Quality product. Not DRM-laden, always-online, unoptimized garbage that pushes microtransactions in my face. It’s not a price problem; it’s a service problem. If I’m going to get a shittier experience as a legitimate customer, piracy is the smart thing to do.
If you’re concerned about DRM, just use GOG or Itch. If you’re concerned about shitty games, do research before you buy something and just avoid studios like EA.
It won’t change anything until people stop preordering games and actually wait for them to come out before shelling out a hundred bucks.
Pre-order and dlc is what has made gaming so awful lately. Game companies realized they can make a half-assed game and fill it with microtransactions and still make shit loads of money
The biggest issue with pre-ordering is the gaming community itself tbh. Even if an individual knows better intellectually, companies have people specialized to make advertising as engaging as possible. Most of us (I used to be one of them) simply do not have the tools, nor the idea, of how to mentally combat “hype trains” and thus get our expectations up praying that the game will come out good and satisfy us for a bit.
Good old inability to delay gratification (google it, it’s an actual behavioural trait) in the face of the pretty clear logic that almost all games (except some multiplayer ones) are actually better a year later than at launch day.
Mind you, the world around us pretty much tries to train us every single day to be like that: it makes for wonderful profit-maximizing mindless consumers.
In all fairness, graphing that only makes sense in inflation-adjusted dollars, which judging by the legend isn’t the case (the seasonal adjustment only smooths the differences between quarters).
Mind you, I still expect it will keep it’s shape in the last few years, but it might show the current point as below the 2009 peak (not that it makes it any better).
Sorry, I used to work in Finance and am a bit of stickler for clearity in Financial and Economic figures :/
I’m not an economist but anecdotal evidence that I’ve picked up from a number of different sources in the last couple of years lends me to believe that consumer debt is pretty darn high. This is from the Federal Reserve and what else is an average schmuck supposed to look at? https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/fb2404fb-ca88-4c39-8a8f-5fbd5b08c04e.png
Oh yeah, the explosion of indebtness at all levels has been the tendency for decades now, certainly ever since money creation started being done by the banks themselves when they lent money (there’s an interesting paper from the Bank Of England called “Money Creating in the Modern Economy” which is quite the eye-opener on how money is created nowadays)
All the obcession with Public Debt is to a large extent smoke and mirrors: both consumer and corporate debt have grown just as fast or even faster and are very high as percentage of GDP compared to the historic average.
In many ways we’re repeating the period that led to the Great Crash of 1929.
My point in the last post was about the graphic itself rather than critical of the point you were making.
Understood. Whether or not we are replicating economic conditions from 1929 is another story entirely. Other than AI, there really isn’t too much of a stock market bubble. The S&P 500 P/E ratio is lower than pre-pandemic and the Buffett indicator(US stock market value divided by GDP) is still well within a safe range. 1929 was pre-globalization, pre-SEC and there were next to no banking regulations at the time. The Internet bubble of 2000 with its insane speculation more closely resembled the crash of 29 than does the current market conditions. The 2008 housing debacle was primarily too much leveraged mortgage debt.
I’m not a student of economics and haven’t studied much of it but I have owned stocks for quite a few years and have a basic understanding of how money works.
Oh, a lot of banking regulation introduced after 29 was rolled back in the 90s and 00s and not restored after the 2009 Crash.
I was actually in Investment Banking before, during and after the 2008 Crash and unconditional rescues with no lessons learned were all the rage.
That said, my point comes more from the economic super-cycle which takes about an century and is mostly visible in terms of general indebtness. This stuff has to do with the nature of economic activity in general and risk aversion (or lack thereof) by economic actors, so it’s way beyond mere stockmarkets and their crashes (which reflect it rather than drive it).
There’s a lot going on with anemic growth and the “solution” for the persistent recession after the 2008 Crash - ultra-low interest rates - being rolled back due to an accumulation of bubbles all over the Economy leading to Inflation (which was already going up before the war in Ukraine), in turn causing rumbles in the realestate mortgage market and the more bubbly stockmarkets like the Nasdaq (and even more in the Tech Startup investment asset class).
I mean, we’re even seeing the rise of populism in politics.
I suspect we might be living in interesting times.
Exactly. Companies know how to manipulate our dopamine high and keep on repeating the cycle of pre-orders and post-launch disappointment; while the game developers are laughing their way to the banks.
Pre-ordering makes zero sense for a digitally downloadable product, since it isn’t scarce like physical products can be. Unless the company invents advantages that didn’t need to be there, there’s no benefit of being in the front of the queue, since eventually everybody can get a copy. Consumers are dumb…
Pre-ordering has the illusion of value. When you pre-order chances are it gets you into the game before others and with extra stuff to boot. That could be an advantage that could snowball. Or atleast that is one of the rationalizations that can be made. Saldy, even assuming that is true, it wouldn’t matter since the game tends to be shit/unplayable at launch.
The pre-orders that technically are worth anything are those that give physical baubles/items that could contain value to some individuals. But right now? yeah pre-orders are scams.
But speaking personally now, the feelings can be so damn strong that you create “logical” reasons to pre-order and then end up lamenting at the idiocy or full commit to sunk cost fallacy.
i really want to use gog but they don’t offer regional pricing.
like for example factorio is 8$ for me on steam but 36$ on gog. Skyrim is 40$ on gog and 17$ on steam.
I’d rather invest my time figuring a smart purchase, than spend my minuscule available money padding some rich fuck wallet. I don’t have much money or time, so I’d rather spend it on quality products and services than waste it on moneygrubbers.
No one’s disputing that. The discussion is about how awful it is that we have to do that. It sucks that our miniscule time is even smaller because we have to now sift through the garbage first.
Avoiding a title is simply not a consideration for a lot of people—especially if it’s shitty. They’re important context for meme and conversation material.
Did “all digital” kill renting? Back in my day we had Blockbuster and gamefly, and we could buy used disks from gamestop and play 'em for a bit and return them within 7 days to “rent” them as well. I’m glad I’m all ROMs and flashcarts these days.
Odd contradiction. I support pirating when a person can’t access media legally (whether due to financials or just dick-moves by corps). However, this is the same logic that writers are striking against with streaming and I sure as hell support them.
Of course piracy preserves old games. Also piracy is not a problem when it is miniscule. The issue is when piracy becomes the norm, so that these companies will be pushed towards more locked systems (consoles exclusives) and abandon PC. Some may even call for androud style locking up on PC.
Google is already trying the latter with the Web DRM stuff they’re trying to shove down everyone’s throats (and why I stopped using Chrome and Chromium — I’ve been daily driving Firefox for a while now and replaced Chromium with Brave for when I need a Chromium browser).
Streaming happened after piracy…but then piracy still happens to keep streaming in check it seems. It’s like that looming ‘did you want to make some money or no money?’ Threat On the greedy distributors. Has absolutely fuck all to do with the artist.
To add to what Skull giver said, the current retro market only exists because of the emulators that Nintendo has been fighting for over 25 years. There would be no SNES Mini console without snes9x or zsnes. Neither would there be a Nintendo e-shop for their old games on new consoles. The knowledge base to even make that work would not exist. Archiving old copies of games may not even exist.
Nintendo’s position is highly hypocritical. They have benefited from emulation far more than they’ve been harmed.
Actually more like: “Here’s an HD remaster of an old game that we ported previously but instead of giving you the same price as that lets just charge $60 instead.”
Fan: “I’ve been feeling like playing Super Mario Sunshine again lately. Do you happen to have this game?”
Nintendo: “Yes indeed, it is part of the Super Mario 3D Collection, which also contains Super Mario 64 with HD graphics and Super Mario Galaxy, also in HD and with added button controls.”
Fan: “Nice! I’d like a copy of Super Mario 3D Collection.”
Nintendo: “We only sold this for a short time after the 35th anniversary of Super Mario. So i guess you should’ve asked sooner.”
Fan: “Well then. Now excuse me while i get an RCM-”
More like: Nintendo, “here is a collection of old games that you have to pay for a monthly subscription in order to access.”
Me: “that’s really stupid, no thanks”
PS: it is possible to be a fan of Nintendo’s and also think they are dicks about emulation and piracy and don’t offer reasonable alternatives…many things in life are multi-faceted as such, and it’s perfectly OK (and healthy ackshually) to acknowledge the bad in those we admire.
Nintendo has also committed piracy of their own software, by downloading a rom that a piracy group extracted and uploaded to the internet, so that Nintendo could then can re-sell the game back to us.
If Nintendo will sell me the old games I love, I’ll happily rebuy them so long as there’s no installed killswitch (sorry, “DRM”) that will take it away from me one day.
It’s impossible to pirate your own game tho. Why find an old cartridge and dump the ROM yourself if somebody already did it. The actual source code is probably somewhere in the shadowrealm, so nothing they can do.
I don’t mind the HD remakes, but I do mind the constant obsession with releasing them over making a new game or, ye gods forbid, coming up with a new IP. That, and it’d be nice if they wouldn’t leave several of them locked to dead on arrival systems (like the WiiU) which just creates the same problem all over again.
But what really gets my goat is locking all the Virtual Console releases onto the shop of whatever console they’re on, so when that service inevitably goes defunct they’re all lost again. Those old 16 bit games aren’t changing, having content updates, or getting patched. And they’re just emulating them anyway, so just put a whole bunch of titles on a Switch cartridge or something and let me play them in perpetuity as long as my Switch still functions. I will not pay $60 for Mario 1 again. I probably would pay $60 for the entirety of the first party library from the NES on a cartridge.
All my old NES, SNES, N64, and Gamecube games still work just fine, decades later. But there’s stuff that was on the DSi and WiiWare shops that’s just gone forever, and you can never get them back.
It’s a free market. If you don’t like what someone is charging for something then don’t buy it. If you pirate as a result then that’s fine but it’s selfish behavior.
Yeah, forgive me for not wanting to miss out on something because my economy is shit. Despite me telling you that I buy when I can afford it. Never mind the fact that you can literally frame anything and everything as “selfish behavior” in this life, even breathing. Let me point out that you’re just an another smug asshole.
You pirating something because you don’t want to miss out on it is inherently selfish. Just because you’re not making as much money as you’d like doesn’t change anything. And no, you can’t frame breathing as selfish since it’s a necessary function for living which can’t be said about your desire to pirate video games.
And me paying it back when I can is what? Me trying to save up for the good things in life while I’m still alive and able is what? Me supporting the games I like in ways theat doesn’t involve spending is what?
Breathing is inherently selfish because you’re consuming a resource… with a virtually infinite supply… just like software. Imagine that.
You know what’s also selfish and self-serving? Being a smug asshole.
Yea, pirating something just because you don’t have the money for it is still selfish behavior. Comparing necessary bodily functions to pirating someone else’s IP is a real leap in logic but if that’s what helps you justify your selfish behavior then that’s cool.
Did I compare breathing to pirating or did I say that anything could be portrayed as selfish regardless of what it is? Because I’m pretty sure I said the latter, yet you’re being very disingenuous and that’s also very selfish behavior. But I’m sure you’ll argue that eating is not selfishly depriving an organism of their life because it’s also a necessary bodily function, right? I’m sure you’ll be consistent and not self-serving at all with your logic.
And doubling down on the smug asshole act is also very cool, but we’re just going to ignore that for the third time in a row.
Except you can’t portray breathing as selfish in any manner since it’s a necessary bodily function unlike your desire to pirate which is completely optional. You feel entitled to play something you don’t want to or can’t pay for. It’s selfish behavior.
Except that trippling down on the smug asshole is definitely self-serving behavior and no amount of ignoring it is going to change that. You feel entitled to say something–even if it’s lies–that you can’t justify for any reason other than to feel superior, regardless if come across as a hypocrite. It’s selfish behavior.
And yet it’s absolutely selfish and self-serving, and now confirmed hypocritical for you to call anyone out on it. All you did all this time was to share your unwanted and negative opinion trying to frame a discussion in a negative light for someone else so that you can feel smug about it for a second. Face it, not only are you admitting now to being a selfish person yourself criticizing someone for the hings that you do, but you’re also a confirmed lying asshole trying to make people feel bad for no justifiable reason.
I didn’t call anyone out, you responded to my original comment trying to explain your reasoning for pirating which is fine. I am pointing out that your reasoning is flawed and your desire to play games without paying is out of selfishness.
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