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- Fire seasoned devs - Realize production is lagging behind - Hire them back as temporary contractors - Invest in more bloat that does not increase profits - Make “premium” skins that cost the same as some AA games - Repeat
@@arcamean785 That's just it. This assumes a person isn't neurodivergent and has an inclination towards completion. Folks have emptied bank accounts, maxed out credit sources, and stolen from friends and family to satisfy their mental needs. And they can't stop themselves, even though they know it's breaking them. The only option they have is avoidance, which is why I'm glad this episode exists.
Back in the day, to get the ultra rare skins you had to perform some difficult to complete activity in-game that would prove how good you are. Now all you have to do is drop a few hundred
Yeah I used to play league a lot, but the past few years it just seems like a job grinding out various events. I basically don't play anymore other than an occasional ARAM with some friends.
I feel like artists for things like this should have royalties just like actors and such anything that is created by talents and will make money in perpetuity should get money the same.
@Daniele-PierreDuLac I am saying that our system needs to change we are still working off a system where things were made and sold and that was it now things are made to be sold an infinite number of times if something you made will make money 1 time being payed 1 time makes sense but if the thing you made will make money for the next 20 years you should too. I am not saying this exact time it should because yes the way it works isn't like that the point is the system should change going forward.
It shouldn't. Because all anyone would ever do is the try to join a successful business to passively earn royalties rather than try to start their own.
@@johnoden5932 There are companies that already do this, see Valve for example, anyone can make Dota 2 skins and potentially profit from them if they're accepted by Valve and there are artists who do and make a lot. I think the person you're responding to is being unnecessarily dismissive but they do have a point, at the end of the day these artists agreed to the contract, even if yes I agree it's scummy it's not actually the companies' fault that they had contract regret after and realised they got screwed over. I'm reminded a bit of the Witcher book writer who took a cash payment and handed over his IP entirely to CD Projekt Red thinking he was being smart even though he was offered something like 5% I think it might have been ( Don't quote me on that ) in royalties. He clearly had no idea how big of a success it was and then proceeded to go after CD Projekt Red after like he was a victim. Let this be a lesson to anyone trying to get to the higher tiers of business, if you think it has the slightest chance of doing well always find a way of getting a percentage in profit through royalties or any other method so you don't get ripped off for your work. I'm not writing this as a justification for their behaviour, this is just the realities of a business deal younger generations especially need to take note of.
They said the quiet part out loud? Ya. A lot of people have been doing that lately... seriously, have these companies forgotten we can chose NOT to give them money.
@@vanishingllama7342but most people don’t actually have a reason to not spend the money(assuming they actually have the disposable income). The vast majority of consumers don’t care about politics or working conditions or wage slavery. They don’t want to see hear or think about that during their hobby.
In Civilization Beyond Earth, there's a flavour text where it explains the culture leader Elodié wrote her first dissertation on the collapse of the video game industry in the 2020s and 2030s. I first read that in 2014 and wondered how in the hell something like that could happen. I've been thinking about that little text a lot lately.
I suppose you were quite young in 2014, because I have seen people talking about it since the very early 2010's due to the various DIE (Diversity, inclusivity, and equity) movements that had begun invading the gaming world and the corporate take overs that had led to it happening. Plenty of people have been warning about this for well over a decade now. Most people just didn't want to take part in politics, so only the bad guys took part.
The saddest part about the excessive monetisation is that it's going nowhere. Even tho the majority of players don't engage in macro transactions, there will always be a few who will always buy those. And companies quickly learnt that they can easily offset that low amount of always buying players by upcharging them hundreds per purchase. By bringing in the recent Faker skin - it earned 2.5 million $ during a single stream. With 500$ per pack, it means Riot only needed 5000 people out of millions playing LoL in order to earn this much.
If you don't want excessive monetisation, don't play games with excessive monetisation. That is not the same as playing the game anyway and not buy those items. If you really mean it, don't play any game from a studio that produces any games with excessive monetisation.
@@nodwick4231 "Easier said than done". There are millions of people who play those games either because they can't afford or run normal games as they tend to be not so demanding on weaker PCs or play because "the game is good despite the grind". They reality is that there are too many who chose those games for one or the other reason and a single person not playing it won't make a dent. You would have to drop the daily player count by 2/3rd for the paying ones to dip and as I've seen numerous time in previous "game boycotts"... that ain't happening.
@@DajovaI imagine Genshin's even worse, because Chinese seem to actively take pride in throwing money at gacha slop. With them, Japan, and S.Korea being the large audience, even if everyone in the west collectively dropped it and every other Mihoyo game, it wouldn't even make a dent
We can blame corporate greed all day... However, so long as people continue to supply revenue, making these greedy moves profitable, they will continue to implement them. Most have little willpower to stop themselves... especially if they are purchasing with someone elses money, such as a parent.
riot games is a studio that deserves to fail. They stopped caring about league a long time ago. I dropped league after vanguard happened and switched to linux mint as my daily driver and haven't looked back once.
What stops the studio they worked for from cutting off the royalty check shortly after sacking? Warner Bros. making their recent TV inaccessible, anyone?
Stephanie Sterling said it best about “It’s just cosmetic” type defences. If it was just cosmetic and not everything is for you, why would these devs and publishers bother? Do you think they do all of this just to only adopt a handful of purchasers? Do you think they don’t want to create more customers? Do you honestly believe it doesn’t impact the overall designs of games?
It is absolutely not JUST cosmetic, to use the game For Honor as an example, the reason the playerbase stuck around for so long and is still keeping the game alive is because the devs for the most part listened to feedback about keeping the medieval aeshtetic and not just doing a bunch of fantasy visual effect skins for everything, People wanted the gritty metal aesthetic to be the main one
Come on, as much as I hate league, just cosmetic is still miles ahead of P2W or even "pay for convenience" type crap. That's what really hurts the game, because the devs create problems that can be solved with $$$
They won't get me. Ever. It's funny because once i got wind of this system i thought to myself: 'I don't play gacha games', and suddenly my time spend on league decreased by about 90%, only the occasional ARAM.
Everyone I know who was at one point a hardcore league player have by and large stopped playing. I think at this point the playerbase numbers have stagnated and are likely dropping. South Korea will always remain the largest country for League and SK is an absolute dystopia of people who are willing to spend money to make themselves look better in any way possible. This leads me to believe that they're basically at the point where the game isn't going to really go anywhere and they're looking to make as much money as possible by milking whoever is left. Riot, in general, is a mess. It's a miracle Valorant was even made considering that their devs constantly fail at making new games and can barely even manage new game modes in LoL. Their side projects have mostly failed or are in production limbo. Once again, I'm pretty sure if it weren't for South Korea, Riot's situation would be far worse.
I think League could definitely be stagnating, but I think the playerbase numbers, if they are dropping, are dropping very slowly. This is rather natural, though, for a game this old or at least it is expected. League is very old and Riot isn't dumb they know a new game or new projects are a necessity to grow forward, and so it will happen whether anyone likes it or not. Valorant is a recent result of this. You are right on SK though, it's a weird dystopian like place in which they care about image to a degree that is offputting.
Brand new super Nintendo games when the system was new were around 100 dollars or more per game... And that was in the 90s. 30 years ago. And we bought them.
Ubisoft also said the quiet part out loud when they said that you don't actually own any of your games, yet y'all started memeing on them with that quote. Next thing everyone realizes is that Steam were forced to let you know that it was indeed true :).
No. Bullying never leads to anything good. But we should absolutely not acknowledge their fancy purchase, and thereby remove a large reason that you do such things.
It is worth noting FOMO works both ways, fear of missing out requires you to not be missing out. Now that you will have missed out, there is less reason to join this game. The less reason to join this game the more likely they will go the Smite Route. In other words the design of this is exclusivity that will drive League of Legends 2 to be made. You are paying money to drive the death of LoL and the skins you spend.
13:50 Preach!! I wish devs (especially blizzard) would focus more on pumping out content rather than useless skins. Do you remember what skin or transmog you had on when you had that great win or beat that one raid? NO!! but I bet you remember the character you were playing
Fun fact: the "Pity" system is there not because the developers have a good heart, but because if they don't have one, the thing would be considered gambling.
That part was said when the expensive jhin chroma got released so they warned us and they said if they have market for it which they have they will keep developing it
Well said at the end there. People will say they're just cosmetics, they don't change the game, they don't matter. If that were true, why do studios charge for them? Why do they invest so much money in the making and marketing of them? Because they do matter.
Lots of companies say the quiet part out loud. The real question is, does it even matter? Will players of these games hold the companies accountable? No... no they won't. Just remember, when you open your wallet for pixels in League or for power in games like Lost Ark, you're not really getting *anything*. When those games are no longer playable, you can think about all the money you spent in these titles.
I don't even play these games and I'm so tired of hearing about all of this gacha/monetization scheme BS. It's so obviously manipulative and cynical. The fact that it works so well is what's most depressing.
There's a problem with corporate greed, they get a taste of profit and want more each year, it's not enough to make $1million every year, no, it has to be $1million year one, $2million year two, $3million year 3 etc as if just being a profitable company isn't enough, it has to be profitable and growing constantly at any cost to the consumer even if it ends ultimately destroying the company because it's impossible to have infinite growth (unless you're Nvidia) eventually you hit a ceiling and then the only way is down when it becomes unsustainable
I started working in the gaming industry in 2007 and by now I am at a point where I decided to leave the industry. Luxury ingame skins are certainly part of my decision.
When Overwatch first launched, I looked at it and ignored it, understanding the Korean-MMO levels of monetization. Of course now, I am knee-deep in retro-gaming and just got a MiSTer board.
Imaging making a product that has a sale value of 500 and having someone else sell it. I mean it's normal everywhere but still a funny thing to see pronounced.
I remember when we bought game content. I remember when the thing we expected from a game was fun. Paying real money for digital cosmetics has always made me feel uneasy and it has only become worse with time.
As someone knows someone who owns every single skin, little legends, emote and chroma in the game - ever x: yes they exist. I hate it so much. I agree with Asmongold here. Virtual currencies should just go away. Things should just be able to bought 1:1 vs real money - straight forward. As someone who also drops money on Rito, and i don't mind doing so, I am glad that my fav characters aren't that popular. Still wondering if DJ Sona and Elementalist Lux will be upgraded to be an Exalted or not. Jinx basically has the same functionality as DJ Sona, minus the Music plus the HUD
"nobody's forcing you to buy it" Seems like we should review the importance of "precedent" Companies look at what's successful such as FAANG and think "hey maybe that's a good thing to copy for our company, they didn't even get in trouble by their customers so it must be ok" I think if we just look at recent years we can clearly see that happening... and many will often tell us directly that they are doing it.
Why pay a veteran artist 6 figures to make something that an eager new artist is willing to do for 60% of the salary? It's not like LoL's art style requires the most talented artists.
that last 2 minutes is exactly it. full stop. im in my 40s and you could see the writing on the wall become crystal clear when fortnite was stealing dances and they were making money hand over fist on skins. selling map packs walked so selling skins could run.... the industry into the ground.
ive been a rocket league player/fan since day one. all of the development on the game we see these days goes to skins, rocket pass items, and license deals.
@@bigrob029 I remember Cathode Ray Dude going on about perfection in appliance/tech businesses during his look at Daystarter. Perfection is what drives skeevy business.
Arcane is like BG3: a very well crafted licensed release that gives life to an IP that's controlled by people who have no interest in anything but cash.
I criticized the overwatch episode because Blizzard has been doing overwatch dirty by focusing on the cosmetics since it became the sequel, so it wasn't particularly interesting to hear about what I already kinda knew. 🙃
i'm 05:36 min into the video, and how Bellular is describing and phrasing things is getting me worried that riot will try to push a skin with a monthly sub... if that, is true and things catch up, i think it will be time to let the gamer hobiee goes.
My backlog of games is big. I can have myself entertained for years to come. I simply refuse to play games, that are taking the piss like this. Even if I do not intend to bys any of their skins - I will not provide a +1 to their player numbers.
Amazing that Blizzard and Riot are both doing the same thing. And it's going to work. Because there are people in the world who love buying expensive shit just for the sake of buying it.
Sadly there's so many people that are too far gone into addictions of gambling for these glorified gifs. I don't mind if people WANT to and CAN spend hundreds of dollars for a skin but when it's getting so psychologically manipulative and lives are getting ruined.
as a valorant player, I dont give a shit about all this. The moment I need to spend a penny, I am out. And as for Riot focusing on the skins rather then the gameplay, I dont care and actually am happy about it. I like where it is now, few small changes can improve stuff(looking at sunset) but as a silver, its mostly irrelevant to me. People may look down at me, but I dont care, as long as I am having fun.
Really the only thing needed to make capitalism work is a basic sense of "enough" on the part of all participants. Sadly, this is incompatible with human nature.
LoL has always had a pretty predatory business model. Why should they change now? If this type of behavior upsets you, stop giving them money and/or stop playing the game altogether. Companies know that the internet will gripe about everything so unless they feel it in the bottom line, they won't change.
The freaking gacha and its pity system finally arrived in a MOBA game. What's next, simulation games? FPS games? I know gacha is common in eastern games but goddamn this is just depressing
more likely tencent is going to shift the production to china, in recent years the number of chinese artists for league increased. while there are certainly really good western artists, china has much more of them
Now, only at 2:05 here and I don't know about whatever gacha style element is involved with the Jinx stuff, so I'm speaking solely to arbitrarily-highly priced skins and cosmetic items: It's a little strange to me to have something that's positioned intentionally as an exorbitantly expensive vanity item for the sake of showing off that that is what it is be criticized solely for being expensive. And I understand the concerns and other things around marketing that preys on things like FOMO and player psychology to push players toward this idea of needing to "have all the things", but I don't see how an individually expensive item is any more contributory to that than anything else. Maybe someone who knew that the Ahri skin was way too much for them to be reasonably spending on but who felt some kind of way about the possibility of not owning it could weigh in on however they feel this system might be abusive, but if you're not buying it specifically to be like "I love this character and game so much I dropped X amount on it", or if you're like "Well I like the skin but I feel ashamed to use it because it outs how much I spent on league", like, what is actually driving that rationale in the first place? I guess the core of it for me is that like, I grew up not being able to spend anything on /any/ game. I played free shit and if they gave out some premium currency or something and I got to get like one skin after saving it up eventually I was like "Aw yeah my main gets something"-- I didn't lament not having stuff for other things, or care that much, or feel any kind of need to have the most exorbitant thing. So this one is particularly difficult for me to wrap my head around why people would feel like they //need// to have this in the first place to the point where it being any arbitrary price even is part of the conversation Like, if we look at other 'premium' type things that were only there to show how much you spent on it, those have always had this air of "This is to show off what I spent more than the character/skin overall". And I'm sure yall know the look too-- usually like a black and gold recolour/material swap of a different, normally priced, good skin. It wasn't that you looked at those and went "Swapping that material makes this worth the arbitrary price tag", it was that the material swap was only there to flaunt that you /paid/ that arbitrary price tag. Like that was always the point. I dunno I also don't understand people being super invested in brand name clothes so I'm probably just missing something somewhere lol
It definitely preys upon different psychologies. When I used to play League I would always go out of my way to buy every skin for my main champs and kinds compulsively collected them. Eventually I realized I was enjoying having the character skins more than playing the game and just cold quit. I realized I had just been drawn into a system designed to make me do that. It used to be bad my account had multiple prestige skins and all that. So one day I just cold quit and felt so much better. Then I fell into gacha for a while, and while im grateful I've even had the disposable income to support such hobbies, it was kinda just a waste at a certain point, and now im clean from gacha games. These monetization models are designed for people like me, and thats what makes them so insidious and terrifying.
So with that gacha system looks like it's about a $230-$250 worst case skin depending on the way you get your RP for it, with the absolute guarantee being at 32000 RP. I'm not sure roughly what else you'd expect to get alongside that at that point, but I do wonder what the value proposition actually ends up being in that worst case-- What the bundle would look like if it were a static bundle purchase for instance. I will say that doing it as a gacha IS likely to pull more engagement from people who would otherwise not look twice at it, and it also isn't certain how their pity rate works-- if it's a hard pity, soft pity, where rates start scaling or don't, etc. As someone who F2Ps several gachas pretty much just to look at their systems, the rate they give there is actually not far from normal rates in the slightest-- The only thing is that the only buy-in is fully premium currency with RP. It's also worth noting that the average pull on this system is more than the average pull in most gachas-- If we took Hoyoverse gachas as a kind of baseline (Since generally speaking most things seem to follow roughly their trend lately), we're talking roughly $2.70 per paid pull, while the pulls in Riot's proposed system here would be ~$3.00. It's possible that this increase might look similar enough to make frequent Hoyoverse players or others familiar with very similar pricing structures to over-value the Riot pulls slightly as a result of this. Couple this with the fact that in dedicated gacha games, most non-insane people aren't really going to be actually paying for pulls so much as playing for them (The currencies for pulling in gacha games are generally primarily acquired through gameplay unless the player in question is a pretty extreme whale; paid pulls are usually just a small push if you're already near something so like if someone liked the game, had a banner on that they liked, and were like "Eh I can drop $30 to support and that'd also get me enough pulls to guarantee that banner".), which makes the Riot paid-only system is a little more wild, since the idea of paying through from 0 to pity on a Hoyoverse banner seems insane to me, so even more so here with the higher average price. Though this might be offset if someone really wanted some stuff from the mythic shop with the "failed" pulls?
@@GothicPrincessAlice Ohhh I gotcha-- And I'm glad to hear your perspective on it! I do understand some of the collector mentality in terms of it being neat, if not the priority. Good shit on getting out of that mentality and loop!
I'd pay $500 for Faker themed sled dogs in The Pale Beyond. And to your point: Elon Musk plays games. Dude bought Twitter as a joke. I can't imagine he plays games with the base skins...
Riot games: we’ve got the whale items. Now how can we get more money from the poors. Gambling! The fools will end up spending more than just buying the skin outright. *insert evil laughter *
Sorry take it as venting. To the ones that bought the 500$ skin: YOU ARE THE FUCKING PROBLEM! Sorry, I just had it with the lower common denominator that keeps giving the companies absurd amounts of money for awful products 😢
Well, what Riot is doing is very similar to drugs...after awhile, they will need to make it worse, feel like they are getting the same value. Eventually, they will have nothing to give the game will decay the company rust...then nothing is there. The core game is left with nothing, the skins become the content, it becomes the game future...."wonderful way to trap such a simple mind"
This is adorable because gamers will complain about this to the end of time while simultaneously opening their wallets to fund some CEO's next bonus for being useless. Enjoy the bed you made for yourselves and keep forking over your hard earned dollars for junk. Or maybe start voting with your dollar, and your time.
Whales, I cannot stress this enough, STOP buying this crap! You guys are the ones that matter here, and if you express displeasure at this they will actually take notice. Please.
I TOLD LEAGUE/WILD RIFT PLAYERS TO START BOYCOTTING RIOT WHEN THEY RELEASED THE GACHA SKIN SYSTEM! See? I predicted the outcome. I warned ahead. NOTHING CAN BE CHANGED.
Give me one moba where the party matchmaking system is as good as the one from SC2. It's been 15 years. Nobody fixed that. However, we have innovative and new ways to buy shit.
then theres me, not bougth a single skin since league started with the free boxes N keys. sitting here being like ''why should i spend money in league again? but yeah im an an outlier in many aspects.
Bellular has been replaced by a chinese robot. China, please give us back the real Bellular. This is genius, this is predatory. Anyway, Riot is not the instigator here. Why not give everyone cool skins, the game would be much better.
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First
Keep it up!
this is a scam no one should sell out to it as its harmful for your audience.
@@thelightsilentI've heard that it's not very good, but what makes it a scam? Genuinely, I want to know
@@conallirvine5157 when you cancel they charge you a year after even after you cancel it. Theres a few videos of yt that expose it.
- Fire seasoned devs
- Realize production is lagging behind
- Hire them back as temporary contractors
- Invest in more bloat that does not increase profits
- Make “premium” skins that cost the same as some AA games
- Repeat
So long as idiots give their money companies will say "Screw you desire to get your monies worth, we want the whales".
Bingo. "We have met the enemy and he is us." They make this because it sells.
Whenever someone is rewarded for bad behavior you can expect more bad behavior.
Vote with your wallet.
@@arcamean785 That's just it. This assumes a person isn't neurodivergent and has an inclination towards completion. Folks have emptied bank accounts, maxed out credit sources, and stolen from friends and family to satisfy their mental needs.
And they can't stop themselves, even though they know it's breaking them. The only option they have is avoidance, which is why I'm glad this episode exists.
Back in the day, to get the ultra rare skins you had to perform some difficult to complete activity in-game that would prove how good you are. Now all you have to do is drop a few hundred
so glad I'm not really playing competitive fomo generators anymore
@@TheLumberjack1987 bang on
Yeah I used to play league a lot, but the past few years it just seems like a job grinding out various events. I basically don't play anymore other than an occasional ARAM with some friends.
1,700 hours and counting in "Dyson Sphere Program." And that's far from the only game I play ;)
Corporate greed will kill the videogame industry
Corporate greed is killing everything in the West right now.
Already has
correction corporate greed HAS killed the gaming industry over the last decade
The Triple AAA industry for sure.
Indie games and even Double AA titles will continue to thrive and do well for themselves.
it will not, it will only kill AAA
the indie scene is blossoming like never before
Game with 15+ year old game-breaking bugs, outdated interface, the healthiest thing league players can do is quit cold turkey. Worked for me.
Grats :)
I feel like artists for things like this should have royalties just like actors and such anything that is created by talents and will make money in perpetuity should get money the same.
Why? They are a contractor contracted for a job. They delivered and were paid.
the quality of the skins would probably go up too if the artists making them knew that the better they sold the more money they would make
@Daniele-PierreDuLac I am saying that our system needs to change we are still working off a system where things were made and sold and that was it now things are made to be sold an infinite number of times if something you made will make money 1 time being payed 1 time makes sense but if the thing you made will make money for the next 20 years you should too. I am not saying this exact time it should because yes the way it works isn't like that the point is the system should change going forward.
It shouldn't. Because all anyone would ever do is the try to join a successful business to passively earn royalties rather than try to start their own.
@@johnoden5932 There are companies that already do this, see Valve for example, anyone can make Dota 2 skins and potentially profit from them if they're accepted by Valve and there are artists who do and make a lot. I think the person you're responding to is being unnecessarily dismissive but they do have a point, at the end of the day these artists agreed to the contract, even if yes I agree it's scummy it's not actually the companies' fault that they had contract regret after and realised they got screwed over.
I'm reminded a bit of the Witcher book writer who took a cash payment and handed over his IP entirely to CD Projekt Red thinking he was being smart even though he was offered something like 5% I think it might have been ( Don't quote me on that ) in royalties. He clearly had no idea how big of a success it was and then proceeded to go after CD Projekt Red after like he was a victim. Let this be a lesson to anyone trying to get to the higher tiers of business, if you think it has the slightest chance of doing well always find a way of getting a percentage in profit through royalties or any other method so you don't get ripped off for your work.
I'm not writing this as a justification for their behaviour, this is just the realities of a business deal younger generations especially need to take note of.
They said the quiet part out loud?
Ya. A lot of people have been doing that lately... seriously, have these companies forgotten we can chose NOT to give them money.
@@vanishingllama7342 I'm still waiting for us to make that decision lol.
This fact is irrelevant when people will buy anyway.
@@IEgOImkAwx ... ya. But a guy can dream.
@@vanishingllama7342but most people don’t actually have a reason to not spend the money(assuming they actually have the disposable income). The vast majority of consumers don’t care about politics or working conditions or wage slavery. They don’t want to see hear or think about that during their hobby.
@@Daniele-PierreDuLac Good point 👉
In Civilization Beyond Earth, there's a flavour text where it explains the culture leader Elodié wrote her first dissertation on the collapse of the video game industry in the 2020s and 2030s. I first read that in 2014 and wondered how in the hell something like that could happen.
I've been thinking about that little text a lot lately.
could you paraphrase for us that haven't read it?
I suppose you were quite young in 2014, because I have seen people talking about it since the very early 2010's due to the various DIE (Diversity, inclusivity, and equity) movements that had begun invading the gaming world and the corporate take overs that had led to it happening. Plenty of people have been warning about this for well over a decade now. Most people just didn't want to take part in politics, so only the bad guys took part.
The saddest part about the excessive monetisation is that it's going nowhere.
Even tho the majority of players don't engage in macro transactions, there will always be a few who will always buy those. And companies quickly learnt that they can easily offset that low amount of always buying players by upcharging them hundreds per purchase.
By bringing in the recent Faker skin - it earned 2.5 million $ during a single stream. With 500$ per pack, it means Riot only needed 5000 people out of millions playing LoL in order to earn this much.
If you don't want excessive monetisation, don't play games with excessive monetisation. That is not the same as playing the game anyway and not buy those items.
If you really mean it, don't play any game from a studio that produces any games with excessive monetisation.
@@nodwick4231 you are the problem.
@@nodwick4231 "Easier said than done".
There are millions of people who play those games either because they can't afford or run normal games as they tend to be not so demanding on weaker PCs or play because "the game is good despite the grind".
They reality is that there are too many who chose those games for one or the other reason and a single person not playing it won't make a dent. You would have to drop the daily player count by 2/3rd for the paying ones to dip and as I've seen numerous time in previous "game boycotts"... that ain't happening.
@@nodwick4231 tell that to the gacha crowd, like genshin. its stupidly huge.
@@DajovaI imagine Genshin's even worse, because Chinese seem to actively take pride in throwing money at gacha slop. With them, Japan, and S.Korea being the large audience, even if everyone in the west collectively dropped it and every other Mihoyo game, it wouldn't even make a dent
To borrow a phrase. The more these companies try to tighten their grip the more people that will slip through their fingers.
We can blame corporate greed all day... However, so long as people continue to supply revenue, making these greedy moves profitable, they will continue to implement them.
Most have little willpower to stop themselves... especially if they are purchasing with someone elses money, such as a parent.
Fight back by AFK-ing if they're on your team
Its owned by Tencent, 100% them behind this with all the gacha games.
@@DeathRebel369 maybe, but I don’t doubt those who work at riot want money. I doubt they’d need much convincing.
riot games is a studio that deserves to fail. They stopped caring about league a long time ago. I dropped league after vanguard happened and switched to linux mint as my daily driver and haven't looked back once.
Artists should wise up and be paid in royalties to avoid being fired right after they finish their job and are no longer needed!
What stops the studio they worked for from cutting off the royalty check shortly after sacking?
Warner Bros. making their recent TV inaccessible, anyone?
why ? they got paid for their job.
Stephanie Sterling said it best about “It’s just cosmetic” type defences.
If it was just cosmetic and not everything is for you, why would these devs and publishers bother? Do you think they do all of this just to only adopt a handful of purchasers? Do you think they don’t want to create more customers? Do you honestly believe it doesn’t impact the overall designs of games?
Absolutely, a lot of people are dense enough to believe the nonsense they're spouting.
pepople tend to forget that tencent owns riot games and their biggest market is china. they are not making stuff for the west anymore
When the monetization is all about cosmetics, everything else about the game is as well.
It is absolutely not JUST cosmetic, to use the game For Honor as an example, the reason the playerbase stuck around for so long and is still keeping the game alive is because the devs for the most part listened to feedback about keeping the medieval aeshtetic and not just doing a bunch of fantasy visual effect skins for everything, People wanted the gritty metal aesthetic to be the main one
Come on, as much as I hate league, just cosmetic is still miles ahead of P2W or even "pay for convenience" type crap. That's what really hurts the game, because the devs create problems that can be solved with $$$
Buying physical items will always be better than digital
This isn’t new. This is a loot box with extra steps
They won't get me. Ever.
It's funny because once i got wind of this system i thought to myself: 'I don't play gacha games', and suddenly my time spend on league decreased by about 90%, only the occasional ARAM.
Everyone I know who was at one point a hardcore league player have by and large stopped playing. I think at this point the playerbase numbers have stagnated and are likely dropping. South Korea will always remain the largest country for League and SK is an absolute dystopia of people who are willing to spend money to make themselves look better in any way possible. This leads me to believe that they're basically at the point where the game isn't going to really go anywhere and they're looking to make as much money as possible by milking whoever is left.
Riot, in general, is a mess. It's a miracle Valorant was even made considering that their devs constantly fail at making new games and can barely even manage new game modes in LoL. Their side projects have mostly failed or are in production limbo. Once again, I'm pretty sure if it weren't for South Korea, Riot's situation would be far worse.
I think League could definitely be stagnating, but I think the playerbase numbers, if they are dropping, are dropping very slowly. This is rather natural, though, for a game this old or at least it is expected. League is very old and Riot isn't dumb they know a new game or new projects are a necessity to grow forward, and so it will happen whether anyone likes it or not. Valorant is a recent result of this. You are right on SK though, it's a weird dystopian like place in which they care about image to a degree that is offputting.
It IS normal. Look at csgo skins.
This is the shit we live through today.
Brand new super Nintendo games when the system was new were around 100 dollars or more per game... And that was in the 90s. 30 years ago. And we bought them.
At least you could sell the game afterwards. Used market was really a thing back then. Now you don't own it so you'll just have to suck it up.
It's a surety that I'll never give Riot a dime of my money again, for anything. I hope many others will follow suit.
Ubisoft also said the quiet part out loud when they said that you don't actually own any of your games, yet y'all started memeing on them with that quote. Next thing everyone realizes is that Steam were forced to let you know that it was indeed true :).
Poetic justice since it was Steam/Valve who pioneered the whole always-online digital DRM launcher in the first place.
I miss TotalBiscuit, but at the same time I'm glad he doesn't have to see what this industry has become.
I quit this greedy game since "Faker skin"
I'll just say it, we need to bully people who buy skins.
We need to stop playing games that offer skins. That would really help.
Honestly, methinks that Korean game developers and Bethesda (horse armour, anyone?) need to be shamed for making this skeevy monetization mainstream
AFK-ing if they're on your team is solid move. My whole team has done it a few times. Feels good 😅
No. Bullying never leads to anything good. But we should absolutely not acknowledge their fancy purchase, and thereby remove a large reason that you do such things.
Smells like oceanfront property. None of this has a meaningful value
One of the few upsides of climate change is seeing some richie's oceanfront property become all ocean and no front.
It is worth noting FOMO works both ways, fear of missing out requires you to not be missing out.
Now that you will have missed out, there is less reason to join this game. The less reason to join this game the more likely they will go the Smite Route. In other words the design of this is exclusivity that will drive League of Legends 2 to be made. You are paying money to drive the death of LoL and the skins you spend.
13:50 Preach!! I wish devs (especially blizzard) would focus more on pumping out content rather than useless skins. Do you remember what skin or transmog you had on when you had that great win or beat that one raid? NO!! but I bet you remember the character you were playing
blizzard doesn't have the experts anymore to pump anything out
Some companies just can't grasp volume sales. Make cheap skins, sell tons of them, keep people employed making more skins and content.
We're all gonna look fondly back at cash shops. Pay your money Get your item! 😮
Not really, that was just as stupid. I look fondly back when you got the complete game and you unlocked stuff by playing the game.
it sounds like Blizzard is aping off MMOs like Genshin and Tower of Fantasy, Injecting a Gacha Pool with whats called a "Pity" System.
Fun fact: the "Pity" system is there not because the developers have a good heart, but because if they don't have one, the thing would be considered gambling.
That part was said when the expensive jhin chroma got released so they warned us and they said if they have market for it which they have they will keep developing it
Well said at the end there. People will say they're just cosmetics, they don't change the game, they don't matter. If that were true, why do studios charge for them? Why do they invest so much money in the making and marketing of them? Because they do matter.
Lots of companies say the quiet part out loud. The real question is, does it even matter? Will players of these games hold the companies accountable? No... no they won't. Just remember, when you open your wallet for pixels in League or for power in games like Lost Ark, you're not really getting *anything*. When those games are no longer playable, you can think about all the money you spent in these titles.
I don't even play these games and I'm so tired of hearing about all of this gacha/monetization scheme BS. It's so obviously manipulative and cynical. The fact that it works so well is what's most depressing.
Every day we see proof that people are stupid.
There's a problem with corporate greed, they get a taste of profit and want more each year, it's not enough to make $1million every year, no, it has to be $1million year one, $2million year two, $3million year 3 etc as if just being a profitable company isn't enough, it has to be profitable and growing constantly at any cost to the consumer even if it ends ultimately destroying the company because it's impossible to have infinite growth (unless you're Nvidia) eventually you hit a ceiling and then the only way is down when it becomes unsustainable
The people designing these monetization systems are genuinely some of the worst people ever.
I started working in the gaming industry in 2007 and by now I am at a point where I decided to leave the industry. Luxury ingame skins are certainly part of my decision.
Do people never think about that everything they spend money on will be gone the moment Riot pulls the plug?
A "pity system" is just the second tier of emotional manipulation on top of the Skinner box that gacha offers.
I'm thankful cosmetics bring me no satisfaction at all and don't pay for any of this horse shit as I hold zero value to any of that slop.
When Overwatch first launched, I looked at it and ignored it, understanding the Korean-MMO levels of monetization. Of course now, I am knee-deep in retro-gaming and just got a MiSTer board.
Imaging making a product that has a sale value of 500 and having someone else sell it. I mean it's normal everywhere but still a funny thing to see pronounced.
Cant wait to see a bellular vid about the new wow brutosaur with this vid as a reference
I remember when we bought game content. I remember when the thing we expected from a game was fun. Paying real money for digital cosmetics has always made me feel uneasy and it has only become worse with time.
Hello there, new Brutausaur! What a topical video XD
As someone knows someone who owns every single skin, little legends, emote and chroma in the game - ever x: yes they exist.
I hate it so much. I agree with Asmongold here. Virtual currencies should just go away. Things should just be able to bought 1:1 vs real money - straight forward.
As someone who also drops money on Rito, and i don't mind doing so, I am glad that my fav characters aren't that popular.
Still wondering if DJ Sona and Elementalist Lux will be upgraded to be an Exalted or not. Jinx basically has the same functionality as DJ Sona, minus the Music plus the HUD
"nobody's forcing you to buy it" Seems like we should review the importance of "precedent"
Companies look at what's successful such as FAANG and think "hey maybe that's a good thing to copy for our company, they didn't even get in trouble by their customers so it must be ok"
I think if we just look at recent years we can clearly see that happening... and many will often tell us directly that they are doing it.
People actually defended the skin pricing?
If not for everyone else suffering from it as well I would almost think they deserve to be fleeced.
When its a no self control contest and your opponent is the silly goose who keeps preordering shit games
Why pay a veteran artist 6 figures to make something that an eager new artist is willing to do for 60% of the salary? It's not like LoL's art style requires the most talented artists.
"This employee makes us money."
"That's great. They're fired."
... and capitalists wonder why people are starting to turn back toward unions.
Wow, how thoughtful of them! Glad they’re looking out for the players by introducing gambling to children and young adults
Except we ALREADY had a gatcha system with 200$ skins. They're adding another one on top of it.
that last 2 minutes is exactly it. full stop.
im in my 40s and you could see the writing on the wall become crystal clear when fortnite was stealing dances and they were making money hand over fist on skins. selling map packs walked so selling skins could run.... the industry into the ground.
ive been a rocket league player/fan since day one. all of the development on the game we see these days goes to skins, rocket pass items, and license deals.
@@bigrob029 I remember Cathode Ray Dude going on about perfection in appliance/tech businesses during his look at Daystarter. Perfection is what drives skeevy business.
Arcane is like BG3: a very well crafted licensed release that gives life to an IP that's controlled by people who have no interest in anything but cash.
I criticized the overwatch episode because Blizzard has been doing overwatch dirty by focusing on the cosmetics since it became the sequel, so it wasn't particularly interesting to hear about what I already kinda knew. 🙃
i'm 05:36 min into the video, and how Bellular is describing and phrasing things is getting me worried that riot will try to push a skin with a monthly sub... if that, is true and things catch up, i think it will be time to let the gamer hobiee goes.
Publicly owned companies everyone.
My backlog of games is big. I can have myself entertained for years to come. I simply refuse to play games, that are taking the piss like this. Even if I do not intend to bys any of their skins - I will not provide a +1 to their player numbers.
Amazing that Blizzard and Riot are both doing the same thing.
And it's going to work. Because there are people in the world who love buying expensive shit just for the sake of buying it.
There is too much money in so few hands if this is capable of making a profit. THey are selling you NOTHING!
So basically, just a new loop box system that’s somehow even more exploitative and insidious than the original one. What fun….
haven't played league since 2014, i bough that damn skt t1 vayne lol
And here I was being mad at Valve for making $35 dollar skins... xD
Sadly there's so many people that are too far gone into addictions of gambling for these glorified gifs. I don't mind if people WANT to and CAN spend hundreds of dollars for a skin but when it's getting so psychologically manipulative and lives are getting ruined.
as a valorant player, I dont give a shit about all this. The moment I need to spend a penny, I am out.
And as for Riot focusing on the skins rather then the gameplay, I dont care and actually am happy about it.
I like where it is now, few small changes can improve stuff(looking at sunset) but as a silver, its mostly irrelevant to me.
People may look down at me, but I dont care, as long as I am having fun.
Really the only thing needed to make capitalism work is a basic sense of "enough" on the part of all participants.
Sadly, this is incompatible with human nature.
In other words... They learned from StarTrek Onlines pay to win system.
I could excuse buying lootboxes in 2010
I cant excuse buying overpriced skins in 2024!
There goes my respect for the last big company I had in the gaming industrie 🤡
LoL has always had a pretty predatory business model. Why should they change now? If this type of behavior upsets you, stop giving them money and/or stop playing the game altogether. Companies know that the internet will gripe about everything so unless they feel it in the bottom line, they won't change.
The freaking gacha and its pity system finally arrived in a MOBA game. What's next, simulation games? FPS games? I know gacha is common in eastern games but goddamn this is just depressing
That studio had some of the most talanted artists in the industry... and they fired them lol Guess they trained their in-house AI enough I guess
more likely tencent is going to shift the production to china, in recent years the number of chinese artists for league increased. while there are certainly really good western artists, china has much more of them
Now, only at 2:05 here and I don't know about whatever gacha style element is involved with the Jinx stuff, so I'm speaking solely to arbitrarily-highly priced skins and cosmetic items:
It's a little strange to me to have something that's positioned intentionally as an exorbitantly expensive vanity item for the sake of showing off that that is what it is be criticized solely for being expensive. And I understand the concerns and other things around marketing that preys on things like FOMO and player psychology to push players toward this idea of needing to "have all the things", but I don't see how an individually expensive item is any more contributory to that than anything else.
Maybe someone who knew that the Ahri skin was way too much for them to be reasonably spending on but who felt some kind of way about the possibility of not owning it could weigh in on however they feel this system might be abusive, but if you're not buying it specifically to be like "I love this character and game so much I dropped X amount on it", or if you're like "Well I like the skin but I feel ashamed to use it because it outs how much I spent on league", like, what is actually driving that rationale in the first place?
I guess the core of it for me is that like, I grew up not being able to spend anything on /any/ game. I played free shit and if they gave out some premium currency or something and I got to get like one skin after saving it up eventually I was like "Aw yeah my main gets something"-- I didn't lament not having stuff for other things, or care that much, or feel any kind of need to have the most exorbitant thing. So this one is particularly difficult for me to wrap my head around why people would feel like they //need// to have this in the first place to the point where it being any arbitrary price even is part of the conversation
Like, if we look at other 'premium' type things that were only there to show how much you spent on it, those have always had this air of "This is to show off what I spent more than the character/skin overall". And I'm sure yall know the look too-- usually like a black and gold recolour/material swap of a different, normally priced, good skin. It wasn't that you looked at those and went "Swapping that material makes this worth the arbitrary price tag", it was that the material swap was only there to flaunt that you /paid/ that arbitrary price tag. Like that was always the point.
I dunno I also don't understand people being super invested in brand name clothes so I'm probably just missing something somewhere lol
It definitely preys upon different psychologies. When I used to play League I would always go out of my way to buy every skin for my main champs and kinds compulsively collected them. Eventually I realized I was enjoying having the character skins more than playing the game and just cold quit. I realized I had just been drawn into a system designed to make me do that. It used to be bad my account had multiple prestige skins and all that. So one day I just cold quit and felt so much better. Then I fell into gacha for a while, and while im grateful I've even had the disposable income to support such hobbies, it was kinda just a waste at a certain point, and now im clean from gacha games. These monetization models are designed for people like me, and thats what makes them so insidious and terrifying.
So with that gacha system looks like it's about a $230-$250 worst case skin depending on the way you get your RP for it, with the absolute guarantee being at 32000 RP.
I'm not sure roughly what else you'd expect to get alongside that at that point, but I do wonder what the value proposition actually ends up being in that worst case-- What the bundle would look like if it were a static bundle purchase for instance.
I will say that doing it as a gacha IS likely to pull more engagement from people who would otherwise not look twice at it, and it also isn't certain how their pity rate works-- if it's a hard pity, soft pity, where rates start scaling or don't, etc. As someone who F2Ps several gachas pretty much just to look at their systems, the rate they give there is actually not far from normal rates in the slightest-- The only thing is that the only buy-in is fully premium currency with RP. It's also worth noting that the average pull on this system is more than the average pull in most gachas-- If we took Hoyoverse gachas as a kind of baseline (Since generally speaking most things seem to follow roughly their trend lately), we're talking roughly $2.70 per paid pull, while the pulls in Riot's proposed system here would be ~$3.00. It's possible that this increase might look similar enough to make frequent Hoyoverse players or others familiar with very similar pricing structures to over-value the Riot pulls slightly as a result of this.
Couple this with the fact that in dedicated gacha games, most non-insane people aren't really going to be actually paying for pulls so much as playing for them (The currencies for pulling in gacha games are generally primarily acquired through gameplay unless the player in question is a pretty extreme whale; paid pulls are usually just a small push if you're already near something so like if someone liked the game, had a banner on that they liked, and were like "Eh I can drop $30 to support and that'd also get me enough pulls to guarantee that banner".), which makes the Riot paid-only system is a little more wild, since the idea of paying through from 0 to pity on a Hoyoverse banner seems insane to me, so even more so here with the higher average price. Though this might be offset if someone really wanted some stuff from the mythic shop with the "failed" pulls?
@@GothicPrincessAlice Ohhh I gotcha-- And I'm glad to hear your perspective on it! I do understand some of the collector mentality in terms of it being neat, if not the priority. Good shit on getting out of that mentality and loop!
Not surprising but it's disappointing to see what Riot has become.
Can someone explain to me how exalted sparks are any different that loot boxes other than being round not square?
Hand over fist out there, at any cost.
I'd pay $500 for Faker themed sled dogs in The Pale Beyond. And to your point: Elon Musk plays games. Dude bought Twitter as a joke. I can't imagine he plays games with the base skins...
They need prompt writers.
Riot games: we’ve got the whale items. Now how can we get more money from the poors. Gambling! The fools will end up spending more than just buying the skin outright. *insert evil laughter *
Sorry take it as venting.
To the ones that bought the 500$ skin: YOU ARE THE FUCKING PROBLEM!
Sorry, I just had it with the lower common denominator that keeps giving the companies absurd amounts of money for awful products 😢
I dont get how this manipulative shit aint illegal its literally gambling
I wouldn't buy a skin for $5.
These companies that do this shit are like sirens of the sea and have all these whales enthralled.
Sounds like arcanas in dotes.
Well, what Riot is doing is very similar to drugs...after awhile, they will need to make it worse, feel like they are getting the same value. Eventually, they will have nothing to give the game will decay the company rust...then nothing is there. The core game is left with nothing, the skins become the content, it becomes the game future...."wonderful way to trap such a simple mind"
Dont worry 2025 will change Leauge of Legends forever
Skins are fine. As long as not pay to win.
This is adorable because gamers will complain about this to the end of time while simultaneously opening their wallets to fund some CEO's next bonus for being useless.
Enjoy the bed you made for yourselves and keep forking over your hard earned dollars for junk.
Or maybe start voting with your dollar, and your time.
Whales, I cannot stress this enough, STOP buying this crap! You guys are the ones that matter here, and if you express displeasure at this they will actually take notice. Please.
Another reason to never play any multi-player or online game
The thing that gets me is that people care so much and act surprised.
I TOLD LEAGUE/WILD RIFT PLAYERS TO START BOYCOTTING RIOT WHEN THEY RELEASED THE GACHA SKIN SYSTEM!
See? I predicted the outcome. I warned ahead. NOTHING CAN BE CHANGED.
Give me one moba where the party matchmaking system is as good as the one from SC2. It's been 15 years. Nobody fixed that. However, we have innovative and new ways to buy shit.
then theres me, not bougth a single skin since league started with the free boxes N keys. sitting here being like ''why should i spend money in league again? but yeah im an an outlier in many aspects.
Bellular has been replaced by a chinese robot. China, please give us back the real Bellular. This is genius, this is predatory. Anyway, Riot is not the instigator here. Why not give everyone cool skins, the game would be much better.