Games Industry (The Absolute State Of)

Nah, it's fine. I just felt like I'd said everything and everyone seems pretty set in their opinions

Re: AC- All I can say is if people weren't buying them, they wouldn't be there. They will be incorporated into the design to push people towards buying them. You can't really know what changes were made to the game to do that (lower XP gain, increased grind, for example). Even if you don't buy them, you're still affected by their inclusion. There's also all the special editions, exclusive content, preorder bonuses and all that. It all leads to an overall worse experience and this discussion was initially about value and people gleefully celebrating what a great deal we're getting

My point really is publishers aren't giving us a good deal, we sometimes get good games despite them

You can avoid it but most people aren't very strong willed. I know this forum generally skews towards misanthropy and people are stupid and deserve their misery, etc but it is scummy and purposefully exploitative and I don't see it as something that should just be accepted

Agree that it's shitty, and as I said I'd be perfectly happy to see a ban on some of the more scummy things. I certainly wish people wouldn't accept it (if only by just not buying the crap), but we're not locked into playing EA/ActiBlizzard/Ubisoft/whatever games, nobody is forced to preorder, etc. Ideally we wouldn't have to be discerning with what we buy and play to avoid it, but we can be.

I honestly have no idea what it's like on most consoles these days, so most of my experience is based on PC.
That and Switch, which is both weirdly similar and different to PC.

A surprising number of indie games from Steam are available to download for Switch, stuff that would never have been possible before digital distribution. Plus their sales are on a par with Steam sales, and there's also as much junk as Steam.
But it means there's this huge price gap. You can pay 40+ quid for 1st party nintendo games that rarely get discounted, or get great indie games for 50p-5quid.

Personally I'd never buy any of the 40+ quid games as I can find stuff very similar for a fraction of the price (Zelda 50 / Fenyx 5 / Wavetale 2) (Mario Kart 50 / Team Sonic 4) (Pokemon 40, TemTem 8) etc..
But kids of course want what they want, and they want Pokemon or Zelda or whatever is cool at the moment.
[Edit:] the point not being the comparative quality of the games, but the prices being a factor of 10 different [/edit]

But I tend to mentally price those differently for some reason. I guess I just shrug and accept the price for their games.

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I assume gamepass is following the Netflix/Disney+ model of taking massive losses in the hope of building up enough recurring revenue that they'll make it out the other side. It seems to have worked for Netflix, but less so for Disney+ (though personally I bet it will in the long run). Microsoft has deep enough pockets to make it work, it just depends if they tough it out or blink.

But like a lot of things, I imagine there will be diminishing returns as the number of titles and artists/devs increases. It was much easier for indie titles to get noticed back in the early days of Steam, and for titles to get play in the early days of Gamepass. But once gamepass has thousands of titles, both old and new, it's going to be much harder for them to claim some massive value.
Plus it'll remain to be seen what kind of games the subscription model favours. It'll probably affect the kind of games that are made.

I can't claim to be an expert on Social Media music stars, but I'm not sure all the money is going to record labels. There seem to be quite a few artists making it huge from their bedrooms. (Though of course that'll be a tiny percentage of those that are trying).
Spotify is clearly only profitable for a select few, but if you manage to make it big *without* all the money going to a record label then I assume it'd be pretty profitable. Similar to those few youtubers who are making millions.
I guess self-published games have the same potential, as well as the same downsides.

There was an article recently about the creation of Steam, and it mentioned that back then it was standard for publishers to give devs a big advance, and then take 85% of the proceeds. Which was one of the things that spurred them to make steam. I guess that's still the case for big AAA games, but little indies now have the chance to put their stuff directly on Steam with only a 30% valve cut, so it seems to have taken a similar path to the music industry.

True, but previously the publishers probably wouldn't have taken the risk at all, so the so the name wouldn't have been made at all.

iirc the retail stores would have taken a 30% cut from the proceeds of physical games as well, which would have been before the 85% cut the publisher got.

I said previously in this thread but it really baffles me the love that steam gets from consumers. They're making a killing as a parasite.

Yes for PC gaming in the 00's they helped pace the way for DD and a lot of indie devs would have never seen the light of day if they didn't get exposure and distribution via steam.

These days it's not necessary. Plenty of devs have proven direct distribution can work (like Rimworld or Minecraft) or you can just make your own digital distribution platform with blackjack and hookers (CDProjekt Red). They don't currently add value and make a *killing* doing it. At least publishers put some upfront capital investment in to title development, and do marketing. Steam does nothing but make money, and people apparently love them for it.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpwwyj6v24xo

This? (Literally the first result I got on searching )

Predictably, the comments section is rife with brave souls posting to defend this poor defenceless multibillion dollar company.....

It's mainly convenience.

All your games in a single library with mods, forums, friends, user reviews, scheduled updates, guides and a host of other things are all a few clicks away.

It's fairly stable and the download speeds are excellent too. 

Agreed - the Steam fanboys are bonkers. Looking at some of the 'Discussions' over the years and lunatic fringe is probably too light a term.

Some of the arguments I hear against Epic is that they have to have another login. Is it that much of an issue? I use Epic for the free games and I have no problem with having another login. It's a mild inconvenience at best.

I think there’s a couple of things going on. First, I do think that someone has done a good job of characterising platform fees as something paid by individual developers rather than by publishers or, more accurately, the users buying games. In the case of steam, if you’re happy losing things like the ability to refund you can get pretty much every single game out there on a minimum 15% discount on sites like Green Man and Fanatical so that’s half that fee dealt with. I already picked up Square Enix’s offerings this autumn (Saga and Dragon Quest) for 20% off apiece. The value for me with the remainder I pay is obviously largely client features like Fossilized shader caches for my deck, input advancements and cloud saving but there’s another big thing: I’ve now largely moved off windows on my main system in favour of Linux and with Steam bankrolling Codeweavers that’s actually been largely painless for games. Hell, when I upgrade my Mac I’ll toss them some money for Crossover too.

Secondly, the undercurrent of entitlement in this argument goes both ways. I don’t have the time to buy and play everything I want to; as a result I’m cutting back on games for often capricious reasons. I didn’t buy FF16 because they don’t have Japanese lip sync in cutscenes. I’m not going to pick up the new Trails game that comes out this week, at least on release, because they brought back Rean. I didn’t buy the new Prince of Persia yet because I saw people having issues with cloud saves and haven’t circled back to it because I have too many games on. I nearly didn’t buy Kunitsugami because they characterised it as a tactics game - luckily they released a demo which let me realise it is actually the new Pixeljunk Monsters game I wanted. Especially at a time of year like this when I have four massive RPGs hoving into view, anything which gives me an excuse to cut a game loose and disconnect from the FOMO is almost welcome.

I’m still fucked when Nintendo release the new Switch though, I’ve got so much stuff put aside until I see exactly what happens with back compatibility and updates.

If there's one I'd actually "fanboy" a bit over (by which I mean have a preference for) it's GOG, because they actually do a lot of work to make games available and functional, it's DRM free, there's the option to download installers, and the few times I've contacted their customer support they've been excellent. I like the client more as well.


Yet Rimworld and CDProjekt games are on Steam, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if they've seen far more sales and revenue there.


That half of all releases never turn a profit doesn't necessarily mean much in itself. Half the releases on Steam are probably asset flips and the like, which is another problem as it makes discoverability for genuine small indies more difficult.

Yeah, I'll avoid Epic when possible because it's Epic and the Windows store because I just don't like it. But it's not that I'm "boycotting" them or because I'm married to Steam or any other platform - I just prefer buying my games elsewhere.

Moonlight + sunlight allow you trigger a "mouse mode" for the controller stick for clicking bespoke launcher nonsense.

The "I'll only buy on Steam!" thing is a bit of a mish-mash of different factors though.

I'd imagine that the percentage that are just blindly-loyal fanboys is pretty small.

For a lot it's probably convenience. Combined with a general dislike of having to install additional launchers and software (if you already have steam).
Most of them are ok now, but a lot of them were awful at launch. (As was Steam, but it had a big head start to improve things).

Plus there's the issue of enforced exclusivity, especially on Epic, that annoys some people.

Personally, I buy games from a bunch of places, so I'm not that bothered. Though I will note that Steam has a bunch of additional functionality (TV Mode, Family Sharing, Remote Co-op, Controller support, Steamworks mods, etc... )
Some of which I use, some of which I never touch. So it would depend a lot on the user how much value that adds.

But I also don't get the idea of Steam being some kind of parasite, which seems just as idealogical.
At the end of the day it's basically just a store. A store which is entirely optional. Sure, it charges a percentage, but it's a pretty industry and retail standard percentage, and people almost always have the option to buy from somewhere else.

You can buy your physical copy of a game from a bunch of stores, and all of them will charge a percentage. Some may charge more or less, or have higher or lower prices, and some may be more or less convenient. You may have your favorite that you prefer to buy from. It's no different.

I have much more of an issue with platform specific stores and their monopolies (Apple store, Google Play store, Nintendo store, PS and Xbox stores? (I assume, I have no experience).
Which have essentially the same issues as Steam, while also being basically mandatory.