The Era of "Wallet Gamers"
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- Опубліковано 7 сер 2023
- Microtransactions and monetization practices are supported by Whales and Consoomers. Or should we just call them Wallet Gamers. They don't want to earn anything, just pretend like they did because they "earned that money irl" They've been ruining the industry for years now, assisting corporations in their mission to destroy the gaming industry and milk it dry. Triple A AAA gaming studios and developers are just as bad as the whales they cater too.
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I love the argument they use "Youre just poor bro" brother youre in $20k of debt from buying colors in a video game
Don't worry, their parents get everything for them lmao
Yeah, most of the whales spending money in the cash shops are degenerates putting themselves in debt, not multimillionaires.
Not buying buying shit dont mean you poor, any wealthy person will tell that buying dumb shit is not good pattern. If they dumb enough to let companies milk Fck em. They'll be poor soon.
Why do people assume everyone who pays is a child? 75% chance it's an adult who comes back from work to play.
@@zonk4817 used to be the norm a few years back but now ur 100% correct, and even then some of those 'adults' dont spend their money but their parents like 1 mate
The biggest problem was when gamers started accepting "why do even care bro?".
Never back down from caring
Apathy is death
There is literally no way to fix the problem, except not playing these shit titles. Except it doesn't help at all, because there are enough ignorant players to attract whales into pay-to-win games.
There will always be good games. Just broaden the horizon from mainstream titles to other games.
@@newsciencestuff5540Exactly. Not only that there’s TONS of great older games. Most people into RPGs have never played Divinity Original Sin 2. One of the best RPGs of all time!
@@NoHateLikeChristianLovegot some more examples? Not played in 20 years and rather do golden oldies
"you're just poor, bro" is something a whale or a cocaine addict could say. They are the victims of drug dealers and game publishers who try to exploit their addictive personalities. 🌈
A cocaine addict would never say that, though. I don't know how.
This hole goes even deeper than you think.
Some streamers are given a lot of money by the publisher just to promote their game and deliberately spend like $10000 in their in-game shop for publicity.
I mean that's better than when they promote full on gambling, sponsored by some online casino
@@tomlxyz there is no difference.
@@tomlxyz well horse poop is better than cow poop
I can't remember the channels name but the creators of star citizen did this with someone then the streamer had the audacity to say this is what the normal gameplay experience is like. Like brother you were givin 5 grand to spend in the game and 30 people gifted you ships and other stuff
The words "From a Triple A studio" used to mean a promise for quality. Since then it's changed to a promise to make as much money off of your back.
its a warning now
That's not true! There are some amazing games that have recently released like... Erm..hmm..ugghh. god.. red dead? I might be able to only think of one game but I swear there is!!!
Resident Evil 4 remake, probably. Does SF6 count?
@@ilfoxyy Does japanese games count? Cause in that case both Elden Ring and maybe Armored Core are both on the good games list. I do want to say that Capcom (developers of REmake4 and SF6 are slowly getting quite greedy too with their MX. I would give Capcom 3 more years before they are suddenly back on the bad side of the industry in full again, but things might happen.
@@bok4822 baldur's gate 3 is also pretty good from what I'm hearing
Nothing is more demotivating than asking someone where they got their drip and the response is "the cash shop".
"Unlockables are for sweaties."
If someone ever tells you that or that they got it from the "battle pass" the proper response is to call them a loser.
I think it’s worse when streamers tell you how bad the practice is yet but everything day one to “show you” 💀
You morons really need to stop complaining about skin monetization as a system. It's the best kind of monetization system there is. It has no negative impact on the actual game experience while letting poor people play games for free.
@@Monkeyman-qt1smliterally OW youtubers in a nutshell. They say how bad the shop is meanwhile they spend money on the shop “for the funnies”
For some odd reason digital knives became more expensive than real world knives
That reminded me an on-giing "joke" about chocolate-money being more expensive than the money that buys it.
Like on counter strike?
No not entirely
@@HunterAnsorge-ok9jk1000 dollar knife
@@cevatkokbudak6414 AKM bayonets are indeed pricey aren’t they
I used to also fall into many of the pitfalls of modern day gaming regarding microtransactions and fomo but ever since I started living alone, it has all gone away. Once you realize that those 5 bucks for pixels could be spent onto a small meal instead it really changes the way you look at things. It's a form of addiction but you can get over it.
Other studio developers say BG3 is an anomaly, and they are afraid of it becoming the new standard in AAA Games. ...but it's not a new standard. It's the old standard; and its well past time that it be one we should return to.
It was a bit odd that he didn’t mention that.
@@Go_Coupnot a single youtuber I've watched has mentioned how this isn't a new standard but a met standard
@@Go_Coupnot a single youtuber I've watched has mentioned how this isn't a new standard but a met standard
Bg3 us trash made loser nerds who cNt get out of their moms basement
Hell yeah, I agree. It’s just that some gamers now have aged up to not know any better. I’m not speaking about this guy, I’m just commenting on how it’s a shame and sad that “kids these days” aren’t old enough to know better and that sucks. For the record I’m 35, so I’m not even ancient, it’s just taken over the last few years and I absolutely despise it. That and the fact that now they feel like they can rush out an unfinished game, patch it for months, and still justify charging $70 for it now. I’m not happy about the increase in cost and decrease in quality at all.
"How do you spend $100,000 on a video game?" -Asmongold, in the process of being the pot calling the kettle black.
I'd be interested to know if that clip was before or after he played Lost Ark
Let's not forget there's one particular dickhead who whaled himself into a hole cause he spent 2 mortgages on Diablo immoral. Bout 400k and he can't progress into the end of the game...
Asmongold opinion are garbage tier literally react streamer when he says "wow bad" the clown follower repeat , the community is so bad because of ppl like him
@@stoneymahoney9106OH *CRAP*
I've always found that saying funny, because both the pot and the kettle can be black
The fact that full priced games do this has always been gross to me. It sucks, because while most people see the issue, all these companies need are less than half a percent of financial illiterates to waste their life savings.
As a apex player I love these idiots. Your super bright and colorful skin makes you so easy to spot on all the maps. Nothing like a white/red/gold skin to hide you in green grass and mountain hills or dark grey buildings.
I think James Stephanie Sterling put it best: “If a game sells you time savers, it’s admitting it’s a bad game, because it’s admitting that there is a monetary value on playing the game less.”
Lmao. He has his occasional moments
I'd stop quoting that character. He's a whale himself.
@@TheBcoolGuy @TheDeceptiveHero One can be generally disagreeable and still state the occasional truth. One can also admit someone stated a truth without aligning themselves with that person completely. I do understand what you mean though...just wanted to throw this out there as well.
@@TheBcoolGuy People also keep quoting GabeN for what he once said about piracy being a service problem despite the fact that it was him and his company who first forced Steam upon PC gamers and then successfully manipulated them into accepting the DRM in their games in the first place.
Sterling is an absolute doink.
“When the sales guys run the company, the product guys don’t matter so much, and a lot of them just turn off.” ~Steve Jobs
Unfortunately it's the sales guys who have the easiest way to show how they do their jobs. Try explaining to a CEO how the key gameplay feature you added or bug you fixed impacted sales, and at best you'll only confuse them. Meanwhile a salesperson can say "X ad campaign increased sales by Y%" or "Cash shop item X increased revenue by Y this quarter".
Sales teams are important (a game with zero marketing will find it hard to sell a huge amount of copies), but companies need to stop treating sales as the cornerstone of game development.
@@ShermTank7272 The problem is that at the end of the day; The sales teams are 100% factually right.
Sales ARE the cornerstone of game development. Whether we like it or not, the masses will _always_ buy the latest thing, no matter how awful it is, no matter if they already _own something that''s better already._ They want the latest thing at any given time and will always pay as much money as physically possible. There is no reason in the modern day to target anyone but the lowest common denominator.
Actual developers basically have no recourse but to leave the company and make their own thing independently. If you join a large game studio as a developer, then you're accepting your fate as a live service gear designed to scam the crap out of people for as long as possible, until you're eventually tossed aside in a massive layoff.
Buying digital assets (like skins) that do not provide any benefits in actual gameplay are not "Pay to Win". They are "Pay for Pretty".
One thing that barely anyone ever mentions in this discussion about microtransaction in games is that a vast (and I really mean vast) majority of these "Wallet Gamers" come from China.
Not only is it evident by pure numbers of income of game studios report from Asia compared to America/Europe it is also apparent from the trends in gaming market towards P2W and microtransactions the more western companies started to enter Chinese market. Even games like CSGO that have a market driven in game economy didn't avoid it, a vast majority of the most expensive items in the game are in hands of Chinese players these days who are more than willing to pay the exorbitant prices in 10 000s of dollars per item.
And why is that? From the people that I know and from what I've heard overall about this problem is that people in China unlike in the West don't look down upon someone who spends money to progress in the game rather than working for it, moreover they actually look up at those people since he's the one who's richer/can spend ridiculous amount of money on games and is therefore better than someone who has to toil to progress in the game.
This is purely a cultural thing and any game publisher/developer will immediately take advantage of this by making more and more microtransactions. This is why a game like Diablo: Immortal was marketed mainly towards Chinese market, because they're the cash cows not the western players.
The sad truth is that nothing will change in this regard because they're the ones having a monetary leverage over the developers not us, moreover it will only get worse as western consumers get more accustomed to the same practices every single day.
Ah so Chyna has money and they still want ours? Sounds legit 🤔
A good chunck of those whales also come from other Asian countries like South Korea or Japan. It's so normalized over there that even other more mundane things like manga reading apps have microtransactions. Imagine having to buy 200 coins to pay to read your favorite story but a chapter is 110 coins. That is somehow considered normal.
Oblivious to the damage they are causing to the industry?
Oh they know exactly what they are doing and the effect, they just don’t care.
at the end of the day it's how they value said items IMO, subjective value is how they call it, you may call it a sad reality i call it "everyday occurrence"
I would argue that upper management and C-suite are looking at their revenue charts, the strong buy ratings from financial analysts and pitches from investors queuing out the door... and congratulating themselves on a job well done.
More than that, they benefit from it.
Whales make some games profitable, some games are made that cater to whales.
I beg to disagree. It's easy to tell you self that one person won't make a difference, and they are kinda right. Unless a massive boycott happens, them not spending anymore won't really make a difference in the grand scheme.
or they are addicted in wich case its not as simple as to stop spending
These people need help. I see them all the time. They blindly defend these megacorporations and yeah you're right they ruined gaming.
People with gambling and drug addictions do the same. I remember mentioning about microtransaction issues on Destiny forums years ago and I got over hundred dislikes. It was pretty insane. It seems people finally realize the intentions of that game. Took years just to realize this? That is also another symptom of addicts: Don’t know until things get really bad. I think gaming is a great hobby, but I don’t feel like these are games at all. I really feel like its gambling addiction.
Update: The subreddit calmed down after content drop and new DLC announcement. It's so spooky to me...Just a day before people were so angry at bungie and we saw tons of content creators post videos about almost every day...It's like their "provider" gave them what they wanted for now. As long as these kind of things exist, these practices from game companies will not disappear anytime soon.
Im not sure they're actually people, no doubt the massive studios have bots commenting everywhere on social media to push agendas.
Your hands aren't free of blood either. You continue to play these games with microtransactions. The whale will not spend/play a game where there is no fishes to hunt/be superior too.
@@joi8674 Yeah no. I quit out of those ages ago. Tried Halo Infinite and left it very quickly in fact 95% of its original playerbase has. Same thing happened with Halo 5. The whales and the shills ruined it.
@@timsohn7057 Yeah games have changed. They aren't about being fun anymore they're about spending as much time in them as humanly possible.
There must be a link between the people who pay for micro transactions and those you have gambling problems. It’s sad that this once artistic industry is now just a really fancy slot machine
Speaking from my experience thats not the case as their is no potential of making money unless it's counter strike cases but to my knowledge that's the exception.
You are correct. Video games and slot machines use the same neurological tricks to get people addicted, and if you get addicted to one, you’re likely to get addicted to the other. Video game companies that do microtransactions tend to hire people with psychology degrees to figure out player behavior. I really don’t agree with this video calling wallet gamers stupid, actually. Gambling is heavily regulated in America for a reason, because you can psychologically trick people with flashy visuals very easily into giving you money. The fact that the gaming industry and its lootboxes isn’t held to the same standard is embarrassing. Many current wallet gamers were children exposed to gacha games/predatory market practices whos brains are literally conditioned to gamble. I consider that a failure of regulation.
Edit: it’s also been proven over and over again that once you’ve been conditioned on slot machines, it’s hard to STOP getting drawn in by lights and visuals. Being conditioned as a child (and an adult) to gambling messes with your head. That’s why it’s illegal for children to gamble- psychological damage.
I feel bad for people who have fallen for the psychological tricks games prey on to extract money, since I feel like I am the type of person that *should* have fallen into it at some point (but managed to mostly avoid it)
Why do you think you could have fallen into it?
Ngl I fell for it. I thought to myself "I'm not spending much, others have spent more" but I still spent the amount of a triple A game..
Worst cash grab ever made : rise of the kingdom
You see its a full pvp game where you build a city, recruit soldier ect ect but the bread and butter of the game is alliance.
Naturally, strong ally with the strong, and shut down all other player access to any valuable loot.
So just to survive as f2p, you need to play as hardcore f2p and get into the big whale alliance to get some piece of benefit.
Here is the catch : the whale will press you in chat to spend with (rarely) some threat to kick you if you dont
Principe of the game is kinda cool, but rn its trash game
Spend 10$, see it didnt increase increase my city by much, desintalled this game on the spot and vowed to never spend on mobile game again
@@anonyme4881 I've seen worse unfortunately
I spend money on mobile games, usually now i wait and see if it's actually enjoyable then i'll buy convenience things. I can easily see what games are rip off or silly (ad free for $10 is good, ad free for 1 month for $30 not great -_-). Even now with AFK Arena, ive spent a few thousand over the 4 years i've played, well worth it for the entertainment i've gotten.
But now it's an obvious pay to win and i'm seeing more "What packs can i buy to ascend [new hero]!?" , so we'll spend couple hundred to get a hero all so we can rank average to below average in game modes... You can't even buy top tier now unless you drop hundreds of thousands, but people still throw money to be average. It's an easy decline to see, every new system is OP meta, every new hero is OP meta, every new hero needs every resource investment etc. /rant
You didn’t mention the narcissism involved in pay to win pvp it’s nuts.
Yeah, buying skins is one things, but buying more powerful weapons for easier win is the same as cheating, bribing the judge to win a trial, completely immoral.
You are confusing immoral for fucking plain Evil.@@mechanicalsilence1
@@mechanicalsilence1I agree, it kills the fun when a match is filled with like 4 or more people with these items at all times,
It's basically present in most if not all online/multiplayer games. It makes it not worth it to come back to. It makes it boring when there's no level-playing field, so to speak.
@@Altzar2011 it's strange hearing people don't just hack these items in
@@Altzar2011 In a strange twist, Dota 2 has a "pay-for-better-chance to-win" system that's not broken. It acts as your advisor, giving tips and suggestion for the kind of game, enemies you're up against, latest changes in the meta....
Technically you're better with it, but by no means stronger.
Good one, I'd say
Gotta love paying full price for a game then seeing a battle pass and an item shop as one of the first things I see
Nah the first thing you see is an in-game ad to those things which tbh feels even more morally bankrupt on so many levels.
yeah, but if its a free game doing this, like Fortnite, then I'll give it a pass
Paid games? Nah
Nobody is forcing you to buy the battle pass. It's not our fault you're too poor to buy them.
Most of these games are free btw, you don't need that new player skin in order to enjoy a game like fortine or apex.
@@KrolKaz Did you even watch the video
@@KrolKaz🫵🐋💯
It really blows my mind why some people purchase some of these things, cosmetics I get but a lot of these p2w micro transactions are like paying to not play the game or paying to fix a problem artificially created by the developers.
I feel awful after realising how much money I spend on a ps plus, a thing that basically removed restriction on my own Internet that Sony put there in a first place
I'm in the group of people who sit in the ex-whale community. I had a addiction. I realized my issue before going into debt, luckily, and now I spend dramatically less money and I'm hyper critical on MTX and scummy monetization practices now. Its one of the most addictive and life ruining drugs I've seen in recent years
I had my time with a Gatcha game in my highschool years. It took me pulling up my google play purchase history and totaling up how much I had spent in total. Read the sum and instantly uninstalled and have been radicalized against predatory mtx since.
It's funny seeing your comment right below a guy calling for the shaming and gatekeeping of people like (past-)you. The industry has turned us against each other with this shit more than anything. The studios are the ones hiring psychologists and casino-industry veterans to make their shops as attractive and addictive as possible. We should point our anger at them (and their shills), not at the victims of their exploitation.
@@thegamesforreal1673 its absurd that in my country a legal casino has to comply with a lot of rules (wich is good) but a lot of mainstream games are allowed to use even more predatory tactics on minors and people with gabling adictions
@@thegamesforreal1673 it pretty much is just leads to a single question. Who's the villain between a single depressed man who may or may not work a shitty job and just wants his daily dopamine hit or the greedy corps who use psychologist to find the best way to monetize dopamine?
I understand why someone would think its the players fault, but most of the times these people are victims of the corporations, as well as the content creators they consume who make money advertising to scam. Nowadays STILL videos like CSGO case openings and new season/ holiday event shop buying videos do so well that its better to do it than release multiple videos that together might get the same amount of revenue.
Lowkey gatekeeping these whales from gaming won't do anything. As long as there are lonely, depressed, single people who needs dopamine hits, and more of them are appearing by the day, gaming corps will try to exploit them. That first purchase is the hardest, but after that, it's easy to make a whale.
And I know all this because unlike the people who wanna gatekeep whales, I was one so I understand more than any how they think
“Dramatically less money” 😂😂😂😂😂😂 by that, do you mean a few hundred dollars to a thousand dollars per year? LOL, you are in fact still is a part of the problem, regardless of how much you try patting yourself in the back 😂
*Three rules I never break when buying games:*
_[edit] I break 'Rule 1' ONLY when the game is proven to work, doesn't break 'Rule 3' and is discounted to a sane level._
1. Ignore games from triple 'A' developers.
2. Never-ever-ever pre-order any game.
3. Don't buy games with a cash shop.
Here are my rules:
1. Never play a free to play game.
2. Never buy a game on release until I check on the internet that it actually works.
3. Never play a game that has micro-transactions. Don't support companies who put these in their games.
4. Never buy DLC, unless it comes packaged in a "Complete edition" or a "Game of the Year" edition or something like that.
5. Never give Microsoft money. They tried to pull that "you can't let your friends borrow your games" bs in 2013. I hold grudges. (By the way I haven't owned a Sony console since the PS1 so I'm not part of any console war or whatever. I just refuse to buy an Xbox or anything from Microsoft when they have competitors who sell very similar products.)
@@johnzarek36286 never give money to nintendo
@@johnzarek3628I think rule 1 is bit of extreme, there exist some free to play games that developer just want make a game they like for fun, like Elona(not mobile one) or hat world.
These rules are kinda funny. Where do you think AAA developers start off? The witcher 3 is considered AAA.
@@eddie47523 We got an elona chad here
I used to work as a QA for Zynga. There are whales that dropped 100K regularly on their poker and slots games. They are literally printing money with those games that cost pennies for them to make.
I remember that having a red tiger skin was cool. Now every noob has the same thing I unlocked for getting 1,000 headshots.
Its all fun in games untill you realize:
These prices can buy you a lot of real-world things, and in some cases, even Cars and *homes* when it comes to the big spenders.
Honestly not everyone cares for such things, atlest I don't, I believe
Maybe I haven't felt the temptation yet or smth like that, but it seems only a certain type of people interest themselves in such materialism
Though I do understand the importance of paying careful attention to your wallet and making sure you have enough to live by
@@hell1942🫵🐋❓
wallet gamer excuse lol@@hell1942
@@hell1942 🐋🐳🐳🐳🐳
Dude a full tank of gas for me is what a video game cost these days. It’s ridiculous
Imagine my old foolish self thinking when they were selling horse armor in Oblivion. ( No one is going to pay for silly little items in video games, No one will pay real money for in game cosmetics) Man was I ever wrong! 😮
We all were... unfortunately
Horse armor and its consequences have been a disaster for the gaming race
D4 has horse armor in the cash shop funny enough
As someone that generally never really had a lot of money since well I was born I always laughed at the idea of paid cosmetics in video games like "pfft who buys those they gonna realize it's dumb and not do it again" since you know I knew the value of money and I always said "u have to be stupid to get those"... Well... I was wrong... But I wish I were right....
@@dragonslayer3552you weren't wrong, they are stupid
This terrible state of gaming pushed me into Riichi Mahjong. No meta, no microtransactions, no monthly patches.
5:00 As you say, it varies. At the strictest levels, there's no such thing as a non-pay-to-win game, because you can pay someone to tell you how to win.
As a person who has been a whale in MANY mobile games. I can say that this video is entirely accurate. I was unfortunate enough to be introduced to this style of gaming at the age of 14, and would spend all my Christmas and birthday money on BS in mobile games instead of enjoying my childhood. One thing people don’t talk about is the massive influence the industry has on turning children into mindless compulsive spenders with 0 self control. By the age of 20 I had dropped more than $30k on mobile games alone in my life, I was a pizza deliver boy who spend every extra cent I had on these games and it was a crippling lifestyle that just continued to feed itself. Thank god I finally got out.
jesus, i’m a fuckin drug addict and when i was using speed i wasn’t even spending that much money. these games need to be regulated, mobile games should not be able to financially ruin you more than drug addiction.
@@spaceghostmiid absolutely, I had multiple friends who would regularly drop 10k at a time. Some who were over a million spent overall. I was barely qualified as a whale at the level I was at. Shît should be illegal with the level its at these days, basically gambling but pretty
@@Sizablefire i think that’s the only reason i managed to stay away from that stuff, i know i like gambling too much, and i know how similar that stuff is to gambling.
@@spaceghostmiid That's just a lack of self control and an addictive personality. I know children that don't have that issue. It's a person thing. Plenty of people go to casinos and gamble and lose and leave. Then you have a small portion that lose and keep playing until they're in a hole they can't get out of. Again, a person thing.
You can't just start your story and then stop in the middle
Can we please hear how you got out of that hole? Please, we need your example so we can learn what doing better looks like
It is astonishing how bold they have gotten. It is $20 for a single skin in Diablo 4! I remember when a skin was a couple bucks and exclusive skins were still attainable in game as a flex. But that's gone and here we are.
once saw someone in a pokemon unite stream about a year back say they would buy the next skin that came out for their main if it was under 40 bucks. Who in their right mind would ever pay 40 dollars for a skin
@@SkafosGnWyou can buy RE4 with that money and get yourself a large cone ice cream too
@@SkafosGnW Sadly there are people who have both money and the sense of superiority, that if a cosmetic is exclusive enough they will pay any price just so they can flex.
Arent certain skins on league of legends a whole 60 bucks?
I remember skins used to be unlocks you earned by beating the game under certain conditions
3:25 The fact that the guy used the word "invested" says everything you need to know
I always found it funny that micro transactions were originally seen as a mobile game thing, then a F2P game thing. And now every game is just a glorified mobile game lmaooo
Bruh, I never for the life of me thought that I would see micro transactions in single player PC/Console games.
@@johnnopeyy4129avoid ubisoft at all cost
The thing about baldurs gate, it will never make as much money as your average live service. But that's the only thing companies care about. So when devs from other studios are raging about how it's not the industry standard, they're right. And that makes me sad.
Honestly, BG3 feels like a little oasis/haven in a desert of AAA garbage. My friends and I are having a blast and I'm trying to savor every moment of it until I go back out there.
You're not wrong, but at the same time single-player "complete" (aka no microtransactions) games belong to an almost entirely different market than live services. The live service market is already saturated, and a lot of such games fails and becomes dead a few weeks after day one; a game like Baldur's Gate instead is far more likely to sell well, and ironically has to compete more with indie games that with AAA games.
It's a shame thinking of what great games some companies could have made instead of their whale-milking simulators, but I don't foresee all companies going in that direction in the near future.
The reason Larian could go the no MTX route is that they aren't public. Swen, the founder and CEO, personally owns a controlling share of the company. Larian can do whatever the boss thinks is right, which in this case is great for the players. He could have easily leveraged BG3 to make far more money, but chose not to be greedy.
Most AAA publishers and dev studios are either public themselves or owned by public corps, who are at the mercy of the markets and the quarterly cycle. They love MTX because it not only brings in more revenue, it brings in more consistent revenue over time, which looks way better on balance sheets to investors than the spike and dropoff of a set price launch. More consistent growth on earnings reports == generally higher stock price, and so on.
I'd expect more of the good releases in the next few years to be from indie devs through mid size private studios. They have the freedom to do stuff like BG3 and BattleBit.
@@riccardolanni9973but these dead games are making a lot of money in little amount of time, they keep repeating it
Oh. On a funny-depressing note !
I was talking to a mobile game company CEO a couple years back and they had a fairly successful game (quite fun too), so I asked them about the whales and what they thought about the ethics of it all.
Their answer ? "We don't call them whales, that's insulting. We call them super-fans."
As a person invested in take two interactive ,I call whales money printers, let’s make some dough !!!
Lovely. @@Mynipplesmychoice
Tbh ive always had a problem with any microtransaction in games. Even if it is just cosmetic. Never understood why people say "its just cosmetic microtransactions" when that's half of the reason i enjoy playing games. Now they just use cosmetics against you by making it impossible / nearly impossible to actually get a decent skin without paying for it.
Yea, but if it’s just cosmetic, at least is not as pay to win as battle passes and other mechanics. And I think one of the only games that does this well is counterstrike, there is no camo or egregious pay to win mechanics. You have skins that cost cents, and you can sell you case drops for usually $0.30 to $1.
What’s kind of sinister though, is that because Valve developed their own skin economy, people invest in it. I think this is fine in itself, but it’s very worrying to me how many people invest only in CS skins instead of diversifying their portfolio and investing in legitimate financial products. I heard people say that all of their savings are in skins. That’s profoundly worrying to me
-on top of the gambling mechanics of it all. But ultimately, I don’t know of a less impactful way to make money from a free to play game, it’s nice that CS doesn’t have the egregious pay to win mechanics that destroy the competitive viability of the game.
@@KevinLindstromMediaoh you could not be more wrong. skins in shooters are literally an advantage. profitable shooters all sell you skins that are super hard to spot. making them p2w.
I see a lot of people condemning these studios and publishers that opt for wallet gamer culture however I think we also need to praise the companies that Don't use these practices. We need to encourage players towards those games and encourage said companies to keep making complete packages. Good on you for bringing up those examples.
Look at every example towards the end though, they're all niche old style super specific games. You spend a whole video showing these shooters like Apex and such, then your examples of greatness are super niche weird games majority of people won't like, or super hard ones like soulslike that majority won't be able to beat.
@@weasle5022 Or they aren't niche and old style, just indie titles with little resources to work with and a lot of good game design and ideals. It's not that games like all of the examples at the end of the video are old fashioned, it is that they are enjoyable experiences some people made for gameplay, not money.
Get your head out of the gutter.
@@weasle5022do you only play f2p games?
No wonder why the gaming industry is in the state it’s in 💀
I blame Fortnite started all of this
@@jacoryarnett7347Nah, Fortnite just added the battle pass, and before that there was the annual and season passes. Fortnite’s way just proved to be way more lucrative.
@@jacoryarnett7347 And that stupid oblivion horse being patient zero too
@@A90sChick The Oblivion Horse Armor was just a meme that gained recognition bc it was a popular game for console gamers, Microsoft was the one pushing for stuff like that on their new Xbox Live store because they saw what was going on in Asia's PC space that was way ahead of the curve on monetization.
You know what is better in business than selling a great product at a great value? Selling an addictive product.
Some people just really get drawn in the feedback loop ig. Most I've ever spent on a mobile game was 3$ and it was for cosmetic items.
@@xcyan_lilyx5788 $3 and how many thousands of hours of your life?
You know what's even better? Selling an addictive product with no production cost. Most in game purchases cause no significant cost to the company, the transaction cost itself is the most expensive part
No such thing, only people with poor self control
I guess ban games or make them $500.
I like how these people call me poor because I don’t spend money on pixels.
until gamers start to vote with their wallets, all the cash shops, battle passes, cosmetics and microtransactions are here to stay.
Dice employees soaking L’s on the daily
Wassup bro 👌
Honestly it's just tiring nowadays. Remember, way back now, when you could just buy a game and it would ship as a complete package? Unfortunately we lost that battle years ago because, even if a thousand people say "no" to micro-transactions, a hundred wales will drop in and spend a thousand each so the company still makes their profit.
We could fight back by not even purchasing games that have microtransactions. If all of us quit games that have microtransactions than the wales won't have anyone to "flex" (in their mind) to. Plus developers and companies might get alarmed about their low player counts.
I’ve just got round to playing the Mad Max game and it was a breath of fresh air not having prompts telling me I can spend in game currency or that’s their is a new battle pass.
The only wau to fight back is drop gaming and get a hobby. Like cooking or singing
It's mostly the new releases cashing on hype.
If you look for 5+ year old games, you'll find that most of them have (finally) reached the end of their development phase and are quite complete, and most likely on sale too.
gamers are weak minded overall they cant resist the siren song of a new release, even if they say they won't buy it enough people always do @@johnzarek3628
The only game I've spent on every microtransaction is Deep Rock Galactic. I insist on waiting for the sale to be over so I can spend full price. Ghost Ship are the few chads left in the gaming sphere and they're the only ones I choose to spend on.
I got DRG got bored after few hrs, is it because I played alone? Is it fun with friends or random ppl?
It's funny how so many of these people use the term invested, no no, you spent it, that money's gone.
I like how the term is still “micro transaction” when in fact it sometimes is more then the original title price. To that I can genuinely admit I was part of this problem. Maybe not “whale” but I have bought skins that tickle my fancy. I’ve leaned away from it though and this video is a good way of explaining why.
micro transactions = automatic Adult Only rating
its time for legislation.
i dont mind micro transactions and its usually only kids that complain about it but i do agree with this. any game with micro transactions should require proof of age 18+ to play
I am glad someone looked at the actual Whales and by proxy how little voting with your wallet matters.
Things are so corrupt that without major intervention or mass protests we can't change things.
I regret not listening when DLC came and people warned us of unfinished games being finished as paid DLC. By the time I realized what was about to happen in CoD when the Peacekeeper was introduced in BO2 and tried to warn people it was too late.
I am so glad I'm not the only one noticing this. I say it to my friends all the time. Gaming used to be an art form. People would create the best thing they could and put their hearts into it. Now it's just business people asking HOW CAN WE GET THE MOST MONEY? but its also the gamer's faults for dumping their money into this diarrhea. Now we're stuck in this shitty world of development and you can't stop them because the apes will buy.
I chuckle, i played the old MWF and MWF2, call of duty was fun as hell, worst we got was a map pack to buy. But enjoy multiplayer for thousands of hours no worries. Now i see little cousins playing Fortnite and majority is "hey check out my new skin, look at my guy, look at my mounts!!!" . Even seeing stupid shit like Snoop Dogg in CoD is funny to me, so low we've slumped
Man bungie used to be a prime example of progression with cosmetics, like halo 3 when you did challenges for armor set (like if you rocked the Hayabusa armor set you were one of the best) or even in destiny 1 where you get different armor set when you do hardmode raids or challenges. Man we went a long way in video games, its unfortunate that theyre now going the wrong way
It gave you such a sense of accomplishment. Doing the vid master challenges in halo 3 and odst to get recon armor really made you feel like you earned something.
People are legit invested. 10k into a video game! Insane. That’s why this issue will never go away.
AAA gaming industries take advantage of two things to keep people spending indefinitely: FOMO, and the sunk cost fallacy.
- By making certain highly desirable items only available for a limited time, the whale is compelled to spend, lest they "miss out" on their one chance to get that coveted item.
- Once a person has spent a considerable amount of money on a game's MTXs (typically around $50 or so), it makes that person less likely to quit playing that game because they don't want their purchases to "go to waste"... which, in turn, leads to the likelihood of more money being spent, which further reinforces that line of thinking and thus perpetuates the cycle.
why the hell people are calling it "investing"
Investment means you are expecting something in return
@@ofal5124 Theres a few games (most notably csgo) where it makes sense, since you're able to sell skins on the steam community market along with 3rd party marketplaces after buying them and using them yourself. I've made over 5k while spending less than 1k from doing this, sold on 3rd party marketplaces so it was paid into my bank not steam wallet funds. I don't purchase any microtransactions from games that lock items to your account after your purchase and I think it should be much more common to allow items to be traded/sold after purchase.
@@ofal5124yea "fun"
they arent investing because they lose all the money
While it's not my style to pay for cosmetics in games, well, because I'm poor, but at the same time I'm grateful that they spending money to keep the game running and be able to update new content.
I bought cod mw2 recently because the game being at the end of its lifecycle makes it go on sale more often, and the reason i bought it is because i legitimately love the gunplay, weapon models/animations and overal pacing. Its the most "fun" modern cod to come out in almost 10 years in my opinion.
Loading up the game for the first time and being slapped in the face with literally 3 or 4 screens to click through asking me to purchase the battle pass really put into perspective the state of gaming for me.
I've got over 7k hours in Apex legends over both steam and origin. Ive never spent the money required to purchase an Heirloom. In the 4 years ive been playing the game ive only been able to earn 1 hierloom.
Not to mention all of the tricks these developers play with our phycology to keep us addicted to these games so that we find ourselves ending up at the cash shop at some point. Gaming has just gotten so nasty and dystopian. Baulder's Gate isn't really my vibe, but i really hope it, and future titles that follow in it's footsteps help change things
You can have fun playing with poop but that doesn’t make it respectable or anything
This is why we stan Deep Rock Galactic. One time purchase, infinite replayability, earnable cosmetics and upgrades and even the entire season pass is earned by playing, not paying.
only one problem with the season pass: it takes too long to unlock
Rock and stone brother!
DLC look better. P2W.
Video talked a lot about destiny 2
Just play Warframe, Premium currency is quite easily farmable, and If i spend Money its for supporting what they are doing
Also ROCK AND STONE
@@bigzockt5908 warframe gets like really boring when you get to mars tho
Remember how special the launch of Destiny 1 was? Literally everything earnable in game. If you inspected someone who had something you didn't, you ask where it was from and go get it yourself. Good times.
i still think destiny 1 is the gold standard for paid content in games. even during taken king/rise of iron all the coolest items were lootable from raids, trials, or quests.
The microtransactions were either fully cosmetic or provided such a small advantage that it didn’t matter (like the paid sparrows that had 10 more speed,) and the other paid content was literally entire new games worth of content that would regularly get free updates.
There's also hollow knight (obviously), and bloons td 6. Yeah, you have in-game purchases for it, but nothing is required to be bought to complete the entire game. That's right! *The entire game can be completed without spending a penny.* What matters is if you have the skill or experience to beat the harder maps.
One of the things that annoys me is that these gam- sorry, "Live Services" are designed with extra grind so even if you ignore the cash shop, you WILL suffer the unbearably slow progression and inability to perform normal levels of achievement.
The biggest issue to me for these wallet gamers is that they're buying something with little value. If it's not cosmetics then you're paying for convenience. If you're paying money to make the game good or spend less time playing, then you're playing the wrong game.
Exactly. The argument "I spent money so I don't have to play 6+ hours and instead I can only play 1h so it makes the game more enjoyable" is ridiculous. In what world playing less is more enjoyable. What's the point of said game then?
You can put that to the most absurd and just sell 100 % progress so you're done with the game immediately
The core aspect of a live service game, to me, is the *live* part.
Blizzard craps out a regurgitated Diablo game. It's a boxed product, so it's dead before you open the box. They ask for you to pay rent on the game you just bought, but it'll never see any expansion whatsoever. Maybe in another box, if you're lucky. History should have taught the players to expect it to be thrown away for Diablo 8, 9, 10, etc down the line. All vaguely identical to Diablo 3.
Genshin Impact, $0. You get characters automatically over time from the calendar. Every year or two they add an entire game's worth of territory for EVERYONE to explore. It's a game that never ends - play until you're not having fun any more, take a break for a few years, and come back to a ton of new stuff. You can even use your old characters - no YuGiOh style power creep here.
There's negative issues with FOMO, absolutely. But there's a large difference between the two. The Diablo wallet guy is paying for one of Bobby Kotick's yachts and a sword skin. The Genshin player is paying for extra FUN primarily, and also funds the game. As a fair cut of that profit is actually reinvested back into the game itself. (And as OP says, to influence the market to make more games like this. Than the incremental idle games most of these games are fundamentally.)
Characters like Klee aren't about power or convenience. It's about tossing bombs and blasting lasers at guys, cutely: ua-cam.com/video/C_duDk5e8yU/v-deo.html
I learned it after quitting a mobile game. I can spend 0-70$ on a good game and I have more games than I have time to play.
Game with micro transactions for me isn’t worth it. I rather support developers who make good game with honest monetization.
yOu aRe JuSt pOoR, bRo
Whales are the reason GTA5 is still out.
And whales are the reason sports games release a $90 game every year.
this is why i love subset games so much, they’ve only made two games sure, but both of them have had so much love put into them, and then been given free expansions with no DLCs other than the soundtrack
We have all done the sin of giving money to companies who don't deserve it. Most of us have gotten wise and realized that it's a scam and stopped. Those that still do it, we must forever shame and gatekeep out of our hobby. This is a no micro-transaction zone.
But how the hell do you gate keep someone who is just mindlessly paying for digital shit?
I never gave a single cent to pay to win games, I did buy games that don't deserve my money now but maybe deserved it before *cough*overwatch*cough*
@@thehatter9400 That's the neat part, you don't. And corporations value them more than us.
Shaming and gate keeping will probably not help much. If anything that would probably just cause them to double down. Best to show grace and try to help them see how the system is taking advantage of them. May not work, but if those with addictive behaviors are shamed. 9 times out of 10 that will just make it worse.
@@gogetaa11no they deserve shaming, when people try to tell them it’s predatory and ruining games they just laugh at you and say you’re poor or something, even though they are using cosmetics to fill the void in their miserable dull lives
"It doesn't affect you!!!!!!"
He's right, it affects everybody.
'It's just cosmetics'
Or even better, 'The mtx are more consumer friendly then that game'. or 'this gacha game is more consumer friendly then that gacha game'. 'you can get your favorite unit without paying if you just grind enough as a f2p'.
- microtransactions are microtransactions. Comparing the mtx in one game to another doesn't negate the fact that both have them.
- So what if it's more consumer friendly ? Might as well say, this gambling house gives you a bit more chips for your buck that that gambling house.
-the f2p fuckers that can't seem to get enough of telling everyone that they play a gacha game as a f2p.
I can bet you that they never can get into the top 1000 in leaderboards.
They are constanly doing hundreds of minor task to collect resources, they might as well be doing chores. At that point, just go get a job and spend money on the game. instead of playing it all day everyday.
Let's not forget that most if not every gacha game requires you to get duplicates of the most rare character.
If you don't get it, then you'll have to wait till that banner comes out again which by that point stronger characters comes out. I played a gacha game as a f2p and let me tell you, it's not fun. It's a fkn job.
They even added a small roulette in the homescreen that let's you get a chance at a shitty reward by watching an ad in order to spin the roulette... They found a way to get money out off the f2p players :D
So he is wrong then
At the turn of the century people were already selling EverQuest loot on eBay. There was a minority who wanted pay-to-win even outside of the game's design, and the beneficiaries were other players. Is it any wonder that game companies wanted to get in on the action?
I agree with most of what u said. However, Wallet gamers are also the reason why so many ppl can enjoy gaming. Where I came from, a lot of ppl cannot afford to buy a 60$ games, so they are able to play a game for free, just because someone else is buying skins. Imo, I dont see it as a problem for a game to have cosmetics are they main/only way of profiting. In addition to that, there will always be games that u pay once and have access to the whole game, such as Elden Ring. I think it is unreasonable to want every to be the next GTA5 or Elden ring.
Cope
I see your point outside from these Western gamers. While they can play with their pcs which is affordable, it's not really affordable in a 3rd world country as you must be at least in the upper middle class to afford a good budget pc. So we tend to resort to f2p games that range from few to a lot of monetized transactions.
The sole solution to halt this trend is by instilling a sense of responsibility in the players who enjoy free-to-play games without contributing financially. This isn't about condemning those who invest in the game. If every player simply contributed a dollar, most games wouldn't feel compelled to adopt a pay-to-win model. I've witnessed this firsthand in a game studio where we initially crafted high-quality games at affordable prices, with the expectation that players would only need to spend a few bucks. However, many players opted not to spend anything and solely wanted to play for free. As a result, we struggled to sustain our project and were forced to resort to a pay-to-win approach.
Baldur’s gate 3 got me back into gaming. I was definitely a payer rather than a player, and when I started cutting that predatory shit out of my life, I realized just how empty the gaming industry was, and how few new options there are out there. Larion studios has had my respect since divinity. Thanks for shining a light on some of the good games, I’ll have to try grimdawn!
Another good game without micro transactions is pvz gw. It’s multiplayer, but you will have the best multiplayer experience compared to multiplayer games now. Most people on there are casual with atleast one or two tryhards.
@@Stupei3555 man you made me nostalgic now I wanna re install it I had so much fun times with it
I'm still on the Factorio grind. 20 dollars and 2.7k hours later, still the best financial decision I ever made. It's not for everyone, but the game gives me endless joy.
Larian* Come on, they REALLY deserve to have their name written correctly!
... OK bro.
Nice wake up.
Man ive picked up both Baldurs Gate 3 and Elden Ring at the same time and i got to admit that it has been a blast playing real games for once in over 10 years
Thats wild, that's alot of quality content you got right there
get yo ass some niche indie games and youll feel like your 10 again
Yup fromsoft has thankfully remained pure ever since I was little and they still haven't fallen to this... Mess... The only paid content they sell is their dlc and well it's always better than the base game you know as it should be... The dlcs are never just free cash grabs which is another problem rarely mentioned... "I guess it's overshadowed by a worst one"
Elden ring has been one of the best experiences I’ve had while gaming, ever. No hyperbole, just a lot of fun. It has something that is hard to capture, and something I hat From excels at, a sense of mystery that is rewarded and a sense of real wonder. Not much left compares sadly.
Ironic this coming from a dude using Skyrim profile picture, the most bland game of all time, you guys are just stuck on nostalgia.
Playing free online game with micro transactions for 5 years still only spend 35 dollar on these games in 5 years
Ur a fake mobile gamer, pathetic 😂
I think the most I spent on such things was Path of Exile. Maybe upwards in the low $200s. This is over a large number of years as I first started playing in 2013. Not too upset about it as that game has given me a crazy number of hours of enjoyment, which is more than I can say for most games. However, this discussion remindes me of a time I was watching a pre-recorded livestream of CohhCarnage. He was playing PoE for the first time and I had it playing on my second monitor as I was playing PoE. Cohh was looking over the various MTX bundles in the store. You know, the top tier MTX that costs $500 (it was $500 at the time as I recall). Cohh was considering it, but he was learning towards nope. Than some moron was insisting gifting $500 to Cohh specifically to buy the MTX. Cohh told the dude a few times, "Nah". The dude does it anyway. Well, since Cohh was just handed this money, he felt he had no choice and bought the $500 tier. I just facepalmed. Not only was that a lot of money just to throw away, he just gave it all away to GGG through Cohh and had nothing to show for it. Wtf is wrong with people?
The AAA "devs" having a melt down is due to why/how they got where they are. They don't need to be good at leading or designing. So what happens if things start to go the other way?
I love how Dices defense literally shows their failings. It doesn't matter if the players didn't understand the mechanics because it's YOUR JOB to make sure they understand the new mechanics if you fail to do that you don't blame your audience.
I've been against gambling since I was a kid. This type of shit absolutely constitutes gambling.
What's worse is these games actually give popular streamers thousands and thousands worth of these items so people think they actually bought it all, and by their logic, if they can do it, why can't it... Sad that more people don't talk about this problem and how EVERYONE suffers as a consequence. Rest of us can just boycott such games.
there was a youtube video a while back of this dude that interviewed a Clash of Clans whale. this guy spent a ton, and even bankrolled his guild. the thing that tripped me out the most was how he saved money by playing the game. he said that before picking up the game he would spend money like crazy going out every night(buying bottles, vip loungies, etc..) and ever since he dropped that habit to play the game and lead his guild he started saving money. dude said he would spend about 25k a month beforehand, and since stopping he only spends about 8k a month on games. rich people are a trip.
I’ve been playing Fortnite with my friends for the past month or so and it astounds me how willing they are to drop money on skins and emotes, one of them even bought me a skin cuz they were tired of me wearing whatever I had on from 5 years ago. I bought the battle pass cuz I was like “fuck it, whatever, its only $8” and I can definitively say I won’t be buying another one
The most powerful weapon the developers have is fostering that community of people who value the skins so much that someone will buy skins they already own, to give to someone else just so they don't have to see an outdated one
I just use the currency I earn in both the pass and campaign to buy from the shop.
I personally have never spent money on vbucks for a year now thanks to Save The World lmao
I personally still had a a lot of fun with my friends when I played this season! I'm currently lvl 140 even though I haven't really been playing much because of school and interest in other games lol
@@pls_stap_same here, STW is probably the best thing I've bought on Fortnite lol
Damn. I still get made fun of by my friends for spending $300 on Overwatch 2 when it came out. A decision I now regret because I hate Overwatch 2 with a passion and everything it stands for.
Nice recommendations. Also perfect info density. Subscribed!
I've been playing BG3 like it's a full-time job I give a fuck about. Loved Divinity Original Sin 1 & 2 so knew I'd most likely enjoy BG3. Just like the previous titles Larian has done, they have captured me by allowing me to think for myself, creating unique (enough) environments and a large epic story with more than plenty to explore on the side. On top of that, it has an incredible amount of replayability and the visuals are stunning.
It's a real bummer in this age of instant satisfaction it feels so rare to get something like this with new games. Something that simply respects your intelligence, and gives you a full experience for a single price tag. Looks like I'll be forever stuck playing tac-shooters until something worthwhile comes out to captivate me for a while.
BG3 does look nice the thing is, if I wanted to play a game with the developers hidden fetishes I'd play fallout: frontier and that's free.
Did you play BG1 and 2? How, in your opinion, does it stack up against those? I'm a huge fan of BG1 and 2. I played Original Sin1 and didn't like it very much (got bored several hours in). For now, it doesn't seem I'll like BG3, too.
You should play disco elysium. Its a CRPG like BG3 and has a way more unique writing style, setting and mechanics. Like instead of leveling up strentgh or dexterity you level up aspects of your personality like electro-chemistry or empathy, unironically changed me probably for the better and made me cry.
@@SylvanFeanturi Objectively BG1 and 2 are phenomenal but remember there is matter of personal preference which simply may seem that this type of games is simply not for you.
Money talks, and we are saying to the developers "Yeah, put my content behind paywalls please"
This. The world is basically asking games to all go this route. Easy solution is to just not buy the crap, or not play these types of games. Yet there’s a bunch of whales, sponsored, streamers, etc that get the hype trains going so average players get suckered into slowly dumping money into these games. Of course very few people would spend 100k all at once on a mobile game. Instead, the middle class players get nickel and dimed into the $100K over time, never realizing just how much was spent.
I’ve played 2 games like this in my life and I wish I never downloaded them as by the time I quit I had already dropped thousands and got nothing in return other than bad entertainment for the time I was still interested in playing it.
"Money talks, people want to get addicted to tobacco products at a young age and be exploited for the rest of their lives, it's their own fault"
Think before you speak.
Exploitation is never the victims fault.
@@damianbouras This is about the video game industry. As someone who has lost my sister to substance addiction, they are two completely different topics. Think before you speak...
@@Future_Max I don't think these are different topics because game studios actually just exploit some forms of (gambling) addiction, which I assume most, if not all, whales have.
Did you know that Raid: Shadow Legends was/is being developed by an online casino? Or that most/all big game studios employ psychologists to purposefully design monetization aspects as predatory and casino-y as possible? That's no coincidence. The only difference is people can't overdose from having no money but ask someone who's dad/mom had a serious gambling addiction aka "problematic gambling" (or just google) and albeit some key differences you will also see a lot of similarities to substance addiction.
Companies make what works for *them*, so if they get a fuckton of money because 1000 people can't control their spending habbits then the next game will be even more eggregious, even if the other 999000 people won't be interested anymore. I think Activision-Blizzard made an (inofficial?) statement a few years ago where they were basically saying that a lot less people are playing WoW but the ones who still stick around more than make up for the revenue. THIS is the benchmark of the industry.
99.8% of gamers who absolutely despise a game's direction and won't spend money on it are completely irrelevant as long as the other 0.2% make up for it, and oh boi, they do.. So yea, money talks but wallet gamers just have a lot more money to let talk.
believe it or not they're both addictions lmao
Great video bro imma give Tunic a try looks like a nice chill and fun game to play after work
your point at 9:50 about FOMO is 100% me. Apex is super predatory where if you buy the heirloom when it comes out, it is only $160, but if you wait, you have to spend up to $500 to get it randomly in a pack. I have fallen victim to that more times than I can count, unfortunately, but thankfully have come around to realize it is just pixels on a screen and not worth $160, let alone $500
Honestly after watching your vids I got back into D1 after having been a massive D2 player. Never felt better. The end game and gameplay loop is just so much better. There is an actual goal to reach. Plus you can EARN ALL cosmetics/shaders/ships/ornaments by PLAYING the game!
Is there any modern LFG for D1 these days? I tried getting back into it earlier this year, but when it came to finding players for strikes, POE, or raids I can’t find anywhere online
I love D1 and enjoy running strikes but unfortunately I don’t get match make due to not enough players.
Still rubbish.
Destiny was its best when you did new incursions with a group of friends
Yeah but the game is practically dead, you’re bound to get bored real quick. Maybe I’m wrong tho, haven’t played D1 since 2021 so maybe it’s population on Xbox is higher…
As someone that waited for Destiny since that Halo 3:ODST easter egg popped up, Ya Destint 1 is just so much better tbh
I fell into the "trap" of spending money on free games too for a while. I spent around 4-5 thousand dollars on Lords mobile 🤦 And another 2k on Genshin impact.. And I've never been a gambling addict or even spent alot of money on games but it just happened gradually.. Then I quit all gaming for about a year, and when I finally decided to take again I bought a playstation instead and I only buy games I like and I haven't spent a single dime on in-game purchases since then..
I love genshin and i always say to people to demand more QoL improvement than just being "grateful from what we've been giving".. Being grateful of what? I'm a light spender and rarely buy something substantial from the game, but i keep saying over and over to other players to keep your criticism up in hoyoverse ass so the game gets better but many people told me to be grateful and don't complain because I'm too poor bruh
I love genshin and everything of it, seeing our requested QoL improvement got ignored and 3rd anniversary coming soon, i feel like we won't move even an inch towards gameplay improvement.
I feel defeated bcs many people doesn't have the same voice as i am.
Damn 2k? I am little shamefull for spending around 15-20 bucks in genshin, i cannot comprehend 2k.
I can not accurately describe the feeling of being someone who, in the day, spent so much money on games like Warframe, free games that made their money through their stores. It's not even like those are the games I mainly play, I'm a die-hard Souls fan. I have thousands upon thousands of hours in space sims, a collective few thousand hours in the Monster Hunter series, and Larian's Divinity DKS/OS and Baldur's Gate series. But for some reason I hesitate to blame my friends for, who play them religiously, I kept finding myself throwing money into games like WoW, Destiny 2, Warframe, Apex, etc in order to make them fun, trying to make them more appealing by having nice things to make up for maybe playing a game I didn't like for the sake of my friends.
I stopped after both Lightfall in Destiny 2 released and Duviri Paradox released in Warframe. They both made me release I was chasing games that didn't exist, fun and exciting games that pulled me in with evolving story and content, Duviri showed me what Warframe could have been when you strip away all the bullshit they peddled over the years and made a focused story with focused combat instead of a melee and ability spamming joke that I had spent at least a couple thousand dollars trying to make feel good. Lightfall showed me that Bungie had gotten to the point where they were parsing out and drip feeding content so much that it was effectively false advertising, a single important cutscene intermediated by pointless and irrelevant quests for a mcguffin, and I had a hundred dollars for it. At that point, i was done buying into the schemes, fuck game stores, fuck free to plays and pay to win games. It was never worth any of the money I spent on it. I dont regret the times I've had with my friends, but I do regret that it cost both me, and gaming as a whole so much money to fool myself into thinking those times were dependant on things that I had in a game.
When Diablo 4 came out, I was excited, it had a cosmetic shop but I'd never touch it, I knew Blizzard all too well, but not enough it turns out, because what was once a fairly good and enjoyable game with a few flaws turned to a compete shit show once ActiBlizzard's money schemes really kicked into gear, neutering the game even further, dark patterns, ignoring feedback, excuses and hollow promises to fix what they broke on purpose. Ive been extremely hateful toward the people behind the decisions for D4 specifically because despite what ActiBlizzard has become, it still felt like an utter betrayal when I had just been through a painful epiphany. They stole a good game from me when I needed it for the sake of selling it back to me again and again, more hours, more grinding, more shop items that refresh every day while our stashes burst at the seams with bullshit equipment with inflated stats and meaningless aspects.
The only game I've played with my friends since was Baldur's Gate 3, but my friend, who owned the group save is so devoted to WoW, so scared of difficulty or missing out on gear, he wont play BG3 anymore. I play alone, BG3, Starfield, my space sims. I paid for games to fuel a connection to my friends, and now that Ive stopped, that connection, were it not for occasionally seeing some of them in real life, would likely be gone because they still depend on paying to make the games feel fun. This shit is garbage, its a black hole of money and time and it erodes the quality, the fun, the integrity of games and the friendships that they cultivate. And now, my reward is hanging out in a voice call and stream with my friends, while I play BG3 or Starfield and they pay $30 for a few carries through a WoW dungeon for an armor set.
0:57 missed opportunity to call “whale city” wales
Such an accurate video. I have a group of friends who not only spend a lot in games, they barely play them. They all work full time with kids, and spend more time talking about and spending than they do actually playing. It’s nuts
Exact situation with me and an old group of gaming friends. I was the only one who never spent money but it felt like every time we played they were spending on the in game shop. Showing off cosmetics to each other.
It's a completely delusional video. Modern (especially mobile) games are specifically designed to encourage this kind of behaviour. How can you not blame the billion dollar cooperation, who created the game, but shift the focus on the player, who got baited... I don't understand why this kind of argument keeps coming up in every situation. Don't hate the player, hate the game. We can't change the gaming landscape but forcing whales to stop their addiction. They are addicted for a reason... they can't stop. Unless game dev studios stop baiting ppl into that addiction it's never going to change
@@jonathanerhard197 I agree with what you are saying - I lean more on the side of individual responsibility, more so than blaming corporates. For example, if you eat McDonalds 3x a day, that isn't McDonalds fault, you have a choice - But they legitimately do have addictive tricks in the games to addict people. I'd love nothing more than regulators and governments to come down and smash the video game market to pieces. You're argument is valid and well made.
@@jonathanerhard197 This is impossible to solve unless the players themselves solve it on their own. Some people are just easily addicted because they have dopamine problems. There's no way around it until the person themselves recognizes the problem and seeks treatment. I mean you do realize that designs to encourage people to stay longer and spend more are embedded in our everyday life not just video games? Just open your phone and look at any market place apps. Or go take a walk to the mall or nearby shopping district or even the convenience store downstairs. It's everywhere man, how are you going to stop such a large scale thing? 😂
Mindless consumption
This is the argument against the cosmetics thing that everyone should mention. We used to get full games and unlock special cosmetics as rewards for skill and effort. Now they're just purchases. They're designed that way now so upper management can get a majority of the profits without contributing a single iota of effort into the production.
Not only that but the pricing of items themselves is an issue.
We currently have the free play model in many online games. Which ok i get it. You have an online game that no one payed up-frond and you have to keep servers running and add content etc so you need to make money somehow.
But then you come and say. "Hey here is this new weapon skin for 79.99 and this new armor for 250 and this chest with 10000diamonts and a new weapon for 59.99 and am like: "Are this guys insane!?"
In what world does this make sense? just to change a few colors on your weapons cost more than buying full ledge games with whole worlds and characters? Hell if you buy in a sale you can buy not just one but quite a few whole great games for the price of that silly skin.
The comparison is ludicrous. Is like in real life some guy said to you, look you can ether go and buy that whole house with a nice yard and garden etc or i can give you some really cool paintwork on your car that could probably fade away in a few years or months.
I mean seriously? How can you compare the difference in value? Yet this people still prefer buying that skin? It makes no sense!
There are free games that i liked and i spend some hours on and thought, "Ok i had some good fun with this, the developer deserves some money from me, let's see if i can buy anything" but then i see the prices and i am like NOPE, NO WAY.
A little skin should just be 1-2 dollars or something, some armor just 5-7 dollars etc. This are minimum effort items in a service game that will just disappear, you can't be charging full game prices for them. What the hell is with this prices?
If prices were logical ironically enough a player like me could be buying a thing or two every month in a game i play loyally and give them a decent sum threw a year.
But as overprized as they are i end up paying nothing. But it seems the ones paying threw their nose for everything more than make up from losing buyers like me.
It's insane how long some people, including myself, could live from that amount of money and these "gamers" spend it on funny looking pixels
I play a lot of rocket league and recently some stated that an item shop item had "more meaning than a champ reward decal" I was stunned!
I tried out Tunic on Game Pass thinking it'd be a neat little game I'd play and be done with. Little did I know that game would become my 3rd favorite game of all time. The music, the gameplay, the art design, the story. It all just comes together to make an absolutely amazing gameplay experience. I cannot recommend it enough
Thanks for the suggestion. What are the first two?
@@riccardolanni9973 Majora's Mask, Okami, then Tunic. My top 10 video games aren't objective as I recognize that there are games like Red Dead Redemption 2 and the like that are objectively better, but these games just resonated with me and changed my life and tastes in video games
I once was the whale myself and spent a lot of money on d2 and fortnite and thought it was okay. Now I am ashamed of myself and my participation in ruining industry, thanks to the recent state of the game article. In a way, thank you Bungie for making me a better gamer
You made yourself a better gamer and a better person.
No, bro, you didn't become a "better gamer". You achieved something greater: you have become a TRUE gamer. A legit one.
I can see the problem with destiny 2 (I tried it, had fun but I didn't want to buy the DLCs), but as for Fortnite, while it does have microtransactions I don't remember it being Pay to win lol.
For me, I still have a ton of fun with it with my friends! I haven't really spent any money on Fortnite for over a year now because of save the world and the extra vb u get from the battle pass; which wasn't really that hard to complete cuz I got to level 140 despite me being a bit more interested in other games at that time lol! And even though I do get a lot of vbucks from these in-game sources, I only use them whenever I see something that actually is cool to me! Not things that are say, "rare" or "popular"!
fortnite back in the day wasn’t even bad fr the skins were overpriced but at least they were original. now they just buy the license to some random IP, turn it into a skin, and sell it for 20 dollars
@@pls_stap_fortnite did have a p2w glider at one point but the comp players complained so hard epic removed it from the game until they could fix the animation
“I have over $20k invested into the game”
Cosmetics are not an investment.
Bruh the damage has already been done. Either participate or don’t, it won’t change anything. For every person who doesn’t spend and consumes anti-monetization content, there are five more who will and don’t even know other people are having anti-monetization conversations.
I found a way to break the system...
I'm poor af
Yeah me too 🎉
As someone who has gone through the wallet gamer phase and come out on the other side of it I’m just so always filled with regret. I can’t believe how much money I’ve wasted on certain games anytime I think about it I just become angry with myself. now I really try to stay away from games like this all together and not get caught in the cycle again.
One of the things that kept me in check and managed to never spend much on microtransactions.
Just thinking of throwing money on something that will be shut down a few years down the line made me not want to spend. I was imagining how regretful i will feel for spending that money and having nothing later on and that kept me away from spending.
I still kind of waste my money on games(mostly physical, for digital i buy DRM free from GOG that i can store in a hard disk and always own since they have no DRM and don't need clients etc like Steam) and consoles and PC parts and tech stuff etc which i admit not very wise since if i put them together in all the many years it could buy me half a house but at least they are still there. They are items i can i still have and i can touch and sell and use.
I can wake up in the morning and still see them there and smile because i like those items. No one can take them away from me with the click of a button.
Thats why i love single player games
this is why I'm glad the only game I've ever spent a lot of money on was csgo (and not opening cases), wish being able to trade/sell skins was more common in other games
I can relate, having a Genshin phase, shamefully. I was ecstatic when i got my first 5-star hero and i wanted to collect them all, but after like the last update to the inazuma arc, a light bulb turned on in my head and it told me, this is wasteful and i need to stop playing this game. Never looked back since.
@@RVBMichaelJCaboosegood for you , stop playing that game , it's brain rotting , a good campaign shooter feels better
absolutely CRAZY that you did not mention terraria
2:10 - Now in that game’s defense, that one has been mitigated to being connected with the actual freemium Warzone game as many of the cosmetics there are useable in Modern Warfare 2 and eventually 3. It’s been the case for awhile now since the original version of that came out.
My old boss was one of those whales. He just had a lot of disposable income, so thousands of dollars was not a loss for him. I guess he could've spent it on hookers