'But arcades!' Are renting someone else's hardware. Different thing. This did abuse not exist fifteen years ago. 'But free games!' Can just *be free.* Or pay-what-you-want. Or cheap. Or something you already own. How's your back catalog on Steam? This Skinner-box horseshit where a game is \"\"\"free\"\"\" but somehow makes a billion dollars is weaponized frustration. The *handful* of games that were re-released with tiny updates at full price are now the entire industry's goal, thanks to this specific abuse. (And they still got you chumps to buy three 3D versions of Street Fighter.) You can pay the price of a whole-ass game for a *hat.* Lesser versions of that aren't better, just lesser. The opportunity to spend one hundred dollars right the hell now is shoved in your face between rounds. Or dangled each time a lootbox animation juuust misses. Or crammed into your inventory, as a *gift,* mmyes, if only you bought a key. If LoL wants to keep making money they can charge a subscription or sell expansions. Y'know - rational consumer purchasing decisions. Not playing keep-away and then tickling people's balls in a controlled environment where fireworks go off each time you click Confirm Purchase.

https://www.darkpattern.games/

Wait, in what world is a subscription a "rational consumer purchasing decision" where buying characters for a fighting game if you want them as they come out is not? I would prefer to pay for in-game content of any kind, cosmetics included, over paying a subscription for a game. Any day. Especially if the content is characters, as is the case in LoL or Street Fighter. And yeah, I bought three 3D Street Fighter games. And a bunch of characters for each. Even a costume or two. I am extremely on board with that. Money extremely well spent, as far as I'm concerned. Hell, the SF6 community at the moment is *begging* for more cosmetics. They just announced a handful of horny-ass swimsuit costumes and people went *ballistic*. It's not my bag, but if people like them and they know what they're buying who the hell are you to tell them they're wrong, let alone that it should be illegal? I mean, it's a straightforward enough transaction. You think bikini Cammy with tan lines is hot and will pay some money for that skin. I get subsidized by your teenage hormones and keep playing the game I like. Win/win in my book. That's the problem with this train of thought. There's some stuff where you and I agree there are bad practices and we can probably agree on some common sense regulation for them. But if you're going to come at me with a maximalist approach that boils down to "games I don't like shouldn't exist" we're going to disagree. Which, if nothing else, is a good reason for regulation of creative products to be relatively loose whenever possible. I was not on board with Hillary wanting to ban Mortal Kombat in the 90s because she didn't like hearts being ripped off and I'm not on board with people wanting to ban free to play games now. It made sense to have age ratings in the 90s and it makes sense to have that and other common sense regulations now.

> “games I don’t like shouldn’t exist”

This site is fake, it doesn't have Dead By Daylight at the absolute top of dark pattern design, and says DBD Mobile (now shut down) is only -1.43? Also, why would anyone need an account for this? Isn't this just a database? What, does it have a linked forum?

Except the arcade games were at least upfront about it and didn't DELIBERATELY turn up the exploitation a few notches when a potentially EXTRA profitable player was detected by an algorithm made specifically for that purpose. Maximizing corporate profiteering has become the best funded and least regulated scientific discipline in the world and it's not even close.

There are 14,000 games released on Steam every year. What percentage do you believe contain in-game purchases? It's quite literally just the giant AAA venture capitalist backed studios that do this. Just don't buy them. It's like saying if we allow AI art to continue soon there will be no more humans making art. People will always make art. People will always make games. If all the art you see is corporate slop that's a you problem.

If you want to say that certain types of business models, like paying for RNG where you don't know what you're buying, are predatory, I would be with you on that. But your extreme hardline stance of "nothing should cost money ever" is not a reasonable place to draw the line. At least some of what you're railing against should be perfectly fine.

I don't "delight in their exploitation", I am one of the people who buy this stuff. I am not a victim just because you decide I am. I have some say in this. So hell yeah, bait me, daddy. To this day, Dragon Ball FighterZ is probably the best gaming experience I've ever had. I was there at ground floor, bought every character, watched every tournament, got competitive. I ended up with three copies of the game, all 100%-ed and with hundreds of hours of play. And the only thing that bums me out is that they had to bail out of it early, presumably to go make Marvel Tokon. I will be on ground floor for Tokon, and I will be funding that mouse engine with a bunch of piecemeal cash, I'm sure. And I need you to listen to me when I tell you that it's going to be on purpose, that I'm not a victim, that I hope that treadmill lasts for a good long while and that the game is good enough to support it. So please spare me the benevolent outrage. I don't need your protection from my own taste. I would very much appreciate an offline-playable version of the game I can buy with all the DLC down the line, like I did for Marvel vs Capcom 3 or Street Fighter IV, and thanks to the weirdly wholesome interaction between developers and the FGC I may actually get that at some point to support tournament play. But otherwise? Nobody is complaining. You can go save somebody else. And hey, I say this being a big fan of single player games, and a big supporter of physical media and game preservation. But you come here to tell me that some of my favourite games —and I'm talking game-changing experiences I cherish deeply— should have been illegal and I just don't know better? Yeah, not gonna fly, Hillary.

>> I get subsidized by your teenage hormones and keep playing the game I like. Uh huh. > So hell yeah, bait me, daddy. Nope, pulling the chute on this conversation.

Half the industry by revenue and growing. 'But indies!' means nothing, when you count two games with $43 in revenue between them, like that's twice as many games as Fortnite. > People will always make art. People will always make games. If all the art you see is corporate slop that’s a you problem.

> But arcades!' Are renting someone else's hardware. Different thing. This did abuse not exist fifteen years ago. Yes it did, and even longer. Quite a few arcade games were made with intentional difficulty spikes to suck up as many quarters as possible, not to be a fair game.

Read what you quoted.

It wasn't even that hidden back then, games like candy crush admitted to journalists that they changed the difficulty based on spending habits. The fact they might have that formula fine tuned even more shouldn't be surprising.

Just think what we could accomplish if we focused efforts elsewhere...

We're saying the games we like couldn't exist without the business models you want to ban. How does something like Dragon Ball FighterZ continue to expand if you are forbidding them from selling anything that would make character expansions possible? If you want to say "nothing should cost money ever", then the natural outcome of that is that we just don't get new characters anymore. In effect, you *are* banning these games by making it impossible for them to exist like this.

I remember watching some animated YouTube video years ago about what if we did things so n a way that made sense, like having farms in locations where there was plenty of water and we didn't ship cheap stuff around the world but I have been unable to find that video

Stop lying about what I said. "Nothing inside a video game" does not mean "nothing ever." And you know goddamn well that fighting games had incremental re-releases, decades before this abuse was possible. Or, sell actual expansions. You want characters to cost twenty bucks each? Fine, sell that *like a game,* not like a fucking hat. If it's on your hard drive, in your game, you already fucking have it, and charging real money is a scam. Or, if you want continuing revenue for an online service - make it a service. Sell subscriptions. Oh sorry, do people not like that? Yeah no shit, because it's up-front about how much it costs, rather than luring people in and gouging them for untold sums. Or, a game comes out, and plainly exists, and doesn't become the version that's squeezed a billion dollars out of ten percent of players over ten years. Oh well! TF2 without this bullshit would still be TF2. People would still be playing 2fort, forever, the same way they're still doing Ryu vs Ken on Street Fighter 2 Turbo. I do not respect the dishonest conflation of 'FighterZ doesn't get to expand forever' with 'FighterZ would be *banned.*'

>And you know goddamn well that fighting games had incremental re-releases, decades before this abuse was possible. Of course I know, I know how much it fucking sucked! No one wants to go back to that! You'd rather spend $60 on Street Fighter II: The World Warrior, then spend $60 on Street Fighter II': Champion Edition, then spend $60 on Street Fighter II Turbo: Hyper Fighting, then spend $60 on Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers, then spend $60 on Super Street Fighter II Turbo? That's better to you than being able to get the patches for free, with the option of buying characters at a reasonable price, all while still retaining compatibility with opponents on the latest version even if you don't spend a dime? How is that better? How? >Or, if you want continuing revenue for an online service - make it a service. Sell subscriptions. Oh sorry, do people not like that? No, no I don't like that! I would much rather buy a character once than have to subscribe to them forever! If I buy a character I get to keep them, if I subscribe I don't. And I'm not getting gouged, I know what the price tag is. If anything, a subscription is gouging because I have to keep paying again and again in order to keep what I should've only had to pay for once. I'm actually baffled that you're seriously trying to suggest subscriptions as a better alternative. Like... seriously? Really? >I do not respect the dishonest conflation of 'FighterZ doesn't get to expand forever' with 'FighterZ would be banned.' *FighterZ as we know it* would not exist in your world. In your world, it'd just be the 1.0 base game and that'd be it, but I know you know we're talking about what FighterZ was able to become over the course of its lifespan thanks to DLC. You're taking this needlessly aggressive tone accusing us of misconstruing you, but I know you know damn well what we're saying here while you keep misconstruing us. Don't accuse me of being dishonest when you're playing dumb like this.

Nothing *inside* a video game. That part is not optional. I've dealt with too many cranks who see me arguing - JUST SELL GAMES - and then go 'you want it for *free!*' No, folks, *you* want it for free. You want to play endlessly-updated games, 'subsidized by teenage hormones.' You imagine that *you* would never be taken for ungodly sums of money. Even if you're right, you're counting on other people being taken for all the money you're not paying, and more. That's what it means, when this abuse makes more money. Predatory abuse is inseparable from this business model. Maximum revenue comes from addiction and frustration. You can be made to want whatever bullshit they're allowed to push. *That's how games work.* They mechanically convince you to value arbitrary nonsense. edit: oh shit, I thought I hit submit on this five hours ago.