"it's the customer's fault we're systematically turning games into vending machines by fudging gameplay mechanics to motivate spending"
To be fair, some people put in thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars into the game.
Doesn't stop Ubisoft from being greedy scummy whores though.
That person's right, you know. At least from their perspective.
Imagine a dev just want to make a solid game but the higher up says "put lootboxes in because they make money" and now people have hateful preconceptions.
If consumers would stop buying them they wouldn't have to make that move. Hate them all you want but if they continue to rake in the dosh they have no reason to stop.
and they're absolutely right.
If you're stupid enough to gouge yourself, they will happily fleece you the fuck out of house and home. You're a number on a screen and directly contrary to their english major washout marketing, they don't give the slightest fuck about you, other than your filthy filthy lucre. Until such time as gonads and spine are grown and the answer to gib money chumps is a flat 'no', this will continue to record profits and Ubi$haft literally laughing all the way to the bank.
They rely on buyers called "whales" which are a small percentage of players who make up a very large percentage of the sales. Return customers.
The supply-demand thing falls apart when the demand is artificially cultivated by forcing it into the supply.
I mean, to be fair, he's not wrong. It's sleazy as hell, but gamers have enabled this behavior for years by just gobbling it up. They'll bitch - briefly - but that usually amounts to nothing. Like how game industry boycotts almost never work when many of the people boycotting just buy the boycotted game day one anyway. Gamers have zero self-control or discipline.
Consumers are fucking retarded so the only way to feasibly fix this is by getting some actual regulation.
There is also a large amount of gamers who don't care about these shitty practices as long as they can afford it.
One example would be a friend of mine who wanted me to purchase Battlefront 2 with him and after I told him about the lootbox fiasco he went "lol who cares I've got the money" and proceeded to not only purchase the game but also spend about 100 dollars on lootboxes.
They dont mention the part where whales make up most of the sales meaning you cant "vote with your wallet", and the whole "its just cosmetics" and "theyre not bad if they are done right" is BS because it doesnt change the fact that its unregulated gambling, and there are better ways to monetize games that consumers are fine with but we all know they wont do it because its not a infinite money printing scheme
But whatever, they make games to make the shareholders happy instead of us so its not like our opinions matter, and I have a little bit of respect for Ubisoft since they act like theyre in the game industry unlike others, so you do what you want. Just dont blame the players when you fail to meet your increasingly stupid expectations
Their argument falls apart when you take into account that GAMBLING IS REGULATED FOR A FUCKING REASON.
Consumers tend to be hypocrites sometimes, so I'm not surprised.
I have a friend who absolutely hates lootboxes in games to the point where they won't buy a game if it has lootboxes in it, yet the love Overwatch and have no problem buying lootbox packs.
Anecdotal, sure, but I'm sure there are other consumers like this. Consumers who jump on the bandwagon of hating lootboxes and microtransactions, but as soon as they see something they want in a game and realize they have the dosh for it, they leap for it without a second thought.
Your friend is stupid.
Basically everything bad in gaming persists because gamers support it with their hard earned dollars. Like, you know why Bethesda Studios was finally arrogant enough to release a game that was flat out broken at launch? Because people have continued buying every single Skyrim port despite Bethesda never fixing a single one of the base game's many bugs - and sometimes introducing new bugs while they're at it.
"It's the customer's fault we're greedy!"
"its your fault our marketing department has psychology graduates manipulating our consumer base!"
???
He's not....wrong?
If people flat out stopped buying them, there won't be the demand to keep including them. It's a scummy two way street
"It's the gambler's fault they have a gambling addiction."
This isn't even a "gamer" thing. Boycotting in general just does not work. "Voting with your wallet" as a concept does not work. There have been studies done on this in the past, expecting consumers to fix the system by willingly disrupting their own habits and routines or even being informed enough to know what's happening and why it's bad is just not realistic.
It's a classic deflection of libertarians and an-caps to say "there's nothing wrong with the system, consumers just need to vote with their wallet if it's so important to them!!!" and sadly it's a lie that's caught on, but the fact of the matter is that it just demonstrably does not work. Capitalism is a broken model and the only way to fix the system is to change it.
Lootboxes are just universally bad. The majority of players are being punished by being denied content and the minority of "whales" are also suffering because of a gambling addiction. No one benefits from lootboxes except corporations that are abusing lack of gambling regulation and the sooner the government puts a stop to that bullshit the better.
He isn't wrong but it's far more complicated than "not supporting bad business practices". Publishers see popular features like player customization and mods, stuff with over a decade of tradition and content behind them, and turn it into a business venue for themselves. At that point you have to ask yourself "do I completely go without one of my favourite features or do I dole out?", the answer for many people is pretty obvious.
Nobody forces you to go down an addicts path, anyway. You cant blame anyone else but urself if you for example when you take drugs and become an addict in process.
Science disagrees with you my friend.
There's nothing anyone can do to stop this from happening
"Vote with your wallet" is bs because there's always gonna be some dumb motherfucker pouring in thousands on them, avoiding them personally has little to no effect, what they don't know doesn't hurt them. The best we can do is kick up a loud enough controversy like with Battlefront 2 and Shadow of War.
That's the sad reality, not buying isn't enough, because someone's always buying more than enough to make up for your missed buck.
You better go out and vote in the 2020 elections then. Because one of two political parties in the country is willing to fuck over the continued existence of the human race itself just so they can live like kings until they die.
You know it's funny. I actually have severe OCD alongside personal and buying habits that I both need to focus hard and take pills to remedy. When I bring this up to people, they tell me to just shrug it off.
Might explain why I'm so apathetic to loot boxes.
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