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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 21st, 2023

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  • Yeah, not the same thing. I’m not saying microtransactions can’t be stopped. I’m saying it won’t happen through US-based legislation.

    And this iPhone monopoly suit is apples-and-oranges to a microtransaction litigation. They’re being charged with being in breach of an 1890s law that has held strong, but that has nothing to do with microtransactions. In fact, no relevant law exists except some flimsy gambling statutes that simply do not work. Most importantly, there is no legislative piece to it. Apple broke a big law and has been doing so with virtually no consequences for decades. Nobody’s passing new laws against Apple. They’re just finally facing the justice that they should’ve faced a long time gone.





  • This here. Through the years, if I ever pirated a game and liked it, it was instabought.

    Execs that know they’re producing shit are the ones that really double-down on anti-piracy measures. When piracy is considered, it turns into a challenge of quality. When piracy isn’t considered, it’s just about return on marketing spend.

    The real lost sales are the people who pirate a game, spend 15 minutes playing it, and delete it saying “thank GOD I wasn’t stupid enough to buy this”. Make a refund policy just hard enough on Steam and most of those just keep the game with regret.


  • Which is why Quest is beating PSVR in terms of overall experience. Of course, it’s still not doing as well as it seems to need to. ACNexus did reasonably well considering the audience size, but they’re still pulling out.

    I’m sure the corp interest rates issue is part of it all, but nobody seems to be able to overcome the “why would I buy VR with no games?” and “why would I research games for VR if I don’t have VR?”

    I mean, for me, I’ve powered through more solid VR games since jan-1 than I’ve played PC/PS/Xbox games in the last 3 or 4 years. But the games I’ve been playing are The Room and 7th Guest (OMG t7G remake is the GOAT). Popular among an older generation, but not great to build a critical-mass following.

    There’s a marketing challenge and nobody has solved it. Even when I got my headset it was more of a “shit, I have nothing else to ask my wife for for Christmas… The HELL do I pick?”



  • I didn’t say that there are no good games. But genres have been drowned in these microtransaction games enough that it has become disruptive. I find myself sometimes playing games that are in many ways inferior to older games because they are trying to be low-budget disruptors in a market where the high budgets are largely “filled with urine” as it were.

    Look at a few companies’ recent “people are just going to have to get used to subscriptions/microtransactions” attitudes. It’s going the same way television has gone. One cannot pretend in good faith overall quality in entertainment is not going down for reasons that the decisionmakers know to be hurting the products.



  • While I agree, I start to get tired of a significant percent of the game industry being reskins on older games. I always wait till they come out and let them convince me they put enough effort in to justify my time again.

    Like Dyson Sphere Program. I avoided it and youtubed it up until I knew it managed to transcend being a Factorio Clone, and that the factorio feel dies around the 2 hour mark, leaving 78 hours of completely new content. But had it not done that…ehhhhh