It’s like buying a tiara for your fetus, before you even buy a crib.
ALSO, MICROTRANSACTIONS = DLC.
I mean, do that, and they’ll just stop labeling the games as early access while still being in the same unfinished state, meaning people can’t even decide if they want to avoid a game or not based on that label.
So they’ll have to avoid games based on what people say about them, and nobody will be able to hide behind the excuse of “but it’s still in Early Access, maaaan.”
Steam’s refund system is really good. I say get rid of Early Access and let every game stand on an absolutely equal footing, with no excuses anywhere in sight, for anybody. No privileged “oooh, but you don’t get to judge this game yet” roped-off section for people to play shell-games with.
Start selling your game any time you want, in any state you want. But beware the wrath of the consumer. That’s fair.
EDIT: I realize this could seemingly contradict another comment I just made, where I defended the Early Access program, as a vital means of securing funds for independent developers. To be clear, I think that the function of Early Access should essentially remain, but not be labeled, in any default way.
I think all the games should be on the store, all the time, any time. And it should be up to each developer to make their case, on their own, as to why the customer should be willing to spend money on their product.
Then companies could just say that it’s not finished, add micro transactions and have the same thing as before except without the little early access box.
That’s why I do have some complex feelings about how Early Access should be. I think it’s highly necessary for it to exist, in order to fund truly independent developers, so games that fall outside the mainstream marketable sludge can be created. On the other hand, yeah, there are real pitfalls and attractive nuisance situations, associated with it.
As I said in another comment, I think one option would be to just completely remove all labels and categories from the store. If a game is Early Access, let the game’s own developers say so, in the description. Make the case directly, that this is a game that is still in development. No special, “official” box that says “you should judge this game more favorably, because it’s not finished.” Make the developer tell everyone that situation themselves, in their own words.
Then, if people play the game and realize it’s shitty, they can use the refund system. And if they play for longer than the refund system will allow, then they can tell everyone that the game sucks, and it should be avoided.
That way, the access to early funding remains, but nobody is propped up by an artificial notion of Early Access-ness.
Tower Unite 😒
Early Access can be easily abused. That’s why I don’t bother with it at all.
As I mentioned to someone else, that’s a shame. The only alternative to Early Access = developers having to go hat-in-hand, begging for up-front investments from heartless corporations. They increasingly won’t fund anything that isn’t fit to be saddled with a games-as-a-service price-gouging model.
When Early Access is abused, it’s destroying that necessary system for all of us, developers and consumers alike. If you want games that aren’t 100 percent mainstream, money-sucking garbage, you should want Early Access to stick around. That’s why I think it should, ya know, suck less, and NOT be abused.
Meanwhile, ConcernedApe is out there quietly adding more and more free features to an eight year old game: Stardew Valley. All while working on a completely new title that will release… eh, eventually.
I have no issue with people shipping unfinished products, as long as they’re transparent about it. But using it as a way to lower expectations for a buggy “final” product, while charging more for the updates, is just crummy. At least bundle it in, turn off “early access”, and raise the price appropriately. If it has DLC, the core game is “done” in my book.
Edit: thanks for the robust conversation on this thread.
I’ll add this clarification: clearly there are outliers and exceptions to all this. It’s entirely possible to have something incomplete, and still be worth treating like a full release, DLC and all.
To me, I think the key dividing line is determined by the overall “buginess” or “playability” of the product. If something has broken mechanics or is full of game-destroying bugs, and it negatively impacts the overall fun factor, that’s the case I’m talking about here. As a game’s main job is to package joy for other people, it’s pretty easy to see how a developer or publisher is just seeking a payday at your expense.
I’m so hyped for the new stardew valley update. I’ll absolutely be buying the haunted chocalatier as well.
Same for Wube and Factorio
Capitalism makes great games.
people make games. capitalist extract wealth from the working class.
People give companies money for games they want to buy.
Minecraft has been going on this model for over a decade, too.
And people give it shit for some reason, there’s always people claiming the latest update ruined the game. MY GUY, you can literally choose what version of the game you want to play from within the launcher. Which is another underrated feature more games should have. Especially like minecraft does it.
Motion Twin are finally wrapping up the updates of Dead Cells after the 35th (!) one. While they’re working on a board game and an animated series. Now, granted, they released several paid DLCs, but that didn’t stop them from pumping out free updates with content in between them
I’ll give them a pass. The game has been very playable at nearly every pre-release right up through the present. Granted, for a while there was no mid or late game, but what was on offer was relatively bug free and fun.
Terraria is a truly extreme case, the developers truly just can’t stop making updates.
Factorio isn’t amazing in this way, but the developers have a lot of integrity - they delivered their plans for 1.0, released some good extra updates, continue fixing bugs, and went to work developing paid DLC. I do suppose the DLC will come with a major update to the base game, but that’s also because they found they needed to make changes and additions for the expansion.
I often play a game called Sailwind. Very relaxing, but impressively deep sailing sim. It’s been early access for a couple of years, but the (solo-)dev is active, new features are added all the time. If he would release a paid, cosmetic dlc: I’d buy it in a heartbeat. I think it would be nicer than to “get him a coffee” or sub to his patreon.
What I’m trying to say is: not all early access is bad, not all paid dlc is plain greed. And the combo is not necessarily toxic.
If people wanna buy dumb shit, let ‘em.
Nah. Not acceptable. That’s not the case, here. People had already bought the game, in Early Access, before they started selling this extra shit.
They’re betraying the original investors with this shit. It’s fucked up.
EDIT: I just checked the dates, and only one of the three DLC packs has been added after the game began its Early Access phase. I guess that’s something. At least you’d know the DLC was going on, right when they started to sell the game. It still shouldn’t be allowed. Early Access should be a privilege, specifically for developers who intend to be respectful of their users.
I can’t tell you how many threads I’ve seen online over the years of people complaining about paying for early access or preorders and the game isn’t what they thought.
At what point is it your own fault?
Fault isn’t an all-or-nothing proposition. Yes, if you buy basically anything at this point, you’re a sucker.
But it’s also the fault of the people doing the shady shit. Multiple parties can all be at fault. Why absolve people of shitty behavior, ever?
Blame is free. Spread it everywhere that it ought to be spread.
I mean, it is just your opinion that EA shouldn’t have DLC. There is no fault in buying it and there is no fault in selling it. Does it make things worse for the rest of us? Yeh it does, but really, why do you care if you aren’t buying it?
ONCE AGAIN, I am having to explain the whole concept of CARING ABOUT OTHER PEOPLE, BECAUSE OF EMPATHY.
It’s fucking fascinating to me, how I’ve been called a psychopath in this thread, and yet soooooo many of y’all are really scratching your heads, trying to puzzle out why I would care about people other than myself.
Then let me ask another way, what right do you have to decide what other people may or may not want? If people are paying their hard earned cash to pay for what you and I consider shitty things, then you and I are clearly wrong.
I’ve never seen a game in early access have dlc, only micro transactions for stuff like cosmetics and boosts. Can you give me an example of dlc on an early access game?
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1604030/V_Rising/
I guess you could define the DLC for this game as “microtransactions,” because it’s basically alternate cosmetic stuff, for equipment and housing decorations (and maybe, like, different colored effects for powers, basically). But it’s sold under the label of “DLC,” and I don’t care to make a distinction between “microtransactions” and “DLC,” myself. One is a subset of the other.
If they have time to be making decorative extra shit, they should be spending that time working on the core game, which IS NOT FINISHED YET.
You called for a more nuanced take from the other comment thread, but you would put cosmetics and expansions under the same label in this one because you “don’t care to make a distinction” - do you see the issue?
I don’t see any issue. I can have any opinion I want, with or without your permission.
Yes, you can have any opinion you want. And no one needs to take you seriously. Your senseless unhinged rambling speaks plenty for itself.
Fair enough. But I’m still correct, whether you like it or not.
You are insufferable. Hope you enjoy your debate.
You misspelled “correct.”
I’m right. You’re wrong. Pay attention to me and try to learn.
Yes, but if you opinions are hypocritical, they’re free to point that out. It does undermine both you and this discussion.
In this case, there is nuance between cosmetics and expansion pack type dlc. One is obviously more atrocious, but if you’d engage honestly in the debate, you’d find that many people do distinguish between those things. And many people are asking you to provide examples of a game and you point to cosmetics. For many of us, that vastly changes the conversation.
It may not for you, but for us, that nuance matters. And if you’re going to jump on the badwagon in one post extolling the virtues of deeper conversation because otherwise Lemmy will become a sesspit, I dunno, maybe do some of that yourself. Be part of the solution, not the problem.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m gonna go see all the nuances other people are discussing.
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That’s a terrible excuse not to talk to someone, I don’t think I’d be talking to most people for more than a few messages if I did that. Also not everyone has spell check in their Lemmy Interface so there might not have been a red squiggle or maybe the user assumed that because it’s a very uncommon word it might not be in the dictionary.
not everyone has spell check in their Lemmy Interface
I don’t see how that can be true, unless someone is using some sort of text-only, Unix-style browser. All modern browsers will load the rich-text-enabled text entry box, unless you go far out of your way to defeat that feature. I tested the word in the text entry box, and it came up as misspelled. You shouldn’t go to great lengths to disable a spellcheck feature, unless you have ABSOLUTELY PERFECT SPELLING.
If you do, and then you misspell some shit, that is the perfect definition of living in a glass house and chucking rocks. You deserve what’s coming to you, if you do it.
Fuck off, no you weren’t.
People who want to engage in discussion don’t find a flimsy, meaningless excuse to hurl insults instead. Be less transparent before you try to troll, please.
You are right that I was unnecessarily rude. I apologize.
But I honestly do want to know why you just ignore the red misspelling squiggle, when you misspell a word. I guess I have mild OCD or something, because I simply CANNOT ignore that shit. It’s an absolutely foreign concept, for someone to just be like “nah, I’m right about that word. I know better than the actual dictionary.”
Again: I’m really, truly not trying to be rude anymore. I’m genuinely trying to understand your behavior.
Yeah that’s what I was talking about. I have no problem with this. I mean, I won’t buy any of it, but cosmetic artists and riggers aren’t the same people who do level design and shit.
If you want to show me someone selling, like, an expansion for $20 on an early access game then I’ll be incredulous with you. But that link is just typical bad business. No reason for Valve to get involved banning it or whatever
The problem is that THE. GAME. IS. NOT. FUCKING. FINISHED.
That’s the problem. Every single nanosecond spent working on DLC/microtransaction shit is being STOLEN from the people who paid into the Early Access model.
This sounds personal. Who hurt you?
Nobody, in this specific situation.
See, this is a thing called EMPATHY. And a sense of justice, outside what I stand to gain, personally.
I believe people should be called out for doing shitty things, just in general. This seems to be an entirely alien concept for a lot of folks. I find that disturbing.
Your attitude betrays your passion. This level of anger is abnormal for the subject of cosmetics in early access games, even for empathetic people. I give both time and money to charity and I’m nowhere near your level of angry and emotional over cosmetics.
Whether you’ll admit it or not, something happened to make you this emotionally sensitive to this particular issue. I’m curious what it was
Believe what you want. I’ll have the satisfaction of being correct, either way.
Star Citezen, right?
Do they sell expansions? Or just ships? I’m on original basic backer and don’t even know lol
Offhand, I know ARK released paid DLC while still in early access.
Yeah see that’s absurd
Tell us how you feel about Star Citizen.
Actually gotten good recently.
Marks have been saying this for literally over a decade.
Ok but actually? I’m an original backer with nothing but the original dinky ship and I’m still waiting for a game worth playing for the money I already spent. Haven’t looked in a year or two.
Is squadron 42 even playable end to end yet?
I’m not the one who said it’s good so can’t comment on that part, but sq42 is supposedly feature complete and in the final polishing phase atm.
So the answer is “no”.
I don’t even play the game man, just reporting the news. No need to be a jerk about it.
Not being a jerk, just clarifying that the game that was promised 11 years ago doesn’t exist, and won’t exist for some time.
Same as always.
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Is your name ironic?
How is it a scam?
Did I mention the fact that you can pay thousands of real-world dollars for a not-real spaceship?
Do you need any other fucking definition of a scam?
That’s what’s called a microtransaction. Sure, the prices are insane, but that doesn’t make it a scam.
Micro transactions in games are scams by default.
Not by definition, at least
noun - a fraudulent or deceptive act or operation
If you design a game with psychologists to maximize serotonin hits instead of gameplay and then charge money to keep getting a hit is, by definition, a deceptive act, and ergo – scam.
Chill dude
Nah.
Fair enough
But but but… Your username!
Yeah, it was a mistake. Or, like, aspirational.
Holy shit you’re a psychopath.
Wanting people to be punished for horrible things they did? That’s psychopathy, now?
You realize that there are poor souls out there who have spent their life savings on that piece of shit, right? Now, here comes the best part: the part where YOU tell me that those people don’t deserve sympathy. They chose to get scammed, they’re suckers, they deserve what they got for speculating on fake starships, etc.
Which one of us has empathy? Which one of us is pointing the finger at the actual criminals?
the part where you tell me
I don’t have to tell you shit. You’re a psychopath who’s clearly beyond reason. You can’t be helped.
Care to give me a list of other criminals and villains who you think shouldn’t be punished?
I’m fascinated by this through-the-looking-glass mentality you have, where wanting vicious and destructive criminals to be punished is evidence of psychopathy.
Namaste the fuck away from you.
I just see this as you continuing to defend the actual psychopaths, in the situation. Let me try to make this clearer, for you:
The scammers who sell pretend starships have been happily doing so for YEARS, by now. They know about the stories of people compulsively spending thousands of dollars on their bullshit. They know there are people out there, who have had to break down and tell their spouses “I spent the kids’ college fund on a bunch of in-game starships…BUT HONEY, WE’LL BE ABLE TO FLIP THEM FOR TEN TIMES WHAT I INVESTED! WHY ARE YOU CRYING?”
That shit has happened. To real people. And the asshole scammers absolutely know about it. And they DO NOT CARE, AT ALL. That’s what psychopathy is. They calmly and happily continue to spend those people’s hard-earned dollars. Not on the game. Not investing it back into the game. Oh, no. If they had been using all that fucking money to develop the game, it would have come out years and years ago.
They’re funding their own investments, their own lavish lifestyles, their own egomaniacal satisfaction. They will never feel any guilt about what they’re doing, because they don’t feel guilt. Again: they are actual psychopaths.
The only way to make them feel anything negative about what they’ve done would be to imprison them, in that horrible place in the desert, where they can only see a tiny rectangle of sunlight, and barely have enough space to stretch to their full height. They won’t ever feel bad about the pain they caused other people. They can’t. They would only ever feel sorry for themselves. But I want them to feel that pain.
I don’t see how you can disagree, knowing that most of their victims will NEVER be financially okay again, and the perpetrators of the scam are just freely living the good life. What passes for a concept of justice, inside your head?
With my penis.
Also also: can we make it that developers have only one Early Access game at a time. Finish the game before moving on to the next one, or abandon it and release it without the EA label.
YES! That’s maybe the most important point I could make, but I forgot to make it.
I like your sentence structure. ADHD?
ADHD?
Obviously, yes. I feel seen.
Respect. If bullet points were a thing. An actually easy to use thing. I’d use them. Cursor stuff covers the markup buttons for me.
You can make a bulleted list by just starting each line with an asterisk (*)
- Like
- This
Thanks.
-
That’s not going to last that like up in the old brain bucket.
-
Appreciate the effort though.
-
Word.
Libre Office Writer
This guy writes.
For sale: baby tiara, never worn.
Don’t call it stillborn, call it vaporware.
I don’t buy early access so I didn’t even know :O
Space engineers had joined the thread
Fuck that bigot
Someone needs to make a new template with that bigot photoshoped out
Found it on the Internet
Is that Aflleck? 😂
Who is that? I dunno if I’ve ever seen the original and don’t recognize the person
Stephen Crowder, he’s a right winger YouTuber.
It’s from a series where he’d set up a table like this at a university with a right-wing opinion on the front and debate students over it.
A spouse-abusing right-winger. That’s the key detail at this point.
And by “debate”, they mean “talk over the other person, make a thousand shitty arguments a minute, and call it a win when the other person gets frustrated and walks away”
In case anybody else is curious, Stephen Crowder is not the same person as David Crowder (stage name, Crowder), a popular Christian musician.
I would consider selling something like a soundtrack acceptable but no game content dlc, absolutely.
Fuck that. Why is that acceptable? A soundtrack is a basic part of a game. You’re so used to paying for extra shit that you forgot that options like those are part of the game that you paid for from non bullshit companies.
You don’t know shit about how remuneration for composers works, huh.
Are you trying to imply that the only way a game music composer can make money is if the game studio sells you their music as dlc? So all the games without dlc soundtracks just got their music off some hobo in an alley and nobody got paid?
🤡
I’m not a programmer or a gamer (or a musician), just curious. What does make it different?
They get paid for their work, obviously, but often a significant portion of their ongoing pay is based on soundtrack sales, whether physical or digital.
For one example, you can look into how Id screwed over Mick Gordon with the doom eternal OST, but it’s a long and frustrating read.
OST in a straight audio format has never been part of buying the game unless you ripped the files yourself. Be more entitled.
Be more entitled
Lol, whatever. Keep paying for stupid shit I guess. The studios definitely know their market.
I don’t pay for it, my man. If anyone making video game music was talented they’d be making actual music.
Define “actual music”. Does it become real music when it’s part of a movie sound track? Or when it’s played on pop radio stations? When it gets performed by middle schoolers in band classes? When the London Philharmonic performs it? When it reaches Billboard 100? When the artist wins a grammy? Do you need to be in ASCAP to make music? I’m a little confused as to what would differentiate music made for digital entertainment from any other music.
dang, honestly one of the worst takes I’ve seen this year
Right? There are so many OST for games that are absolutely amazing. It’s “real” music whatever that was supposed to mean.
exactly. The first thing that came to my mind was Hollow Knight OST, if it’s not “real” then I guess I must’ve imagined how much it slaps
You’re just dead wrong for that. You can’t be serious?
We as gamers who want this are completely outdone by the insane amount of money some people will spend in this market. Change my mind.
PS. I hate the DLC and micro transaction market as they exist today. But they make 1000x the old market so no way anything changes.
war thunder, destiny 2, what other games are there for the sole purpose of milking multiple payments of money out of people over a long period of time
gta 5 online probably counts too
