Unchecked Greed in Gaming - How The Industry is Destroying Itself
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- Опубліковано 7 тра 2024
- With Microsoft shutting down studios, and dispersing multi hundred million dollar payouts on their acquisitions... todays video is meant to examine a structure that fully incentivizes gaming companies to avoid creativity, stifle innovation, and focus all their efforts into predatory monetization for the personal enrichment of a few executives.
Take Two Interactive, Activision Blizzard, Microsoft and many more companies are at fault for an industry descending into Unchecked Greed.
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#gaming #microsoft #microtransactions - Ігри
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Bobby Codex if Im saying his name right is the Bob Iger version of Games, Instead being CEO Weatherman its a Fat Smug Guy who probably smells on coke all day.
@@mightyraptor01 If you where offered that amount of money you would take it too. Ps "who probably smells on coke all day"? What does that even mean?
Hi,
Would you be willing to cover the phenomenon of Phigital Sports?
Oh and heres another video from LegacyKillaHD which I dunno if you two know each other but I figured before you post another 30 minute video within 5 hours from now. Just keep in mind Sony is no Better considering they're pushing Political Messaging with SweetBaby. ua-cam.com/video/oo_vXvxlmbc/v-deo.html
And yes Im kinda pissed right now, things are already bad enough but really its the whole West in Decline and bar is very low now.
When parasites control everything, they create an environment where parasites thrive. This causes more parasites to enter, at all levels. This is happening in nearly all aspects of western society. How many parasites can the body handle until the body dies?
The problem is gamers "angrily" still give them money
This
I stopped long ago
are they though? Sales are in the gutter.
@@Yattayatta 800 million for mobile made more
@@Yattayatta sales no longer make these industries money. 90% or so income now comes from microtransactions. It is why every game is shoehorning them in
Every CEO is out there "yolo-ing" turning respectable businesses into cash grabs.
Yeah i mean look at Bobby. It was just a question of when things start to crumble. But he still got away with it, cashed out for years with bonuses that could finance a new whole game while they fired the ones who crunched their s*** of for trying to make a good game with all those demands and changes etc.
And in the end, he even sold the company for a last big bonus and he knows he dont need to worry to find something new.
These CEOs like him willingly drive a beloved company into the wall for their own personal gain.
@DieterDuplak314 yoooo, that term is awesome, I'm using that later xD
Thanks for thr inspiration.
It is ridiculous how much they are paid, especially when some of them are responsible for the WORST decisions in their company. Their company's evaluation drops but there they are still getting paid millions to billions... where is the logic in that?
These CEO’s are rare. Most CEO want to help the world, it’s just the industry CEO’s who obviously aren’t gonna do anything great in the world that cash out
eurocentric culture is finally eating itself alive because it consumed everything else on earth already
Employee - "That's a nice Lambo and mansion you got there Boss!"
Boss - "If you work hard by the end of the season I'll buy a couple more... then I'll fire you and buy more".
Everyone hates a success story
@@LWT80everyone hates a Throne built on a mountain of corpses
@@LWT80that is complete bullshit.
@@GalladeTheWarriorI mean, it's more of a half-way truth
@@GHOSTSTARSCREAMright like the boeing ceo getting millions for being the top guy during the destruction of their reputation you reach that point you only fail up government is the same way
Battlepasses, liveservices, microtransactions, lootboxes, always online requirements for single player games and increased prices in game. Yet many come out buggy, glitchy and unfinished. Corporate executives destroy everything they touch and still get rewarded.
Dont forget that the games you buy arent even yours. So if you buy microtransactions, DLCs and the game itself of course, they can take the game away from you or make changes however they want. YOU just own a linzenze that states that you are allowed to play THEIR product.
Buy no games for 5 years and go through older titles you never played. Retrogame on emulators, etc.
Hold the line!
It sucks because live service as a concept is great but companies always ruin them without finishing games and/or riddling it with predatory mtx
I am old enougth to remember when games in console, were to put the game and play, and games were creative, now all games, like Vee from lack of enterteinment said, all games feel the same, companies want to make THE GAME, all feel same, buggy and glitchy, nothing, nothing good, consoles are so expensive, and are support so little, a console in the time, could be suported for 10 to more years, now 5 and maybe even less, with really few games, is not even worth to buy, games are so expensive, consoles are expensive, and the console controls are so expensive and broke so easily, and tos and the company can take away your game if they want, is so sad, is dead, gaming is dead
@@Rthesecond So true, and as a lawyer i dont even understand, why is not call rent, o i know, why, because if you buy, buy in the proper leagl term, should be yours, but no, is renting, they dont want to be call rent because have more strict protection, agains all theyre crap, gaming is very well dead
The reason I love this channel is that he covers the same video game stuff as everyone else but is absurdly more comprehensive and eye-opening. He doesn't just read other people's comments/articles, he does his own in-depth research and breaks down numbers/trends in a way that is astounding
Thats why hes the Upper Echelon !
He's the GOAT
He walks tall.
The man is much more intelligent than I'll ever be in 10 lifetimes 😂😂😂
Dude perfectly articulates himself and is thorough while remaining objective. Solid channel.
It isn't just the greed for money, it is also the greed for power and even greed of praise to satisfy the ego.
1000%
It's money addiction, money for the sake of money, money for the feeling of superiority, moral intellectual, personal superiority, and if to achieve that superiority you have to sink others, then so be it.
Eh No! Its all about the money. The problem in the Industry is the corporations and their untrammelled greed which is destroying games. Corporations have a single goal to increase didvidends on a quarterly basis. Nothing is proof against this rapacious concept.
Satisfying the ego is called pride.
The sins that the video game industry are greed, sloth, and pride.
Friendly reminder. When Iwata was in a similar situation with the Wii U and 3DS failing to launch, he chose to take a pay cut so his employees wouldn't have to. That man was a pillar of the gaming industry and I feel he's still sorely missed even today.
He's the reason why Pokemon games had Quality Control for the DS Era. Boy howdy does it need that now. Badly.
The new apex update is another piece of evidence
They made a new currency so you couldn't use the currency you saved for the new items
And the new currency forces you to spend a minimum of 35 dollars per skin
here is a revolutionary idea, don't purchase worthless crap! just a bit of advice lol.
i just don't understand kids nowadays.
Damn...it's like people like stuff and support it or something...@@user-tp5yb4hr4w
@@user-tp5yb4hr4w I doubt OP would buy any of that considering their clear annoyance. The issue is all the people who do buy into it and encourage this awful behavior.
Well, that, and all the shareholders wanting non stop growth out of the company, but that's a whole other issue.
or you could simply not spend money on a free to play game?
@@user-tp5yb4hr4w i never said anything about buying the skins
I've been enjoying Indie and AA games more and more nowadays.
Agreed. The past 5 years I have purchased FAR more indies and AA than AAA.
I went back to games I haven't played in years. Currently, Diablo 2 original CD's and an old external drive with the 1.13c patch on it, with the Internet disconnected.
To be fair they're the only good ones.
Don’t forget about retro. They’ve been seeing good sales as well.
@@AlexanderTheGoodEnough
This is how I'm enjoying the real Warcraft 3 just off a bunch of old discs, and a magical update patch.
BTW there's several Captain Hook options for D2 if you're interested in playing multiplayer with a friend using the physical disc version it's just a simple patch to disconnect from blizzard, and it's copy protection. But there's a whole lot of cheaters if you play on the public servers and don't host your own small one. (It's super easy to host a server and takes a tiny amount of bandwidth to play with friends. Both LAN and online.)
The greed in the industry has turned me off new games all together. But i don't even mind, there's so many good old games. Basically PS3 X360 and before. Im sure there are many great new games that aren't predatory but yeah im happy not being part of the current state of games.
I feel ya on that
The gaming industry is just like any other business. The consumers which are you and every other person without a life. Caused this. You guys are also the reason we don't get to own games anymore. Might want to do some self reflection and notice how stupid all of you are.
I'll second this.
Just like Im not happy with Current STATE of the WEST, thanks Biden's handlers.
@@mightyraptor01 and the problem stems from the same thing, greed.
Everyone who ordered the firings gets a bonus. Everyone else gets fired.
Wow, that's exactly how greed works
Always works like that sadly
The thing all these execs have in common: They all say "Happy Hannukah!"
it blows my mind that eurocentric culture is literally nothing more than what your comment said happening over and over until there are people who believe themselves to be born owning the planet and all the people on it and those people stealing everything from everyone else.
And where does that leave them? Fewer people actually working, creating less money.
It's the shovelware crash all over again with a bizarro post-modern version of the Hayes Code slapped on top of it to accelerate the process.
It does rhyme with 1982, doesn't it?
@@Francois424what happened in 1982?
@@jonggisiagian8970 The last gaming crash. Basically game companies became lazy and began making "shovel-ware" as in really poor games, whist still selling them at full price. The quality degraded so fast that eventually the bubble burst and many companies and even consoles died as a result. Took about 2-4 years before we started getting good stuff again.
@@Francois424main difference is that at the time the budget for shovelware wasn't in the hundreds of millions.
@@atraxian5881
It's almost impressive when ya say it aloud, isn't it?
What you just described is basically every single publicly owned company regardless of industry. The only thing that changes is the exact details of the fuckery going on below the surface.
And to make it worse, they are basically forced to do this because it's what the shareholders want too and the mistake of a case in Dodge v Ford Motor Co exists
@@noah1535 Allowing your company to become publicly traded is essentially selling it's soul.
Yep. It’s every hype industry. It’s not just gaming
In fact I see these things the first time done in real estate companies in my own country. They hype up the stock prices so that it rises ridiculously high, then when it gets high enough, they make it crash to the ground and pocketing the profit.
Every company will eventually do this, encourage small teams and indies like Lethal Company
Honestly this bs is running rampt throughout the corporate landscape and it's made literally everything worse objectively.
Every major company seems to be doing cost cutting to boost their stock prices, meanwhile tanking their quality and reputations, a prime example of this Boeing. It's actually baffling to see this level of greed.
you have 5 days
That’s what happens when you have a stock market system that encourages short term growth over long term growth.
Unchecked greed everywhere, not just video games. It's disgusting we've become a society that follows cold profit maximizing algorithms to the detriment of our fellow human beings.
Short term profit at that.
If the stock market just focused on long term growth over short term growth
This extend to basically everything and anything in the current economy.
ESGs and whatnot
Including money laundering, err, “startup funds”
Capitalism baby.
To be fair this guy doesnt understand how the stock market works at all
But why
Greed ruins everything. Everyone knows it. Most people just don't care, especially when they get something out of it.
It's going to take more than just the gaming industry to burn down to fix things
@DieterDuplak314America is like this thanks to constant anti-socialist propaganda. Anything that would even remotely improve people’s lives is shot down as socialism.
YAFI
As an American, Capitalism is a failure.
yeah it seems a bit naive to believe people who have to fantasize about being in fictional worlds all the time by seeing increasingly expensive amounts of dancing pixels on electrified screens in front of them to cope with their place in eurocentric cultures hierarchy of dumbassery, would be the people to put in any work in fixing anything that might involve another human being getting helped too.
@DieterDuplak314 if you are currently in europe, you arent anything close to a communist lol. you are literally the subject of a monarch. their property.. europeans have spent more money killing real communists everywhere they might exist than they have spent on anything that benefits the life of any human. europeans hate communists more than anything on earth, and they almost destroyed the entire planet two times trying to kill each other out of hatred and disagreement for who is the "superior race" or whatever the hell
Great video, but something I wanted to point out: this isn't just the video game industry. This is happening in virtually every industry. Mass layoffs, that when you add all the salaries together, are a fraction of the CEO compensation. Then they use the saved money to buyback stocks to raise the stock price to hit the target for their bonus. Then they're paid in the inflated stocks.
I don't think stock buybacks are inherently bad-- they're more or less a tax advantaged form of dividend payout that offer more flexibility. But there was once a time where mass layoffs meant the stock price went down, as it was seen as a sign that the company is doing bad. Now the mask is off-- investors know that even if there is mass layoffs, there'll still be massive stock buybacks to make shareholders whole again. Sometimes the stock price even goes up now after mass layoffs. We need to break the vicious cycle of high executive pay to stop this unchecked greed.
Normal ppl believe in the system, but they arent aware how much in crumbling. Taxpayers and cosumers are be conned for profit. Its up to us to purchase things, stop endlessly consuming. Stop buying from mainland china too
Current system rewards short term growth over long term growth; one reason is CEO bonuses.
Holy fuck can’t UA-cam actually do something about these bots
I don’t want ass in my face every time I click on a damn video dude…there’s other apps for that
They could but if they do the lower "view" numbers mean less ad money and google can't have that.
@@Spartanbot1001 Even though ad money is almost always wasted money from the advertisers.
@@dgalloway107 Me when an ad plays: Ok now I just do something else until the ad is gone.
I just want a block user ability like we see in Twitter. Once you block the user, you don't see them again, or at the very least their comment gets hidden going forward.
@@schwarzflammenkaiser2347 There is something called Ublock origin. You don't have to wait for the ad to finish if there is no ad.
Except you watch them for the channels you really want to support then have my respect.
The toxicity, predation, and damage of corporate profit-maximizing neoliberal orthodoxy in both labor relations and product development is rampant throughout the entire economy. Rule by global corporate capital now exists in a hierarchical capacity over the nation-state.
What is described in this video is 'Maximising Shareholder Profit'. Fairly standard practice in corporate america. If anyone is wondering why the economy for the last few decades has been seemingly lackluster for the working man, this is a contributor. A short term business strategy that produces quasi-growth that is largely not holistic, but rather jacking up key performance metrics at the expense of the future. Hence cost cutting in any conceivable area of the business.
Interesting, thanks for the info.
Do you know strategies that would instead promote long-term growth of a company while making a good enough profit ?
the truth is actually because the last few decades are when europe retook complete power over america and thus the majority of the worlds economic capacity. there isnt a SINGLE instance of any "independent" country consistently selling the well being of their own people off to europe as much as america has. if that doesnt speak volumes about who is really in control, you should probably stop paying attention because you are too dumb to ever allow yourself to understand things for what they are.
@@Hollowed2wizMaking good/valuable products and NOT treating their customers like shit.
But that would be good for the company, not the shareholders. So we can't have that.
@@BangersAndMash98 It is literally opening yourself up to being sued by the shareholders.
@@vivusthevivusthing6182Yup, shareholder primacy sure is great, ain't it?
I love living in a society where sociopaths and psychopaths are the ones who succeed the most. They're the ones who end up with the power to make decisions that affect us all.
You damn sure do not get anywhere sitting on your ass feeling sorry for yourself complaining about psychos and sociopaths.
I hate it.
The Chump dynasty and their God & Goddess tier statuses tell ya everything ya need to know. Without coin, corruption, crews, clout, computer code, control, communities of cronies, and shady opportunities... you ain't SHEET. 💪😎✌️ #copium
News flash bro it's been this way at least as long as humans have been writing history, we just called them gods back then
@@GalladeTheWarrior I know... Humans will be humans. If we weren't calling people gods, we were using the concept of God to justify some truly horrific things.
This is why i worry that Rockstar and GTA games could end up just being shallow clones of their former selves. With ever bigger, online components at the expense of the single player experience or any other new games created.
They already r
Next GTA Online could even have a premium currency with vehicles that can only be purchased by them. In a game like War Thunder, I see that as okay because the game is FTP but paying $90CAD for a AAA game like Call of Duty and having $25CAD skins is absurd, especially when lootboxes were in the previous games that gave access to overpowered weapons
@@finkamain1621 well they did it with RDR2, they will do it with VI
GTAV was released in 2013 in the PS3 era. And the same game was re-released for the PS4 and PS5 with some sh1tty remaster of an excuse. They milked that game and GTA Online to death. And instead of giving us a good remaster of the first 3 GTAs (which fans actually wanted), we got a broken mobile port, which is still a worse experience than the originals. Work on RDR2 had started just after RDR1 was released. They're an industry titan, and they still take close to a decade to release a new game. GTA6 is set to release in 2025-26, which'll be 12-13 years since its predecessor. That amount of dev time is just absurd. Rockstar is the most overhyped and overrated studio, period. And their business practices with their Online aspects is pure scum, EA levels of scum.
@@SmootherThanSilk Not to mention they removed the original games on Steam when their "remasters" came out. Essentially if anyone had any interest in playing a legit copy of old GTA's on PC, they'd have to purchase the new ones instead
You are 100% correct. I’ve been gaming loving enough to remember that buying a game meant you got the entire game at point of sale. Today, at point of sale you get a horrifically buggy, unfinished ‘game’ and need to pay more over time to get the whole game that you previously got from the start. This must violate a consumer law; selling one thing yet providing another…
You're misremembering.
One of my favorite games of all time shipped on *floppy disks* for Win3.11/9x, came out unfinished, received several patches you could only get by mailing shipping to the company so they'd mail back a disk, and was eventually abandoned without ever being feature-complete.
And it was published by Sierra, of all people. *And* it still sold enough copies to get a sequel.
Companies selling unfinished games has been present in the industry for *at least* thirty years.
The argument that companies need to sell games at a higher price with microtransactions just to break even is utter BS since this kinda shows that all of the profits just go straight into the CEOs little piggy bank.
It’s always been a lie. Why do we prioritize profit over customer and worker satisfaction
should say "break even with the expectations of the monarchs who command all the rich folks to do what they do and reward them for it" ... its not some natural market expectation. its the eurocentric cultural standard of HAVING TO be more harmful than beneficial to the majority of people involved with it. there's a reason something that strives to end poverty is considered something that "makes everyone poor" in the minds of monarchists. because they value being able to harm with impunity more than they value having big numbers in accounts
@@saturationstation1446 you’re the only other person I’ve seen who sees it this way.
Europeans really believe in keeping 99% of people poor for no reason other than benefiting the 1%
Not to mention that they spend so much on voice actors, especially if it's a Hollywood celeb. Someone like The Rock in any Hollywood movie will want a minimum $20 million to be hired - That's a lot from the budget. It happens with video games too
@@finkamain1621 And the voice actors aren't even good. Voice actors sound like voice actors and I'm sick of it.
I keep buying indie games and have found the joy of gaming again
This is the way.
Yep. Those are the saviors of gaming in my eyes, but be careful, as soon as you see your favorite indie devs acquired by some other company, slowly begin detaching yourself from them.
I pirate. Fuck that
Wartales, For The King 1 & 2, The Iron Oath, Hard West 2, The Ascent, King Arthur - A Knight's Tale.
These are some of my favourite Indie titles, and I've sunk more than a 100 hours in some of them. Great value, good fun, some are replayable, never felt a shred of buyer's remorse. I highly recommend all to at least check them out.
I have been working professionally in the video game industry since 2006. I will frequently be in conversations with young developers and they will sometimes ask for advice. The biggest piece of advice I always give them is to never sell their company. Ever. The moment you sell your company to, a publisher, or other publicly treated company, you have immediately changed the dynamic of what your mission statement is. The moment you are publicly traded, you are no longer beholden to your customers. You are now beholden to profits and shareholders. And that’s not a matter of opinion either. Due to “Ford vs Dodge” it is literally enshrined in law that CEOs have to put the interest of shareholders above everyone else.
Really thought out man. The rot starts at the top and basically stays there with the upper executives. They're so damn out of touch with reality because most of them are surrounded by mindless "Yes Men." Always patting each other on the back for making piss poor decisions. Something has gotta change.
This isn't just happening to the gaming industry, this is happening in every industry.
The enshitification of everything for "number go up" is what it's all about now.
I'm not surprised at all. Can't remember the guys name but some studio head or exec or something called the producer or Baulders Gate 3 an idiot for not putting microtransactions in the game. I'm see headlines of younger players going back to older or retro games.
Companies tried telling us "survival horror is dead" and "no one wants to play single player games anymore. Live service is the future."
Then the amount of companies who hopped on the bandwagon ended up with duds soon after and cut the servers for the games we paid for.
Turns out gaming is a luxury, and those are the first things people have to cut when the economy struggles. Then it doesn't help when video game companies try to squeeze as much money out of people either directly or by violating and selling their privacy, and many gamers are realizing that they can replay older, better games for free
When it comes to live service games that rely on microtransaction
If you've seen the video, mobile revenue is double than pc or console. Normies ruined gaming for everyone
@@A1stardanway to miss the point
i think people are finally growing mature enough to realize and admit to themselves that games are digital drugs and they are digital drug addicts
@@A1stardan At least mobile games are free, but the normies end up buying consoles and $80 games and they still think it's good to pay $25 for a skin
It's not just this industry either, feels like it's everywhere. 🤮
In short, the industry and the many many people's lives under these executives are currently completely hanging by the string called "humanity" of these top executives. Those who are lacking in humanity will just grab the money and leave everybody to hang, while those with some semblance of humanity in them will turn to a less destructive outcome and approach. Just like I've said before on some video here on UA-cam...Humankind will only be able to reach the next step towards a new level of civilization once us humans are able to willingly take, choose, and accept, the harder option whenever the situation arises that we have to choose between the easier way but more damaging towards others, versus the harder way but more considerate of others and the future generations. We have time and time again always chose the easier way, and called it "progress".
Ive never had a lower opinion of the prospects of my dream career.
I wanted to go into game dev when I was a kid. In 2008-2009 I could already see that was a bad idea, even back then it was widely known and reported that devs would get crunched and laid off after product ships. Before the explosion of f2p and also "forever games" aka live service. If your passion is exclusive to video games, I can only recommend trying to get a place with independent development or doing your own indie dev.
If your dream career was landing a job at a AAA studio, that sounds like a slow burn nightmare.
AI is your real problem
Big Companies nowadays have too much power. They exploit their customers on a giant scale and have no problem to use psychological tactics. Where will this end?
the wallet
They have no power, it ends as soon as enough people stop buying their products, you don't need games in your life. If you think they suck (I think they suck) don't buy them. It will start with layoffs, then you'll have some CEO heads rolling, companies shutting down, useless employees fired.
That will then lead to indie studios taking market shares, hiring the real talent, making good games and there you go. It just takes a while for it to happen sadly.
@@Yattayatta ... and then indie game studios will become those AAA big companies who sh!t on their empolees and consumers. So the circle of life continues.
When mobile dumbasses stop buying shit
This is all because investors have 0 accountability.
And there's also that retarded law where you have to keep "the company's interest" (read: the investor's interest) as the highest priority, and if you do anything that would lower the revenue of a company, but increase your product/service quality and customer satisfaction, you can LITERALLY GET SUED by the investors because you weren't acting in the company's best interest...
THAT'S the main problem.
The comments section on this video is interesting. There seems to be a feeling of powerlessness due to lack of understanding within it. It is surprising how little the consumer understands their own power and resorts to words like "activism", which can be dangerous. This is an entertainment industry guys, it does not exist without you the customer. You may not have an arsenal of options at your disposal to combat the issues expressed in the video, but you only need one - YOUR WALLET! Be cognizent of, but stop worrying about things you have no direct control over, and affect the things that you do. None of it can exist without your dollar. There are multiple examples within this very industry of the consumers reversing greed inspired decisions. All it takes is enough people to be concientious of their purchasing power. That starts with you, as an individual.
I'm starting to believe that we, as a society, put too much value on money. Money was supposed to be a tool to streamline prices because you don't know if a trade between object A and object B is an equal trade.
However, this made everything about life becomes money oriented. Success is being determined by who can make the most money. Those who got promoted is the one who made the most money instead of the best at their job. Determining if something is good or not is by which bring the most money.
Throw away mutual relationship. Throw away creativity. Throw away people's life. These are in the name of making more money.
Amen
This doesn´t apply solely to gaming. Pretty much every major business is prefering short term gains and high stock prices to long term development and a healthy company.
Unchecked greed and activism never end well.
You think corporations paying lip service to social issues is activism?
@@ifeoluwaadeoye6557 yes.
@@ifeoluwaadeoye6557 no, that's not what he said.
He said that unchecked greed and unchecked activism never end well. They're two separate things with this one thing in common.
@@meyes1098 what are you on about?
@@ifeoluwaadeoye6557 idk man, try reading it again, if you still don't get it, take a few English comprehension courses, that should help.
The reason these people get to these CEO positions is that the VC and Banking Financial Overlords make sure members of their Tribe are selected and thusly compensated. The cattle get the rest
They worship the Mammon above all. And people need to start to realize this.
Well that cell zoom in just ruined my appetite 😂😂
s u c c
Making money was and never is the problem.
It's the shift in focus from creating/publishing a product to an audience towards making shareholders your audience doing anything for infinite growth.
Shareholders are essentially a bank loan with annual increased interest rates. You reach the point you can't even break even anymore.
Add overpaid executives and you have a bubble waiting to go boom.
Not to mention that developers have solely relied on for years for people to pre-order their games all while they make big $ when their game isn't even finished so they can put out an unpolished product. I even remember DLCs being marketed before a game is even out
@@finkamain1621 Merely a symptom of their chase for infinte growth. If you can´t sell anymore products you start to sell products in advance just to boost the reported income in that quarter etc.
They burned pretty much all good will of people, proving them fools every time someone pre-ordered.
The problem I see is that gamers are very talented chumps. They can be very clever and intelligent and Hyper focused and at the same time be complete fools who are very good at wasting their time and money, especially if they lack mature responsibility or it's someone else's money.
You can say the same about the mass public. Most people can have the intelligence to figure out they are being duped but will let it happen anyway because the short-term benefits/comfort are more agreeable to them in the immediate now.
This is why there has always been a lower class, the middle class and upper class need worker-types to work and keep their society functioning. They are now finding out that if the low-income earners have no hope and no future they don't work and the comfortable middle-to-upper class life starts to look a little more like lower-class life.
Most people _know_ that poor people eat one meal a day at most while they themselves eat twice or thrice a day. Doesn't stop them from eating that much though, because it feels good to eat the good food in the moment, doesn't it?
@@RexhunterjI love this empathetic response. Everyone else isnt stupid, its just easier cuz it makes more sense to your brain. Even if you know something is wrong deep down, which everyone does
This is all borderline criminal; those execs will see no consequences, directly - only gold parachutes should their bullshittery go "too far."
The executives have been extracting wealth from the rest of the economy and society for a long time now. Welcome to modern capitalism. Early on they were doing it in the name of shareholders, but these days even the shareholders get robbed if they don't spot the drop before it hits.
Greed is killing broader society too. Private companies are buying up water companies and increasing prices while literally giving people sewage water.
Good video!
There's a video from How Money Works that talks a bit about the history of why investors once realized that if they align the CEOs interest with theirs, that results in more gain for the investors, so they started pumping bonuses and ridiculous salaries so CEOs prioritize inverstor's wants instead of workers or customers.
Don't know if it's ok to link it but its pretty easy to find.
Watched that too! It's a stranger paradox: before that there has stagnation, now, there has Just short termo gains!
Idk how the hell 108k is average. I have 7 years of experience and I get 36k. My first year was 4 digit income.... It took a lot of grind, first grey hair, several pages of CV filled with projects to get to 3k EUR a month. And apparently I am just now exiting the "minimum income" for my profession? Bruh.... Actually considering all the firings and the impossibility to find a job exiting is improbable. I will probably have to return to cheaper contracts to get any jobs at all.
This fucking sucks.
That sounds painful af. So much work for just 3k a month, what a joke this industry is. And even more ridicoulus if i compare it to my own job working as a Mail/Delivery guy making 2.1k a month after taxes in a job that requires no skills other than reading and a drivers license.
Newsflash, it isn't just gaming.
Executives, investment firms, and venture capitalists stripmine businesses for money. This has been a thing in every industry they get a hold of since the 80s.
Meanwhile, I'll bet many employees are living paycheck-to-paycheck. I HIGHLY doubt many of the total number of employees are making anywhere near 100K, and likely FAR lower than that.
It's worse for mobile games and the way they aggressively target kids. It is incredibly easy for kids to accidently rack up hundreds of dollars just trying to click off ads. I have tablets set up so that my granddaughters have to get confirmation from me in order to buy something. I watched as they played a game and every time an ad came up they would quickly try and hit the x, instead accept buying something that is outrageously priced. Barbie accessories at $70.00 WTF even adult games aren't as aggressive or priced as such. Really disgusting.
It's intentionally designed to be manipulative. Kids are vulnerable to it. It's unethical and disgusting.
Best thing you can do is not give them tablets or mobiles, and if they want to play games, buy similar ones on pc and let them play there
@@A1stardan Actually the best thing to do is set it up so it has to get permission before anything can be bought. That being said, it's the nature of targeting kids that gets me mad.
Go on SideScroller! You bring so much knowledge to the table.
*NUMBER MUST GO UP*
you cover this so much and i thank you for it. don’t stop. i have grown to be apathetic toward this tread of killing creative and fun gaming but you posting these is always a good reminder to not stop questioning. thank you for screaming into the void when i’m too tired to.
Once any creative pursuit becomes about stock prices, it’s doomed.
I pretty much just play boardgames now. Goin back to basics
Yup same I play whitebox RPG solo and d&d 5e solo both with chat gp paid subscription the value is better then a video game sub
I greatly appreciate the nuance that CEOs aren't greedy just for making money, it's how they do it. Too many people don't understand that nuance.
Very nice video. Exactly my thoughts on the video game industry the last 20+ years. From the moment physical copies and physical demos stopped all this sh*t started.
Won't be long till the companies try to charge you for changing your graphic options, accessing the settings menu, charge you per a save slot. Ten years ago this would be laughable but now these days I could see someone trying it, especially the charging per a save slot.
I want to say I think the constant push for high end graphics all the time by games has also lead to inflated game costs, instead of just focusing on making a good game first, it seems studios spend so much time and money on trying to squeeze out a little bit more graphics which most won't even notice. publisher meddling as well is not helping either.
There are MMOs where you have to buy consumables in order to send broadcast messages, for instance...
@@TorIverWilhelmsen Well seems like it is coming quicker than I expected.
Call of Duty Black Ops II charged for for each additional 10 custom class slots back in 2013
Moral of the story: Don't work as a Game Developer.
If you buy them you're the problem
You are the best at covering media/tech & industry news!
The biggest problem with AAA gaming it has become to corporate and run by suits not gamers that know the industry
If you didn’t know already, executives are a leech on the real work done by the employees. They don’t do any of the work that actually makes the company money, they screw the company over through extreme short-term thinking, then they get a golden parachute ($millions) even if they get fired by the board for incompetence. Meanwhile, the average worker has to justify bathroom breaks while getting paid a fraction of the value they create for the company.
This is how capitalism works. This is why we’re such a f*cked up country.
You are the riches country on earth, 100k/year is insane in any other country except maybe Norway. EU median salary is around 30k something, if you go to east Asia you'll be looking at 8-9k if you are lucky, over to Africa and you will struggle to reach 4k.
CEOs also don't spawn out of the ether when a company is created, under capitalism you are free to start your own gaming company CEOFREEGAMING, hire all the talent from the company you think has an overpaid CEO, offer them that money as salary, and make your own games.
@@Yattayatta If you don’t live here, you don’t get to criticize it. Most don’t make anywhere close to 100k. Most work multiple jobs and still have a hard time making ends meet. As for starting a business, the US is particularly bad for small businesses, favoring corporate control instead.
Again, if you’re totally ignorant of reality, maybe shut the hell up and let the adults fight for human decency.
@@mgkrewson I know enough to know that you guys live well beyond the rest of the world and still cry about it.
Saw a video the other day of a woman sitting in a new car talking about how hard life is in the US, someone said "you are sitting in a new car, can't be that bad"
Another American commented "It's a cheap car, it's only 34k"
Insanity, most people here will never in their lives own a car worth 34k.
@@Yattayatta So… you don’t want us to care about improving our country because we’re ostensibly better off than you? I’m not just complaining here, I wrote my original post to help educate, because there’s a lot of propaganda to the contrary.
You think things are great here, but they’re great in the same way they’re great in any oppressive society: great for the wealthy few and the petit bourgeoisie, shit for the rest of us. Yes we have a lot of access material goods, but most of it’s cheap crap, and all it really does is distract us from our humanity being stolen from us. It doesn’t count as progress in my eyes.
@@mgkrewson The thing you don't realize is that you have a choice, most people don't.
Surrounded by cheap crap? Then why buy it? You are free to carve your own furniture, toys etc, or you can commission someone for it.
By the way, that "cheap crap" is luxury goods in most other countries.
smoothest sponsored segment i've eva siiiiin
Companies trying to sell us $70 - $150 games aren't selling in 200 countries... so we who do get to buy them are being told to subsidize their bloated budgets, reckless spending and poor sales strategies. This is a problem that more money can't fix.
Is there anything in any aspect of society that isn't destroying itself these days?
I think you’re right about that boiling point. For the entire country not just gamers
There is a pattern with all those AAA game company CEOs but I just can't put my finger on it...
Let me give you a hint:
They don't eat pork meat.
It's not just the gaming industry that are doing things like this. I work for a supermarket and they do the same sort of stuff. It's almost every company going back to the greed is good to pay their share holders and screw everyone else.
My goodness, the thoughtfulness and thoroughness of the research. Kudos to you my friend. Gained a sub, this is the critical commentary I've long yearned for.
Weeeell, I got about 10k hours of factorio to play.
funny how the title could also be "Unchecked Greed in le world" How humanity is Destroying Itself :(
Thank you so much for doing what you do. These videos are incredibly insightful and needed.
Well done video bro, this is on a whole nother level 💯
Typical corporate cannibalism. Buy smaller companies, asset strip them, dissolve them and retire with the most money you possibly can while leaving business and personal devastation in your wake.
It is obvious that at corpo level it is not about making games or giving a good product/experience, it's all greed and money.
Support indie devs.
It's not just the video game industry. It's anything that has any large corporation doing anything. I work at a resort, and the "parent" company is squeezing as much as they can and spend as little as possible to make as much as possible. Sad really.
This is where most industries are heading unfortunately, nothing will change at these companies until the change is forced upon them.
Not just gaming...
Zelnik and kotick huh? Curious names, wonder if there's any connection between them...
je
We’ve been well aware of the greed amongst publishing companies for years now and the only way anything will change is if gamers vote with their feet… but they never do! It’s the same with people who complain about games being released broken and then go off and pre order the next title from the same publisher! Gamers need to get over their addiction before anything will change
"Rich people bad". Well, I can't see how this gaming industry greed differs from any other megacorp greed. CEOs and shareholders always capture, merge, divide and sell out smaller companies and corp divisions while signing themselves huge bonuses and getting richier, and always will be.
I lived without gaming before. I will again. I'm at a point where I no longer care if it burns. I've had some small moments of fun, but this is all a luxury. I don't need it.
I'd rather focus on my health, or just me in general.
At the end of the day, they wouldn't be able to do this if people weren't willing to buy the product. If this resulted in lower net revenues, they wouldn't be pursuing them. It's the consumer's fault for paying for lackluster garbage products.
You're so close to realizing that the greed has always been there, and paying executives special payouts is what has empowered this crap to happen in the first place. Pay them well but always in line with the worker.
I am 42, academic, this channel provides me with what I need, not for all but for me, I like the complex made simple narrative with an insane amount of research and as an academic I know how important thoroughness and accuracy is. UE shines on that level. But far more... they are authentic.
The first minutes immediately opened my eyes. It's fascinating how people argue that artistic work and expression should be rewarded, so they can continue to do the thing and basically argue for upper and middle managers to make money of the artists while the actual artist is kept in a precarious and parasitic work environment and gets the least of that supposed "reward" they "deserve". I also say "people in trouble should get some donation" and then go buy birthday presents for the most popular and rich person I know while I watch them make fun of and bully homeless people :D
The employees could get together with their own capital, and offer their labor. The problem is making a living when your going to need to spend 16 hours a day. This is to get the job done, because your livelihood is a liability to yourself. A hobby, or a side job sure. When its a career that usually involves borrowing, finding investors, and paying others to do what you don't do.
The regulatory capture, and bureaucracy involved to get approvals. Yes, corporations do force by lobbying for their own bureaucracies to become middlemen.
@@josephpurdy8390 you have to simply ignore history to believe well off eurocentrics will allow people to willingly not be enslaved to them. ffs, 99% of the entire human species in the past 3 decades has died from labor induced starvation for no reason other than it was commanded to happen by rich europeans...
Upper Echelon constantly fails to mention the most important thing: the players decide what happens, through their purchases, period.
And studios decision on selling their souls to these greedy companies
Hifi rush sold well for essentially a AA game. Tango even said they wanted to use the existing engine and make a sequel. The evil dead games were also successes. It makes no sense why tango was shut down.
Redfall was a flop and the previous game arkane Austin made was wolfenstein new blood which also sucked. The last good game they made was prey over 7 years ago and that sold poorly too. They didnt make dishonored. Arkane Austin had it coming eventually
The problem is that current enconomy falls to the whales who are like 80% of the revenue of most games, and that type of people don't care
Blackrock has entered the chat
@@Matiargentino100 Whales care what they spend their money on. I'm sure some % of them are low IQ people, but that goes for any demographic. You are not throwing away 100+ dollars on a game just because if you don't enjoy the product. Not even if you have 10 million in the bank, because spending habits like that will make you not have anything in the bank pretty soon.
Keep up the great work! One of the most reliable news sources in gaming. Dude does his research!
The problem isn't that they make a lot of money, its that they get paid in a large amount of stock options. Meaning that instead of being incentivized for long-term thought of what would benefit the company, they dont care beyond their parachute and their ability to cash our their stock options.
These people aren't on the side of their business. They're on the side of the stockholders, and they've never been on the side of gamers.
games can't catch a break HOLY!
LET IT EAT ITSELF!
Wow! Spot on analysis, actual journalism still exists.
@UpperEchelon now you ask the question in the end "what can be done" - which is for us whose hobby this is and for those who work in the industry a key question.
within the framework of how money is made there is just one solution that has proven effective and that is _starving the beast_
it requires some outrage and some discipline from us consumers.
but ea's battlefront 2 monetization disaster, xbox always online and "you can't buy the console without kinect" aswell as the latest helldivers2 rejection of sony's psn requirements has shown how people's backlash to predatory business practices has very effectively forced major companies to roll back on their wet dreams of forcing ever increasingly insidious tactics on their customers to satisfy short term market highs.
Don't buy new games, play more old games.
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Nice work old mate. 👍👌
What surprises me is that there are still people who play games. In 2024.