Skate players were explicitly told map areas would not be “locked behind a paywall”
i remember pointing out that this would happen in a couple places and ppl said i was just being negative. like a live service skate game is a dead in the water idea but ppl were so starved for skate content they just didn’t listen to sense. look where they are now
Following this period, all players can skate Grom from April 14 through May 5 […] But then, from May 5 through June 2, you’ll need to either buy Skate Pass Premium to enter Grom, or gain access by turning in 500 earnable Rip Chips for a 24-hour ticket that lets you skate in this area temporarily.
Not only are they using microrranscations in a ‘new’ way, but they rely on fomo to call players in. “What if I miss on the period of free access? I better hurry” “Well what else can i do as a player?”
It might be that i am playing nes games and having fun with them, but i personally think that a game that pulls this shit once can do it forever to keep me engaged against my common sense. If the conditions for the players are not fair, the smart move is not to play the game.
Edit: if some of you want a modern looking game for the nes, try gravity armor metal storm by Irem. Arcade style, but it’s fairly advanced for being a classic 8-bit game. Maybe lesser known than the mabdatory contra rom / cartridge in the corner of your rom, but very good for modern players in particular.
My brain just shuts off when I read stuff like this.
Man, I dunno. Fuck AAA gaming, I’ll go play something else.
Indies are where its at. Or classic games, especially with mods
Games are a modern media and I think suffer from a lot of modern engagement mechanics.
We need to stop viewing them as a constant stream of “new content” and more as an established library.
Absolutely the problem. They’ve stopped trying to make fun and started trying to exploit psychological weaknesses and hijack our internal reward systems to rinse us of both time and money.
Fun is no longer the driving factor, and it makes me feel not quite angry or nauseous, but somewhere around those emotions.
They’ve stopped trying to make fun and started trying to exploit psychological weaknesses and hijack our internal reward systems to rinse us of both time and money
Exactly, and the fact that Jeffrey Epstein was pro microtransactions really tells you the kind of scum we’re dealing with here
I shifted to that view a long time ago. I have a selection of “classics” I play on rotation and I add a few indies or modern ports every now and then.
The multiplay scene went in a direction I don’t intend to follow. Some old friends are thinking about hosting a retro lan party, but I’m going to make it clear that I’m walking if they try sneaking in any modern shit.
Thinking about it now, I haven’t bought any game with EA’s name on it since Dead Space 3.
Man, remember back in the day when you just went and bought a game and then played it?
I still just buy games and play them.
They’re just 99,99% not ‘triple A’ games but from developers or publishers who care about games.
In American-style neo-liberalism, everything must have a price tag. If it doesn’t generate a profit, it can’t exist.
Then people should stop buying, otherwise nothing will change. People complained about Nintendo switch 2, yet they bought it.
This is actually good advice… in isolation. Encouraging people to spend their money more wisely can bring awareness to an issue but it ultimately does little to implement change. Sure, you and I (and the Fediverse as a whole) might be hyper-vigilant about these kind of things but the average consumer isn’t. Continuing with your Nintendo example, Nintendo has decades of brand recognition and a zealous fanbase to satisfy the demand. An eager gaming press will gladly take free hardware from Nintendo for positive coverage.
Real change won’t happen until the tap is turned off, so to speak. These companies are taking advantages of gaps in the law that permit them to get away with this. Antitrust law in the US dates back to a time when steam-powered trains were still common and the last breakup involved a telephone company. When AT&T was broken up, the home computer (desktop in modern parlance) was just starting to take off.
So, yes, we should spend our money elsewhere when we see this kinds of corporate abuses but until you starve the beast, keep expecting these kinds of behaviors.
People aren’t playing or paying for stuff in Skate. The player count drop off has been substantial.
I understand the sentiment here but let’s note that you do not go buy Skate. because it’s free to play.
Remember when free to play meant free to play?
I remember shareware.
But… shareware was literally designed to paywall the majority of an application or game until you paid for it. It was a free shareable demo.
Free to play games are similar to old shareware though… You get to play some of it for free then pay for the rest.
An important detail is that this rental option is paid for in grind currency, not paid currency. Yes, “for now”.
Even just the idea of having to ‘grind’ for a virtual currency, it’s something that modern games do and it turns them into a job. Yes, I said it. Games that have long grind hours just to access basic resources. These are really a second job sometimes, thinking of always online games like rust too. I like my games to be on when I need them to be. To save an be able to go back to them whenever i feel like. Earthbound had a commentary from the lead programmer and creator of the game in the same tone, that his game would be easy to save, quit and restart in a very casual way by design (ness’s dad personally calls you, the player, if the game runs for long enough, to basically tell you to go touch some grass). I have found certain modern titles to be made for long hour daily marathons, else you’re not adavncing enough. I emulate old stuff now.
Yeah, that’s just to normalise rentable levels. Once it has been begrudgingly accepted, there’ll be one that requires premium currency. Never buy EA.
You’ll still be able to buy them with ingame currency, but itll be days worth of farming or BEST VALUE 4.99.
They’ll still be able to hide behind an ethical “no mtx required” label.
Why days worth of farming? To help give the player a sense of “pride and accomplishment” of course.
People are still playing EA games after the take over by Saudis/Jared Kushner??? Sorry, I feel no empathy for these gamers.
there’s no moral consumption under capitalism so many people just don’t care
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i know, for my persuasive argument let me start with
you are just a piece of shit humanbeing
yeah, a bit too extreme take from me. I’m just so annoyed about people who apathetically keep supporting things that make our world worse or that are produced from suffering of others.
at what point does understanding become endorsing
when you are aware of the things company is doing and still continue buying from them. Though if the company has monopoly and you are dependent of the product, then its a bit different.
idk. I’ve heard we can still consume pussy.
That poor cat, are you forcing it to play EA games???
Animal Humane Society operates the primary animal cruelty reporting line in Minnesota: 612-772-9999 or report online at investigations@animalhumanesociety.org.
The cat is being eaten brah
thank you
while you’re at it, i have also been making this lion watch infowars nonstop for the last all of its life and it is very gay.
What kind of sucker buys from EA?
Split Fiction and It Takes Two were pretty great.
Add Mass Effect, Dead Space and Star Wars Jedi series…
But yeah I wish all of these were DRM free, without any online connection and on GOG.
I only bought Split Fiction because it didn’t come with the EA launcher. It seems to be a recent decision of theirs to not include it on some games on Steam, but they’re not doing it retroactively. It Takes Two I played on Game Pass for a dollar, because I’m not willing to put up with EA’s additional DRM.
It Takes Two actually removed the EA App in a patch a while back.
I think they allow studios they only publish for and don’t own like Hazelight the freedom to remove the EA App DRM now, but EA won’t pay for the dev time for their back catalogue.
Thanks for the link, though the store page does still say it requires an EA account. Is that just outdated? Dragon Age: The Veilguard also doesn’t have an EA app requirement, so this is a thing they’re doing with studios they own too.
IIRC it still requires an EA account for online play, but not if you play offline.
I have it takes two, played the whole thing on steam without EA launcher. Was on my steam deck, so maybe linux dodged that somehow?
I believe it’s still running in the background and makes it an extra pain in the ass to play without internet. I ran into that one with Jedi: Fallen Order when trying to play on the train (I only paid $4 for it and still felt ripped off). The store page still lists that it’s there. It’s why whenever I get around to the Dragon Age games, I can play the first one on GOG and the fourth one on Steam (no EA launcher), but unless something changes, the best option appears to be pirating 2 and 3.
EA gives their studios the ability to decide their own revenue models.
This change likely came because they weren’t as profitable as predicted so they had targets to make up for.
This is a great example for the moral justifications of piracy. The bytes for the maps are on your hard drive, why the fuck should you not be allowed to play on them? When someone playing a pirated copy has a better experience than someone on a
boughtlicensed copy something’s not right.Uh…Jared Kushner owns EA now, so I don’t know why this would be relevant to anyone.
Along with his Saudi oil tycoon buddies.
I don’t know why EA would be relevant to anyone for the past 20+ years, but here we are.
because they have exclusive rights to making an NFL video game
The fun part is…I tried the newest one on game pass recently. Aside from roster updates it’s the same game I bought on disc 20 years ago
lol if it was the same game from 20 years ago itd actually be pretty good. that would be madden 05 era which some say is the peak of madden
Well, I was looking forward to a new Mass Effect, but playing something like that made by Kushner and the Saudis would probably make tears in reality. Like, I’m pretty sure the paradox will make serious issues.
After all these things, why are people still buying anything from EA? Just boycott them.
Skate is free to play, nothing was bought.
Apparently the cosmetic microtransactions didn’t make enough money. So now they are putting locations behind a paywall.
Majority of people are NPCs
We’re now expected to rent imaginary spaces for our characters to play the game we already purchased in?
Is advocating people be burned at the stake against the ToS here? Because I’m advocating the fuck out of that.
Nobody purchased Skate, it is free to play.
They just promised not to lock locations behind a paywall, which the executives decided to change.
I see a clear correlation between the decline of tar-and-feathers and riding people out on a rail and the rise of terrible business practices.
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Yes. Remember when we burned people at the stake? Whatever happened to that? Just live stream a few billionaires and child rapists being slowly burned as an object lesson to the rest and I imagine things would change fairly quickly.
Remember when we burned people at the stake? Whatever happened to that?
Climate change and the rising cost of fuels is what happend.
Someone really needs to start an eco friendly, low carb, gluten free, vegan burning-at-the-stake materials company.
Yet people have zero self control and keep giving them money.
Exactly. EA do it because enough people allow them to do it.
I really don’t understand people like that, though. There are plenty of great games that don’t have predatory monetisation. Yet millions and millions opt to get fleeced. This shit won’t stop as long as people keep falling for it.
let them I’ll keep adding more hours to megabonk.
EA literally had one job:
- Make Skate 2 but with a new area and updated graphics.
And EA went and fucked it up being greedy. And they wonder why Steam is killing it.
I would settle for Skate 2 without the soundtrack so they can release it again. No improvements. There is a glitch where you push a few buttons(throw board, turn right, jump, force pull board and grab board before landing) and go flying while the game physics shits the bed. It was great for getting to places that were otherwise inaccessible or not yet unlocked and for getting real high Hall of Meat scores. Imperfections like that are what make a great game perfect.
I would say this tracks for Saudi Arab-EA, but they did this kind of shit before the Saudis owned them.
Honestly from a business perspective, EA is one if the smartest publishers out there. They made a game and stripped away most of the functionality and then sold it for full price. They then slowly added the content back in content packs and people gladly paid. That was The Sims. And it’s had like three sequels, all monetized the exact same way. And people keep paying them.
I still have Skate 3 installed on my Xbox for those times when I just want to chill for an hour. It makes me a little sad when I see what its become nowadays…
