counterpoint: i actually think it's the fat more prevalent mentality of "blaming foolish consumers" that ruins it for the rest of us. Expecting consumers to **ever** do differently at scale is a dead-end fantasy we all need to stop having. **Only** market regulation stops manipulative market practices. Doing anything less then "advocating for laws to stop this shit" izza giant waste of brain cells, yet i see threads of people making that useless case every time something like this happens. **Change will not come from consumers voting with their wallets,** FULL STOP** If you're thinking it will, *Never think this again* Furthermore, anyone advocating for consumer action or blaming consumers is doing the companies fucking us a huge favor and as these bad actors can continue griftin' as long as it is legal to do so

I don't believe in voting with your wallet, I believe in organizing. Individuals can never stand against an organization. A large group of individuals doing what they think is right but not working together can't win against even a much smaller organized force. In fact I think that your idea is little more than propaganda to keep the masses weakened in the face of power that is intentionally organized *against us*. But I don't play monster hunter to engage in political theory, I do it because it is a highly technical game with a steep learning curve. For whatever reason, a major stress reliever for me is to perform difficult actions with my hands. That's all I want. We are all treat brained little piggies in our own way, it shouldn't be controversial. I don't play genshin impact but if you do, whatever. Like I said, I work full time, I have a life full of family and friends, and I volunteer my time and energy to make my community better. If I wanna spend $70 on one of the like 3 game series that I *really* like, I shouldn't have to justify that to other gamers ffs. The problem with the gaming industry is a problem with *capitalism*, its called **the tendency for the rate of profit to fall**. Enshitification has been a proven phenomenon about for like 150 years. Voting with your dollars is pointless when it is the dollars themselves which are the problem.

Disturbing? Yes. Surprising? No, sadly. You have weeks or months of "this thing doesn't look good, the beta sucked, it's just the same as before etc." Then millions of people buy it anyway.

The commenter you replied to was basically just informing people not to buy. You made a great showing that you were going to buy anyway and you don't care. That is something you need to justify, not the buying itself. No one would even know if you didn't go out of your way to tell everyone. And yes, what you do is good, but takes time to amount to anything. In the mean time, it is perfectly acceptable to also pursue methods that work in the short term. We aren't just individuals on a forum, we are public opinion. As flawed as it is, that's still better than the apathy you promote in your first comment.

If it exists, the game has suffered because of it, if it exists, people will spend money on it. The systems are designed to prey on how we think, they shouldn't exist. It costs them barely anything, it's cosmetics the artists on payroll would be making regardless of if they are selling them or not, because they would just be unlockable.

This is the comment I responded to initially: https://midwest.social/post/23827090/15643582 > Capcom regularly puts out certified bangers. I’ll keep buying their games for as long as those games are high quality experiences are worth the money. They can learn about microtransactions by me not buying those lol. I was agreeing with someone else, and was sarcastically called a "good little consumer." Which fine, but I'm going to respond. So no, the comment I initially responded to was not informing people not to buy, the next I responded to was a sarcastic remark, and the next was, I believe flawed, justification for why its objectively wrong to buy a game? Or buy it on day one, or something. Is the objective to silence me? To make me follow along with a mainstream opinion that I don't agree with? I just want to play the new MH and not be made to feel bad about it. Maybe I'm not as up to date on all the nuances of this argument, but how do you think I feel when I spend significant time and energy learning and educating about political theory and practice, just to have people disagree with me from a point of ignorance? Maybe its just something you all are gonna have to learn to deal with, having people who share your interests but not your opinions disagree with you.

Yeah, sorry, one comment up from that one was the one I thought you responded too. Doesn't change anything though as far as I'm concerned. I don't think there is anything left to say, good luck with that Revolution thing.

That's what you want to fix? Companies trying new monetization strats?

> And you are calling them morons, by consistently saying it’s a stupid decision. Saying a decision is stupid isn't the same as calling a person stupid, smart people do stupid things all the time. I'm saying something like "mouth feel" is a stupid reason to dramatically increase your risk of lung cancer, especially when vapes exist. People should be free to make stupid decisions. > Any sane definition of video games must conclude that they make you value objectively worthless arbitrary goals. That's unfair and you know it. [Video games can provide a lot of value](https://health.clevelandclinic.org/are-video-games-good-for-you). Yes there's trash out there, and that exists in every field. Look at people getting into CCGs like MtG, wine collecting (esp when [wine experts can't reliably tell "good" from "bad"](https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2011/10/you-are-not-so-smart-why-we-cant-tell-good-wine-from-bad/247240/)), or any other form of hobby with a high price ceiling. > How the fuck do you split hairs about these specific things, versus your libertarian insistence that only overt lying could possibly be wrong? It's about power imbalance. Scarcity in MP games (e.g. cosmetics) is completely artificial because the game files continue to include those products so you can see others wear them, so the only reason to stop selling them is to inflate their price. Can you truly make an informed decision under time pressure? No. The only reason for the scarcity is manipulation, hence why it's wrong. That's why high pressure sales is successful, and also why I oppose it. I totally understand companies choosing to stop selling a product. I have my own views on how that should be handled (e.g. they give up any copyright protections), but if they're still maintaining a product and it costs them nothing to keep selling it (i.e. no ongoing licensing costs), they should keep it available for purchase. > There’s nothing sanitary about unsanitized goods. There's a huge difference between unpasteurized milk and unsanitary milk. When I say "sanitary," I mean things like washing/disinfecting utters before milking, quickly cooling the milk and keeping it cold though shipping, ensuring clean jugs, testing cows for disease, etc. I expect more stringent controls for unpasteurized milk than pasteurized because you don't have that pasteurization process to cover up your mistakes. Pasteurization alters the taste of the milk, to the point that I refuse to drink ultra-pasteurized milk (i.e. shelf-stable milk) and actually prefer powdered milk to it. Unpasteurized milk is delicious, but pasteurized whole milk is close enough, so that's what I buy. > driving too fast is dangerous Well yeah, it presents a risk to others, so it should be controlled. Your rights end where mine begin, and you driving too fast presents an unacceptable risk to my (and others') life. > botulism kills people It certainly does, and should obviously be avoided... That's why we have food safety standards and health inspections, to inform the public of any dangers and shut down dangerous operations. That said, if you want to take the risk, be my guest. I sometimes buy from unregulated street vendors, knowing full well the risks of doing so.

'Playing games is healthy' will not counter the fact that points aren't real. Games make you... care about... arbitrary worthless crap. No general defense of the benefits of play will make the made-up goals... real. It's a game. > It’s about power imbalance. Oh, so you're actually fine with legal consequences for manipulative antipatterns; you're just struggling to maintain a prior conclusion as the slow realization undermines any consistent rationale. Good. Keep thinking about it. Hey, you know which other mobile-trash gimmicks inflate the price of frivolous nonsense with zero marginal cost? All of them.

When it comes to video games, idgaf if someone wants to give a game dev thousands of their own dollars because they want to pay an idiot tax. It's a free market, and we're all free to just ***not play the fucking game.*** Actually that's the default so just doing nothing is plenty. I get what you're saying but we're not talking about groceries here, we're talking about something that could literally cease to exist and aside from some folks maybe being out of work nobody would even notice or care. I do agree though that strong regulation is much better than expecting consumers to stop consuming something as long as it's a necessary thing or something with quite inelastic demand (ie: medicine).

> Games make you… care about… arbitrary worthless crap That's a super subjective take. One person's trash is another person's treasure. Who's to say your collection of beanie babies holds any more value than my collection of achievements in Steam? It's entirely subjective. > you’re actually fine with legal consequences for manipulative antipatterns Yes, because at a certain point, manipulation constitutes an initiation of force against a user. That point isn't "paid character respecs" though, but a consistent pattern of putting people under pressure so they have to make a decision before they can get complete information. If they allow refunds within a generous enough amount of time (i.e. if you drunkenly buy a bunch of cosmetics or something then request a refund when sober), then it's probably fine. However, I believe these types of rules should be set by court precedent, not legislatures, legislatures merely define broadly what constitutes "force" in a variety of contexts to give judges and juries something to build off of.

Off-topic, anyone remember the early days of rockpapershotgun? God*damn* i miss the stylings of the og writers. Now it's just another game site but I'll never forget some of their early pieces

That's still shuffling unrelated definitions of "value." You understand Achievements have no intrinsic worth. The fact you've been made to care about them anyway, is what I am talking about. You were *made* to care about collecting a thousand unicorn skulls, because the game dangled a cleverly-named merit badge for doing so. Dollar value: zilch. Totally arbitrary nonsense, could've been anything else. > at a certain point, manipulation constitutes an initiation of force against a user. Kinda weird to frame it with the non-aggression principle, but sure, yes, good. These systems exploit cognitive vulnerabilities to shortcut our decision-making and trick people out of real money. Generally for things that cost the seller nothing... like editing your own character on your own computer. Any game taking real money is inevitably a collection of these abusive antipatterns, for that kind of manufactured desire. Nitpicking individual cases is letting the trees obscure the forest - these are game studios. Finding novel ways to manipulate customers is their job. Only a sweeping solution could possibly work.

> Dollar value: zilch For me, yeah, I agree. For someone else, maybe they do have value. Achievements are a particularly stupid example because you can automate getting them, but my point is that digital things can have value. Maybe they're sentimental (I did a hard thing and this proves it), or maybe they're resellable (rare item in a game, which can be traded). Something physical that you value could have no value to someone else. Value is subjective. > Kinda weird to frame it with the non-aggression principle As a libertarian, that's generally how I frame things, because if I can't justify it under the NAP, it's probably me forcing my values on others. > Finding novel ways to manipulate customers is their job True, but isn't that true of pretty much everything if we zoom out enough? Politicians want to manipulate voters to get (re)elected, restaurants want to manipulate patrons to return, etc. We all have a selfish interest in getting others to do what we want. There has to be a line at which point self-interest is "wrong" to the extent that we should use government to regulate it. I use the NAP to reason about that point, others use some other (often subjective) metric. This same line of reasoning could be used to ban porn games, games with self-harm, or games critical of a government. Banning things is generally not what governments should be doing, they should practice restraint and only step in when someone's rights are violated or at risk of being violated.

Variations on a scam.

This is the thing though. Let ppl have their opinion of you. You did a selfish thing, thought screw the community or lack there of. Let people shame you for being selfish, value is perspective at least enjoy it.

> Dollar value: zilch For me, yeah, I agree. For someone else, maybe they do have value. Achievements are a particularly stupid example because you can automate getting them, but my point is that digital things can have value. Maybe they're sentimental (I did a hard thing and this proves it), or maybe they're resellable (rare item in a game, which can be traded). Something physical that you value could have no value to someone else. Value is subjective. > Kinda weird to frame it with the non-aggression principle As a libertarian, that's generally how I frame things, because if I can't justify it under the NAP, it's probably me forcing my values on others. > Finding novel ways to manipulate customers is their job True, but isn't that true of pretty much everything if we zoom out enough? Politicians want to manipulate voters to get (re)elected, restaurants want to manipulate patrons to return, etc. We all have a selfish interest in getting others to do what we want. There has to be a line at which point self-interest is "wrong" to the extent that we should use government to regulate it. I use the NAP to reason about that point, others use some other (often subjective) metric. This same line of reasoning could be used to ban porn games, games with self-harm, or games critical of a government. Banning things is generally not what governments should be doing, they should practice restraint and only step in when someone's rights are violated or at risk of being violated.

It's not exactly a scam, though, is it. Are the game companies committing fraud?

The author mentioned Horse armor's probs why commenters are bringing it up