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this post was submitted on 04 Nov 2023
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What would this sort of legislation look like to you?
No recurring costs for products and no up-front costs for services. Not for fucking video games.
So wait, are developers supposed to labor for free then? I'm not sure how that's even close to being feasible in any scenario.
"Subscription or price, not both."
"So nothing?!?"
Stop talking.
You literally said "no recurring costs" (subscription) and "no up-front costs" (price). I'm not sure what other takeaway I was supposed to have from that comment.
Either way, it still sounds like you're expecting developers to work for free, so that you can play video games without paying for them. That's a really weird sense of entitlement, imo.
No recurring costs FOR PRODUCTS.
No up-front fees FOR SERVICES.
Jesus! This subject invites the most aggressively poor reading comprehension of any topic on the internet.
My entire fucking argument is JUST SELL GAMES, and people will bend over inside-out to find some way to scoff 'you want it for free.' Because apparently that's the only position you're prepared to deal with, y'might as well pretend that's what's happening.
I really don't understand what difference "products" or "services" is supposed to make in this argument, though. Many games these days are a service, a fact which is inherently true for an MMO like WoW. MMOs require active and ongoing development and support in order to function. That's just the nature of that type of game.
If you want single-player, offline games that only require a one-time purchase, those still exist. But WoW is not that game, and has no intention to ever be, nor do the players have any expectation that it would operate in such a manner.
Maybe instead of getting defensive, you could just clarify wtf you're talking about, or at least take into consideration the context of live-service games, which is what this discussion is specifically about.
Subscription services are fine. Just... don't charge... up-front.
I do not know how to make this more clear or simple.
... and goddammit I do have to complicate this because you dragged "live service" games into it. Those generally aren't a product or a service. They're a scam. They're a no-cover-charge casino that will gladly take unlimited sums of your actual money in exchange for approximately nothing.
I didn't drag live-service games into this. This thread is literally about World of Warcraft, a live-service game.
My guy, are we even having the same discussion here?
Considering you thought 'don't charge up-front for subscription games' meant 'destroy all subscription games,' evidently fucking not.
There's at least almost an argument for applying "live service" to anything that's not a standalone title - but no, the term mostly exists to distinguish them from games that are subscription-based. We have another term for those. It's "subscription-based." The alternative is microtransaction hell. Or "season pass" nonsense, which is macrotransaction hell. Games that ostensibly do not cost money... but somehow pull in billions upon billions of dollars.
I never said or suggested this, so your "reading comprehension" complaints are a little ironic now. I was trying to figure out what you were trying to say, which I still don't fully understand.
It seems like your argument is more "I don't like these types of games, so nobody else should". And it's fine to not like live service games; they're not for everybody. But for millions of people out there, that's the type of game they want to play, and are willing to pay for. You can make the argument that microtransactions or subscription fees are predatory, which is fine, but nobody's obligated to pay for those; people choose to because they want to play a live service game, which is a product an a service which is not free to develop or maintain.
My ass you didn't.
And god damn am I tired of people reducing all arguments to 'you just don't like it.'
It's a SCAM. It's an abuse of innate human foibles, to make a shitload of money. It is making video games, as a medium, objectively worse - maximum profit comes from addiction and frustration, not any form of innate enjoyment. What the fuck does like have to do with that?
You even immediately acknowledge this is condemnation of predatory practices - but you refuse to see the problem, because hey, nobody put a gun to scam victim's heads!
Predatory practices are A-OK in Chozo's book!
Don't play WoW, then. I'm not sure what the issue is. You don't like their pricing model, I get that. You don't have to, and you're allowed to not like it. I also don't like it, because I haven't the time or level of interest for the costs to be worthwhile for me.
The thing is, other people are allowed to like it. It's not a scam, though; you're getting what you're paying for. Just because it's not something you would pay for doesn't mean nobody else would or should. If you don't feel that the cost is worth your perceived value of the service, then don't buy it. But to suggest that the government should restrict them from being able to sustain their product (or even - GASP - make a profit from doing so) is absurd.
But the fact of the matter is that games like that cost money to create and maintain. If people are willing to pay for a base game, expansion, and a subscription fee in order to access it, then the creator should be allowed to charge for those things. It's not exploiting a vulnerable demographic like, for instance, payday loan sharks. We're talking about a purely recreational hobby. Hobbies generally cost money.
'This is infecting everything, unethical models win out, the whole medium is incentivized to frustr--'
'Just don't buy it.'
'...'
'It's okay, I don't LIKE it either!'
This was not a conversation.
We can definitely agree on this much.