Born just in time to finance horse armor.

Is there literally anything that would be worse to use financing to buy than DLC?

Using financing to buy microtransactions?

You can finance pulls for a gacha game, if you want something worse.

And I read the other day that "buy now pay later" loans will be hitting your credit report now, so I'm sure this will definitely help make America great again. What could go wrong?

And from what I've heard, they can ONLY impact it negatively.

Cosmetic horse armor

This really is a new low - Get people hooked on your game with addictive mechanics. Suck the money out of them. When they're broke, drive them into debt


I hate this.

Nothing inside a video game should cost real money. Ban the entire business model. Nobody thinks games should cost $1000. Yet that's how much this abusive business model can extract from individual players. For *hats.* You don't even get all the hats! When there's not straight-up gambling, there's still a constant trickle of bullshit, because some schmuck will think a static model with a particle effect is worth the price of several entire video games. The total content of these games, even a decade in, is unremarkable. The least objectionable examples still want $200 to have all the characters, in a 1v1 fighter. Whoop de doo. Defenders can only insist Capcom used to gouge people even harder. The shit y'all put up with might be worse than annual sportsball releases. The far end of that spectrum now needs an installment plan. How fucky does an industry have to get, before people stop going 'but arcades?' This shit is already half the revenue in gaming. It's getting worse, and it's spreading. It's in full-price, flagship-franchise, single-player games. If we allow this to continue there will be nothing else.

That's fucking diabolical

I'm fine with it for f2p games. The monetization is sometimes awful in those, but it's also sometimes perfectly fine. I just want *one* monetization model. Either have microtransations and ingame purchases(preferably that don't actually effect the gameplay), or have your game cost money up front. Pick *one.* No more $40 games with battlepasses and buyable skins.

Any product that can take one thousand dollars from someone, in exchange for what would typically earn a studio twenty dollars, is not differentiated by whether it has a cover charge. The tolerable monetization model is: *just sell games.* They're not services - they're products. You buy them and own them.

> Nothing inside a video game should cost real money. Ban the entire business model. Is most of what I was referring to. I don't mind things in games costing money, as long as the game itself doesn't costs money. I also don't mind live service games, at least in concept. They're very rarely good games, but good examples do exist. A lot of what I think you're talking about is based on player trading, is it not? Maybe I don't know the games you're talking about. I don't think Valve sets the prices for hats, and I don't think DE sets prices for rivens. They're tradeable, so a market forms. To be clear, I think paying $1000 for a hat is absolutely insane, but I also don't see how it's functionally different than paying an absurd amount of money for a trading card you have no intention of using. Are there games actually asking $1000 for literally anything in-game? Not a player set price, to be clear.

Good to see someone took the scam of Lay Away and convinced an entire generation this is fine for things they will never own, even if they pay it off.

'I was only endorsing what you're condemning' is a baffling sentiment. > A lot of what I think you’re talking about is based on player trading, is it not? None. ... you know that cost is *cumulative,* yes? Games that somehow trick people into spending a thousand dollars a month don't do it in one great lump.

Horse armor was above-board, compared to this shit. You got files you didn't have. Modern "DLC" is already on your hard drive, appearing on other people's characters, but *you're* not allowed to touch that file until you pay ten actual dollars.

I'm not supporting what you're condemning. I'm just arguing that it's not 100% black and white. I disagree with "all live service games bad." I certainly agree that some are predatory and a problem, and the entire genre as a whole needs more regulation. I couldn't really grasp spending that amount of money on a video game, even cumulatively, so no I didn't consider it from that angle.

The regulation needed is: fuck all that. Games make you value arbitrary nonsense. That is what makes them games. Attaching a dollar price to that fiction is a category error. The entire business model is an exploitation of that confusion. This abuse is making games objectively worse. Maximum revenue comes from addiction and frustration. Fun is an obstacle. At best, fun is bait on the hook. The actual goal, *especially* for "free" games, is to grind you down as thoroughly as possible to extract real money over and over and over and over. If you don't think that's you - neither did most people who wondered where all their money went.