It’s like buying a tiara for your fetus, before you even buy a crib.
ALSO, MICROTRANSACTIONS = DLC.
I like your sentence structure. ADHD?
ADHD?
Obviously, yes. I feel seen.
Respect. If bullet points were a thing. An actually easy to use thing. I’d use them. Cursor stuff covers the markup buttons for me.
Word.
Libre Office Writer
This guy writes.
You can make a bulleted list by just starting each line with an asterisk (*)
- Like
- This
Thanks.
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That’s not going to last that like up in the old brain bucket.
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Appreciate the effort though.
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Transactions = more money for Steam
Disrupt this incentive loop (somehow) and then we can all have nice things.
What do you imagine would replace Steam/Valve? The Magical Post-Capitalist Game Fairy, who distributes games for free, for no reason?
Do you remember who used to distribute games? Walmart. And Best Buy. And CompUSA. And Circuit City. And Target. And GameStop. And Electronic Boutique. Ya know, retailers.
I deliberately peppered that list with names that most people hate AND names that many people associate with good feelings of nostalgia, or mixed feelings at least. But that’s the reality of retail. Capitalism sucks. It literally sucks. It sucks money out of everyone, for itself.
Steam was and is the disruption that you’re talking about. Steam disrupted a broken and destructive brick-and-mortar sales mode. If the catalog of products available on Steam had to be sold in physical stores, only about the top 2-5 percent of the currently available catalog would be physically able to be sold. THAT WAS, AND REMAINS, THE MASSIVE DISRUPTION TO THE OLD SYSTEM.
You’re talking about disrupting the disruption. Maybe you’re talking about some kind of nonsense universe, where everyone distributes open source games for free, maaaaan. Or maybe you think the developers should still get money, but the distribution system should be run as…a charity, I guess? Just, because someone feels like spending hundreds of millions of dollars on a bulletproof, entirely secure, worldwide system of game distribution and sales…for free?
Like I said, that would be some kind of Magical Post-Capitalist Game Fairy. If anyone tells you they are willing to do that shit, I guarantee there is a catch. They’ll be getting something that they want, somehow. If they’re taking a 30 percent cut of the money, I know that’s the catch. If they’re supposedly doing everything for free, out of the goodness of their own charitable hearts, I don’t know what their angle is, but I know it can’t be good.
At least you’re advocating that someone should get paid. Most open-source/free-software zealots don’t bother to do that.
Motherfuckers just stand on the notion that people with the equivalent of (or actually possessing) postgraduate engineering degrees should just…work for free. Like, literally work at Walmart as a nine-to-five gig, then come home to their hovel with five roommates, and slave away, doing engineering work on free software projects that could be sold for tens of millions.
When I support a company like Valve, I’m looking at their past behavior (supporting open industry standards, for things like controllers and VR, plowing money back into developing blue-sky R&D, in both hardware and software) and the fact that they’re an entirely private holding, as opposed to a public company that has to answer to shareholders. Shareholders, of course, would demand that they stop funding anything that won’t specifically generate a maximum return on investment, in a short or medium timeframe.
Because Valve doesn’t have to worry about that crap, they can build a system that is not inherently brittle. I believe them, when they say they have contingency plans, to make sure that we won’t ever have to worry about losing access to software we purchased licenses to use on their systems. And if they ever did become insolvent, there is apparently a contingency-contingency plan, to allow people to download fully non-DRM versions of as much of those libraries as possible.
But to the open-source/free-software zealot, none of that matters. The perfect is always the enemy of the good. Valve = proprietary, so they’re bad, according to you.
Whatever. Narrowmindedness is what it is.
Imagine a (post scarcity at that) world without profit incentive.
As long as people have the basics (which just means they have options) we will work for joy of others, to benefit society or nature, to further science, art, etc. Each in our own way. Studies have proven that. But can’t be Mozart if stuck at a 9-5 with engineered pressure (to keep you in line), a mortgage & commute. The procrastination myth was fed to us (and masqueraded as tiredness from work, as it that is weird).
You know that would only lead to more games being published as ‘a finished product’ eventhough they really are not. It would make the problem worse, not better.
“early access” is just an expectations management thing that lets companies release buggy shit and hide behind the “its in beta” argument.
Beta testing/piloting/early access is a real, legitimately valuable, strategy that allows devs to get real-world user feedback so they can make their finished product better, but the way its being used by big companies and game studios is a perversion of the initial intent.
You may be wrong though. It might not make it worse. Think of all of the push-back and review bombs that happen when companies release finished products that are buggy af. Cyberpunk is an example of this. They got so much shit, rightfully so, at launch.
Exactly. Like I’ve said in various comments in this thread, I have complex feelings about how the situation could actually be fixed. Basically, it comes down to two options:
A. Valve should start to actually regulate the Early Access program. Add rules about when and how DLC can be added (basically never, in Early Access), how long a product can stay in Early Access (someone mentioned the possibility of a ‘long-term early access’ category being established). Add a separate grade system for people to rank how well the game is doing, in terms of customer’s satisfaction, in terms of progress toward a finished product. I would also suggest that forced monetary transparency might be a good thing to add, as a requirement for Early Access participation. If the storefront page openly displayed the amount of revenue the game has generated, since coming to Early Access, it would help to instantly make some judgments about the whole product. If the game in question is a dinky 2D platformer, but it has raised $800,000 over 8 years, I’m gonna be questioning why it hasn’t just been completed, at this point.
B. Valve could also remove the entire Early Access label, and just let anyone start selling anything, in any state of completion, and simply make their own case for why people should buy it. If the game is basically an Early Access game, but the game’s description doesn’t make that clear, people will refund the game and shit-talk them, all over the internet. If they make a good case, in their own description and trailers and other media, then people may decide “I will fund this thing, based on those merits.” The benefit would be the lack of the “its in beta” label, for people to hide behind. If devs just had to make their own pitch, in their own words, people would be more likely to judge that pitch, with an appropriately critical eye.
I mean, do that, and they’ll just stop labeling the games as early access while still being in the same unfinished state, meaning people can’t even decide if they want to avoid a game or not based on that label.
So they’ll have to avoid games based on what people say about them, and nobody will be able to hide behind the excuse of “but it’s still in Early Access, maaaan.”
Steam’s refund system is really good. I say get rid of Early Access and let every game stand on an absolutely equal footing, with no excuses anywhere in sight, for anybody. No privileged “oooh, but you don’t get to judge this game yet” roped-off section for people to play shell-games with.
Start selling your game any time you want, in any state you want. But beware the wrath of the consumer. That’s fair.
EDIT: I realize this could seemingly contradict another comment I just made, where I defended the Early Access program, as a vital means of securing funds for independent developers. To be clear, I think that the function of Early Access should essentially remain, but not be labeled, in any default way.
I think all the games should be on the store, all the time, any time. And it should be up to each developer to make their case, on their own, as to why the customer should be willing to spend money on their product.
Then companies could just say that it’s not finished, add micro transactions and have the same thing as before except without the little early access box.
That’s why I do have some complex feelings about how Early Access should be. I think it’s highly necessary for it to exist, in order to fund truly independent developers, so games that fall outside the mainstream marketable sludge can be created. On the other hand, yeah, there are real pitfalls and attractive nuisance situations, associated with it.
As I said in another comment, I think one option would be to just completely remove all labels and categories from the store. If a game is Early Access, let the game’s own developers say so, in the description. Make the case directly, that this is a game that is still in development. No special, “official” box that says “you should judge this game more favorably, because it’s not finished.” Make the developer tell everyone that situation themselves, in their own words.
Then, if people play the game and realize it’s shitty, they can use the refund system. And if they play for longer than the refund system will allow, then they can tell everyone that the game sucks, and it should be avoided.
That way, the access to early funding remains, but nobody is propped up by an artificial notion of Early Access-ness.
This would also incentive devs to actually finish their game instead of getting stuck in early access limbo
Nah, they’d just call it finished and do the same thing.
For sale: baby tiara, never worn.
Don’t call it stillborn, call it vaporware.
wonder if steam gets 30% of all that too
I can’t understand the hate for Steam/Valve taking 30 percent. Back in the day, when people were forced to rely on traditional brick-and-mortar sales models, developers could consider themselves lucky if they got the 30 percent. When publishers, disc/disk manufacturers, box printers, shippers, and retailers finally got done taking all their cuts, it could amount to more than 70 percent. Easily. The lowly creator of the software was an afterthought, in the payment pecking order.
But noooooo, Valve is eeeevil incarnate, because they take 30 fucking percent. Fuck that. 30 percent is reasonable. And what do they do with that money? Does Gaben flaunt his private jet travel and buy sketchy islands, like a some billionaires? Nah. They pump the money back into weird, tech-focused projects. Modern VR would be ENTIRELY under the control of FACEBOOK AND APPLE, if it wasn’t for Valve spending their money stash on the SteamVR systems.
I know I sound like a fanboy. It’s not even REALLY about any of the stuff I’ve said, so far. The biggest reason why it’s okay for Valve to take 30 percent is to insure that Steam will always exist, and always be thriving, barring a vast and all-encompassing planet-wide economic catastrophe. Nobody has to worry about their Steam library suddenly vanishing. People might be tempted to praise alternative distributors, like Itch.io, because they take only a 10 percent cut. But you only have to look at their website to realize they’re incredibly fragile, by comparison. I don’t know if Itch.io will still be around in ten years, twenty years, certainly not thirty years. Steam WILL be around in fifty years, when I’m an old, old man. I’d be SHOCKED if it wasn’t around a century from now.
That kind of guaranteed future costs money. That is a stone cold fact, whether you like it or not.
EDIT: I just looked it up, and it seems that Gaben does indeed own an island. Pfft. Whatever. I still don’t begrudge Valve existing, exactly the way it exists. If Valve hadn’t built Steam, we’d be living in a universe where Google/Alphabet handled the lion’s share of PC game distribution. Wouldn’t THAT be lovely for everyone?
EDIT 2: the article that I found, implying that Gaben owns an island, appears to be satire. LOL.
Just wanna commend you for proving yourself wrong on one of your own facts. Even if it did turn our you were right about him not owning an island.
Thanks.
Any transaction through steam as far as I understand it.
Space engineers had joined the thread
We as gamers who want this are completely outdone by the insane amount of money some people will spend in this market. Change my mind.
PS. I hate the DLC and micro transaction market as they exist today. But they make 1000x the old market so no way anything changes.
war thunder, destiny 2, what other games are there for the sole purpose of milking multiple payments of money out of people over a long period of time
gta 5 online probably counts too
Doesn’t even have to be the sole reason to be a money killer. WoW, CS2, LoL, Dota. All free to play because if you milk them for $1 for something small it still makes more money than the base game.
Early Access can be easily abused. That’s why I don’t bother with it at all.
As I mentioned to someone else, that’s a shame. The only alternative to Early Access = developers having to go hat-in-hand, begging for up-front investments from heartless corporations. They increasingly won’t fund anything that isn’t fit to be saddled with a games-as-a-service price-gouging model.
When Early Access is abused, it’s destroying that necessary system for all of us, developers and consumers alike. If you want games that aren’t 100 percent mainstream, money-sucking garbage, you should want Early Access to stick around. That’s why I think it should, ya know, suck less, and NOT be abused.
Tower Unite 😒
I think thor said it best, horse armor made more money than starcraft 2 expansion. Thus was the beginning of shit DLC cash grabs
horse armor made more money than starcraft 2 expansion. Thus was the beginning of shit DLC cash grabs
The most annoying thing about that aspect of the phenomenon is how it’s based completely and entirely on a false premise. When you do some crazy new shit and it takes off like gangbusters, you CAN’T JUST ASSUME THAT IT’S GOING TO BE POPULAR FOREVER.
Sometimes, a new product or service is immediately popular because it’s genuinely a hot seller. The day hotcakes were invented, people probably said they were selling like blowjobs. Then they somehow sold even better than blowjobs, so they became the new idiom. But the thing is, that’s not a guaranteed thing, for every product, and you shouldn’t base the future of your industry on your bullshit assumptions.
The goddamned horse armor sold like crazy because it was a new thing. The potential market for $2.50 worth of micro-content was beyond wide open. Huge numbers of people were ready to go “LOL, I’LL BUY THAT INSTEAD OF A CRUNCHWRAP SUPREME.” That should NOT have been an indicator of further success, in and of itself. But big business motherfuckers don’t want to use actual logic, or even real intuition. They just said to themselves “I really want this to be the new easy way of printing money,” and so they have spent all the following years FORCING that paradigm into existence.
But I think it’s a false paradigm. Nobody talks about the money that’s being left on the table, when such a huge percentage of the industry has been given over to microtransaction-based nonsense. The Battle Royale, MOBA, and Hero Shooter genres are as saturated as they’re going to be. What about people (like myself, for instance) who play absolutely none of those games?
I’ve never played them. I’m never going to play them. I’m not even refraining from playing them because I hate microtransactions. I just dislike them, as genres. They’re not my cup of tea. I play mostly play a mixture of sandbox games, RPGs, single-player action and shooter games, strategy games, and VR games, as well as a few survival/crafting/fighting games, like Terraria/Starbound.
I’m not alone. There are other people like me, who always want more intentional, in-depth content. If anybody doubts the possibility for better games to make money, you only need to look at Baldur’s Gate 3. That game has made shitloads of money. Money that corporate advocates of the “we can just print money with skins and stickers” philosophy can never have access to, unless they also pry open their wallets, and invest in real content.
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Stop fucking buying fucking early access fucking games. Companies do shit like this because it’s profitable
There have been many truly amazing early access games though that might not have been made without it (rimworld, factorio, etc)
So glad I got Factorio when it was in EA and before it shot up to twice the price! Incredible game though, I would have gladly paid full release price.
If that was strictly true, I would agree, and I wouldn’t bother talking about it.
But it’s NOT strictly true. There are Early Access developers who actually use the model to get funds for developing games, within reasonable timescales, and without doing exploitative shit.
It’s important for Early Access to exist, because it’s a way for independent developers to exist, completely outside of any big business control. A truly independent developer never has to deal with corporate jackals, breathing down their necks, demanding that they add more microtransactions and gambling into the game. They can make games that are truly outside the mainstream genres, without having to justify themselves to traditional investors.
These are GOOD THINGS. If I truly believed every single Early Access developer was just a scammer, I wouldn’t bother saying any of this. I think Valve needs to get a handle on the system, rather than just letting it twist in the wind, the way they have been. There needs to be a time limit, before a game has to either be released, or else be cut off from further Early Access sales. They need to disallow DLC and other forms of microtransactions, within Early Access games. They need to establish rules about Early Access developers having connections with outside investors, and what exactly would be considered acceptable, within the system.
The developers who use the Early Access program the way it’s supposed to be used are not making massive profits from it. They are paying for the up-front development costs of a game, and hoping that it will turn out to be a big enough success that it will continue to be profitable, after development is complete.
When people do annoying, scam-adjacent shit like selling DLC content for an Early Access game, it fuels opinions like yours. It makes people throw their hands up and say “Early Access is all a scam.” And that fucking sucks. Because if it goes away, there’s no alternative but for indie developers to sign up with traditional corporate psychos, who always try to make games worse.
As an indie dev myself, I really appreciate this take. Spot on.
Same. We’re almost 5 years into an indie project and while the dream is to release as 1.0, the reality is, building games is really fucking hard and going early access brings about a more forgiving mindset from the consumer and enables our team to further invest in the polishing needed to feel good about calling it 1.0. If only we had the bank roll these AAA studios have, but we’re working with pennies and loads of passion to see our dream to fruition.
Good shit, dude. As a fellow indie struggler, I wish you luck!
Thank you! You too homie. One script at a time, one asset at a time… Keep that flame burning until the job is done ✊
I agree that Steam should regulate early access more. The best buyer’s policy in my opinion is to only buy games you know you’ll enjoy in their current state. Any future features are a bonus.
I had great success that way with Dave the Diver, Subnautica, and Satisfactory.
I’ve avoided buying Kerbal Space Program 2 despite 400 hrs on the original because it still feels like a cash grab with not enough content yet.
Weirdly, if you look at it from a purely price-per-hour-of-enjoyment perspective, the two all-time champions in my library are probably Vampire Survivors and Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades.
You couldn’t pick two more different games, in virtually every aspect. One is a minimalist, top-down autoshooter game that established its own genre. It cost me 3 dollars in Early Access. It has come out of Early Access, with flying colors. I have spent 170 hours in it. It is a poster child for the “came out of Early Access as a huge hit” phenomenon.
The other is a VR-only firearms simulation sandbox game, with a whole bunch of different game modes, thousands of meticulously simulated weapons, and a wiener fixation. It entered Early Access in 2016, cost 20 dollars, and is still in Early Access. I have spend 502 hours in it, and it’s by far my most played VR game. It exemplifies a weird third-way philosophy, where a game is literally constantly updated, throughout the Early Access period, to the point that it really doesn’t matter how long it remains in Early Access, because anyone who even vaguely enjoys it has spent so much time in it, and gotten so much value from it that…well, it really doesn’t matter if it ever releases, in ANY state.
BeamNG.drive is another example of that sort of game. Because I’m a weirdo who plays weird sandbox games, it should be no surprise that I also fuck with that game. Although I didn’t pick it up until a couple months ago.
Just to piggyback off of this/give an example of good usage of early access: to me BG3 was great usage of early access. It stayed there for a long time and actually used the early access to get player feedback to improve the game. When the game finally released the only dlc they had was given for free to everyone who played early access, and it doesn’t really change the gameplay experience at all, it was only stuff like an art book and some references to their older game.
Nah there are actually good early access game (Palworld, and predecessor come to mind although predecessor is f2p) but one should use caution when buying Early access games
Holy shit, someone mentioned predecessor on lemmy? Goddamn.
Palworld is pretty good but it is so fucking buggy it actually makes me want to stop playing sometimes and I feel a lot of resentment for having paid for such trash. It will definitely make me more careful to check bug reports and gameplay videos before investing more time and energy into a game in the future.
Bugs I have found so far include:
- Invaders getting stuck really far away from my base and never reaching the base
- Enemies tunneling through the floor and getting stuck there permanently
- Pals being hungry even though the feeder has plenty of food (had to move my feeder to fix it, but still annoying)
- Pals randomly floating in midair and getting stuck there
- Pals getting stuck at the edge of my base and having to pick them up to get them unstuck
- Escape button (in menus) being super flaky (have to press it twice sometimes)
- Click to attack (with melee weapon) sometimes doesn’t work, have to try pressing random buttons to fix it
- Graphics glitches with the pal sphere that I’m holding - randomly flashes between blue and green, so I can’t tell which one I’m about to throw
Controls also suck bigtime. I still keep accidentally throwing pal spheres with Q and I really suck at using 1/3 to switch between pals. They should make it so you have to left click to throw the pal sphere. Should also maybe allow alternative ways of selecting left/right for pals and in menus, other than 1/3. Maybe Ctrl+scroll or something, idk
It also is taking fucking forever to get a gun. I am level 17 and so far do not feel like it’s “Pokemon with guns” at all. I have a shitty spear which is the most powerful melee weapon at my level, yet does almost no damage to level 18+, and a semi-shitty crossbow which is super annoying to get the arrows for (arrows don’t drop from enemies and the grind to manufacture them is super boring)
Get a base and put a fixy in a pen. They drop arrows spheres and coins. No need to farm the arrows. Also lvl 17 is like 3hours of game time Max. So quite early in the game
I wish I had access to Steam - it won’t run in my PC, yet it has all these amazing casual games I want to try!! : ( But I would never buy DLC for a game that hadn’t been (and might never be) released yet.
What kind of PC are you running, a 286 Compaq from the early 90s?
Lord knows, I think this PC was made from rocks and twigs 2000 years ago. It’s still running Windows 7 (I mean - windows 7!! What is this, 1824???) Anyway - I have a newer PC but for some reason, it won’t connect to the internet (!) and this one will, but won’t run anything like steam or any other applications. I’m living in the prehistoric ages, man.
