I just had a horrific thought, if AAA studios are retarded enough to go with 24/7 transcript monitoring of voice chat and kernel level access to people's PCs for anti-cheat, they are going to be retarded enough to start charging people money for the privilege of accessing moderated servers. One thing that's getting very noticeable with the discussion around matchmaking is the understandable complaining about cheating because of all the damn script kiddies running around that are in the matches every 5 seconds.
Will they do the intelligent thing of making private matches and servers more configurable and allow people to police their own content online freely? No, that's not how developers think silly, they're going to charge a monthly fee for multiplayer servers or alternatively and here's something far worse than that I'm thinking of. They're going to have different tiers of pricing where you'll have the standard free servers, maybe moderated servers depending on how much and then for the 'pros' they'll really talk this up too as part of their marketing to sucker in all the try hards into paying for it who will inevitably be paying for the staff of blue hairs and Indians who will check reports 24/7.
I'm fucking calling it, yes this is a fever dream but I'm convinced they will do this and they will milk normie gamers who will praise it. The reason I think this is because loads of normies already try to convince people to go onto the FaceIt third party app for Counter-Strike. Oh and as an added bonus they're probably going to make you link your real identity among other things to the more premium servers they will offer as an 'option'.
Multiplayer gaming solved you guys, enjoy your dystopian surveillance state :)
This is the thing, none of us who actually play video games are the target audience anymore, they're primarily catering to normies who don't know any better, mentally ill whales and try hard streamers constantly trying to flex their k/d ratio as well as the kiddies who follow them. Why bother making a real game if they can do shit like this instead?
We don't give them money. I always use Call of Duty as an example because it's something I know and it was not fueled by microtransactions. Not only do they out-sell previous titles, for example Modern Warfare 2 in 2022 broke all of their records, but then from reports I've seen they make $5 million per day from all the bullshit they sell. I believe it too, I played it a few months ago with my cousin on a "free weekend." My observation, 75% of players at minimum have a current-release cosmetic skin, which costs $20-$30.
Roblox is publicly traded, in the last 12 months their revenue was $3.16 billion. I have no idea how they don't make money. Talk to any < 13 year old kid and see how many Roblox gift cards they have gotten for birthday presents. It's a TON.
Then you come to someone like me, it pains me to pay $70 for a new game. I actually don't think I ever have. I rarely pirate, I take advantage of sales. Let's assume there's an annual release game that launches working and complete and I value having enough to spend $70 on every year. They have to sell 45 million copies annually to match that Roblox money. It's just not going to happen.
Edit to add for context: Nintendo games often fit that last model. As an example, Zelda Breath of the Wild has sold over 30 million copies. Being one of if not the most sold games on Switch. They would have to do that every year, and still come out behind.