I’m saying I believe mobile gaming has played a stronger role in pushing the industry towards the freemium model.
With mobile gaming becoming bigger than consoles and PC combined years ago and it wasn’t through selling titles.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/05/27/mobile-games-spending/
Point is traditional gamers overlook the juggernaut that is mobile gaming, since they are only fixated on consoles and PC not realizing how absolutely financially huge mobile gaming is on its own, and showed that the model is extremely effective by overtaking consoles and PC.
Consoles were and still are more mainstream than PC with some companies claiming PC gaming is dying for so long that is took a long time for other companies to start giving a go at a storefront on PC.
I just don’t really buy the Steam factor, since most people’s exposure to mtx, iap, and in game ads has been through mobile gaming. Like if they don’t even play CS or TF2 they don’t even know about it at all which would be someone like me, but mobile gaming has been so easily accessible that even “non gamers” like old people were sucked into stuff like bejeweled.
Most games have also been console ports to PC than the other way around too. Steam and PC emergence has felt like more a recent thing that started taking hold last gen with companies finally coming around to porting stuff to PC.
That’s not to say they haven’t had a hand in it, but it seems overstated with rise in the freemium model across platforms being the main driver. Even the concept of gacha existed before video games.
Yeah, I don’t think lot of gamers realize just how huge the mobile gaming market is and how influential it is with other companies following trends of proven money makers.
Like Apple ranked third in gaming revenue with 15.3 billion in 2021, and traditional gamers wouldn’t think of Apple when it comes to gaming.
Wasn’t it more mobile gaming that had a bigger impact on mtx and loot boxes with games there having consumers less willing to pay more than 99 cents at the time and having to rely on the freemium model as well as having an enormous user base with the accessibility of smartphones?
I keep hearing tf2 and cs go but maybe it’s because I got into PC games late, but had no clue about loot boxes. And average gamer or last least the younger ones grew up playing consoles and then mobiles games more than PCs at the time aside from PC only games like league of legends, cs, and so on.
Seems to be other games too
https://www.techspot.com/news/105709-windows-11-24h2-update-breaks-ubisoft-games-fix.html
On another note being subbed to similar communities across fediverse kind of makes articles that popped up a day ago and sometimes longer show up again give me feelings of deja vu.
Reviews are more relevant to customers who are buying the game than people who own the game.
It’s no different than people putting in a bad review because a product they got broke on them.
When it comes to digital PC games on changing hardware and OS what the game was at launch is not the same years later. Who’s ever fault it is for the game being in a broken state doesn’t change it is broken, so reviews being updated to reflect the change is helpful for people actually buying games.
There’s been issues raised for a while. Fixes don’t always happen that quickly if ever.
https://www.techspot.com/news/105709-windows-11-24h2-update-breaks-ubisoft-games-fix.html
24 hour fix was mentioned by you, but review bombs happening after issues having popped up all the way back in October in the article is indicative of current owners being fed up and now resorting to public pressure for fixes while also serving as a disclaimer to potential buyers who don’t keep up with gaming news.
I don’t understand. These reviews seem accurate to people who have yet to buy the game, so the score properly reflecting the current state of the game warning potential buyers to not buy it.
Reviews would be useless if they didn’t change and people buying the game because reviews reflecting game is fine.
You are just ignoring that the installers can be downloaded and saved. Or even just the game directory can continue to work.
For people who value that it is a difference. Even how the game works is different with how some don’t work offline or lose ability to function offline once verification expires compared to non DRM counterparts.
You are an idiot acting as if DRM and DRM free is the same as though some license terms is the only determining factor.
Those are terminologies corporations care about. But, for real life use there is a difference between a product that can be remotely taken away and products that can’t. Otherwise could be argued there is no difference between a pirated copy of Red Dead Redemption 2 and a legit one, which there is once you try to play offline.
I’ve enjoyed how I can still play the games I first got on my PC were increased resolution and fps by just going to the settings instead of begging for devs to push an update. Also not being rendered unplayable on new hardware like on my older consoles. For longevity my PC games have aged really nicely compared to the games I got for consoles over the generations.
On July 27th (Saturday) I uploaded a new trailer announcing the Steam launch date. On July 30th (Tuesday) I was contacted by the Epic Store, proposing that I enter into an exclusivity agreement with them instead of releasing DARQ on Steam. They made it clear that releasing DARQ non-exclusively is not an option. I rejected their offer before we had a chance to talk about money.
…
It was important to me to give players what they wanted: options. A lot of people requested that DARQ be made available on GOG. I was happy to work with GOG to bring the game to their platform. I wish the Epic Store would allow indie games to be sold there non-exclusively, as they do with larger, still unreleased games (Cyberpunk 2077), so players can enjoy what they want: a choice.
That’s not what the conversation was about. It was about whether the business model is actually viable.
If the business of that section is turning a profit it lends more support as opposed to being seen as a side project that doesn’t need to turn a profit. Which is why I included GOG into the mix, since Microsoft and Epic are huge companies with alternative revenue streams.
Loss leaders that lead to buying other things that lead to overall profitability for that section of the business.
This entire division is operating at a loss. Point isn’t that it is unusual or underhanded. It’s that because of the way the division is currently run it is not a business model to point to as being sustainable.
When I see sales of Playstation games on PC the numbers are very underwhelming compared to other big third party titles. In contrast helldivers 2 got insane numbers when it launched simultaneously.
I don’t think launch hype sales can be overlooked and how much may potentially be lost. If people are willing to wait then by the time game is available hype is less and it’s more likely for people to move on or wait for even steeper sales.
I think if I wanted to play EA games online back in the day on PS3 I had to make an account and sign in and I remember how annoying as shit it was trying to type in a password and email with a controller.