• mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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    9 months ago

    Ban this entire business model.

    Nothing inside a video game should cost real money. It’s a scam. Games make you value arbitrary nonsense - that is what makes them games. Attaching a dollar value to that manipulation is instantly unethical.

    This exploitation started in “free” mobile trash and is now in full-price flagship titles. It’s in subscription MMOs. It’s in single-player games. Publishers can shove it in after-the-fact, at little cost and less risk. You were never going to shop your way out of it. It is the dominant strategy.

    If we allow this to continue, there will be nothing else. Only legislation will fix this.

    • Syntha@sh.itjust.works
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      9 months ago

      Just don’t buy them lol

      There are so many games without microtransactions you could only play games that were released prior to 2024 and you’d be occupied your whole life.

      • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        So what if new movies need an anal probe? There’s lots of old movies.

        This is a scam.

        This is an abuse, for money. For a lot of money. It’s so profitable that “just don’t buy it!” was never going to work. This is the dominant strategy - it is infecting everything. Nothing inside a video game should ever cost real money, but every game that matters is liable to demand thousands of your actual dollars. ‘Just play Tetris lawl’ is an aggressive denial of a global problem.

        • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
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          9 months ago

          There are plenty, plenty of games that “matter” that respect players and don’t rob them blind of their money or their time with arbitrary grind bullshit.

              • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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                9 months ago

                “This is spreading to everything.” “It’s not in everything yet.”

                Yeah. That’s what spreading means.

                Do you think this problem vanishes if it only infects 90% of games? You gonna tut and scold over this growing abuse, which you acknowledge is an abuse, so long as there’s one game somewhere that didn’t choose an invalid money-sucking business model? “Lol?”

                • conciselyverbose@kbin.social
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                  9 months ago

                  It’s not anywhere close to everything. There are far more quality games that don’t do anything like it than quality games that do. It’s primarily the same AAA shovelware that’s also terrible for 50 other disastrous design decisions and isn’t actually playable regardless of the business model.

                  • mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
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                    9 months ago

                    It’s spreading TO everything. Do you understand what that means? It does not mean “it’s in everything.” It means: it’s in a lot of things, and it’s coming to a lot more things. Potentially: all of them.

                    And again - if it’s not literally everything, does that make the problem go away? You, yourself, just now, said this business model is not valid. Why the fuck are you still defending its existence?