this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2023
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Only legislation will fix this.
If we allow this to continue, there will be nothing else.
What kind of legislation, though? Loot boxes seem like an easy one to write: gambling is illegal already in a lot of places. When it's just exploitative greed, I'm not sure how it's technically so different from charging exorbitant rates for swag at a baseball game or something. Or charging a few thousand bucks for a purse at some high-end fashion retailer.
To be clear: I loathe the FOMO trends in game development, overpriced skins, micro/macro-transactions, and all the "credit/XP boosters" type bullshit. Turning money into ingame currencies to obfuscate actual prices, the general design of games frontloading fun and then squeezing dollars out of you to feel that same high again....I'm just skeptical that there's anything to do about it from a legal perspective that doesn't apply to most of the rest of the capitalist enterprises out there. Please though, I want to be wrong about this, so any examples of how to curb some of these excesses would be great.
Stop letting games take real money.
(Not: stop charging money for games. Not: end subscriptions. Not: make games free. I will not be tolerating any bullshit today from people who refuse to acknowledge how "microtransactions" are the topic and the problem.)
All forms of this are just lootboxes with more steps. We all finally admit lootboxes are bullshit, right? Even the most diehard kneejerk 'but it's cosmetic!' yeahbutts are quick to say some it's not awful, like lootboxes. But they're all just gentler ways of taking unlimited quantities of your actual money.
Nothing inside a video game should cost money.
It's a fucking game. It's not real.
The game itself can and should cost money - the rise of allegedly-free wallet siphons proves how lucrative that bullshit is. They don't need your money up-front; they'll get more from wearing you down. But the fact the same bullshit is in flagship AAA games, including some which want to charge ninety goddamn dollars up-front, and have a subscription, proves they can take you both ways, because you don't really have a choice. This shit is in everything. It is infecting the entire medium, and making the path to maximum revenue a matter of addiction and frustration. We were never going to shop our way out of it. We have to tell the whole industry it's simply not allowed.
Why? Don't buy the armour. Let the whales pay to keep the lights on.
These things exist exactly because whales pay for it. Letting them keep whaling is not a solution nor a workaround, it's just being complacent to the issue.
You don't think game development catered specifically for whales is a problem?
A problem? Yes. Not one worth legislating over, though.
The issue is, it will eventually kill mainstream gaming as an artform, and keep funneling our economy towards the enshittification of everything.
Maybe it isn't worth legislating over, but something should be done, lest humanity will lose most of what is dear to us, and everything will be just about money. I'm already uncomfortable enough with how commodified nearly everything in society is. The commodification of everything is very much not something we want. It's literally what the cyberpunk genre was warning about.
Not to even mention the sort of mentality such a consumerist culture instills on us, especially in regards to whales, and the sociological consequences of this.
oh boy, do I have some sad news for you
Yes, I am aware we are already basically there. At least in comparison to the past. But it can always get worse. Sure, indie games will stay (though likely still very much affected), but AAA games? Yeah.
True art has and will survive worse. Honestly, imo, nothing "mainstream" can really be considered an artform in any meaningful sense. Art can sneak through, but anything made with profit as the main motivator just isn't going to be pushing any envelopes.
I agree. And that's was also my point! I feel like older games were chasing that profit motive much less (well, at least some of the big ones, arcades used to be a thing after all). And you can often quickly see when every franchise started falling off a cliff once it was tried to capitalize on them.
It's exploitation for money. Of course it's worth legislating over.
This is a collective problem where abusive nonsense makes far more money than selling goods and services to allegedly rational consumers. All excuses have failed. It's not just in "free" games, it's not just in shovelware, it's not just "cosmetics," it's not-- it's fuckin' everywhere, okay? The quantities of money involved are obscene. No off-the-shelf game should be capable of taking thousands of actual dollars in one sitting.
Even if there's no dice being rolled - that is plainly the same manipulative valueless pit as gambling. Not even for a game part of the game. For hats. For a model that's already in the game you paid for, deliberately looking like a twenty-year-old ten-kilobyte file in a game you also already paid for.
This is a real problem.
There's only one real solution.
If someone can figure out a reasonable way to legislate against FOMO, then by all means, go for it. I already agreed it's a problem, but it's pretty much the base of capitalism - make something, put a price on it, and if someone deems it worth the price, they buy it. So aside from a complete restructuring of what at this point is the main economic system of the world, I'm not really expecting much to be done about expensive cosmetics in video games.
As if ending microtransactions means destroying capitalism. Jesus fucking Christ, do people get weird about this topic.
This business model did not exist fifteen years ago. Games did fine. What we can do about dumb shit in video games costing obscene amounts of real money for no reason, is... stop that.
It is that simple.
Yes, actually. Because there's nothing different about microtransactions than anything else being sold today, and realistically, microtransactions in video games are just about the least important problem with our economic system. We have much more serious problems that still can't get regulation. Nobody with an ounce of authority is gonna bother specifically with video game costumes.
So if you actually want government mandated change on this particular problem, the only real way that's happening is a wholesale revision or rejection of capitalism itself by the government, which, yeah, is pretty far fetched.
Our real options are just...not buying these things. Don't support it, ever, even for things that appeal to you. Advocate for others to reject it as well. It's probably not gonna work well or quickly, but it's gonna be the most effective thing we as consumers can actually do.
Oh cool, we'll just solve all other problems first, yeah? What's your timeline on that? A couple months? A year?
This is about money.
This is about a business model.
This is about a business model that's infecting a multi-billion-dollar industry. It's plenty important.
"Just don't buy it!" has done absolutely fucking nothing to stop this infection. I'm not-supporting-it as hard as I can, and hey guess what, systemic problems cannot be blamed on individual action. If only we had some mechanism for collectively handling those issues.
It's never gonna happen. That's my point. And where did I blame "individual action" here? I'm on your side on this one, bud. I'm just being realistic about it.
Fatalism is dull, and "just don't buy it" is individual action.
"Tough shit, nothing will happen" is not being on anyone's side. Empty pessimism is a waste of everyone's time.
That's not what Fatalism is, pointing out what can realistically be done isn't "blaming", and this is a Lemmy comment thread. All there is here is time wasting.
It's not realistic, it's not all that can be done, and insisting we're simply fucked is absogoddamnlutely what fatalism is.
Legislation can't fix stupid. We have to let people be able to hurt themselves or we are no better than slaves. Because at that point gov is dictating every aspect of our lives. Freedom isn't free from consequences, but it's worth it.
Victim-blaming, dehumanization, and libertarian twaddle, all in one comment. Aren't you a winner. Shoo.
Avoids commenting on the actual issue and resorts to name-calling. You've convinced me!
Two of those are reasons, troll.
Victim blaming? You consider people who willingly pay for game cosmetics victims? You have a pretty low bar, huh?
You say this for everything, holy shit man.
"Only legislation will fix this" was your response to WoW charging extra for early access, to Mortal Kombat having paid fatalities, to a Disney game not being free-to-play when it leaves early access, to a translation error from a developer who does not speak English and/or the developer adding paid DLC to their $20 game, to a free mobile game having in-app purchases.
I'm really starting to think that you truly believe game developers should perform unpaid labor.
'You say this every time a product is treated like a service! Make up your mind!!!'
Most of those aren't even different situations - they're all blatantly about charging real money inside video games. Just like this. "Microtransactions" are intolerable bullshit, and they're in fucking everything.
I say this a lot because IT'S IN EVERYTHING. Hello, and welcome to the point! This greedy exploitation is the dominant strategy. It sucks for everyone, customers and developers alike, because you can either become this kind of (eugh) "live service," or make less money than the suits expect. So every genre, every price point, fuckin' single-player games, will grow this rot, and then try to soak you for unlimited quantities of real-life currency.
This needs to stop. There is only one way that happens.
Oh and fuck anyone still going 'yOu wAnT iT fOr FrEe!' when what I want is for companies to SELL GAMES, AS PRODUCTS. I am the one saying Genshin Impact should cost $60 and include the whole game, at time of sale. You are the ones who want it for free.
Wow dude, you really need a hobby.