• HurlingDurling@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    The fact that the game hasn’t been fully released yet and they are including a DLC if you buy the premium version, is just asking me to pirate it.

      • escapesamsara@discuss.online
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        10 months ago

        Sure, if the DLC isn’t cut content from the game. That’s the problem. If they have already developed the content, then it should be released with the rest of the game, for the price of the game. DLC, should it be developed at all, should be an expansion beyond the original scope of development funded by the excess profit from the game.

        • TheAndrewBrown@lemm.ee
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          10 months ago

          I dont think you’re thinking about this right. Stuff like DLC has never been funded from profits of a specific game, that’s not how company finances work. They may decide to create an expansion or extension of a product they weren’t planning if a product does better than expected, but a lot of time, it’s too late by then and you’ve missed the wave to capitalize on the success. Most things like this are planned pretty early on based on the projected success. The base game and the DLC might even have separate budgets.

          And all that to say, the DLC shouldn’t factor into your evaluation of a game at all. If you would like the amount of content in the game if the DLC never existed, then they added enough. You aren’t owed more content because of when they developed it, that’s absurd thinking. And if it for some reason got coded into law, it wouldn’t make anyone add more content to the base game, they’d just wait until after the game is released to start developing it. Which would make for a worse experience for both the company and consumer.

          I agree with the person you replied to: if a game feels incomplete, then that’s the problem. I’m not going to pay for an incomplete game, regardless if it has DLC or not. But if a game is complete and I enjoy it, I’ll pay for DLC to get more experience from it and it doesn’t matter to me when the DLC is developed.

            • TheAndrewBrown@lemm.ee
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              10 months ago

              Yeah I don’t understand this mindset. It’d be like saying it shouldn’t be allowed for cars to have different versions with more features because they were developed together. DLC is supposed to be an additional feature like lane assist or something. You can get just the base version for cheaper or you can get a version with more features but you pay more. If the product sucks without the extra features than the problem is an incomplete product.

              I get that we want to pay less and get more, but they can’t give away stuff for free.

        • scubbo@lemmy.ml
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          10 months ago

          If they have already developed the content, then it should be released with the rest of the game, for the price of the game.

          Why? Genuine question. What does it matter to you as a consumer when the content was developed?

          If the point you’re actually trying to make is “if the game is developed as a whole, but then content is carved out such that the base game then feels incomplete without it”, then this is already covered: a game which feels incomplete is inherently flawed, and so doesn’t justify the price of a full game. That’s my original point - most people are actually just pissed at inaccurate or unfair pricing, and DLC can enable that (but doesn’t have to), so they misdirect their anger to all DLC instead.

          • escapesamsara@discuss.online
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            10 months ago

            When a company actually exists that utilizes your view of DLC, then it might be a valid criticism of the phrasing; but zero day one DLC released for any game has been anything but carving up a complete product into an incomplete main product and several DLCs to increase the price without increasing the price. Oblivion was the first example of this. Horse Armor was already developed.

            • scubbo@lemmy.ml
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              9 months ago

              When a company actually exists that utilizes your view of DLC, then it might be a valid criticism of the phrasing

              No, that's precisely the point I'm trying to make - "every example of X that has existed so far is Y" does not imply "by definition, X is provably and definitively always Y".

              You can claim that all DLC that has ever existed is predatory and exploitative (I suspect there are counter-examples; but, fine, whatever, not relevant to my point). You can say that, because of past performance, you are disinclined to trust future examples of DLC or give them the benefit of the doubt. That is all reasonable. But you can't conclude "because all DLC so far has been bad, the concept of DLC as a whole is bad and can never be used well".

              As a super-simple example - here are some prime numbers: 5, 11, 37. Are all prime numbers odd? I can give you a bunch more examples if you want!

          • TawnyFroggy [she/her]@hexbear.net
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            10 months ago

            Day 1 DLC, no matter how optional it might be in practicality, is 100% a tactic to make people feel like they need to pay more to get the “complete” version of the game.

            • scubbo@lemmy.ml
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              9 months ago

              "_Every person who has ever done in the past, has done it with and it had _" does not imply "_The only reason anyone could possibly ever do is with to achieve _". That's a valid reason to be cautious, but not a reason to make blanket statements about an entire category of thing.

              EDIT: for Day1 DLC in particular, a totally valid and non-exploitative reason for it is "we had a release date that we absolutely had to hit (because of marketing, contracts, etc.), which necessitated calling a production halt well in-advance of the release date for QA and testing - but instead of moving on to the next project, developers worked on more stuff for the same game. If that was too complex or didn't work out, we could drop it and no-one would complain; but if we'd kept developing it in the base game, and resulted in a slipped release date, there would be hell to pay"

  • DreamButt@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    Maybe I’m just old but $70 base is too much for any game let alone one from a studio with known issues

    • offspec@lemmy.nicknakin.com
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      10 months ago

      Games have been the same price for over thirty years, they’ve not changed with inflation and production costs have skyrocketed. To an extent the increased market has helped keep costs down for the consumer but it’s not unreasonable to see prices shift upwards.

      • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        What about the cost of disc media that’s absolutely disappeared? That was a huge chunk of the overhead. Logistics to get the copies to all the stores, etc.

        Now it’s just electricity and servers to download from.

        Do you ever notice that no one ever talks about all the advancements that saved money? Of course not, cause then they’d never be able to justify continually hiking the prices up.

        • Corroded@leminal.space
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          10 months ago

          Lots of games today force some sort of online element (ex. Cloud saves, workshop content, multiplayer, etc.) I wonder how much that costs them to maintain. I can’t imagine it’s that significant if they are dealing with multiple single player games.

          • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Probably not as much as the money they derive from the live service model.

            Businesses do what makes them the most money.

        • ThunderWhiskers@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          I am genuinely not trying to sound like a studio apologist, because there are myriad reasons to be upset with them, but y’all need to think these arguments through a little better. I haven’t pulled up any numbers, but are we really going to pretend that the cost of producing a game in 1990 is even remotely comparable to that of a modern day AAA game? The fact that video game costs have remained relatively steady and even decreased in some cases for decades should be astonishing.

          Pick a different argument.

          • thedrivingcrooner@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            Pick a non-strawman argument and then we can have a discussion. They had different methods of creating games yes, but were they easier back then than they are now? I don’t think so, they had people inventing the fucking wheel of what could be possible and we still had a consistent price tag with a FEATURE COMPLETE package. They didn’t have as many workers as they did because all of the programming went to those individual developers to figure out. The amount of work is more intricately spread out in these bigger studios, but the passion and creativeness was more alive back in the early days. None of it was automated with fully polished dev tools and externally hired language teams.

            • Aux@lemmy.world
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              10 months ago

              The only strawman argument here is yours. Most people wouldn’t play a game released today if it looked like Pong and had the same gameplay features. Also, there are a lot more wheels to invent today.

            • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
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              10 months ago

              How are you missing that you are literally comparing a team of 5 programmers and artists to games made by 500+ people?

              I mean seriously you can read, that alone should be enough.

          • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            There’s no way in hell that paying steam is more expensive than buying dics, putting your game on those discs, putting those discs in cases, and then paying to ship those cases all over the world.

            Know how I know? Because businesses do whatever is the most profitable, and clearly digital distro is cheaper since we’ve been pushing for it since it was invented.

      • Maladius@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Yeah my parents were paying $60 for NES games for me… Which is why I had like 3 NES games. The only reason game aren’t $180 now is competition… And reproducibility vs size of market… And physical media is cheap or non-existent. Ok there are a few reasons, but still…

    • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
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      10 months ago

      Eh, to me I usually just convert it to $ per hour of enjoyment. Will I get 10 hours of enjoyment? 100? 1000?

      If it’s a great game and I think I’ll get 1000 hours out of it, even if it’s $70 that’s like $0.07 per hour.

      Compare that to paying $30 to go see a 1.5 hour movie at the theater and you’re doing pretty darn good I think. Even if you only get 10 hours out of it thats $7 an hour for entertainment vs the $20 an hour for a movie.

    • Khalmoon@lemm.ee
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      10 months ago

      I always found it kinda funny how gamers rage about the poor quality of games, but bugs with Bethesda is almost an expectation

      • Corroded@leminal.space
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        10 months ago

        Do you really get that vibe? I feel like a lot of people refer to Bethesda games as a buggy mess. There’s the whole Bugthesda thing.

        I think all the mods designed to improve performance have helped the reputation a bit but I still wouldn’t play Fallout New Vegas on a PS3 due to the bugs.

        • DreamButt@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          I see both. For some reason there are still a lot of people who like their games despite the bugs and will defend them very vocally. I understand liking what you like (even if I strongly disagree) but it never makes sense to say an obvious issue isn’t an issue

          • Corroded@leminal.space
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            10 months ago

            A lot of the time I think they are overlooking the bugs and focusing on the game as a whole. Kind of with the mentality that once you get past the buggy husk you get the tasty kernels inside.

            Fallout 3 (through Steam) was unplayable without mods for a while because Games For Windows Live was used as DRM and was shutdown years ago but if you checked the Steam reviews a significant amount of people omitted this or were fine with the game (mostly) working once you got over that hurdle.

            Personally I didn’t think this was unacceptable considering the GOG version worked fine but it goes to show the mentality people have.

  • TimeSquirrel@kbin.social
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    10 months ago

    8-bit DRM-removal patcher program music plays

    3 command prompt windows pop up in the background and quickly disappear.

    “Fuck. What were those?”

  • AuthorityClassError@lemm.ee
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    10 months ago

    Reading all the comments defending a $70 game with zero day DLC is just bewildering. I mean, HOW MUCH of a fucking cuck do you have to be to not only accept it, but to DEFEND it? You people deserve all the shit you get for being peasants. The rest of us sail the high seas, YARR!

    • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
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      10 months ago

      How much of a toddler do you have to be to not understand that video games were 50-60 dollar for decades? Also, can you give a single example of something that costs $70 but can entertain you for 500 hours? I don’t believe that’s a thing outside a good video game.

      • AuthorityClassError@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        This whole “dollar per hour” crap is just another simp tactic that nobody is buying anymore. But hey, if you wanna talk costs, how about the fact that we’ve been paying $60 for games for around two decades now despite the fact that physical distribution and media creation isn’t a thing anymore? Or how about the fact that for most games, we’re renting them since they’re locked by invasive DRM? How about DLCs being a standard now and games being obviously incomplete? GAAS? Shouldn’t that be cheaper since it’s basically gone the next day?

        If you want variation towards more expensive, why aren’t you considering all the factors that make shit cheaper? The answer? Because you’re simping hard like some 13 year old console fanboy. The only reason the megacorps that make AAA games need that much money is because they’ve fallen into the classic trap of having too much upkeep and flab.

        Indies have proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that you can make awesome games with much smaller budgets.

        • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
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          10 months ago

          In my lifetime rent has quadrupled, video games have gone up 40% (only very recently). Yeah you’re right that the likely $10 max of distribution costs going away definitely ought to have made games $5 brand new despite inflation making every thing else insanely way more expensive.

          Only a fucking baby could mistake being completely rational for being a sImP. Fuck every single corporation. They’re all scum. Fuck irrational idiots harder though.

          I haven’t spent over $60 on a game maybe ever so try not to base your entire lifestyle on buying the world’s most expensive videogames as soon as they will take your money, then complain about it because mommy is no longer paying and you have to work for money or whatever

          And totally yeah let’s just ignore how easy it is to find images of NES games going for $90 in 1987 and that then dev teams were 1-7 people while now that number might be hundreds of people.

          The fact that you’re this mad and this unreasonable tells me you’re unhinged for some other reasons as well and you probably need a lot of therapy. Either that or go back to reddit where interactions like this are considered normal.

          • AuthorityClassError@lemm.ee
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            10 months ago

            Man, your simping and long diatribes are really amusing as hell. Me mad? No, not really. I actually enjoy calling out simps like you and watching them trip over themselves trying to white knight hard for corpos who don’t give a shit about you as customers. Please, do write more, I’m sure someone will make this into a great copypasta someday.

            • SnowdenHeroOfOurTime@unilem.org
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              10 months ago

              You still sound really upset. Maybe if you ask mommy she will buy you some gamey wamies

              Not slightly surprised there wasn’t a shred of a response to the actual logic I laid out lol

          • AuthorityClassError@lemm.ee
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            10 months ago

            Ooof, I hit a nerve there didn’t I? It’s OK though, I’m just some rando on the internet, no need to get worked up about it. Go talk to some friends, touch grass, you’ll be fine kid.

    • Hyperi0n@lemmy.film
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      10 months ago

      You clearly don’t understand development if you are so worked up over day one DLC.

      Development has always worked in stages.

      Imaging being so tilted over a small DLC meanwhile games like BG3 get “released” after 4 years of development which the largest team seen on any one game and it was still basically unfinished mess.

      • AuthorityClassError@lemm.ee
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        10 months ago

        I understand greed perfectly well. I mean, you could write a comedy sketch about it at this point. “No Sir, we absolutely did not create these absolutely fabulous pieces of gear during the development of the game. Nope, not even a pixel! And this gun? This terrific looking and powerful gun that makes all the guns in the game seem meek? Totally something our gun designer thought of when he was taking a piss the SECOND after we stopped development. And this quest line that perfectly fits together with most of the game and completely changes the introduction of our sequel? Well…that’s just us being VERY good writers and not at all greedy bastards who cut off important bits of the story so we can nickle and dime you for it!”

        Then you would have someone coming in and smack them around with a trout, because reasons.

        Oh and in case you think I’m hyperboling, the examples in the sketch are all taken from actual bullshit that’s happened already.

  • rotopenguin@infosec.pub
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    10 months ago

    Eh. By the time I have hardware that can actually play Starfield, it’ll be a GoG giveaway.

  • MeatsOfRage@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    PSA you can still get Gamepass Ultimate for cheap. This is your last opportunity to stock up (I think September 14th is the cutoff).

    Find some cheap Xbox Gold cards (sites like cdkeys or eneba). It’s a little trickier but cdkeys usually sells the cards from the Turkey region super cheap but you have to redeem over VPN.

    3 months of gold converts into 50 days of Gamepass Ultimate. Depending on the price you should be able to get 3 years for $200 or less. Careful to not go over, you can’t redeem past 3 years.

    Edit

    PSA #2

    If you already have Gamepass take part in rewards. You can earn enough points throughout the month to self fund your gamepass subscription or other purchases for free (I cashed in my rewards points recently to get that dope Starfield controller and the Starfield early access upgrade).

    Here’s my 4 main avenues for points:

    Xbox mobile app: go to your profile icon and do everything in the rewards tab. I usually leave Vampire Survivors idling on my PC for the PC game task.

    Edge mobile app: click the search icon on the home screen and scroll down to the news stories, click through them. Till you get your mobile & edge searches (think it’s about 20). Then go up to the top right menu and open rewards. Do everything in here. The top 3 items you usually have to actually do (quizzes and polls). The rest you can just click into and back out of.

    **Bing mobile app: ** click rewards and collect the daily check-in points then click earn to read. Open a news article and scroll to the bottom, it’ll open the next article (you need 10 of these).

    Xbox. Get the rewards app. Do everything in here. Mostly just clicking boxes. Go to the Xbox activities box in the bottom right, you’ll find some rewards to earn in games. There’s also a daily 50 for earning an achievement. Rare Replay gives you an achievement for every game you open and Killer Instinct has several quick achievements for every single fighter.

    It sounds like a lot but the mobile app stuff only takes about 10 mins. I usually do it while I’m waking up in bed and the Xbox stuff takes another 10 minutes usually do this before work.

    If you max out your points you can easily get $15-20 a month.

    • yyy@feddit.nl
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      10 months ago

      Are they banning buying via VPN on that date? I bought the 3 years in Turkey for very cheap and was planning to do that again in a few months.

      • MeatsOfRage@lemmy.ca
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        10 months ago

        They’re stopping the gold conversion program all together on that date. Top yourself up to 3 years right now. I don’t know about buying through Microsoft over VPN though.

        • yyy@feddit.nl
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          10 months ago

          Oh yeah that was what I also used, will do. Happy u said it now

  • shiteyes2 [any]@hexbear.net
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    10 months ago

    Somehow not even bothering to play games became even more satisfying than pirating them. They’re not getting my money OR my time haha! Edgy

  • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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    10 months ago

    $20 for a two hour movie ($10 per hour) sure

    $70 for a game ($7 per hour if you only play 10 hours) no way.

    Though I am a fan of pirate first, pay when they fix the bugs. The low quality of games at release and the whole seemingly 10 year pre-release cycle sucks.

          • Modern_medicine_isnt@lemmy.world
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            10 months ago

            The tcket alone is between $10 and $20, add any snacks… But it was just an example. Think of anything you do for entertainment (that you actually pay for), and the cost per hour. Games are pretty cheap. Like do you have any streaming services? I do, but I play games more than I watch tv, so games come out cheaper.
            All in all, people complain about the cost, but usually get hundreds of hours of entertainment out of a single game.

            • ivn@jlai.lu
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              10 months ago

              I do pay for movie theater, but it only cost 6€50 in my country. Granted that the cost of living is different but not by that much.

  • Stalinwolf@lemmy.ca
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    10 months ago

    Lol, without reading the caption I just assumed this was a shit post comparing Johnny Depp’s likeliness to Jack Sparrow, and I laughed pretty hard at that.

  • doggle@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    10 months ago

    Apparently it’s bundled in with AMDs new cards. I’ve been itching for an upgrade for a while now, and I could finally get away from Nvidia