The Line Between Pricey and Predatory | Cold Take
Вставка
- Опубліковано 7 лип 2024
- This video is brought to you by ΔV: Rings of Saturn. Check out ΔV: Rings of Saturn on Steam today - games.kodera.pl/dv/steam
The never-ending dance of micro(macro?)transactions.
Support us on Patreon: / secondwindgroup
Second Wind Merch Store: sharkrobot.com/collections/se... - Ігри
"People don't bring their mental A game to every situation." Now that's a mentality we should all try and embrace, rather then calling every one stupid. I came to Second Wind for Yatzee, but Cold Take has quickly become my favorite show here. Thank you for always embracing both sides of an argument!
Indeed. Open your hearts to nuance, everyone. (And yeah, Cold Take is Nothing But Bangers, and it makes me happy)
I don't even watch Yahtzee anymore, his shtick got old like five years ago. Cold Take though, I could watch all day. Design Delve is up there too, glad it's gotten more love since the Escapist days.
one hell of a way to start a video strongly, godbless frost
Bold and cold as it might sound, the idea of people NOT bringing their mental A-game makes me even less sympathetic towards idiots. They're coasting by on what doesn't even qualify as "good enough/that'll do", when they could be doing so much better, which is SO much worse than people doing their best and their best being rubbish.
I'm not even asking for them to redline their faculties and S-rank everything all the time; I'd be perfectly content with people giving it their "most" instead of their all, since giving it your most is usually good enough. But so many people don't even give it their most, or even just their "some", and feel content with attaining mediocrity when they not only need to do better, but DESERVE better too.
@@mariteaux I'm just the opposite. I find Yahtzee's reviews entertaining to this day but I can't make it through a full episode of Cold Take without getting sick of the "noirration".
That Faker skin stings not just from the ridiculous price and how little's going to Faker, it's the fact that it's Faker. He's famous for constantly donating his winnings to charity and plans to donate the rest after he's retired. The man is all about never taking more than you need and giving the rest to those who do. So using HIM for their "lets randomly crank the price to catch some whales" scheme is what added the extra insult to injury and really lit the flame.
b-but 30% cut goes to esports orgs or whatever!!
I mean, at least there's that, but man, for how little was done to this skin it definitely sucks that it feels they purely used his name to jack up the price.
That's the thing I hate the most tbh. I worked in retail and I knew these purchases were going into the hands of like ten people, none of them were the employees who sold the clothing in the first place.
He's also famous for not using skins.
@@YTHandlesWereAMistake
That makes this decision mad strange.
@@maromania7 he doesn't even wear the skin! 🤣
Probably one of the spicier 'cold' takes we've had.
A minty take?
Agreed, but it's mainly because Frost does reasonable takes and this time being reasonable is spicy.
Saying SotE is too hard is the hottest take he's had imo
I suppose it depends on what the meaning of 'Cold Take' is supposed to be.
I've always seen it as starting with the thoughts we (the mindless masses) already hold, but with logical follow-through to some of the nuance that we might otherwise miss, i.e. expressing what we're thinking with an eloquence we never could.
Whereas heeere, it's more or less counter to how I presume most people feel about the situation.
I think tying the ideas of luxury goods purchase with digital cosmetic goods is a very toxic thing to do from frost here.
It creates a very bad mindset that allows for a slippery slope even further into pricing hell
the detail of this whole skin situation that I most enjoy though is that Faker was rather well known for never actually using cosmetic skins, even when playing on tournament clients with all the skins unlocked he would still just use the default appearance creating some great comedic irony in him having an expensive limited availability cosmetic skin released to honor him
It'd be more willing to forgive if the 500 skin wasn't the same as the 200 skin just with fakers signature and if he actually had a bigger cut of the profits
I would not say this would be worth it at all since we've gotten legendaries with more or less the same features as the $200 to $500 versions of the Faker Ahri skin. The worst part is that Faker didn't even have or is even rocking the skin.
30% is already pretty generous tbh. They could have done nothing and he gets 0%.
@@arcan762then they probably couldnt have tied it to his name, genius
@@arcan762 generous when your using his name to nickle and dime people
come on now
Intriguing argument.
I was someone who spent more than i could afford in Madden.
Madden also became my drug of choice *after* i got clean off real life drugs.
Im hardwired to be susceptible in all mediums of escape. Good point there Frost!
Happy to say i do neither now. However it took years and thousands of dollars i didnt have wasted.
I personally had to swear off all monetization games, in any form.
Where does the responsibility lie? 🤔
I definitely felt preyed on, like i never even had a choice.
But only _after_ i learned how i was hardwired, did i find the strength to be accountable.
There are teams of psychologists in the gaming industry paid to exploit habits like mine.
I was only a *whale* in the sense of their profit off me, not my actual savings. 🐳
Agreed I was also a whale at one point. The price tags aren’t even the issue a lot of the time to me for the problems I have with monetization, it’s how it’s presented.
Minecraft introduced a paid mod market. That it’s immediately available pretty much anywhere ingame. Helldivers, the only part of your ship that’s accessible at all times, are the battlepass and cash shop. Games have you log in to see ads, so you can see in the menu and see banner ads about the shops. I understand most players aren’t spenders, and devs want to milk that LTV while they can but it just feels egregious especially with the low cost high profit it’s focused on. The devs/whales aren’t charities for having a small portion of the playerbase spend. If margins were that small everyone wouldn’t be chasing it. Apex has brought in literal billions in profit (not revenue, but profit)
It just doesn’t sit well with me and goes beyond just a price tag. Not to mention retention economies were completely glossed over in this.
The last thing too, is this cosmetic focused economy means players have lost their say in how their games look. Pratically no one allows cosmetic mods anymore, you’re limited to ingame stores. I miss when I was little and could be like “Star wars is neat, I found this mod that turns everyone into storm troopers” (and later make cosmetic mods myself). Sure games might do a crossover where you can pay 15$ for a basic storm trooper model, but it’s not the same. Modding let you curate how YOUR game looked to YOU. Anyone could do it for themselves, and you were getting these cosmetics cause you wanted them. Monetization has turned cosmetics into the digital Gucci just about waving money around and you’re lucky to find games that continually support skill unlocks in a meaningful way.
I have a ton of issues with F2P economics, especially after I decided to actually look into the development of these systems, their goals, and how they’re achieved from actual monetization leads.
As an addict in recovery, the behavior of some companies does not seem that different to me than that of certain, highly predatory drug dealers.
RE: Deep Rock Galactic: With the new ability to revisit old seasons in DRG whenever you want, I'm not sure there's much of a FOMO argument for their free battlepasses anymore. I know it was a throw away line, but I feel like DRG is really pretty much only a positive example at this point.
Yeah but I don't think Frost is capable of revisiting the game
As someone who deals with information and influence, and how it spreads, the argument of "We don't need ANY monetization in-game" isn't for the sake of gamers with thin wallets, but rather, everyone and their mother were warning that if Big Corpos were allowed to open this Pandora Box, there would be a nightmare unleashed that would be really hard to put back. Microtransactions were allowed and boiled into a nightmare that has yet to subside, lootboxes were directly tied to allowing microtransactions to brew, and "that guy can't spend 300$ on a skin!" doesn't mean that "I hate everyone who is richer than me", but rather "There will be a poor sap or a kid that will use their family savings to buy that useless stuff, corpos know that and will prey on those people too"
youre right and i feel like they know, especially considering some of the writers at this company. most people in the world can probably remember a company or service they liked that was ruined by really aggressive monetisation or penny pinching
Your argument was addressed in the video- the Big Corpos don't even want "idiot kid spending family savings" money. They want money from the ludicrously rich people for whom someone's family savings is within their daily budget.
@@10NeonThey don't target it but they will absolutely take it. Sure, they need the big spenders to be mostly consistent but let's not pretend they're being altruists here. They want money. A couple thousand from someone who can't actually afford it once in a while isn't something they're going to turn away
@@10Neon hopefully the parents look at the statement and know how to request a chargeback.
What do you mean "would be?" It already is.
Limited-time items are a dealbreaker for me in games because I am the exact person they work on. It's why I outright refuse to play games with battlepasses or licensed content.
NB4 someone brings it up, evergreen battlepasses aren't real battlepasses. Use your head more and semantics less.
Good on you for exercising personal restraint, geniunely
@@ThePhantom9495What is an evergreen battlepass? Genuinely unfamiliar with the term.
Sorry, but I have to ask: when you say licensed content you mean ANY licensed content? Like if a game has licensed music or a real life car brand, does that disqualify it for you?
@@MFG1243 Evergreen means it never expires / is always available, so no fear of missing out.
Never expected Frost to cover this particular story from Riot. I do admire the community uniting for the first 2 weeks for instantly banning the champion in all games as a statement. Granted after those 2 weeks, things went back to normal, but still.
Artificial scarcity (be it limited items being sold or limited time sales) also make neurodivergent people their prey people who actually can't bring their a game.
I agree each one of us is responsible for their wallets, but we have already seen companies like Epic Games doing shady stuff (forcing sales of cosmetics by noy implementing a buying confirmation message as an example), they had to settle out of court with the FTC.
I'd be onboard with Frost if I didn't know people with mental problems have bankrupted themselves because of this. It's not just rich people. It's also people with poor impulse control and children.
@@Pazuzu4All yup! 100%! and not only children, people with impulsive disorders too.
I am myself a neurodivergent person (acalculia, lack of 3d abstraction and dyslexia) and while these shady monetization mechanics don't affect me, I know how frustrating it is to be told to " put more effort" when literally I can't abstract complex maths in my brain as an example.
This one of those cases in which there are shades of gray, nuances that have be taken into account.
I think you're missing what I personally, and many others think is the most damning point of contention to this whole mess. Faker is primarily known for being the greatest league player of all time, yes, but additionally he's known for being extraordinarily humble, historically almost never playing with skin in any of his games. On its own a 500 dollar skin is definitely overpriced and all the other points still stands, but essentially leveraging a community idols image to sell a 500 dollars skin is downright despicable. Putting up a lemonade stand that sells 60 dollar cups of lemonade might be dodgy business, putting the same lemonade stand up at your close friends' graduation party is blatantly disrespectful.
I've been around long enough to know that the attitude of "well I don't buy it so I don't care" is what got us into this situation in the first place. Horse armour? Day-one DLC? Loot boxes? Ultra-mega gold edition pre orders? Everytime someone posted on a forum "I won't buy it, why should I care", it was music to the publishers ears. Tacit aggrement that what they are doing isn't going to be pushed back on toooo much, so they can try something a bit more... daring next time. So in the future, when a company does do something egregious, some really shady monetization, something you really dislike, think back on all those times you thought "I'm not going to buy it, why should I care if they sell it?".
Precisely. It's not enough to just say "oh well, it's not for me so I won't buy it". I don't think anyone, regardless of their tax bracket, should even have the opportunity to spend that much on a digital good. It's just literally not worth that much money. Any response that isn't immediate disapproval is giving the devs the thumbs up to keep doing it. Give them an inch, they'll take a mile. Loot boxes are silly and fun until they're turned into full blown gambling blocking player progression. A $500 commemorative skin might seem fine now but do we really want that price point showing up on revenue spreadsheets and informing further pricing?
Hell, it happened INSIDE LEAGUE. They introduced Gacha for little legends, then put that gacha all over their autobattler, then oh hey look gacha in the main game. When you let someone get away with something you're encouraging them to go further.
Lets be realistic here. Just because you personally don't find worth in battle passes or gold editions does not mean others do not. This never started with horse armor, people were whaling in world of warcraft around the same time. You wanna know who's really egregious? Valve, there were Team fortress two items there were, no joke, over 1000 dollars and the "something special ring" for 100 bucks. this 500 dollar skin is nothing new. Anybody thinking this is some new wave publisher idea needs to look into the past and see for themselves
Stop caring what other people do with their money. Developers/publishers/studios have always had greed fueled schemes since the dawn of video games. It's just now the tech has caught up.
And despite this universe existing, we can still get games for cheap, have the information to make an informed purchase with and can wait for sales.
Don't put the weight of the world on your shoulders and expect other people do the same and get huffy when they don't agree with you or listen.
That... doesn't really make any sense? If somebody else pays $30 for a cosmetic that I have no interest in, I still have no reason to care about the next cosmetic (that I'm also not going to purchase) costing $40.
As long as a game doesn't go pay-to-win, who cares?
@@RumpusImperator who cares? freeloaders wanting shit for free 😅
Implying that Riot "didn't use all their brainpower" seems weird, I'm pretty sure the possible bad PR hit is tiny compared to what the whale fishing will make them. LoL players are a captive audience except for those that have just started.
That's the beauty of (successful) live-service games and the sunken cost fallacy in action
Frost: "People don't always bring their mental A-game, and we shouldn't judge them too harshly for that"
Also Frost: "Corpos are allowed to charge whatever they want to whomever they want, even children and the neuro-divergent"
Pick a lane. And screw $500 skins. It's not like Riot Games are going to means-test everyone who attempts to purchase this overpriced pile of pixels; they will always take the money and run even if it's being given to them by someone who doesn't fully understand what they're doing or the consequences of it.
And if you believe that line from Lui about "if too many people buy this then it's a bad thing" then you're not bringing your mental A-game yourself, and probably shouldn't have weighed in on this topic.
I'm a graphic designer working for a licensed NHL manufacturer of sports memorabilia.
We have done celebratory limited issue premium items to commemorate hall of fame inductions/milestones for big players. Some of them with unique game-used items like jerseys and sticks. These items are also overpriced, but they almost always sell out.
The way I see it is this skin is just that: A limited edition commemorative premium item. The thing is, it's digital. Thus, limited edition is a choice here, not a logistical requirement. We know it, and it makes it less justifiable. Ultimately, it is still an item aimed at a specific audience: high-end collectionists and enthusiasts.
Honestly, I agree. If this was a statue it would be fine- but less league players are interested in a statue than a skin, so it's understandable why it isn't. I think the circumstances around the price tag with games-as-a-service being so ephemeral and companies not being trustworthy has made this skin a lot more controversial than it needed to be. If you could guarantee you'd always have the skin and be able to play league in it's current form against live players, I think this would be a lot less controversial because then it's basically a signed football.
@@Natibe_ It being controversial doesn't really matter. At worst they are gambling some bad PR (still free publicity) for some big potential revenue. It's a calculated win-win for Riot. If they ever shut down LoL, that would be another gamble for Riot, as it would destroy any trust people have for them about future projects. But if someone buys a temporary virtual item and still expects it to last forever in 2024... I say, too bad. We've been trying to warn them for years; clearly they needed the life lesson.
Part of my problem is that there's no such thing as "resale value" for skins like this.
Half of the reason people get into collecting is because these limited, premium items can not only retain their value once purchased, but even increase in value over time as copies become scarcer and the item more historic. Sure, most genuine collectors won't ever be interested in selling, but the option, and therefore the market value, is still there.
But in League of Legends and lots of other games with purchasable skins, once a skin has been purchased all you can do with it is use it, leave it in your inventory to collect dust, or delete it permanently. The only way to quote-unquote "trade" it is to sell the entire account with the skin to someone else, and most if not all games like this strictly have policies in their ToS forbidding that. There's an entire cosmetic black-market because of this crap.
I understand if Riot Games and all of the other skin-sellers don't want to deal with the trouble, resources, and server-space required to allow item trading, but removing an item your were selling from the market completely while you're the only one allowed to sell it is like taking a valuable artifact you saw in a museum out of it and destroying it so that no one else can experience them.
It just comes off as greedy and spiteful.
@@hyperon_ion9423 what differs that kind of 'resell value' from banana game 'speculation'?
@@hyperon_ion9423 Good points, and I'm with you there. Just to add something:
There's more issues to tackle with in allowing trading of items in game than the server-side, namely taxation. If people are trading items for money (even if it is in game currency that can be used to buy stuff that's worth money in the game) most jurisdictions require you to track and pay stuff like VAT on those transactions. As most sales will be for minimal amounts (and as the game maker cannot take a premium on the transactions on the marketplace lest people will not really use it) this causes a lot of additonal work and legal responsibilities.
And then of course on top of this most games and platforms that do allow sale of items and cosmetics for money do not actually allow you to withdraw that money (for the obvious example see steam), so you can't really make actual money that you can use at the store to buy beer or bread, only scrip to be used at the company store to buy more games. There are understandable reasons for this though beyond just greed: if people coulöd actually sell their stuff in real currencies via steam for example, it would turn into a money launderers wet dream overnight (and it's already been used for large scale money laundering in the past even with the existing restrictions).
But that being said, I still do believe that if companies want to make 'limited edition' collectibles and cosmetics, they should allow people to sell those later on, even if just for in-game cash, because that would actually make a lot of sense, increasse the value proposition and kind of allow for people who realized that maybe they didn't need to spend 60 bucks or whatever on a set of digital hats they arrely use to undo their mistake and recoup their money at least somewhat.
Games as a service is just stretching artificial scarcity into a nebulous future rather than selling you a full product. Wanting to spend in perpetuity is unreasonable, not the reverse
But it's what gamers want. Look any mulitplayer game that doesn't get regular updates. Gamers would warn others not to buy it, or it's a dead game on arrival or abandoned by the developer. Even if it's a fully complete game. Gamers want a game they can play forever and games like World of war craft, or guild wars, Dota or league of legend. Constant updates, constant content, always something new coming down the pipe line. And gamers have shown time and time and time again they are willing to pay that price. Other GAAS may fall like we saw with "WoW killers" and like we are now with other GAAS. But once you're hooked into the gamers mind like fortnite or apex legends, you'll be sitting pretty for years.
It is not unreasonable to be against any in-game monetization. What's wrong with wanting to buy a complete product and not have it try to leverage more money out of you?
Think of it like going into McDonalds and ordering a burger, you get a burger. But if you also want fries and a drink, those are extras. If you think those should come for free with the burger out of principle, then you are just another freeloader I'm afraid.
The problem with digital media/video games is that there is no such thing as a "complete" product, or a game's "completeness" is completely subjective. We aren't dealing with cartridges anymore and most have online access. Even the best games get patches and updates where things are changed and added. People need to decide for themselves what they are willing to pay and exercise restraint when they find the price unreasonable. It's not my place to tell others how to spend their money, no matter how scummy I think the publishers get. Consumers need to be smarter.
How much did you pay for buying LoL?
@@arcan762americans sure love their food analogies.
I usually find frosts takes refreshing, but this just seemed kinda softball.
"Incentivizes businesses to...." that's why we had regulations in the 70s.
There is one incentive. Profit.
aye
I don't trust regulations. Far too often big corporations find loopholes or outright ignore those regulations while gaslighting people into thinking there's nothing illegal about what they're doing. Constant vigilance is required to keep these companies in check.
This is why it annoys me when people use "corporate greed" to explain why things are worse now than they used to be. Corporations have always been greedy, and they always will be greedy. The only reason they're able to get away with more nowadays is because someone is *letting* them get away with it.
@@Kio_Kurashi Just remember that the solution to Bad Regulations is not No Regulations.
@@Kio_Kurashi "we can't stop 100% of the crime, so we may as well do nothing"
To influence where people spend their money, I'll point out that the video sponsor is discounted on a DRM free storefront.
I don't know about most people, but I know there have absolutely been F2P games where I was enjoying myself enough to consider converting into a paying customer. It's never actually happened though because every time I would go to checkout the in-game store, everything was overpriced, individual items costing as much as whole entire games.
Again, maybe I'm not most people, but whenever I see these kinds of so-called "premium" purchases, it turns me off of wanting to spend any money on those games.
The problem with late stage capitalism is that corporations always answer the question of how much money to make with "MORE" and never with "enough". It's not about long-term sustainability and keeping devs employed. It's about maximizing short-term profit to maintain an illusion of infinite growth to appease investors.
If getting one character in a gacha game would cost more than buying a preowned ps4 + preowned Bloodborne, then avoid it like the plague, because that's Whale-bait a "normie" can't afford to get hooked onto.
This is inherent to capitalism. It requires endless growth or it will fall.
@@Andystuff800: Then it is a system doomed to failure because limitless growth in a world with limited resources is a literal impossibility.
For me it would depend on how cool the item looks, how much time I've spent in the game, and how much that skin costs.
I've played about 1,000 hours of Fortnite over 3 years. I don't mind throwing them $40 so I can look like Harley Quinn and Jack Skellington.
I've played 500 hours of Dead by Daylight over 4-5 years (I got the game for free), I'll throw them $10 for the battle pass. It got me a cute skin for the character I play most and 3 new characters.
Are these both overpriced? Absolutely. For Fortnite I spent $12-ish/year, DbD $2-ish/year. I think, in that context, it's reasonable for me to be fine spending money on something I would agree is not worth it. I agree Fortnite is wicked overpriced. Those vehicles were $40 each when it came out! Also, consider how much fun you have. XDefiant isn't any more or less egregious than any other game. Spider-Man cost $70 when it released and it took roughly 20-25 hours to 100% it. I' don't have a "number of hours per dollar" formula in my head. Nor am I actively calculating the time I've spent. But, overtime, if it feels like I've gotten a lot of enjoyment out of something for free and they come along and offer me something, I'm a lot more willing to accept.
In my experience with other people, that's about the norm. "Hey, I play this game for like, 5 hours a week with my buds and this particular item looks really cool. I'll shell out some money this time and then won't again for over a year."
We all egregiously spend money on things that are objectively overpriced and not worth it. I look at people buying alcohol regularly and think "you need to spend $15/week?" That's their prerogative, and I don't care unless it becomes a problem. I spend a few bucks a week in gas just so I can go to a particular bike trail I really like. I'm sure some people look at me and think that's crazy, "just ride from your house to somewhere and back."
My rule of thumb is, "am I going to regret spending this money?" If I am, I don't buy. If not, then I'll think about it.
@@EmeralBookwise Indeed.
Cold take is like listening to a gumshoe hardboiled detective who knows too much about the gaming industry.
I'll bet you a lambo that's exactly what he's going for, so. Guess he's doin' something right.
While having correct opinions about delivery pizza. 😁
Thank you Captain Obvious
"She walked into my office, curvy as a Mario Kart track, and twice as dangerous..."
Thats partly why I love the series to be honest.
This is an odd one. I'll admit to being someone whose kneejerk reaction to in-game monetization is negative, but I do acknowledge that sometimes, especially for games that rely heavily on continued developer involvement, the standard floor price of a game isn't enough to keep the developers fed. It's why I generally have no problem with free-to-play games having monetization, so long as the publisher and/or developers don't go overboard.
On the surface, with Lol being a FTP game, and, to my knowledge, not flogging any pay-2-win options, this seems perfectly fine.
Until I see that pricetag. $500 for a skin. Especially when the CEO basically admitted that Riot was charging that price because they are aiming specifically for the wallets of the people who are already spending a lot on the game. Now, Capitalism works on thw assumption that people with some resources that they either don't want or are willing to part with in exchange for a resource that someone else has that they want more, and by that metric, if they've got players willing to shell out half a G for digital bling, then why shouldn't they do so? Also, as a proponent of individual responsibility, I find myself thinking that if you spend that amount on a piece of digital artwork with no physical counterpart that will vanish when the game eventually ends, then that is your business and your business alone.
But, to quote Yahtzee, "When you trade real-world money for an invisible attribute that can be adjusted for no effort, that is not capitalism. That is the death of economics as a concept." Now to clarify, firstly, I'm pretty sure I bungled that, and secondly, I am not trting to insinuate that making this skin is effortless or even that it shouldn't be valuable. I am saying that the fact that a person can drop $500 on a single digital cosmetic item that is guaranteed to not only lose value, but disappear with time has me very VERY worried. I worry that publishers will learn that they can sell items at ridiculous prices because 'hey, someone will buy it, and they were obviously willing to do so already.' I worry that the average gamer will become accustomed to dropping entire paychecks on things that are entirely digital and guaranteed to disappear because "it's not as expensive as it could be" or because it has simply become the norm. I worry that this is set up for another era of bull$hit oexploitative monetization, not because this example is predatory, as I think that aside from the limited-time nature that this is done in relatively good faith, but because whether this succeeds or fails, it is going to put a lot of very unpleasant ideas into the heads of a lot of very shortsighted people.
As a final point, regarding Frost using cars as an analogy, there is a key difference here: Pinto or Lambo, neither one if them is going to suddenly disappear because the dealership you bought them from went out of business. Once you're tired of driving or fall upon hard times, you can sell the car to recoup some costs, at a fraction of the original price, which gives further value to the Lambo beyond just 'looking good.' A skin is a high-tech illusion, and I'm pretty sure that you can't turn around and sell it to someone else if you find yourself in urgent need of cash.
I think you were working with something until the point where you switched from 'someone (will buy it)' to 'the average gamer'. the entire point of this, in every aspect, is that this is not an 'average gamer' thing. Frost particularly went into detail about how trying to nickel and dime the majority of the players isn't as lucrative as catering to whales.
@@Nowolf a fair point. I admit that several of my worries are not exactly logical, but then again, the world at large has shown time and again that most people do not have the sense to quit while they are ahead.
If I buy a Lamborghini today and the dealer closes tomorrow Lamborghini isn't going around with tow trucks to take back the cars
Yet. I can see them going the way of John Deere-- but then, I'm also feeling uncharacteristically cynical lately.....
Ferrari will sue you though :)
The irony of the Faker skin line is that the player himself always uses the base skin.
Even virtual scarcity aside I think spending 500 on a skin that has only slightly higher than usual production value is dumb and allowing people to do it is lame
It's not even their highest production value skin. That one costs only about $26. So you pay 20X the price for a worse, lower effort product.
To be fair, that's basically the definition of any luxury good - digital or physical.
@@Seth90 a skin is a luxury you don't even own, man😭
@@synmad3638 That's the nature of video games. You don't own anything. Even with the old stuff, you only own the storage medium (e.g. the CD) but not the software on it. From that point of view, buying a video game is just as dumb as buying a skin.
All that matters in the end is the amount of enjoyment you yield from it, and some people just enjoy their status symbols quite a bit more than others. But someone buying a $5 skin is just as "lame" as someone buying a $500 one. And as long as there is demand, the developers will continue delivering the supply.
@@Seth90 to me it's lame because it represents a sign of the industry decaying and worse value products gradually becoming more and more acceptable, like it itself is just like whatever to me like even most people in LoL aren't going to be directly affected by a $500 skin being there but it's like, it's a symbol to me of the state of where things have been going and for that it really personally bothers me since yknow, I have an emotional attachment to video games as it's one of my favourite hobbies and I've been doing it since I was a kid, so I care about the health of the industry. When things like this happen it's a poster child and a reminder so it riles up some emotion within me, because I want an industry where things aren't severely poor value relatively speaking and predatory monetization isn't a thing.
A $500 skin itself is one thing but the poor value proposition hasn't just been limited to this, it's trickled down to almost every part of triple a games, this is just a symptom of the machine, so allowing it feels odd to me since I feel like pushback is needed against all fronts to fight back against the entire thing. But I don't really know if that's true, that's just emotionally what it feels like, whether it matters at all to fight back against a $500 skin, who knows. But I feel like stuff like this becomes a sign that it's okay to accept less for your money and to push the cost of things more in other areas
Blaming incentives is a complicated prospect.
If someone offers me a million dollars to kick a baby, we are both in the wrong if I take that deal.
However, if the economy is so bad that I need to kick that baby to pay my rent, maybe someone is also to blame for creating those circumstances.
“Exploitation works” is not a defense.
Years ago, when I was a 20 year old GameStop cashier I was forced to annoy customers with pre-order requests and loyalty card pitches. The fact that I was forced to do that or lose my job didn’t make it any less annoying for the customer that just wanted to buy the game they came for. It didn’t make pre-order culture better. It was just a bad thing.
Oh, they aren't idiots. They know exactly what they're doing. That's what makes it so scummy in my book.
When riot says that they will compensate Faker with revenue share, remember that the skin is bought with Riot’s currency, so riot controls the conversation rate.
For the price of that skin, you can buy FULL GAMES.
For that price, you can buy a WHOLE GAMES CONSOLE.
@@RobertStoll but it is a skin. You dont need a skin. It is to 100% a luxory item. If it is just a skin with no affect for gameplay i dont care for how much they sell it cause i probably wont buy it. If someone then starts to sell me gameplay affecting stuff for such prices then i will get angry.
For big spenders cost of oportunity is no issue.
@@lordrobertusiii7813let's stick with the car analogy. You cam drive your civic next to a Bugatti.... if you scratch it though then thats not really gonna be like a peer relationship.
Wealth disparity harms communities.
And I could buy the skin alongside those full games if I want, so what?
The car analogy is good, but it doesn't compare enough when my hand-me-down shitbox and your Lambo perform the same.
How often do you really get to floor it with a Lambo? Is every Lambo owner taking theirs to the track every weekend? For all practical purposes, a brand new Lambo and a 2004 Toyota Corolla take you from point A to B in about the same amount of time. The Lambo is a status symbol, just like the $500 skins.
also making a Lambo is expensive, making an infinite number of copies of a skin is virtually free once the first has been made (maybe additional space on some server so a few cents at worst)
@@CompuBrains27 if we're only going off of "it gets you from point A to point B", then walking is the same as driving. The more points you bring up to compare between a $500,000+ hyper car and and 4 wheeled Frankenstein with negative resale value, the more it becomes obvious they're entirely different experiences.
@@Motoboy507 driving the speed limit in a urban or suburban environment, there is no difference in arrival time between a Lambo and a 04 Corolla. Walking will usually be much slower assuming you're going more than a few blocks.
@Motoboy507 we're not going only off "it gets you from point A to point B", we're going off "it gets you from point A to point B in about the same amount of time".
You're omitting half the statement to try and undercut it. Come on, man.
It's worth mentioning that when you pay $500 for this skin, you can only use it when Riot's servers are up. It's also worth mentioning that with Vanguard recently implemented, the chance of you spending $500 on a skin and then experiencing technical issues or a false positive that gets your account banned is not zero.
Does spending $500 on a skin make it more or less likely they will have someone actually take a look at your appeal ticket when your account is falsely banned?
While this is a legitimate concern, it seems completely from the topic at hand. I can buy deep rock galactic or Tekken or any game where online is a core component to the experience, and they can then shut down their servers and make the original purchase redundant. This is a big concern in buyer protections and software archiving, but has little to do with what price point Riot sets an individual skin at
*completely separate
Okay, but if you could go back in time and shame Bethesda for their horse armor so hard the moment they think about making anything remotely similar someone in the office has a heart attack - wouldn't you?
Not that this is take is like Extra Credits saying a $70 was okay _when_ we had physical games - but it is close.
And, let's not forget, you pay a premium to skip the levels to _earn_ the skin. That's what people are forgetting. _You_ don't get the skin, you get a chance to obliterate your sanity to _earn it._
This is being greedy with someone's time and money and at that point maybe morale and morals need improvement company wide in a manner that would be endorsed by classic pirates.
Remember - if you don't want to live in a cyberpunk dystopia maybe learn to draw lines on the _"little things"_ before Elon owns your synapses per the Terms of Service or Disney can consider you a member of it's company because you subscribed to a Disney Plus trial - and now you can't sue them in court.
The horse armor is a scapegoat, this type of monetization was inevitable once the internet became global. Maple Story had gacha all the way back in 2003, and the gachapon culture has existed since the '60s in Japan. It was only a matter of time before video games got to this point worldwide. Just wanted to point that out. Unfortunately most whales are perfectly content spending infinite money on games and they won't be swayed by this type of video/comment because they don't see them.
@@Tiwill It's more an example than a scapegoat. Horse armor was in a _single player_ game, after all.
I find few business practices more distasteful then artificial scarcity; particularly when it's digital items. I can't comprehend how people fall for that nonsense.
I don't believe it's "falling for" anything, nobody got duped into buying something else than they thought they were buying. I'm pretty sure it's just people specifically wanting to show off their cash within a wildly popular online game. It can be weird to most people that someone doesn't really consider those sums a big, unreasonable expense, but some people just genuinely have a lot of money and don't care about spending amounts like that as long as it lets them show off and garner attention.
Maybe, but on the other hand, why shouldn't businesses have the right to only offer a product for a limited time? Or to decide to stop offering something? Or to offer it seasonally? We don't say they can't do this with physical goods, so why is digital different? Sure, there's less cost associated with keeping a digital product available, but that's not the reason for limited physical availability. The logic is the same for both: because limited availability drives sales through FOMO. So why would it be okay for companies to exploit FOMO physically but not digitally?
I don't think luxury purchases for a video game cosmetic should cost so much. A "Lambo" cost so much because of expensive parts and labor. Pixels cost much less to develop.
A Lambo costs more to develop and produce than a shitty car, but let's not pretend parts and labor are the primary drivers of luxury car prices. The sports-car aesthetics and luxury brand name prestige are HUGE components of the price.
You aren't the intended audience. You personally don't think it's worth anything, but someone out there does. That's who it's for.
Yeah, it is not justified at all. Additionally it is a purchase that can be taken away because of the seller, such as servers shutting down or the developers deciding to patch it out. Digital items cost as much to replicate as they do to enjoy, so any pricing is arbitrary beyond covering initial production costs.
Personally, it would have made more since to go the route of locking digital content with ownership of a physical item. Like why is it $500 just for a skin? They could have instead sold a commemorative figurine that has a code to unlock the skin in-game. It would still be a waste of money, but at least they would have more of a justification for scarcity & the buyer would have something to show off after the servers shut down.
@@Zanador I think you underestimate how expensive it is to do low quantity manufacturing. The cost to develop a Lambo model isn't that much more, but it's split over only 3,000 cars instead of 3 million, meaning the per unit cost is 1000x more. Automation isn't cost effective at those quantities, so everything has to be built by hand using highly skilled labor. Is there still a substantial mark-up for prestige? Of course, but it's not as high as you would think by comparing them to mass-manufactured cars.
@@Zanador Are you sure? Because figuring out the logistics to make a car every 55 seconds (yes, that is how cars are affordable, by going freaking fast!) and having millions of machines work together across factories is probably more expensive than having a few guys hand-craft their way to a car every other month.
It's funny to bring up horse armor, considering the cosmetic at the center of that controversy was $2, and our first fears and speculation from that initial slippery-slope fallacy have come true 1000 fold.
We couldn't even start to imagine how bad it would get by now, and we've only just begun.
What I'm curious about then would be, can we shift the economy so that people have more disposable income to spend on their anchor game of choice? Just saying things might be easier on these poor mega corps if groceries didn't feel and weren't so dang expensive.
It’s almost like you’re suggesting that people should be given enough income to supply their basic needs like food and rent.
But nah…you couldn’t be. That’d be craaaaaazy
you'd be surprised at how much money people have walking around. Remember, only a very small percentage actually pays at all in F2P. Riot or respawn or steam couldn't give two shits about Empty pockets Timothy and 13 of his friends and 20 of his family not being able to afford dinner when Deep pockets Larry and Big Bank Harvey are shelling out thousands every week.
It's called universal basic income but no one wants to go there.
@@MoonLitChild A few states have been testing it out over the last year or two and results are finally coming in.
@@MoonLitChild Doesn't even need to be that. Even if there was UBI the issue would still be there. Companies are created to siphon money away from communities. At best it would only keep things in somewhat of a checks/balance IF they bigger overseas or cross country companies could be taxed accordingly.
Do something about rent prices, overpriced goods etc and maybe things would get better. Encourage more local spending so that the city and state can get their money back and put it into the streets schools etc all over again.
Frankly, the idea of people not bringing their mental A game to every situation doesn't disclose the idea of the world being full of stupid people.
In fact it just reinforces it.
Probably a take I don't fully agree with, which is fine. There's a few issues I have with League's story about the skin being 'for the big spenders' and I think people are less angry that 'luxury products' exists rather than the implication behind it:
1) Liu compares it to Warhammer figurines, and you also compare it to luxury cars. But the major difference here is that those are both physical goods. If Games Workshop died tomorrow, your figurines would still be valuable... hell they may even be worth more due to rarity. A luxury car has specs and differences from other cars that makes it worth buying, not just based on looks. This skin is not a physical good. Is League servers shut down tomorrow, all those goods disappear. Its more like buying new window curtains and branding them as 'luxury' when there is effectively no difference to other curtains other than appearances. A Steam Card is going to be worth more than the skin in time.
2) I think what gets people the most about this is that this is basically an admittance that 'we're willing to exploit you as long as we dangle the carrot there'. They made it $500 because they want to make the most profit; anything else said is just trying to sell you on it, make you comfortable. But there's no romance that can convince you that this is anything except a monetization scheme. Sure, that's the name of the game, but gamers like it when they feel it isn't that.
3) "Luxury Goods" in games always feels like an alienating barrier. You look at someone with a luxury car in real life you immediately can either sense they're a bad spender, or that they're a few pegs up in the class order. Catering to big spenders with higher quality goods always alienates those who get the lesser quality with no ability or means to get the higher quality goods.
The combination of the pixels being priced more than some game consoles, the crass admittance to exploiting a certain 'class' of gamer, and the alienating nature of high-priced products, naturally makes the average consumer upset.
'selling things is a monetization scheme' yes well done
Probably one of the best takes in the comment section so far.
Personally I think there's a lot more to this than could be covered in a short video.
I will point out that value of luxury goods disappearing is nothing new, nor limited to the digital space. Fad collectibles can be insanely expensive, sometimes drop in limited ways, and then lose all their value when the zeitgeist moves on. Or luxury experiences or food, which you can't trade.
Warhammer is kinda funny to me because there's an entire grey/black market of straight up recasts you can buy if you know the right places to look.
@@Nowolf Way to intentionally miss my point.
@@resolutionblaze363 it's called paraphrasing. But this is your opportunity to distinguish the normal 'selling things people want to buy' from the (what I assume you consider bad) 'monetization scheme'
Is it a matter of value of raw materials VS price? Is it a raw dollars cost limit? Is it the fact it's something ephemeral? Nothing you've said actually explains why this, but not a figurine, or luxury car, or meal at a fancy restaurant, is monetization, instead of just... Selling a thing people want to buy.
I can drive a lambo on any street open to the public. How many games can I use a LoL skin in?
A lambo don't cost $500.
@@ToxicAtom and most skins don't cost 500 dollars either.
Youre missing the point. This is the "lambo" of skins, except it isn't real so if LoL turns off the servers it is gone forever and its not better than many other premium skins in other games just to name two
You can use it in every game of league of legends.
@@vulkendov5210 Not the one Ahri is banned in. Which the community is makng an effort to do
@@madhippy3 you are also missing the point however. The skin being locked to League by its nature just makes the skin a worse value than some other fantasy scenario, which does not make it a scam on its own. It just makes it a shitty purchase in some people’s opinion. Stating, “but what about this other product” doesn’t matter, the question is about if the marketing of this product is predatory because of their use of faker’s name, proprietary currency, etc. Which is an evaluation separate from the product’s value.
I'd still own and be able to re-sell my Warhammer figures after buying them.
I won't ever claim that everything should be free. But if the game's ongoing survival is driven by the need for such cosmetic purchases, then it's the company's fault for getting itself into that position. The Riot Games rationale seems to be, "people spend money on this sort of thing, so we can put this out for a ludicrous price" - no, even if it is marking something rare or someone's achievement. I will once again use the brilliant Futura and Powerwash Simulator as a comparison. They have added FREE content for everyone to enjoy, and PAID content based around familiar licenses. The end result has been that the game has expanded, I've gone back to it and played more, and at no point did I begrudge shelling out real money for digital content.
Just like deep rock with its battle pass that doesn't have a paid premium track purchase, its completely free and built into the games rewarding for completing missions.
No one begrudges buying the cosmetic dlc for it because they get so much value out of a single purchase game.
It’s not about survival, it’s about capitalizing, if you aren’t doing it then someone else will and they’ll get the “votes by wallet” and smother you with the payout
Just accept you’re mad at them doing capitalism, standards for other industries are far below this
Once again instead of fixing core issues and listening to fans/loyal players on how to improve the game stare they openly admit they want to exclusively target spenders. I find that very offensive and I'm sure many others had noticed it as well.
@@Nick-cs4oc well yeah of course people are mad about capitalism that's like, a constant of modern day life
Not really a fair comparison. League of legends is a multi billion dollars company juggling one of the most popular live service games on the planet. The server cost alone must be like buying that Lamborghini or two daily. This is on top of monthly balance patches balancing over 100 heros with a multitude of item, running an E-sports competition with prize pools and teams, creating a brand new free mode called Team fight tacts, free to download and within the game. even going as far as making a fictional K-pop group, music videos, A tv show and spin off games. All employed by over 1000 people globally, that's salaries, healthcare, raises and then some.
Compared to FuturLab, a significantly smaller studio with not even a fraction of the demand expected of them. These are two completely different companies with two completely different goals and situation.
For me its not as much a "tax bracket " thing as it is asking "How does one justify a character skin costing more than 6 current "AAA" games?"
I think it's made clear that the justification is, "the people we want to buy it will buy it". If you have a value-proposition calculation that even involves the price that normal people might pay, you're not one of the people they're making it for.
If it was 10 dollars instead you could also reasonably ask how one justifies a single skin being 1/6th the price of Elden Ring.
And the answer is, value is in the eye of the beholder. They don't need to justify it to you, just the people who do buy skins like these.
I was raised on a "Dollar/hour satisfaction" base mindset when it came to determining a good purchase. it's more nuanced than that, but it's how I calculate it as someone who buys cosmetics and donates to Free games. that said trying to get 500 Hours on a 1 LoL character sounds daunting unless you really like playing that instrument
@@10NeonSo what do we do when this game’s servers get shut down? Once the game has been killed and the skin is no longer accessible?
@@Christoph5782 it's the same as when any other service shuts down. You have lifetime free breadsticks at Olive Garden? Well, you do only as long as Olive Garden is still around.
I think you and riot both have a point about high spenders being a games main source of income. But at some point, a line has to be drawn. 500ish USD for a commemorative peice with a production cost of .3 USD per unit (scaling lower with each unit sold) is far beyond that line in my opinion.
I'm a relatively high spender in League, and i could afford this particular product if i chose to. That doesn't make the price less obscene.
why do I see two of this exact comment from two separate accounts?
oh right, because this site is over run with bots.
the other is @fearthecaboose1337
A line has to be drawn, sure, but that line is drawn by each individual consumer based on their willingness to spend. You and I would find $500 a skin to be ludicrous, however some people out there may decide the value they receive is greater than $500.
while i dont entirely agree with frost (esp on the example in the beginning, while sure you can 'blame' consumers for getting tricked by unethical practises, the answer is to regulate so those arent allowed, not to go "well it's your fault that you're so guillable")
i do think that gamers are quite far from the most logical or reasonable sort when it comes down to pricing and monitisation, a lesson i learned on my own quite a while ago
for my personal anecdote, it's about games with DLCs and how people react to them and their creators. specifically Payday 2 and Space Engineers.
Now payday 2 is quite well known, and its no secret that it has, or had, many many expensive DLCs released semi regularily to the point where the majority of the games content is DLCs and the price of all of them together was over 200€, without the base game included. People reacted as if they didnt mind, most of them anyway. it was just seen as fair, even if the content was lacking, the game still got praised more than plenty.
As for Space Engineers, idk if its that well known, came out on early access initially and been priced the usual indie amount of 20€, after the game got its full release, the devs kept updating it and started making small DLCs to go along with some of the updates, very cheap ones, mostly visual stuff so they didnt even lock any features away, and the game had workshop modding support regardless so it was certainly completely optional. community hated it, hated them. most of those DLCs either have very negative or mixed review scores, and every update post has people whining about the DLCs. a cheap game with cheap DLCs that dont even lock much out gets hated on and called greedy, and an expensive game that has most of the content locked behind many expensive DLCs gets praise all around.
Now i doubt its the same crowd of people for both games, but it does come to show how different things can be to the point of simply unreasonable. if even minecraft can get called scumy for "lackluster" free consistent content updates and virtual thingly veiled slot machines can get nonstop praise, you know the people really arent with it anymore
The delivery on "should be noted as being unreasonable" came off real strong, like distractingly so, and now im more curious what the story is there tbh
I see that Frost also likes to fake his own death when a date goes horribly wrong.
I think him getting involved with LoL was the 'horribly wrong' part.
an actual quote from John Riccitiello during an EA shareholder meeting in 2011: "When you are 6 hours into playing battlefield and you run out of ammo in your clip, and we ask you for $1 to reload, you're really not very price sensitive at that point in time" Prices far higher than the time and labor that go into it and tactics meant to to take advantage of people are raged at because of the principle. Whether it's charging $1000 for insulin that costs cents to make, or $500 for a skin that took no more effort than a $30 one. It's not jealousy that we're missing out, it's that nobody likes a scammer, even if we're not the ones being scammed. "16,777% price hike because we added a cup to a skin" is a scam.
The word "scam" implies some form of lie or misrepresentation. The price tag on the skin is out in the open, and the skin isn't being represented as being something other than what it is.
but...buying a skin is literally nothing like the battlefield example? there's no gameplay advantage and the time pressure is measured in weeks, not seconds.
...Did you just compare life-saving medicine to a cosmetic skin in a f2p game?
Trouble is, I remember when cosmetics and mods were free. They were made in by the community for the community instead of by the developer to soak up more profit.
I agree with you about almost everything, but I think it is important to recognize that there are people who aren't actual to bring what you call A game , Neurodivergent people do exist and they play games too and are exposed to shady studio practices they won't recognize as predatory or that compel to their impulses without much they can't do to fight back.
I would really recommend you chatting with Stephanie Sterling (it could be an interesting video idea) As she has covered the topic of microtransactions and neurodivergency quite a bit in her channel.
Just as a reminder that not every person has the same tools you have to fight back against predatory practices.I'm neurodivergent (though not the kind that is affected by predatory practices) And it is kind of frustrating sometimes to be remembered when we can't do something other people can.
it does almost feel like with the economy as a whole that it preys on those who are on such spectrums on the lower end. granted, it does feel worse when related to games, but it can still definitely affect people (SALE 30.3% OFF!!). It sucks but we sorta built ourselves up to let this happen. Really, only games have the slightest of chances of being changed, so hopefully we can fix it someday. Someday.
@@squiddu Hopefully! There needs to be regulation at some point for things to change!
I think that can rapidly turn to some rather tricky questions, like "Should there be some kind of barrier to financial independence?" Now, I don't necessarily have an answer here, and the forms of predatory marketing should be shunned first, but it is worth consideration and questioning on where exactly these logical threads can lead you.
Virtual scarcity is some bullshit and there should be a limit on the price of goods and services
what if that limit was 500 USD?
The only reason for these items to exist is for people to flaunt their money. The target audience specifically *wants* to spend a lot of cash on them just to show off to people. Why prohibit them from doing that? Scarcity of goods people need to live or make their lives more comfortable sucks; scarcity of a skin in a video game doesn't matter. An adult should be able to make a decision on what you spend your money on and what "looking cool in a game" is worth to you.
A frame of mind people don't talk a lot about outside of League is that League is an addiction for a lot of people. That's a silent acknowledgement most league players have when they look at FTP but expensive skin monetization. If this skin was in a game without any purposeful addiction mechanics, then it'd be like "oh wow, for people who support this company to really spend." But it's released to a community with addiction and other mental health issues, so it's more like "trynna take advantage of people with poor self control by stealing the fruits of someone's hard labor over years."
7:53 Every time someone implies that "someone from Accounting" made an executive decision on something, I involuntarily let out a hollow laugh. You overestimate our power.
$500? That's like a third of my mortgage payment. 💀
I'm old school, I don't believe in Free Games in the industry. I'll pay a fair value at the start but I don't want money to give anyone an advantage in game. Get what you pay for but also don't play the corner drug dealer giving a free sample to the kiddies and then expect them to keep on paying for years. I'll pay a sub fee, if thats what it takes to ensure additional content every few years, but not what most of these games become. End FOMO.
I switched from Guild Wars 2 to Final Fantasy 14. GW2 is free to play, but most of the cosmetic items are from the cash shop or behind an insane grind atop a lot of the cash shop cosmetics being limited time offers or in the lootboxes. FF14 is a subscription based game and pretty much all the cosmetic items are available through normal gameplay with insignificant amounts of grind behind them. Looking at my bank statements, I've actually spent less money a year on FF14 than I did on GW2, but people claim GW2 is better monetarily speaking because it doesn't have an upfront and continued cost.
Nice sentiment, but just wanna chime in to say there's nothing in League of Legends that you pay to gain an advantage in the game for. The rest of your comment still applies tho for sure.
@@FSmith-kv4fj I understand your perspective. Personally I know I have spent a lot more money on FF14 than I did GW2; but seeing GW2's cash shop and the grinds required has made me enjoy my time with FF14 far more, despite also having spent more total.
Gee what should I buy, a skin, or a whole ass game console.
Also, a relevant part of this conversation is the community's ongoing concern that skins as a whole are going down in quality despite the overall types of monetization in League becoming more numerous, and less satisfying. Obviously thats anecdotal, but a glance at the League subeddit shows its a recurring conversation. Look at the response to the "Ultimate" Samira skin.
Personally, if they had just made the skin available outside of the bundle I wouldve been fine with it. Ive spent several times more than that in League and other games over the years, but all the extra hullaballoo around it honestly just made it seem less worth it.
Early Cold Takes: get it while it's hot.
Ironic
"I can get into the club, I just can't dance." Frost's mastery of metaphors continues!
Remember to never leave your drink unattended and balance it out with good food with plenty of water.
He said "I just don't dance"; it's not that he can't dance, it's that he doesn't want to dance with you
Eventually Riot will shutdown the LoL servers and then you are left with nothing. At least no one can take away the signed Jordan jersey
until the jersey disintegrates because it's made of the same material as the t-shirt you got in a 10-pack at wallmart
Until the shirt degrades in a few 100 years.
The point is, who fucking cares about hoarding shit if you had your fun. Not everyone cares about collecting it for perpetuity
We certainly need to do a better job as consumers to come together on what is acceptable. Often times devs are taking huge risks not knowing whether a pricing mechanism is going to be shunned or accepted by the community.
I think we also have been given different levels of pricing from devs and whilst some are simple to rate: skins > pay-to-win, lootboxes bad, full priced games are competing at triple A. Some things are not easy to rate: will this get ongoing support, are battlepasses bad? day 1 dlc, why not include it in the game?
There is no "we" there is only you. Stop worry so much about what other people do with their money and focus only on what you want and if the price tag is worth it for the content you get. You put the entire gaming monitization on your shoulders and attach yourself emotionally to it, you're just going to be angry every day for the rest of your life.
that's how you get people wishing cancer on developers over a video game. Even during a live stream.
While problem spenders are going to problem spend, that doesn't entirely excuse the actions of those who prey upon them. Too much evil has been done in the name of "these people were going to get taken for a ride, I might as well be the guy who does it." Just my unasked for two cents.
I remember pogs. But here they were called Flippo's and were mostly about Looney Tunes.
Where is 'here' for you?
@@zachweyrauch2988we had them here in the Netherlands
@@DYNB hmm.... given the word sound I was assuming a Spanish speaking nation.
In Australia/New Zealand they were called Tazos. They also had slots in them so you could make shapes.
Nah man, over priced cosmetics are bad regardless. Why? because once a company realizes that people will spend that much, the price only ever increases, never decreases. The argument that "lower tax bracket" gamers wont ever spend on a F2P game is also a bad one. This is extremely akin to all the gamers that rage against accessibility options in games. Its the same thing that happens in every market and the root cause of "inflation"
I definitely don't think it's unreasonable to say games shouldn't be monotized. There was a time any in game monotization would have been unacceptable, and I don't think that just because now it's the standard suddenly means it's acceptable or okay.
So free to play games shouldn't be monetised? How would you suggest the game then make money, accepting the fact that free to play games do exist and are not going anywhere?
@@arussianwolf They stop publishing free to play stuff and make money by charging up front. I don't believe the free to play model is ethical.
@@Alex-xt7yba lot of players wouldn't try them, game has no players, dead game, company at risk
@@arussianwolf By not being free to play.
@@Thanatos2k God forbid people who can't afford games had access to some for free. The poors should just roll in the dirt for fun, amirite.
Frost and the Jimquisition having almost identical release cycles genuinely makes my Mondays a bit brighter.
It's interesting you should mention Sterling, considering I think she would have the exact opposite take of Frost here.
"Do you want to make money, or do you want to make more money?"
I mostly agree with Frost, but at the same time I'm far from defending a major corporation on any thing that happens to end with them making a whole lot more money, so screw Riot
I am a Warhammer 40k collector just like he mentioned. You know what I can do with the minis I spent thousands of dollars on over the years? Physically touch them. I’m not against cosmetics, I bought more than my fair share. I’m not a whale exactly, more like a tasty salmon. Cosmetics do not equate to a physical item. However, I can understand the mentality behind it. FOMO invades both hobbies and hardcore collectors don’t want gaps in their collections. The difference is, if Games Workshop goes out of business tomorrow, my miniatures won’t disappear forever.
There's a cultural aspect to this as well. Korea has a relatively elevated expectation of looking as good as possible no matter the cost - a significant factor of why they suffer the worst household debt in the world. China, it has the population to be a target even if the sheer majority is in poverty. And they're the regions that bought into that Ahri skin the most while most other regions did bans/boycotts to a 35% rate. Riot found enough targets with the $200 Jhin skin not so long ago. It feels like every time someone else joins their Hall of Fame, there will be a skin that will one-up the Ahri cost.
In comparison to other purchases, 400$ in figurines gets you 400$s of PHYSICAL PRODUCT. Tangible plastic, maybe even painted figures. 400$ for a singular digital asset that costs nothing to distribute and is wholely operated on your own system is immoral.
A counter argument to this is when you buy a $400 Warhammer figurine you are not paying for the plastic or the distribution (maybe that's a few dollars). Just like a a digital purchase you are paying for things that subsidize other aspects of the company like creating the rules, running tournaments, design, and other art creation.
It's like buying a CD vs a digital album. you aren't paying for the plastic so it should be a bit cheaper, but at scale the physical CDs are basically a rounding error for the final per unit cost.
@@Whiskey-Alpha-Tango There's still a whole logistical line of people, resources, and goods that need to get paid to get, mold, and ship said plastic to the store and/or your door. That's well more than 400$ worth of manhours alone that have gone into those figurines.
I doubt there's more than 400$ worth of manhours that went into making that skin. Even less once that skin then sits as an itty bitty file on their server, ready to be copy pasted into the accounts also hosted on that same server.
@@Whiskey-Alpha-Tango you are paying a ton for distribution when you are buying Warhammer figurines due to them keeping all the production in 1 country and the way they ship their products around the world.
Funny thing, the physical, 30cm high, hand-painted statue of this skin is a hundred bucks cheaper.
@@RobertStollif it took even a day and a half to model, texture, and rig, then that's $400 worth of man-hours that went into it's production.
*THE $499 SKIN IS A DISTRACTION, I REPEAT, THE $499 SKIN IS A DISTRACTION*
I think you and riot both have a point about high spenders being a games main source of income. But at some point, a line has to be drawn. 500ish USD for a commemorative peice with a production cost of .3 USD per unit (scaling lower with each unit sold) is far beyond that line in my opinion.
I'm a relatively high spender in League, and i could afford this particular product if i chose to. That doesn't make the price less obscene
Well, depending on units sold, the production price could be much higher than 30 cents. Gotta pay to make all of the assets at the very least, but otherwise I agree.
Right? I've been forced to grind prestige skins/pay for levels which I accept cause it's within a certain obtain-ablity but this is another level. When it's costing players sometimes their full salaries that's just toxic on another level. It's hard to see past what it is at its core. A cash grab plain and simple.
@@Kio_KurashiI really feel bad for the artists too like the skin admittedly looks great and the looks aren't the problem at all. It's the ethics and practices that will make this skin infamous in the future.
@Kio_Kurashi unlikely, as this skin in particular has less quantifiable production costs than ultimate skins, which are priced at 25 USD. Even if 3% of the playerbase buys this, it's likely making a multimillion dollar profit. And that's considering the revenue split.
@@FearTheCaboose1337 I'm not going to pretend to have any idea on the full metrics but I want to point out that the price of a skin isn't necessarily indicative of its production cost, though I still believe you when you say that it's less than an ultimate skin. So a skin could cost $5 to make, sell for $50, and only get 100 copies for a profit of $4995 (sans any taxes or profit shares) while a skin could cost $10 to make, sell for $40, and sell 300 copies for a profit of $11,990.
What I mean to say with this is that a $25 price targeting 50% of the paying playerbase could be quivalent to $60 skin targeting 25% of the playerbase since that playerbase isn't a linear curve of payable assets, let alone willingly payable.
That is to say, you could still very much only sell 5 of those $500 skins while selling 500 of those $25 skins. Which if it is that case where they clearly didn't make as much money as they would've with a cheaper skin then they won't be likely to do this again, but if not... well... We'll get more.
Edit: Btw, this wasn't meant as a counter to your statement. If anything it's more of a support to your statement.
500 dollars for a skin that takes up like 5 pixels on your screen ingame lmao. The splash art for the skin is a superior product, just as special in the context of its existence and is free for everyone to enjoy.
DRG MENTIONED
ROCK AND STONE DEPLOYED
*ROCKETY ROCK AND STONE*
@@coobk Did I hear Rock and Stone?
My life for rock and stone!
Rock on!
Stone and Rock!
o wait...
A hall of fame for a game that literally runs on most mobile phones.
Moreover, putting a price tag on a cosmetic that can easily feed your entire family for weeks, when it does nothing but come with the pretext of "honouring" someone's legacy.
Anyone trying to argue this is fine, or doesn't impact them are delusional and/or so jaded they might need to remove themselves from social media, or from the discussion altogether.
Also: it's not a Lambo. At most, it's a Honda Civic with carboard cutouts painted to look like a Lambo.
if its timegated, if its gacha, if its fomo-centered, etc, it's predatory. End of discussion right there for all those things. I hate this coverage of gachas as real games because "it's not as pricey as those BAD gachas"
the idea of making a digital item that is infinitely replicable at extremely marginal cost artificially "in limited supply" is super scummy.
The First Descendant has a great example of the worst kind of F2P monetization: paying to skip the grind and get playable characters faster than the long process it takes to get them in-game.
And it really gets gross when the "ultimate" versions of characters are up in a way that requires buying $70 for the basic character or $100 for the complete super pack of stuff with them. And I've seen a bunch of them in-game already.
Not only a hot take, but a bad one… maybe more context would help the conversation. $400 skins, $1000 guns; it’s all just a way to turn the knob up on that burner with a pot of frogs in it. Digital goods have value, but not much…They slide goalposts back a bit, and maybe even cry off an apology. That’s cool that you’re cool with it, but I’m not; I’ve seen the effects of problem ‘gambling’ among 12 year olds with no attention and an expectation of moms credit card (so they can fit in, socially) neurodivergent people get hurt, children get hurt, no one bats an eye. Is a free battle pass still predatory; yes, by its nature (I didn’t think that was complicated) it’s the reason they exist;)
I feel personally attacked with that pogs reference.
Loving the content so far gents~
Damn bro, you didn't have to do me dirty like that with the pogs reference 😂
From what I have heard people who make one purchase are much more likely to spend again.
Problem is that a lot of the "luxury spenders" are addicted to pulling the slot machine. An addiction games like LoL fuels in them. And it works even if people can't afford rent. If they could stop, they would.
This isn't gambling. It's a direct purchase. If a direct purchase would have hurt them, they would have already killed themselves on physical luxury products.
@@ThePiesrbest Physical luxury goods are a problem as well, yes. There is an ongoing epidemic in South Korea where people are going deep into debt for luxury goods in hopes of gaining social status. I'm not trying to draw parallels here, they're different issues that need to be approached in their own contexts. But in both situations it's clear that the companies involved are exploiting people's desires and insecurities for huge profits.
You can't say that selling/buying cosmetics is fine because cosmetics have no value. If that were true, nobody would be buying them. A $500 skin has a huge value to somebody who's conditioned by the game to believe it does. Which is then further reinforced by the community interactions.
I think it's irresponsible of Frost to act like _"it's people's freedom to spend on whatever they like,"_ when the scales are always so heavily tilted in the sellers' favor.
I think the response to the skin has been hilarious. Whales are within their right to waste $500 on an Ahri skin, but everyone else is within their right to waste a ban on Ahri every game so the whales never get to use the skin. 🤣
I gotta say i am disgusted at the idea of any ingame cosmetic costing more then a AAA game and seeing one for almost as much as a months rent is beyond ridiculous
DLC - More content, took effort
Horse Armor - Arguably more content, suspiciously similar to existing armor though
Paid Skin - More of the same, my photo editor has color sliders too!
Paid skin for the price of a mid-price current-gen graphics card - Ehm? That GPU took a whole lot more people and hours to create than that skin, do people really think they got value in some polygons there?
I think this is "simply" a reflection in gaming of trends in the wider world -- game companies adapting to radically increasing wealth inequality by creating systems which are shaped around it. If you don't like the current path gaming is on, work politically to reduce wealth inequality and the companies will follow.
That's playing the real meta game right there. put "tax the rich" in S teir.
Feels like I've been waiting my whole life for a sponsor-free version of this video
a skin famously made for... someone who (almost) never uses skins x)
I think an important part of the userbase is being ignored here; the ones that are willing to spend money on the game, but not 1/4 to 1/3 of their paycheck on a single skin. I probably would have spent 40 dollars on it. I wasn't paying 200. I DEFINITELY wasn't paying 400+. Sure, a single purchase of the 400 dollar tag pays for 10 of me, but I feel like the disparity between the two price points is so huge that you have now priced out perfectly willing to spend customers in favor of artificially created haves and have nots.
I have always been in favor of ethical microtransactions. I get it, I get the value to everyone in doing this. My personal rule on this though is that "luxury" items, items intended ONLY for the whales, should either be pointless status symbols ONLY, or they should actually take so much effort to produce that it fully justifies an insane price (which is next to impossible). I don't mind the Faker skin, because the only point to it is if you want to show off. That's fine. But when you have something that looks legit cool, and it's the only thing remotely comparable, so "normies" can't possibly get anything cool, then _that_ is bad design. Basically, whale gear should be the equivalent of an "I'm cooler than you are" t-shirt, not the equivalent of anything remotely fashionable.
I've tried to play League of Legends exactly twice, both times within the first 5 minutes I got terrible stomach cramps and had to rush to the bathroom. I think the universe was trying to tell me something.
Happy International Video Game Day Second Wind!
No mention of the fact that Faker famously doesn't use skins? Or the fact that he regularly donates a significant portion of his winnings? And that using him to push such a high-priced skin is just kind of gross?
"Maybe it's not the best idea to encourage people to assign blame based on an arbitrary numerical scale"
Don't worry. League players have been doing it for years. When they lose, they divide blame between their teammates, matchmaking, game balance, and... pretty much anything but themselves
Artificial scarcity is the oldest trick in the book. I don't fall for that.
until it's something you want. Easy to say you won't buy something when you never wanted it in the first place. Or afford.
First Cold Take I cannot agree with.
500 dollars is insulting to regular ass people and predatory against whales who while some might be a CEO and not hurting for money, most are just addicts. This is predatory.
careful he will call you poor lmao.
@@madhippy3 spot the freeloader lol
@@arcan762 Spot the douchebag HAHA!
"Most" people who spend their free cash on cosmetics are addicts? According to what study?
Here's a counter-point to that:
Maybe we shouldn't be okay with games being yet another stage for wealthy people to flaunt their BS over everyone else.
There are reasons I almost never play multiplayer, and there are reasons I generally stay away from f2p games, and crap like this belongs to both of those groups.
a counter point to you, you aren't the intended audience for this. Steam or Riot or whoever doesn't give a shit about your feelings. And why should you personally be the police on what "flaunting" even is? does me owning gentleman cho'gath mean I'm flaunting? Or did I just buy a skin because I thought it was funny?
@@crushycrawfishy1765 some people just think that anything that isn't made with them specifically in mind is automatically bad
So you avoid playing games that are fun to play just because you're triggerred someone spent money on it to look cool? Even in a free-to-play game, where that's the main way the devs can even afford to keep the servers up to begin with, since they have to make money *somewhere* ? I'm sorry, but that sounds like a you problem. Some people just have more expendable income that you, and game devs monetizing their willing fans is not a bad thing, as long as it doesn't compromise gameplay. It specifically makes it possible for people *without* money to even buy games to begin with to be allowed to have fun in games for free. Do you want to take away free games from everyone who can't afford games just because you're jelly?
Ehh, if the price tag is set I am fine with it. Better than loot boxes which historically have issues with gambling addictions. If it sells the issue is the culture of people who seek this type of thing rather than the services that provide for it, and that’s a can of worms that isn’t the problem of any one industry.
Don’t get it twisted though, Riot is in a squeeze right now, given comments made by some employees. There is an interesting conversation to hack out concerning how much information should consumers be privy when making these purchases.
As an ex League player, I think you should be harsher on Riot, and also take that talk about spenders with a grain of salt. I know my spending habits and I was probably what would be considered a whale when I was playing league, but even I wouldn't have bought the skin if it came out back then. The most expensive skin I bought was DJ Sona when it came out which was either $20 or $40, can't remember which, and even that got some people mad that it was too expensive. That was $40, compared to $400, which is not even a better skin IMO. Riot has been pushing the prices on their skins for a while now and this was the biggest F-U they could have given to the players. From the outside it looks like the players complaining, but Riot is absolutely in the wrong here, and to be honest, defending them in any way is just wrong. This is not selling a Lamborghini in lot full of Honda Civics, it's selling a Honda Civic at a Lamborghini price and calling you poor for complaining about it.