Who said "why aren't you playing it"? I said you *should* play it. Very different things. I know why you're not playing it. It's because you're a sourpuss that doesn't like good games and does like being angry on the Internet. I'm saying you should change that and play good games. Don't even need to spend hundreds on them. Just throw a tenner at them on sale, give them a look, maybe. Also, and I say this with utmost sincerity, I am not a serious person. Wish I was even less serious. I'm a bit too stiff for comfort, really.

Scams work by choice. Putting a gun to someone's head is a mugging. Scams, you walk into freely, and still get robbed. You don't quite get nothing... but for the money, you don't get much. What game could sell for $130, *on sale,* and be taken seriously? That shit only works because breaking it up into little pieces obfuscates the total cost. Same shit as "five easy payments!" in TV infomercials. And $130 is the low, low end. So many of these games, especially the ones that slog on for years, have *thousands of dollars* in stupid shit you can blow your money on. Gambling makes it worse - but worse isn't necessary, for it to be bad. > calling everything predatory Can we please go one interaction without you lying to me about my own opinions? I called skins predatory. Because Jesus Christ, have you seen Fortnite? They could ditch whatever mechanisms you consider beyond-the-pale, and the whole game would still exist as a funnel to exchange your whole wallet in exchange for playable references. I will again grant that this is the gentle end of the spectrum. But it's all the same spectrum. There's no hard cutoffs between thirty-seven characters at five bucks apiece, and pay-to-win weapon unlocks. Grinding instead would be worse. It's even less like an actual product. All incentives point straight toward maximum revenue through engineered frustration.

And you keep pretending I said "nothing should ever be sold." Or “nothing should cost money ever.” Do you need a diagram?

We don't have to leave *your stated examples* to find disproof of your pet dichotomy. SF4 had the same kind of evolution while selling versions like they still came on cartridges. It's possible. You just don't like it. Unless you mean one single byte of FighterZ being different would be a completely different game, in which case, just, shut up. You keep trying to treat any change what-so-ever as equivalent to the whole game ceasing to exist. That's horseshit. You need to stop.

I already told you that SF4 is exactly what people *don't* want to go back to. The game was widely criticized for the fact that you had to buy every upgrade or be left behind. You might be the only person in the world who thinks that's better than what we have now. By the way, despite characters not being DLC when they should've been, SF4 *did* sell costume DLC, which you seem to think is the worst thing ever. IIRC, the kicker with SF4's costumes is that your opponent couldn't see them unless they also bought the costumes, and that was also something people disliked because they didn't want to buy costumes no one will see.

I did. I just didn't give you the clean yes-or-no you're prepared to posture about. > The alternative is we either break compatibility, or the content doesn’t get made at all since you don’t seem to want anyone to get paid to make it. Do you have object permanence? Because you keep pretending we didn't go over the obvious alternatives, repeatedly. You forgot your own examples include games that did not have this business model, but still plainly got made, and took a shitload of your money. Do you honestly not know the difference between "nothing inside a video game should cost real money" and "everything should be free?" Because that impossible confusion would explain a lot of this conversation. I know you understand charging money for things inside a game *can* be abusive. You have no trouble calling gambling or FOMO "predatory." Would you respect someone telling you, that just means you don't want those games made? Fortnite, *banned!* Call of Duty, *deleted!* Never made it past 1.0! How much of that shit would you take, from someone insisting "at least it's not pay-to-win?" Pay-to-win is worse, surely. So anything less abusive than that must be fine. And if you don't respect all the money developers get from pay-to-win, you must want them to to *starve.*

If nothing costs money, nothing is sold. Are you trying to play dumb here?

This is trolling. It'd be fine if we never talk again.

Can *you* go one interaction without the excessively hostile tone? We started this conversation because you said that the act of selling anything at all in games is predatory.

"Pay to skip the grind" is weaponized frustration. Free games that somehow make a billion dollars only exist to drag people across their wallet-hooks.

>I did. I just didn't give you the clean yes-or-no you're prepared to posture about. If I ask you a yes-or-no question, and you say 'nuh-uh', you did not answer the question. In fact, you haven't answered a single question I've ever tried to ask you over the course of this conversation. Do you play competitive fighting games at all? Do you know anything at all of this world? Do you seriously think having to pay for every edition of SF2 and SF4 separately is somehow better than being able to continue playing against anyone even with the base game? Should the games I know and love be able to exist in the form that made them the games I know and love? >You forgot your own examples include games that did not have this business model, but still plainly got made, and had major updates, and took a shitload of your money. No, I gave you an example of a game that broke compatibility and was widely criticized for doing so. It is not a model that we should ever go back to, no one else in the world besides you likes that. The new model is better because it preserves compatibility. Do you understand the point I am making here? >I know you understand charging money for things inside a game can be abusive. Yes, sometimes some things *can* be. But you're arguing that *everything* is, and that is what I disagree with. And I feel that by being so aggressive towards things that are perfectly reasonable, you only end up making it harder to talk about real problems.

>> 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!*' I'd sound less hostile if you didn't need this explained five separate times. And it's not incidental, because you are now that crank, insisting "you don’t seem to want anyone to get paid to make [content]." Stop fucking that strawman.

I know what you said, and I know we're on the same page because we've been talking about concrete examples where you say the DLC shouldn't be allowed to be sold. I don't know why you're up here trying to play some silly semantics games.

That is what it means, to sell content. That is what actual expansions are. This song-and-dance where you have the whole game, but you're not allowed to *really* have the whole game, is inseparable from everything you would call predatory. It's only a matter of degrees. One of the several alternatives you've repeatedly ignored is that these additions can be added to the game people already bought. Surprisingly, this does *not* involve slave labor for artists, because games that stay popular keep selling more copies. Do they make as much money? No. But it turns out maximum corporate revenue is not a guideline for ethics.

I literally didn't. I said it's inseparable from this business model, eight hours later. The comment you're replying to explains how it's all one spectrum - including the things you, personally, would call predatory. The only specific examples *I've* given are skins and skip-the-grind. What I get in response is 'do you still beat your wife?' over the apparent impossibility of updates that already happened, and repeated misrepresentations of how this thread started. You have quoted me directly and then been wrong in the next comment. I sound aggravated because you've been aggravating.

> Should the games I know and love be able to exist in the form that made them the games I know and love? Are we still pretending that paying for whole editions doesn't serve the same function? Are we still ignoring subscriptions because they make you feel icky? Are we still not acknowledging games that get updated for years, to keep sales up, and *then* have sequels? > It is not a model that we should ever go back to Well there's one question answered, albeit still on the basis of 'ick.' It existed - it was profitable - but we can't do it ever again because that's the same as a whole existing game being *banned.* Blah blah blah. I understand that compatibility is preferable. I am telling you it's not worth preserving this business model. This is the *gentlest* this business model could *possibly be,* and it has still created a typical 1v1 with a total price that's fucking bonkers. Compatibility is also possible through the just-update-the-damn-game model. Like how nobody charges five bucks for improved netcode. That also costs money to create, and is surely a key part of improving past the initial version. Funny how it's just taken for granted as part of the game you already bought.

The DLC is content in the video game. That's why you can see it, even if you haven't paid for it. Welcome to the conversation. For the love of god, do not make me rub your nose in this a seventh time.

Yes, I know how DLC works. And I disagree with your blanket opposition to all DLC ever.

It is not inseparable from predatory, because it is not predatory to begin with. The idea that they should just make all DLC free is not a viable alternative.

We can't go back to an objectively worse model because no consumer in the world besides you would be okay with it now that a better model is possible. You cannot be serious trying to say you think we'd ever go backwards. The current model *is* updating the game. Everyone gets to play the latest update even if you do not pay for the DLC. I am also still baffled that you can somehow claim with a straight face that subscriptions are better. Subscriptions are a lock-in model that threaten you with losing everything as soon as you stop paying, so you'll have to keep paying forever to keep your game. **If anything in this conversation is predatory, it's subscriptions!**