The time has come for macrotransactions instead
I’m all in for the return of actual game expansions.
Nah, only the transactions will be bigger. Amount of content won’t.
Just like bags of chips.
Soon to be bag of chip. Now in random shapes.
loot bag with 50% chance of chip
loot case with 10% chance of loot bag with 50% chance of chip
Mystery container with possibility of contents containing loot crates that may contain loot box that may contain chip for a weekly subscription
Paradox, then.
StarCraft Brood Wars Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction
People shit on Bethesda but they’ve consistently released banger expansions. Far Harbor was incredible.
Even the publicly acknowledged start of Micro Transactions “Horse Armour” was couched in decent medium sized DLC and The Shivering Isles
What do you mean by couched in this context?
I don’t think the horse armor was part of a bigger dlc.
Oblivion had a LOT of post release paid content, most of which was decent value per $ spent, including a full on expansion. So while horse armour was a warning sign for things to come, Oblivion ALSO showcased the good side of paid post release content
That makes sense, thank you for explaining.
Now they just re-release the game over and over again and we buy that!
It is kinda funny how people have no issue paying for it all together as bundle, but separate it so people can pay for things individually is silly and everyone is suddenly offended?
I would rather have a story for $10 and $1 outfits I can ignore, than to spend $30 on a story and bunch of cosmetics that don’t add to the game.
This is just marketing, nothing more. They make more money forcing you to buy everything than letting you pick what you want.
Eh… It’s more than just paying, but that a lot of the stuff which is now a standard microtransaction used to be integrated into the total experience, so you’d unlock outfits and such for finding secrets or completing challenges. That sort of content was integral to the over all experience, not just an extra to tack on as an afterthought.
I assess the contents of the game as-is with its current price, determine if I want it, and pull the trigger or don’t. What it could have or might have or might have separated is immaterial to me to be frank. If you gut a bunch of stuff and make it DLC to the point where the game is no longer worth the price, I’m probably passing on your game. Ultimately I just don’t want to participate in FOMO or guessing nonsense and companies that do it don’t get my money.
If you’re a good company and your mtx or DLC make sense then I’m all in. Suzerain is a great recent example.
That’s also just an affect on the market of people wanting more choice and not wanting to be forced to pay for stuff they don’t want.
Of course it can be swung in a negative light too, because it affects developers bottom lines, and they always want the most money possible. CDPR is no different.
The outcome of splitting the content is that there are a lot of people who want to have everything and they will end up paying far more for a la carte than for an expansion. The people who wouldn’t have bought the expansion still buy nothing, and pretty much nobody just buys a couple of things to save money.
Microtransactions is a system designed to prey on completionist whales. Barely anyone only buys a couple of things and doesn’t end up spending more than $30 over time as the content is drip fed and the new hotness comes along to replace the old hotness. Those that don’t spend anything, or just buy one thing before catching on, weren’t going to spend the $30 anyway.
It is false choice that negatively impacts the game experience.
The outcome of splitting the content is that there are a lot of people who want to have everything and they will end up paying far more for a la carte than for an expansion
So if they want the content, they can support the devs so they make more.
The people who wouldn’t have bought the expansion still buy nothing, and pretty much nobody just buys a couple of things to save money.
So no lose there, but they could buy an outfit if they liked it and want to support the dev.
…… that’s actually the majority of gamers…… 2% of the player base accounts for most of the purchases, that means the other 98% is still buying stuff, just not everything. So that’s not even remotely close to reality, most people pick and choose the content, which is literally why this because a thing, because the market wanted it….
Unless the entire game is developed by an independent studio and is entirely funded on microtransactions, buying micro transactions is just there for more company profit on top of the regular game sales by stripping content out of a full release. It isn’t supporting the development.
The market didn’t want it.
just like the market wants nothing but superhero movies? This doesn’t work anything like a free market. people would buy full games if they where available, devs just figured out they could drip feed the content and make significantly more money at the expense of a good product so you don’t get to choose the good product because it doesn’t exist. That’s not the market choosing crap it’s the market makers only providing crap.
because the market wanted it
I can’t possibly roll my eyes any harder at this statement, with gaming companies practically competing to go under as fast as possible over the past decade.
People did have issues paying for it all together, back when they were called “expansion packs.”
I don’t mind paying for more of the game. I do mind paying for fixes to a broken game. I don’t mind optional cosmetic upgrades, but I don’t like pay-to-win, even in single player (looking at you, Nintendo amiibos).
But regardless, people are going to complain, and many of their complaints will be valid.
People had different issues with those, that was because online was a portion of it, and people thought devs were holding content back just to make more money. Obviously some did that, but they started painting every dev with that brush and they needed to adjust to save their bottom line from being affected.
Every change has been a reactionary effort to adjust for the market changes and people suddenly not wanting what they just wanted a few years ago, and using it to their marketing advantage. Of course not everyone is going to be happy, it’s just funny that certain devs get defended for doing what everyone else does since their marketing gets eating up.
You know, the way you phrase it I’d be fine. Only in your example, instead of 60 for it all, it is now 60 for 80% of the story, another 2x15 for the remainder, and 10 per Outfit.
I think some people like to know when it ends. Microtransactions can make it seem endless. Once you’ve done that a few times it makes you want to know about as much as you can upfront.
You used to be able to unlock cosmetic content by playing instead of paying. They’re taking advantage.
The thing is, you actually get 30$ story and 5$ per outfit instead of a 30$ Expansion.
And cosmetics do add to the game for a big part of the market.
I believe that was called phantom liberty.
Or if we’re talking Witcher 3, Hearts of Stone or Blood and Wine. Both of those had an amazing amount of content, well worth it.
Yeah that’s what remaster are for
Ill be getting the Elden ring dlc at 40 dollars day one. Yeah im expecting the game to almost double in size.
what really bugs me are fighting games with dlc characters. i know fighting games arent as profitable, but twenty years ago you could unlock every character by actually playing the game. locking content behind paywalls are a slap to poor gamers. that’s on top of a $60 price tag
Fighting games started in coin operated arcade cabinets that were intentionally designed to be such a pain in the ass to beat that people would dump heaps of money into them just to keep playing. Same deal with games that were released in the days that youd rent them for a week. The difficulty was set so high that it was very unlikely that you could beat the game in that week so you would end up renting them another week or two.
The gaming industry has been filled with greedy fuck policies from the beginning and the only thing that has changed is how they are greedy fucks.
Yeah, I noticed this with mortal Kombat on snes. Every time I played the single player campaign, I’d win one fairly easily, then I’d lose to the next guy. Then I’d use a continue and beat that guy fairly easily and lose to the next one. Repeat until I run out of continues, with the occasional upset of the pattern (extra win or loss).
Also true of timed arcade games like Gauntlet. Unless you were very good, you’d have to keep putting quarters in when the time ran out.
20 years ago, they sold every Street Fighter three times with more characters in each new iteration. Microtransactions suck, but simple DLC is a less shitty than what used to be normal.
What? You didn’t like buying SUPER Street Fighter II TURBO Championship Edition?
I actually did, because once I bought it they couldn’t shut down the dlc servers on me when they released the next one.
This was more a way for them to keep people putting in quarters at the arcades and selling machines to arcade ops.
It translated to some home games, but wasn’t the focus of putting out all these new versions. It made some sense at the time.
Yep
Street Fighter II: The World Warrior - (1991)
Street Fighter II’: Champion Edition - (1992)
Street Fighter II’: Hyper Fighting - (1992)
Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers - (1993)
Super Street Fighter II Turbo - (1994)
All $40-60 games at the time.
You are mistaken about the price. Street Fighter II: The World Warrior had a retail price of $69.99 at launch.
They did milk the fuck out of that, I’ll grant you.
But at the same time you couldn’t take them online and end up playing somebody who’d got the latest one and have to fight new characters you’d have no access to.
$70 is the new $60 because fuck you that’s why
You’re going to be really unhappy when you discover the concept of inflation
Oh stop, games have been the same price for decades, it’s not surprising they’re seeing a small price increase after so long in stagnation.
In good companies this is passed along to the actual devs making our games, which is something we should all support
Yeah, not a penny of the extra $10 is being passed along
This has been disproven and was called out at the time of the increase. Games cost less to develop now than ever. Microtransactions and recurrent subscription transaction1s like battlepasses mean a shit game gets to live longer than it would deserve. People have careers in the field and languages common to the industry - this isn’t a “new and groundbreaking” industry - its one of the largest on the planet.
Studios are absolutely not passing any of that $10 to lower level staff. It was to see if the market would bear it, and no other reason - and corporate defenders came out of the woodwork to pretend BILLION dollar corporations need more money. If videogames were too expensive to make, they’d not be spending so much, now would they?
Games cost less to develop now than ever.
First time I’m hearing that, got a link?
It’s interesting actually. There are both games with insane budgets that cost more that than triple A games in years past and incredible tooling and assets available for very modest amounts of money + incredibly powerful computers very little. It’s possible for some games to be made for less than ever before AND some to be made for more.
“Small” price increase? Are your toilet paper squares $10 bills or something?
Has the distribution gone up though? If the quantity of games being sold has increased the companies are making just as much even though games are “cheaper.”
Imo. That’s the big argument in this debate that doesn’t get discussed. The reach has increased so prices could come down as more units are sold and the company would get the same amount of money.
Hammering and saw noises.
Ah, there it is. CDPR is rebuilding their reputation after Cyberpunk’s launch. Nature is healing.
As it was with witcher 3, AKA “get off the roof, roach!”
“Spending a huge chunk of the budget on dishonest advertising and then releasing a significantly different, half-broken game is still cool though.”
but its okay, cause 4 years later we’ll release an expansion and what we are declaring the final patches to finally have the game in a state it should have been when it was fucking released.
Thanks for all the money,
suckerscustomers!The worst thing is that everyone seems to think that it IS where it should have been at release! Which I will admit that it is finally the polished bug-free game that any game should be at release. But anyone like me who was watching every last promo video they did teasing the game pre-release, knows it still isn’t and never will be the game they promised it would be.
Their insistence on releasing on previous gen hardware is surely as much to blame as the rush to get it out for that sweet sweet pandemic money. Still looking back it’s hard to say if it ever was going to live up to what they were teasing it would be.
I’m a simple man.
I don’t believe their bullshots and promises.
I’m just happy if a game arrives in good, playable condition, feature and story complete.
and Cyberpunk couldnt even live up to that. Perhaps it was story complete on release? I dont know, I was never able to beat the game until like 2 years after release due to encountering a mind-numbing amount of bugs and catastrophes and thus giving up and walking away from the game for a good long time.
I would have refunded it and never thought about it again if it wasnt a gift.
Yeah with initial disaster at release it’s easy to forget they originally promised multiplayer would be added in later and a robust functioning society where each NPC would have a job and routine they follow
Exactly. I hate that people are completely on CDPR side again, forgetting that they completely deceived their fans with a half baked game. Just because they eventually made it better (and still didn’t deliver on what they said) doesn’t mean they deserve to heralded again. Any trust I had in them is gone.
No need to make my comment now because you’ve said it better! Perfect sass.
What’s with the drip feed CDPR pr articles?
They want their reputation back.
CD(PR)^2
Which one is more fitting? (CDPR)PR or CDPRᴾᴿ?
CDP22PRR2
“But we do not rule out that we will use this solution in the future.”
Yeah, what now?
When it comes to multiplayer games.
Please actually read the article next time.
I’m gonna go out on a limb and say there’s not much place for MTX in multiplayer games either
That’s why the top management should never be listened to. The CFO saying that means literally nothing because they will turn around and put MTX in single player games if they feel like they can get away with it. Their word is worthless because their goal is money.
Is this a “its ok of ifs multiplayer” in disguise?
What people don’t say is often more important than what they do. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the The Witcher 4 is an always online multiplayer game with mtx.
Give it twenty years and CDPR will also succumb. Ubisoft, EA and Activision were kings until they got greedy. All companies eventually enshittify because it is all about money at the end of the day in this capitalist culture we live in.
But they see a place for broken games that are sold by lying to their customers and maybe fixed two years later. Fuck off, CDPR. Are you sure you are the right people to do the moral?
CDPR also saw no place for a crunch culture in game development… Until they did
Crunch is only necessary if something has already gone pretty seriously wrong, either it was feature creep or the time scales were unrealistic, or you pull a Bethesda and try to build a game that’s way outside the scope of your own ancient game engine.
Unethical working conditions are never necessary.
I still love that company. The witcher 3 was amazing, easily one of my favourite games of all time. Cyberpunk had some issues sure, I got it a year or so after release and had fun with it. I really like gog and how everything has no drm and I spend a lot of money there. Compare that to almost every other major competitor and these people are saints.
Cyberpunk had some issues sure
“Some issues” is a very kind way of putting it. The game was unplayable and had frequent crashes and game breaking bugs. Even now, it’s never really been fixed for old gen (the gen it was marketed for and sold in a console bundle with), they just turned it into a ghost town, reducing NPC spawn rate and turning off environmental lights to reduce the stress on the system.
And worse of all, they knew all of that, and still sold a broken product, and to ensure that people would buy it, they didn’t allow journalists to record their play sessions, only allowing them to use CDPR’s marketing videos in their reviews. I could still forgive them for releasing a broken product on the market and fixing it at a later date, if they were at least sincere with their fanbase, but they chose to lie through their teeth because money was more important than integrity.
The fact that they eventually fixed the game on another generation is not enough for me.
Imo they shouldn’t do Witcher 4, you should stop when it’s best. They won’t be able to meet the expectations and only disappoint when people compare it to W3.
so what if it isn’t as good as w3? it doesn’t ruin w3.
Nothing inside a video game should cost money.
No abuse highlights that absurdity quite like paying for shit that’s already on your own computer. There’s no server! There’s no infrastructure costs, except to prevent the game you just bought from doing the thing you bought it for!
Ban the entire business model. It’s a scam. Games make you want arbitrary worthless nonsense - that is what makes them games. Directly monetizing that is an exploitation of humanity’s predictable irrationality. Your brain cannot cleanly separate kinds of value. On some level you are wired to pursue cheeseburgers and enchanted scimitars in the same way.
Cosmetics have the exact same grip. They’re just a thinner needle you’re less likely to complain about. It’s the same multi-billion-dollar wallet siphon, jabbing at you every time you play. Limited offer! Today only! Look what your friend got! Have a free pull! Jab jab jab. And people still brag that they’ve only spent twice the cost of the game, inside that game, for things already inside the game they bought.
Addiction to frustration is maximum revenue, under this model. This is the dominant strategy. You were never going to shop your way out of it. If we allow this to continue, there will be nothing else. Only legislation will fix this.
I’m not a huge gamer anymore, at least not of newer games… aren’t microtransactions a bigger problem in multiplayer games because it gives player willing to spend money an unfair advantage over skilled players?
not necessarily, they can be cosmetic only.
Sure, not necessarily… but in practice? Again, this is not something I have personal experience, but based on what I’ve read about it, it generally is about giving someone an advantage, isn’t it?
Some of the older COD games had guns you could only get with real money, and they were overpowered. Nowadays it seems even free to play games have mostly cosmetic micro transactions.
Praise Geraldo del Rivera! CD Projekt Red is (le)terally saving gaming.
Is it 2016 again? If so I want to warn someone
Yes. Warn.
I am actually ok with micro transactions in multiplayer competitive games for cosmetic skins.
I am not saying that most games that do this aren’t extremely toxic in their design but the idea of players of a popular competitive game continually paying small amounts of money to artists to create new riffs on the same player models and weapons that those players can use to express themselves is potentially a wonderful direct connection between 3D modeling artists and players that continually values those 3D modeling artists far after the initial game development is over (and a game company could potentially have no work for a 3D modeler when just maintaining a multiplayer game with small updates).
The problem is that the type of people who are most likely to spend money on loot boxes are exploited heavily, and then shamed by everyone around them into not revealing how much they spent on video game call of duty mobile skins.
None of this even remotely works when you talk about singleplayer games though, basically nobody dresses to the nines to just go for a walk in the woods where nobody can see them… the direct link between 3D modeling artists and players expressing themselves in view of other players is gone. Players may spend hours dressing their singleplayer character and enjoy that part of the game but it just isn’t the same thing as your multiplayer competitive game character you have spent countless hours playing in multiplayer matches interacting with countless people with. It is the difference between taking a freeing walk in the woods and taking a walk in a city in view of a crowd of other artists.
I guess what I am trying to say is that micro transactions are really only okay when they are “micro” because they are a direct interaction between a player and an artist in the way buying a single song from an album might be.
Of course, my entire point is subsumed by the fact that most of the big companies probably treat the 3D modelers making their skins like trash and are probably going to replace literally all of them with AI as quietly but as quickly as possible in the next couple of months.
If they want to sell skins that are purely cosmetic I don’t have an issue with that. Some people have money to drop on stuff like that and it helps fund the game.
Loot boxes on the other hand can absolutely get fucked. It’s gambling, plain and simple. It has no place in games.
Nah, Im a part of the generation that wants to burn Bethesda to the ground for horse armor.
I bought the game, I don’t want every fucking second I spend playing it trying to ignore their cash shop.
Except Bethesda is also one of the few companies that releases full on expansions to their games. Horse armour was the worst (and thus cheapest) of Oblivions addons, but Shivering Isles was an entire new full area and plotline.
Nuance exists. And ignoring it allows a lot of good to get caught in the crossfire
Real good take, I couldn’t agree more. I also sold a dota2 skin that I got randomly for a couple hundred dollars like 8 years ago and it funded my PC purchases for a couple years so I might be biased 😉
Do you really believe money from microtransactions goes to the developer and not the publisher? I would sooner believe in a unicorn than that.
In my comment I attempted to point out that yes the profit from micro transactions never really goes to the artists and developers, but if it did in theory I would actually be really supportive of artist run cosmetic stores for multiplayer competitive games.
I want 3D modeling artists to be valued, and competitive multiplayer games providing a canvas in which artists can continually express themselves and create outfits/skins for players and items in game is an incredible opportunity to reaffirm the value of the labor of 3D modeling artists.
The opportunity is currently totally captured and subverted by shitty corporate control, but in theory it is still there.
For singleplayer games, no horse armor crap is lame, I just want developers working on expansion content.
