Came to mind because Mortal Kombat 1 is one of the greediest fighting games I’ve ever seen, with the recent announcement of a $12 Halloween fatality plus all characters + DLC adding up to $118, so I’m assuming it’s because Warner Bros/Netherrealm Studios just wants more bonus money, so I’m genuinely curious how that whole thought process came to be, and if there’s any way for society as a whole to counteract that, or is it simply built into capitalism and we’re stuck with this forever.
Edit: I didn’t buy MK1, just know people who did because I go to tournaments
Not buying their shit? Seriously that's all it takes, not buying it because if people showed any self restraint:
Loot boxes wouldn't exist or at least you couldn't buy them with real money
DLC would be as expansive as Fallout NV DLC or extremely low cost cosmetics
Saying that if everyone had some self restraint, feminists ,communism, environmentalists, satanists etc wouldn't exist and I wouldn't be trying to work out which mountain is best to live on and watch the nuclear fireworks...
They only continue because people are weak to peer pressure and 'need' to buy it to fit in, nothing will change so long as the base gives in so easily.
Better advice. Don't buy games as fundamentally broken as Fallout NV as well. So that companies stop thinking its acceptable to let gamers and mods fix their shit for them. If you need to use console commands to keep a game functional, then its a major issue.
Unpopular opinion because NV is everyone's special exception baby, but its mass popularity has only given companies the wrong takeaway. Because they didn't see "oh we should improve our writing!" they just saw you'll accept broken slop as long as it has a couple of unrelated good elements underneath.
Same with "buying cosmetics." You're accepting paying literal fucking money for color schemes and jpgs. That should never have been the case, and the fact that people mentally divorce "the bad MTX from the totally okay 100+ costumes designed to milk me" is what allows things like the Diablo 4 Battle Pass to come to fruition, as well as most of the other DLC cancer.
The argument that its okay for them to charge for cosmetics came around because, ironically, people fell to peer pressure to soften their stance to not have to miss out on the newest FOMO because otherwise their stance would cost them not being able to. Because as Horse Armor showed, there was a time when literally everyone had a problem with even "low cost" cosmetics. But people let the Overton slide so that they could consume product, and now they have their Trained NPC phrases like "buy power" to justify companies selling them unlockables.
Let's be honest, they were NEVER going to take the lessons that SHOULD'VE been learnt from that game. Remember the bonus fiasco where they denied it because yhe reviewer score didn't hit a certain percentage? They were never of the best intentions in the first place. Not to mention the ridiculous turn around time to make it, surprised it was as functional as it was on release..
Only way to make them listen is deny them your patronage as a customer, just look at the budweiser and Target boycotts to see how quick they cave when they can't rely on the base to always buy their crap. We're seeing that slightly with increased consumer burnout because it's all bland with the same writing from that woke Canadian studio. It'll be ironic that it takes literal commies to teach normies how to utilise their customer privilege of refusing to buy trash.
Exactly, and that was my point. But people will sing the praises of NV endlessly, meaning not only did they give their patronage but they are assuring generation after generation does too.
I was pointing out that we've already failed at that by even saying "ackshually NV was very good (if you ignore everything wrong with it)" or even "cosmetic DLCs are fine." Its succumbing to decades of peer pressure to normalize things that were unacceptable to us before, such as literally broken games we have to fix ourselves and selling us our own unlocks.
There is a lot more wrong with the industry than just the Wokes. They are certainly the biggest and most deserving of focus problem, but there are a lot of other ones to keep focused on too. Even in games we love.
Was there screeching at negative reviewers for "robbing people's bonuses" or something?
Bethesda made Fallout 3, which introduced FPS to the franchise and the "insert headshot here" VATS mechanic.
They then threw it to Obsidian Entertainment, who were veterans of RPG Development.
There was a division of labor in the contract. Bethesda would do testing and QA and submit bug reports to Obsidian for fixes.
Part of the contract was that Obsidian would receive a substantial bonus if New Vegas received a certain aggregated review score. I think it was 80%, but you can check.
The game was well received by critics, but they docked a few points for the massive number of bugs, which were unquestionably Bethesda's fault due to shitty testing and QA.
When hit up for the bonus, Bethesda laughed in Obsidian's face.