pycorax

Wasn't Apple boasting 4090 performance at one point? lol

It's okay if their pastors touch little boys though! /s

They're gift cards that you can buy from a different online store that's from a different company. Then you redeem them on DLsite.

What's stopping them from doing what DLsite did in Japan by using credits purchased off site? Seems like an alternative business opportunity there.

I mean there's that, but there's also a number of posts and comments about how Nintendo is shit for doing something that they didn't even do. Like, there's more than enough things to give them shit for, why invent new ones?

Perfected it by removing features?

You're using an extreme example which is fine and I agree that what Candy Crush is doing is clearly trying to exploit people. However, I do believe there's a stark difference between that and the examples we were discussing.

I mean I get what you mean and I do agree that it plays a factor but your example here only makes a lot of sense for multiplayer games. CoD is a really good example of this in my opinion. The skins there are ridiculous and the amount of effort they spend to show it off is absurd for a full priced triple A game. On the other hand, most of Ubisoft's games are singleplayer so this FOMO effect doesn't really apply for those games.

I also don't think we can deny the agency of the player too if they do choose to make these purchases. If someone does do their research and justifies the micro transactions after looking at it rationally, is it fair to say that they've been completely manipulated? I've personally given money to EA for Titanfall 2's prime titan skins because I felt that it was a good value and wanted to support it. So I think there are somewhat more ethical micro transactions.

I mean they're not technically wrong, if it wasn't fun for people, people wouldn't be buying them. Considering the context and all, I guess it makes sense. There's too many whales enabling them. We get the games we voted with our wallets. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Headline makes it a bit misleading that Ubi thinks it's referring to all their players, but the actual line does say specify that it's for people who choose to buy them.

Also their refusal to admit to blatent usage of AI generated art for their assets.

Not to mention that Japan tends to use their own local services usually so I'm not sure if speedtest.net is even well known there.

For what it's worth, Windows Phone was sort of a successor to that. And then they went and killed it too...