Shady business Practices in Video Games

[Pink Fluffy Cat]

This was supposed to be a reply in the "dead internet theory in online games" thread but since that thread was deleted, I'll just make another thread on my own.

A typical strategy in FTP MMORPG games is that they would run accounts with ridiculous high stats themselves and use those to engage competition with top players - just so those players will pay more in order to win the "competition" that's rigged from start. MMORPG is an eye opening scene, you'd see people invest thousands of dollars, several times above the average salaries, in the most soulless, contentless, shittest mobile trash you can imagine likes as if it was nothing.
There're also fake ads, which I don't know why it isn't forbidden but it must have been working like charm considering this strategy still dominates the mobile market after these years. What else shady businesses practice in the video game market you are aware of and what's your experience on them? Share if you like.

 

[PizzaW0lf]

Unfortunately, there's a lot that I know of.

The types I HATE
-Unfinished games/way too glitchy
-MICROTRANSACTIONS
-Fraudulent marketing/CGI trailers/Lying
-Games as a service
-DRM
-(Paid) crappy DLC/season passes/DLC before the game comes out...
-ruining a beloved franchise
-General lack of creativity and not willing to even make a sequel that builds upon the last game. Only remakes I guess.
-Obvious ESG pandering

Types I slightly tolerate
-Marketing doesn't have to be perfect
-Paid DLC is ok as long as it's worth it
-Some glitches/not fully polished

 

[Sketch Relics]

Speaking of MMO's, one of their poorer design decisions is using a form of power creep called parasitic design. Basically when they make a new mechanic to power up a character that doesn't really effect system design and is usually abandoned and left to rot after it's personal expansion. Like let's say you have an accessory that you power up by doing the content of an expansion and you really need it for this expansion to actually be stong, but come next expansion there is a new item that you equipt in the same slot that is even more powerful, easier to get (like you get it right away or something), and renders basically all the old content as irrelevant.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwHJqXKwRKM

Here is a good video explaining it further.
It basically ends up skinnerboxing the MMO by never advancing the mechanics of the game.

-Unfinished games/way too glitchy

You know, for glitches I think it actually depends on how much it effects general gameplay. Like Pokemon Red/Blue, Sonic Adventure 1+2, and LOZ Breath of the Wild are all stupidly glitchy games, but you generally have to be trying to cause a glitch to happen to actually see one.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2nGKBPzG2M

This is great and anyone who says otherwise is lying to themselves.

Also can I just post the EA logos?

They just belong here to be honest, especially the sports one for releasing the same games every year with only updated rosters

Also, on the note of re-releasing games, Capcom released an updated version of Dragons Dogma with an expansion as a new standalone game, but didn't give owners of the first release to buy the expansion as DLC.

To my knowledge, this is the only time a company did this in the west, though it's kinda common in Square-Enix's Japan releases, with Kingdom Hearts being the prime example.

 

[Vetusomaru]

The ones I hate the most are paid DLCs. And I was happy when Nintendo avoided that shit during Wii/DS era. Unfortunately they joined this shit at 3DS/Wii U era and even main Pokemon games (from Sword/Shield and after) were affected by this shit.

 

[Vetusomaru]

A shady video game practise I really hate and not so many people talk about it is companies that not only they shamefully rip off other games but they even deny that they rip them off. And some of them have the nerve to sue other companies when they do the same. At least they could make their ripoffs more interesting and appealing but almost all of them are generic and blant as hell.

Puzzloop is the biggest victim of this practise, which is I felt no pity when EA shut down PopCap Games since PopCap Games made a fortune by ripping off other puzzle games including Puzzloop.

Puzzle Bobble is another big victim of this practise, especially at smartphones. I wouldn't care much about Puzzle Bobble ripoffs if it wasn't for the fact that all official Puzzle Bobble games for smartphones are shit and that all Puzzle Bobble ripoffs look so much soulless.

 

[Vetusomaru]

Young gamers: "Video games companies are so shady with their misleading trailers."
Old gamers: "Hold my beer."

("Preview" screenshots from Nintendo 64's Clayfighter 63 1/3. Greek Gamepro - and probably the American one too - shared said screenshots as actual ones for a Nintendo 64 game)

ClayFighter Extreme (63 1/3) [N64 - Beta / Tech Demo / Unused Stuff] - Unseen64

Preserving Details, Screenshots, Videos & more Lost Media for ClayFighter Extreme (63 1/3) [N64 - Beta / Tech Demo / Unused Stuff] Help us to remember cancelled video games!

www.unseen64.net

 

[Rams969]

Everything went wrong when Todd did this and we never stopped him, now is too late

 

[Rams969]

Now seriously, a very shady thing in videogames is how some old games are being made impossible to play, thanks to all those games being in servers the moment the companies shut them down to gain storage the game can't never be played again. If you want more info on this and how "games as a service" are destroying the medium please check out Ross videos about it, he is a great guy
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUAX0gnZ3Nw&ab_channel=AccursedFarms

 

[Sidewinder91]

Bad optimization.

I get it, programmers generally have a huge list of bug reports to address so if they need to choose between 'holding down space for more than five seconds on the menu will crash the game' or 'this could be more optimized' they're going to spend their time fixing the CTD.

But at the same time, relying on powerful hardware to get around bad optimization is kind of the norm now, and is just bad craftsmanship.

 

[Pangolin]

I wish steam would let me download my games into a disk as a perm backup.

 

[alCannium27]

I wish steam would let me download my games into a disk as a perm backup.

you can do a backup of your local game files using the Steam UI, it'll pack those files into local files, using a format only steam can unpack of course, but if you are using steam, that's about as good a backup as you are gonna get without cracking the game. I exported all my games the last time I upgraded my laptop.

I, on the other hand, hate companies that actively sabotge video game preservation efforts, even when many old games are unlikely to receive a remaster, at least not before the source code goes puff in some callous accidents.

Not to mention the fact that I have no faith any "remasters" would be worth the names of the originals these days...

 

[manpaint]

I hate anything that play on "the fear of missing out". It's so predatory. Even Club Penguin had this back in the old days.

 

[Pangolin]

I hate anything that play on "the fear of missing out". It's so predatory. Even Club Penguin had this back in the old days.

Turns out I really didn't need all their dumb daily pins.

 

[PizzaW0lf]

For a fun history lesson, if this was the 2000s the shadiest would be...

>Yearly releases
>Normie sports games
>Normie licensed music and not an original OST (I know the music was still amazing, but it's also really lazy tbh...)
>Shovelware
>Weird and esoteric hardware quirks that gave developers pain
>Concept of DLC started.
>MMOs
>lost generation of 2D games

 

[alCannium27]

Games as a Service, in general, without exceptions

 

[The Chibi One]

Being an oldfag, I used to espouse that DLC on the calibre of Horse Armor was the shadiest thing in gaming, but lately I lean far more into the idea that x-as-a-service practices are by far the shittiest. There are games that people have bought and paid for that they can no longer access because it was "offered as a service" and thus they never really owned it. This has in a way happened to me with a game on Steam (Scratches, for anyone wondering) which was bought and paid for but then Steam removed it from the store and for a time there was no way to play it even after having bought it. My memory is foggy but I recall there was massive backlash regarding this, and they only allowed people who had already purchased it to be able to download it again, without allowing new purchases. An insanely convoluted practice, which paves the way for shadier practices in the vein of the "You'll own nothing, and you'll be happy" mantra.

By comparison, Horse Armor never promised anything more than it provided. It was horse armor, plain and simple. An overpriced cosmetic item, devoid of any gameplay substance and actual value of enjoyment? Sure, but at least you can still boot up your XBOX360 Oblivion version and still have Shadowmere show some serious drip.

 

[Holy]

>Yearly releases
>Normie sports games

Yearly releases made more sense in the 2000s when you couldn't update the game and thus had to make a "new" entry every year with the updated rosters. The concept of yearly releases is an antiquated practice because today they could just update the rosters and release a new game less frequently but they won't since it makes more money to sell it at full price every year. "Normie sports games" were quite high quality back then in their own right. It's genuinely shocking how much worse they are in the modern day. Missing over 70 features that were present in gen 6 games.

 

[Sketch Relics]

Going back through this, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned lootboxes yet, a completely asinine unlock and monetary generating system that has links to shady gambling sites.
Speaking of gambling, lots of overseas hosted gambling sites pay people to stream gambling to attract people to their sites.

 

[evenlymatched95]

I know that this is something that most people don't consider to be shady, but remakes are high on the list for me. They're almost never preferable over the original game, and they're marketed to the people who are too lazy/stupid to run an emulator or think that their game company daddy will go out of business if they don't pay full price on everything.

I wish steam would let me download my games into a disk as a perm backup.

Speaking of emulators - what I've been doing is zipping up my games with a copy of Goldberg Emulator. The program has worked for me more than that other one on Steam Underground.

 

[PizzaW0lf]

Unfortunately they joined this shit at 3DS/Wii U era

I am a bit of a noticer and I've actually noticed something recently with this.

Ever since TotK I don't think Nintendo has made DLC or content updates in a while for their main games. To break it down, I know that Splatoon 3 had the side order mode added but that was already long in development and known before TotK released. Also F Zero 99 came out and that has updates but that's just because it's an NSO game similar to Tetris 99. So updates would make sense for a "subscription" based game. Other than that, I think they genuinely have a good streak going with this so far. Pikmin 4? Nothing of the sort. SMBWonder? Also nothing. And of course TotK doesn't have it either but well... for 70 shekels it better not. And all these are pretty major games and releases just to back up my point.

I know that maybe this just means that the "A" teams are working on Switch 2 games so they can't really work on DLC or updates but I really hope they continue this and I'm proven wrong. I bet the new Mario Kart and AC will have DLC and mess the streak up though but who knows. Pokemon mainline (maybe not legends) will probably still do it though.

Yearly releases made more sense in the 2000s when you couldn't update the game and thus had to make a "new" entry every year with the updated rosters.

"Normie sports games" were quite high quality back then in their own right.

It's funny looking back to say this but, I think I actually wouldn't mind yearly releases anymore. After all, we're not getting any younger and I think it equally sucks to have games take a DECADE OR 2 to come out. Also, even though the games came out every year they were still full products that you could collect individually if you wanted and not always have to get every year. At least you still "owned" the games. Live service just completely ruins this aspect of owning tbh. And you're right the games back then were still high quality compared to today. But, just about EVERYTHING was higher quality compared to today and I think sports games were among the first to be ruined by "anti-consumer" practices. I say "normie" sports games because if you've seen this meme, you'd understand what I mean,

These sports games just had to get popular enough for these types to start "gaming". And it's partly why the gaming community and everything is just so ruined. Another meme to prove my point:

These games lead to the mentality of "haha let's just never take risks ever again!".

Going back through this, I'm surprised that no one has mentioned lootboxes yet

but lately I lean far more into the idea that x-as-a-service practices are by far the shittiest.

I think live services actually the VERY PINNICLE of ant-consumerism in games. The concept has literally EVERYTHING I HATE accelerated.
>Race to bottom value wise (awful monetization, etc)
>ADHD zoomie mechanics
>Absolutely no game design or craftmanship to speak of
>false promises

And in conclusion I feel like a prisoner with live service games. AND IT'S EVEN WORSE WHEN PEOPLE DEFEND SOME OF THIS SHIT!! LIKE WTF BRO!!??? (especially by those who play Marvel rivals or genshin )