and comment on it.
Other communities:
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I didn't drag live-service games into this. This thread is literally about World of Warcraft, a live-service game.
My guy, are we even having the same discussion here?
Considering you thought 'don't charge up-front for subscription games' meant 'destroy all subscription games,' evidently fucking not.
There's at least almost an argument for applying "live service" to anything that's not a standalone title - but no, the term mostly exists to distinguish them from games that are subscription-based. We have another term for those. It's "subscription-based." The alternative is microtransaction hell. Or "season pass" nonsense, which is macrotransaction hell. Games that ostensibly do not cost money... but somehow pull in billions upon billions of dollars.
I never said or suggested this, so your "reading comprehension" complaints are a little ironic now. I was trying to figure out what you were trying to say, which I still don't fully understand.
It seems like your argument is more "I don't like these types of games, so nobody else should". And it's fine to not like live service games; they're not for everybody. But for millions of people out there, that's the type of game they want to play, and are willing to pay for. You can make the argument that microtransactions or subscription fees are predatory, which is fine, but nobody's obligated to pay for those; people choose to because they want to play a live service game, which is a product an a service which is not free to develop or maintain.
My ass you didn't.
And god damn am I tired of people reducing all arguments to 'you just don't like it.'
It's a SCAM. It's an abuse of innate human foibles, to make a shitload of money. It is making video games, as a medium, objectively worse - maximum profit comes from addiction and frustration, not any form of innate enjoyment. What the fuck does like have to do with that?
You even immediately acknowledge this is condemnation of predatory practices - but you refuse to see the problem, because hey, nobody put a gun to scam victim's heads!
Predatory practices are A-OK in Chozo's book!
Don't play WoW, then. I'm not sure what the issue is. You don't like their pricing model, I get that. You don't have to, and you're allowed to not like it. I also don't like it, because I haven't the time or level of interest for the costs to be worthwhile for me.
The thing is, other people are allowed to like it. It's not a scam, though; you're getting what you're paying for. Just because it's not something you would pay for doesn't mean nobody else would or should. If you don't feel that the cost is worth your perceived value of the service, then don't buy it. But to suggest that the government should restrict them from being able to sustain their product (or even - GASP - make a profit from doing so) is absurd.
But the fact of the matter is that games like that cost money to create and maintain. If people are willing to pay for a base game, expansion, and a subscription fee in order to access it, then the creator should be allowed to charge for those things. It's not exploiting a vulnerable demographic like, for instance, payday loan sharks. We're talking about a purely recreational hobby. Hobbies generally cost money.
'This is infecting everything, unethical models win out, the whole medium is incentivized to frustr--'
'Just don't buy it.'
'...'
'It's okay, I don't LIKE it either!'
This was not a conversation.
We can definitely agree on this much.