Exactly... I mean making witcher 3 cost what 100 milion dollars? And these fuckers like Andrew Wilson and Soderlund get 20 mil fucking bonuses. I'm not even talking about salary. So two fucking CEO's get bonus and you have half of "the best game of all time" (overdoing it but you know what I mean).
@@proletariandisciple Socialism is just the political equivalent of synergy in business- an economic ideal that everyone claims to strive for, but is actually impossible on large scales and winds up standing for something almost completely unrelated to the term and usually exploitative and morally abhorrent.
His point is that kids and certain adults don't have the sense to stay away from them so it's up to the rest of us to look out for them. It's a little thing called preying on the weak and that just isn't cricket is it?
It already has before, guess what genius? If it does the only people who will lose out are us and the devs, the people in charge though will laugh their happy asses to the bank, think before you speak you fucking idiot
Fun fact: If everyone who worked on the game got $0.00001 off every dollar of GTA5's $6,000,000,000 lifetime sales and micro transaction revenue, each one would have made an extra $60,000 so far (assuming they were there since day one of sales). Figures say that more then 1000 people have worked worked on it, so I'll vastly overestimate at 2000 and assume all of those were there from day one... That would have been a paltry $120,000,000 off their total raw unbridled profit to pay people a fraction of the fruits of their labor. Wait, that's not a fun fact, that's sad fact. Game developers, when you unionize, please take a cut of the micro transactions too, we beg of you.
That gave me the idea to run some math for 10% of the revenue, which even for major corporations is reasonable (if you're a human and not a money obsessed Captain Planet villain). If you dedicate 10% of the revenue to the developers, you'd be paying 2000 developers $300,000 each at $0.00005 per dollar.
@Agent 005 I'll be honest I would love to see what would happen to the AAA publishers if they attempted to get high-end programmers, designers, artists, etc. from third world countries... if nothing else I somehow suspect it would be the ultimate admission they're glorified mobile game studios.
Also funny how since releasing GTA5, they haven't released a new title in over 5 years despite releasing about 1 new game per year before that. Funny how that works. And the content they did put in Online pales in comparison to the story campaigns from GTA4. I've never heard a single person talk about GTA Online and praise the storytelling. It's just cash shop items and repetitive cheaply produced heist bullshit.
Hell, most people (including me) at least begrudgingly accept the whole season pass thing, and the "silver" and "gold" editions as a compromise. However, seeing they could get away with that, the publishers just decided to push even further, and they will continue to do so. Because there will never be such a thing as "enough" for them.
100-hour work weeks. Let's break that down: 24 hours in every daily cycle, so that's 168 hours total in any week. Subtracting those work hours, we get 68 hours left. Assuming that any of these workers are getting a healthy 9 hours average each day for sleep (but let's be real, they're probably not), we get 63 hours total for sleeping. That leaves 5 hours. What're those five hours for? Family? Free time? _Eating?_ How does someone live if their job consumes their life like this? Better question: Are they paid overtime for this?
Given that the average work commute is around 25 minutes nearly three of those hours would be just getting TO work assuming these workers are working 7 days a week (as that is the only way they could possibly get a 9 or even 8 hour sleep).
I sure hope so! If I'm being cynical though I wouldn't be surprised they're not, because the employees are "willfully dedicating those extra hours to a project they believe in" some other Newspeak-ish bullshit.
Yeah. I used to try to jump on every workshift I could get when i was younger (20-ish). Then I learned somewhere down the line that isnt fucking worth it. Yes you may get some more money, but you dont have the time to enjoy it. If I was forced to do 80-100h week I would change job in the blink of an eye
9 hours/day for sleep?! LOL holy fuck. try working on an oil rig. its 12hr days for 21-28 days in a row without a day off. Then you go home for 7 days and see how much money you can spend before you have to go back.
people going in to bat for big companies, billionaires etc, i just don't get it. they're not your friends and they'd sell you down the river in a heartbeat to make an extra buck.
None of these CEOs will ever match Satoru Iwata, a man who understood cuts had to be made at the TOP first in order to maintain morale and avoid layoffs. I'd like to see any of these guys cut their own salaries.
I'd like to see that in every industry across the culture. Absolutely no excuse for a CEO to make 300x their average employee. And that was the number a decade ago. It's like Jim said, the money those guys make is like the entire GDP of some small countries. You can get a heck of a lot done with a fraction of it.
my favourite thing about Iwata is that he took a paycut during the dark times of the wii u era to help the rest of the company, that's good leadership you don't see a lot of in such big companies
Well this is Japan we are talking about. the country where you have to apologize to all your fellow employees if you take a sick day. Seriously. All of them. Failure to do so is unforgivable and a "shamefur dispray!"
Easily. For all the things they do wrong (a lot of which is tied to Japanese corporate culture where the company is paramount), Nintendo at least remember what they are- _entertainers._ They make _games._ Their reason for existing is to _entertain people._ Unlike other "triple-AEYYYYY" publishers whose sole reason for existing is to make all the money in the world, possibly in a manner involving entertaining people but not necessarily.
Japan, the country where workers are worked to DEATH. Literally. I'm pretty sure the owner of that company felt dishonored so he took the pay cut instead of laying off workers or anything else.
Rules for running a games corporation in 2018: Rule #1 *Make nontaxable billions while your workers have to sleep on the cold office floor during crunch time* Rule #2 *Place your headquarters in a tax haven despite your host country barely making up 0.01% of your consumer base* Rule #3 *Remember to cram in unwanted **-microtransactions-** **_recurrent user spending_** *systems that break game balance*
add in hire the modern day equivalent of Pinkertons to crack down on worker attempts to organize, and release games by their due dates regardless of the game's actual stability
Pfft nigga please, we all know it costs billions more than that. You wouldn't want all those people working that server to lose their jobs do you? PAY UP!
Jim you should totally reference figures in the millions and billions as "Digital Homicide lawsuits", e.g. "Sixty million dollars, that's four Digital Homicide lawsuits".
I'll defend MTs to a point. And by to a point I mean of all the games mentioned in this video I would only excuse DMCV provided things don't change for the worse.
+RippahRooJizah That's the issue though, they ALWAYS change for the worse. Companies have proven you can't give them an inch with out them taking the whole fucking ruler and flying all the way around the world with it. You play apathetic to one practice, they'll only try and see what else they can get away with until before you know it BOOM DMC7 has you rolling lootboxes just to unlock weapons and stages. Or hell they could just shove them into 6 since companies have already proven they're not above shoving microtransactions into single player games that never had them before.
@@aliciafraser1835 And until they do that I will continue to not mind what DMCV does. I am not going to fault DMCV for something a game that doesn't exist theoretically might do. There are worse examples now in other games, Published by far more insidious companies.
But thats the thing, we cant do that anymore...the whole "well at least they arent as bad as other guys" is what is making this worst. Companies are getting away with this nonsense, but they are still being shitty, we need to stop with this "lesser than two evil" bs. Need to put the foot down now, to all mtx, even the "gateway" ones.
Nintendo does its fair share of shitty things, but it at least doesn't have multiple special editions and microtransactions in its games. Still, they should bin the team that thinks RUclips videos are not free advertisement for their products, and I have their entire library of games up to the Cube and DS backed up onto multiple physical media copies spread out over several counties out of sheer spite.
I have an incredibly non-addictive personality and have never bought a microtransaction, but that doesn't stop me from despising them due to the effects they have on others, and for the effects they have on the games.
Anyway, you guys talk the talk and all that but even though you don't buy them, it still ruins the games for other people who don't buy them because of the idiots who *do.* *Microtransactions were like:* ruclips.net/video/Wgf0HzbVqPc/видео.html *this year.* They weren't fucking around and called our bluff, caught us off guard, and yeah...you know the rest.
It is outright disgusting how the gaming industry became a prime example of what kind of abusive situation a unregulated market will eventually lead to. But thank god for you, Jim Sterling, for not becoming tired in pointing out industry bullshit.
criticise EA: Yeah! criticise Ubisoft: Yeah! criticise Overwatch: Whoa hold on now, Overwatch is the best shit ever it's optional it's only cosmetic, it's about player choice. Some groups of people claim to be free of microtransaction bullshit but they're just brainwashed for specific games and defend them no matter how deep the whole they dig for themselves is. More and more people fight against the bullshit but you always see these people around.
Satoru iwata was an honorable man even when Nintendo was down he was the savior taking a pay cut to make sure his employees could push on R.I.P Iwata San.
Kotaku ist going to learn, when folks at Polygon figured out how to use a controller. Then also IGN ist going to give out honest reviews instead of paid ones. Also M Night Schamalan will make a good movie again. If all that happens then suddenly Isis will start loving gays and it starts to rain milk and honey...
I will never understand why people would so fervently defend a large corporation, corporate entity or corporate product. Especially if they’re not being paid. What do they honestly think is going happen? The only one who benefits from this is the corporation in question, not them in any conceivable way. I just really don’t get it.
@@doktoroswaldo3940 That says all. "I spent a hundred quids on that ultra limited edition, I can't say that it's bad because I would feel like I wasted money..." And I know how it feels when you finally see that you spent too much money on a game that is not worth at all. I burned myself two times (AC: Revelations and AC3) and I learned my lesson.
*Yeah, its time the corporate lie around Unions are torn down.* No one gets anything without leverage. Yet employers act like you dont need it. Greedy companies also say you dont need consumer protection, you dont need a higher wage, you dont need to have too many hours off, you dont need to complain when there is crunch time without overpay and so on. At what point are you going to get that corporations do not have your best interest in mind when they "recommend" you should not support a Union!?!
unions ALWAYS become just as corrupt as the big coorporate fat cats they try to fight. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Unions are like a necessary evil just like the coorporations themselves.As someone who has been a part of several unions I can personally attest to their corrupt practices across several industries. It cant be escaped even outside factory and construction work etc. for example, My current engineering teacher literally berates us with highly inappropriate sexist, racial stereotype, religion, and politics jokes and has pop midterms and tells us that hes untouchable specifically because of unions. At past work sites workers refused to do their jobs because of bullshit union excuses like "there was a tiny tarp convering the concrete so we couldnt start work since the people who set up the tarp(tiny 1lb tarp) arent union"
Guess what? Unions don't want people to work themselves into a hospital bed or even an early fucking grave, and the worst the actual unions do is ask for a cut of your paycheck in order to pay for lobbying to increase your fucking paycheck and make sure you aren't demanded to tear yourself to pieces in order to make a basic living. What you just described are what people who are a PART of a union do because they have no knowledge of how a worker's union works. If you reported that shithead teacher's behavior to his union, then I doubt he wouldn't be changing his tune. Stop trying to play "but they did this thing" with the organizations made and consistently proven to improve the lives and livelihood of people.
LOL stop getting all defensive and taking it personal. Unions are most definitely corrupt but that does not mean they dont serve a necessary function. All I was doing was pointing out how unions should not be blindly followed or praised because they are usually equally or at least significantly corrupt in the same fashion and frequency as big corporations. My personal anecdotes are just for perspective on what is culturally known and accepted. Many politicians are corrupt, does that mean we should stop using politicians?
Nothing proves Jim's point more then playing a game that was put out before the Xbox 360 era. He's mentioned it before, like you could just unlock costumes and content through skill and time, not money.
So, the only reason games were still good back then is because.. The publisher COULDN'T make them bad? You're not exactly making who you're defending clear here.
@@Mernom I'm just saying it's been a constant slide into greed, like Jim Sterling mentions. So I guess I'm arguing in his favor? I'm certainly not trying to defend aaa developers.
The "AAA publishers have employees so exploiting customers is ok" argument is eerily similar to the argument made by banks before and after the crash of 2007/8 that because they manage Grandma's pension fund you absolutely can't regulate them in any way or her money will be at risk. The fact that banks or big corporations can hold your money or their employees hostage really isn't a compelling reason to let them do as they wish. Quite the opposite.
Thing is they dont even treat their employees that well either. Crunch time, crunch time without pay, mass layoffs after projects are done, its all bullshit.
"This can apply to a lot more than just video games" I don't understand what's going on in the head of someone where they think telling you the problem is more widespread is some kind of rebuttal.
Yeah, I feel like it's some variant of "There are children starving in Africa." Red herring of minimal meaning once you look at it. I dunno, maybe other than, "Oh, okay, I guess I'll have to go yell at those people next."
As someone who has worked for a few years in big pharma (until I changed due to pure disgust) I can't emphasize enough how true that is. The fact is companies exist to make profit for their shareholders, and we need to find other business models for certain industries (and healthcare is the first). These alternatives have their own issues (e.g. kickstarter) but we have better and better alternatives to the AAA model.
I clicked and then I got a warning that my computer was infected! Thankfully, there was a very nice person, with a sexy foreign accent, who helped me when I called the number provided. Once I gave him control of my computer through teamviewer, he was able to fix all those errors for only a hundred dollars! But I hand to send it via money gram, which was a little odd- but he was so nice I just had to trust him! So then I tried again, I clicked "learn how," and the same thing happened! Thankfully, my hero came through again for another hundred dollars, but I finally was able to click the link and learn about the scam that is microtransactions! It is just terrible that people would scam others like that, and I can't believe that people would be dumb enough to fall for it! What a world, right?
@@sheriffaboubakar9720 BAIT No paid game should have "in-app purchases" and DLC needs to have proper post release work to warrant paying for it (this is why I'm lenient with fighting games, balancing is a pain)
Unfortunately, no; Jimbo is right and everything, but publishers are still the ones laughing all the way to the bank and poor Jimbo just ain't influential enough to change that.
All the ways people try to defend the greedy business practices in games miss the big picture. Which is that years ago games didn't have ANY type of micro transactions in them and did completely fine. So the excuse that companies need them to try to stay afloat is simply not true.
Infinite Spawn Blind fanboyism. Its a condition where socially desperate individuals feel the need to have a connection to the corporate brand that robs them
And because we *like* games (or their predecessors), we instinctively feel that fanboyism. The same thing would apply to oil and power companies if we weren't conditioned to taking those things for granted. People like Devil May Cry, so they shill Capcom. I've never seen anyone shill BP or Alinta Gas.
The real reason they do now is to maximize profit at all costs, in any way they can get away with. They have no regard for the customers, only their money and the companies’ shareholders that expect infinite growth (which is impossible ofc) sooner or later, the “AAA” game industry’s predatory, greedy, anti-consumer behavior is gonna bite them in the ass. I secretly hope they all suffer some consequences and either change for the better or die.
All of the shenmue games have been total fucking failures financially and we got three of those, so what’s the fucking excuse for companies that make billions on a regular basis
@@alinbarba1418 I just ate a vegan shawarma made from ingredients purchased at a fair price from self-employed farmers at a small local business. If you really care about not exploiting anyone, you can.
@@user-pu6pn8vt5d ma man, the very devices we are using to communicate now have minerals mined through slave labour from the Democratic Republic of Congo, the whole country is a decades long proxy war where all the major world players fund various armed groups to keep the country in perpetual turmoil so that the resources can be plundered at will. The problem is not you or me for using these products, the issue is systemic, the very structure that has a vested interest in keeping things the way they are. Through individual actions such as buying local, cruelty free etc. you are buying only your personal peace of mind while the system perpetuates the same horrors. The only way in which you wouldn't participate if you go and live deep in some forest using only whatever grows around you.
R.I.P. Satoru Iwata.The only decent CEO of video game company that dosen't act greedy & actually taking responsibility when Nintendo is in a financial crisis.
From my memory, the higher ups taking a pay cut during times of trouble is a common thing in Japanese society. Also when obsidian went through financial troubles their CEOs took pay cuts so they won't need to lay off as much stuff. Being total dicks seems to be mostly (but not exclusively) an American thing with big companies. Smaller American publishers and Devs like devolver digital don't seem to be infected by such actions.
To anyone who says they need micro transactions to stay afloat. Remember even infinity wars made less then some of the biggest AAA games in the past few years and that movie had far more people and royalties to pay then any single AAA game in the past 20 years and still made a butt load of money.
While the microtransactions don't typically target me, I can't deny that they ARE predatory. I've never even considered buying lootboxes in a paid game, and just quit playing the game if I feel pressured. I would love to see microtransactions in paid games disappear, but it's never going to happen.
Whenever I drop a F2P game at the point that I'm feeling the pressure of not using microtransactions, I always think to myself, "how better this game could have been if there was no microtransactions". Whenever I drop a full priced game at the point that I'm feeling the pressure of not using microtransactions, I always think to myself, "how better this game could have been if there was no microtransactions". It's easy to see what's wrong when both sentences can be used side by side, doesn't it?
couldn't disagree more, smart people don't have gambling addictions because they do a risk assessment of the situation and see its not worth it. Back in the day this industry was a niche product that catered mostly to nerdy intellectuals that would not stand for the bullshit that is going on today, in recent years however theres been an huge influx of idiots and low iq normies that AAA companies are milking dry year after year. In short 'a fool and his money are easily parted'
It can happen, but you'd have to convince most people not to buy games they want if they have MTX. The problem, of course, is that _consumer_ can be a derogatory word for a reason.
i just check if the publisher is the same as the dveloper. Otherwise i dont consider them indie. Still the best thing would be that any programer earn a share from profits.
QuantumTV i might mean the disk, since a lot of physical copues just include a pass to download the game online. Just a guess, don't own it or plan on it.
I work in life and medical insurance and have a union bargaining agreement. My company only clients are ones that works with unions. Unions aren’t _(inherently)_ bad. They literally save thousands of jobs and lives. Including mine, cause I have a pre-existing condition. In fact, companies with happy employees improve the economy a lot more because they actually CIRCULATE money in the economy.
They're good as long as they don't get corrupt and turn mafia-esque, which has happened sometimes in the past with some of them. So it's like most things in life: you need a good balance in the middle. (Just for the record though, I agree with everything Jim is saying in this video, if that wasn't clear.)
Unions are like people. SOme are good. Others... Oh boy, is that a union or a terrorist organization? I am speaking from experaince with that. A foster Dad was in a union and got hurt, the company tried to cheapo out of medical bills. Union was not amused and made it known. Still being pay full benefits. Another time with my Adopted father was fulling for a strike. This one poor excuse of an Union decided it didn't like that and nearly started a riot. Nearly cause one of the members decided to take a swing at a 9 your old kid who was waiting for his single dad to finish fulling in for them. The New Crews got that live, and the nearby Cops reacted angrierly. That union was forcely disbanded with the entire up management jailed for corruption charges, and later smuggling. So you need to treat each union on its own and decide if its a good one or a bad one. Cause each one is different...
Unions aren't bad, but they aren't good either. They defend the jobs of terrible employees, just as much as good employees. They get terrible employees just as much money as good employees. They remove meritocracy from the workplace which harms the productivity of a company.
i mean your right but if corporations werent such slimy bastards we wouldnt need unions i would rather have shitty workers at least having a job and not starving instead of some fuck head ceo gettting his 3rd yacht.
And he was a passionate programming genius who taught himself at an early age, and he was roped into his position because the old president knew Iwata was the best man for the job.
"Defenders of the Games Industry" are really all that one kid in high school who discovered Ayn Rand and was just happy that an ethos existed to justify their sack-crushingly awful worldview.
I've never been susceptible to loot boxes because I honestly don't give a shit about stuff in them, and I refuse to spend money on something that only gives me a CHANCE of getting what I want (except charity raffles, if I know the charity isn't a scam). But yeah, that shit's exploitative to those who get hooked on it. I only took a few years of psychology in college before changing majors and since then have just sort of casually studied it on my own, but the basics of operant conditioning explain why those games generate compulsive spending behaviors. That was shit we got into in the 101 class, so even the most basic grasp of psychology will tell you that, yes, they are exploitative.
Yeah I almost feel like a crazy person because I just don't care at ALL about character skins or hats or costumes or anything. I played Overwatch for a while and enjoyed getting the lootboxes that came naturally from the game, but never once wanted to buy some. I also just end up using the default skins anyway. Like there's something oddly "impersonal" about a developer designing a skin for you and then you getting to choose which one you want. It doesn't feel special or expressive in any way. How people can spend money on this crap in this game and Fortnite and others just boggles my mind. That's also why I kinda don't care that they're there: If people wanna spend money on useless aesthetic crap, let them. Fuck it.
@@CodyHazelleMusic yeah, it isn't my money so fuck it. At the same time, I will explore the edges of every game world, if it rewards me with those things instead, and I have to actually find them, because I find that to be enjoyable. But to just buy them, yeah, I don't see anything special about that, like, yeah anyone could find them in their game like me, but, maybe we explore different areas and find different ones, so our games were different respectively, but when it's offered on sale, we can all just buy the same thing. It's kinda silly honestly, to spend so much money on just *looking* different. I've never understood it, but hey, I'm glad it isn't my money.
Since I had my son my gaming hours per week have dropped to maybe 2 to 3 down from 10 or more if I was really into a game. I'm time poor mid 30's with a decent disposable income and not so much loot boxes but stats boosts and time savers to beat the grind are directly targetted at me. I hate it particulary in single player games. That shit was supposedto be my escape and relaxation and now my gaming experience is being locked behind grind walls just to pressure me to spend more money.
@Andy Ramsay I'm glad you brought this up. There's obviously been a lot of discussion around AC Odyssey's use of "time saver" microtransactions and many people are saying that they are there for people who "can't be bothered with the grind/side missions" which isn't true in many cases. Right now, I'm a post-grad student so I get super busy at times, there was a time in my life where I was working three jobs so I had hardly any game time. These "time savers" are there specifically to exploit people like that.
The only way to fix the problems inherent to the system is to make the employees themselves the shareholders or owners of the company. Co-ops should be the default corporate structure not the exception.
These companies are literally the same as "real world" corporations. No matter how much they earn, the top 5% of work pyramid, general "somethings", executives and all the sort always take the lion cut of any profit. Sure, they should earn more than average coder or animator, because their heavy responsibility includes making decisions successful enough so that these average coders and animators would actually have a job. Unfortunately humans are garbage beings and just like hundreds of years of history proved, 99% of the time those at the top have no problem using their power and position to conveniently pocket more than they should ethically and definetily more than they should officially, "by contract". With that in mind it's just baffling how some people act like Activison and such are not the same as some major pharmaceutical, oil, electronics or any other corporation. People at the top keep getting away with being greedy, so they keep getting greedier and exploit both their workers and clients more and more.
But people tend not to think about these corporations in the larger context of all corporate entities in the economy. They think that the game industry lives in a bubble when in fact it's affected by everything around it and is a part of the whole.
>because their heavy responsibility includes making decisions successful enough so that these average coders and animators would actually have a job. you do know bosses are unnecessary to the well functioning of a corporation/business right or have you never heard of co opratives? the only purpose the "boss" or executives serve is to act as a sockpuppet of the investors and to leech away money from the devs/coders who go trough bullshit 24/7 crunch periods just to finish the newest generic bland cash grab the video game industry would be quite a bit better if they adopted something akin to valve's (steam) system where the devs are allowed a bit of breathing room and creative freedom or a sort of workplace democracy/discussion making.
Hearing the the RDR crew are putting in 100 hour work weeks really just makes me want the game less. Seriously, push it back a month or two. I don’t want to play a game made under such conditions. That’s like a conflict diamond or some shit, it’s an unethical product.
Spiral Jumper The guy who did the interview already responded saying that the only people affected by the whole 100 hour weeks was him and 3 other people from the writing team and it was by their own accord. None of them were forced or asked to stay that much time on overtime and it was for 3 weeks, not months or even years.
Yeah I saw that too, really relieved personally. I've been a fan of Rockstar since back in the day, I even loved Oni. So I'm glad I don't need to feel guilty about my RDR pre-order.
I just don't touch GTA online. GTA is a great single player game and I can easily earn everything I want in single player via actual heist missions and stock manipulation. As far as I'm concerned RDRO and GTAO can fuck right off.
But you turn a blind eye to the ones who work the same or more hours for far less money making your 4k tvs, iPhones, and consoles that play those games....
I used to love gaming, i don't anymore. At first i thought it was a problem with myself, now i realize its just because the games are just cheap trash churned out year after year, with the "game" part just an excuse to shovel some gambling into peoples lives.
Gaming is still fun as long as you look past the bs like AC and CoD and the likes. Games like Hollow Knight and Subnautica are gems that will restore your faith in gaming :)
I've taken to replaying old games in my library back before things went down this path. I've actually been reminded of the dead space series from this video and may play 1 and 2 soon to occupy myself.
Heck, right now I’m playing a game from nearly ten years ago and having the time of my life without a micro transaction in sight. Sadly it was also the last game Pandemic Studios ever made before EA double tapped them in the back.
There was a time when i was fine with Overwatch's loot boxes. I thought "well i'd never buy the things, they're just some virtual costumes" I figured the only people who would buy them were just going to spend a few dollars maybe, or had more money than they knew what to do with. But then i saw my friends saying how they bought loot boxes, paying the full 60 dollars for 50 loot boxes, either saying they got what they wanted or they didn't. I can't condone this kind of business, the kind that makes sensible people waste their money on virtual garbage, not even guaranteed to get something from it. You could buy another game for 60$, maybe a game with a unique story, maybe something with deep tactical gameplay, or a tough beat-em-up, instead they spend that 60$ on a few skins and sprays for Overwatch. And that is a damn shame.
While I can happily say I never bought any Overwatch lootboxes, I am ashamed to admit being guilty of partaking in similar schemes in other games to some degree. it's something I have been making a conscious effort to identify and avoid for a while now. People like Jim bringing attention to the problem and keep talking about it has certainly helped reinforce that resolve not to reward these tactics. The lootboxes and limited time skins are ultimately what killed my desire to play Overwatch because it left that much of a bad taste in my mouth, being forced to grind my ass off for hours or shell out even more cash just for the *chance* to get what I wanted.
@@hellatze I haven't read anywhere where he stated that he's managing his friends money. I took as an example that no matter how much lootboxes you buy you probably cant pull what you want due to RNG.
@@excusablegold roasted is the wrong word, slandered is more appropriate, but that implies that having a fake japanese girlfriend is a bad thing, which if you have one, it's probably not healthy, but if that's your deal, cool.
They once said mobile games would kill console gaming. We laughed at such an absurd statement. Little did we know, how true that statement really was...
That is basically what I said. We thought they meant companies would stop making games for consoles and instead make them for phones and tablets. When gamers didn't jump on it, they brought the mobile games to console. They shoved mobile game shit (such as microtransactions) into console games, and they are killing console gaming. Thus, my original comment.
I love that Iwata actually cared about his employees. Other companies and their CEOs can really learn a thing from Iwata. It's a shame that man is gone now :'( .
True. His philosophy and practices should be adopted into a particular style of upper management in all industries - I can actually see that becoming a sort of quasi-religion in terms of nurturing a "healthy" company that a CEO can actually take pride in.
I have long argued that if you truly enjoy something, you should be even more critical of it than people who hate the thing you like, because you should want something that is good to get better. The exploitative greed of AAA developers only makes things worse, never better (at least not for the customer), so don't defend Free-to-Play mobile game exploitative BS in $60 AAA games! I've said it before, but it needs repeating. AAA publishers like ActivisionBlizzard and EA are not your friend. A friend would loan you $10 to buy lunch if they saw you were starving. These AAA companies would snatch your wallet off you, take the money and the credit card out, then try to sell you back your empty wallet.
Single-handedly the most important video you've ever made on the topic. Thank god for you - I'm sharing this everywhere. You are doing such important work advocating for the player and the developer and shining a light on the immoral and illegal practices by these corporations. Thank you again!
@Agent 005 . It could matter. People like Jim need to be more reasonable, not just the usual reactionary-lefty type who wants to ban everything. Eg. Restrict micrograms actions to those over 21+, most people will get behind that.
Thank you for this. Anything that sheds more light on the industry is good. As a developer myself I am constantly appalled by business practices and the horrible treatment of especially QA workers.
Yeah, Devs need to unionize. Thats really the only real world solution I can see actually helping them out. The ability to have unions is something wars have been fought over. These things are important. Those fatcats aint going to just wake up and have a change of heart
I get the feeling that if a suit gets wind of any proto-union forming they'll just kill the studio and hire another team, since there are so many springing up thanks to targeted marketing of Unity courses and the like. I believe the word is "shenanigans"
Probably. I think that's why it'll have to be widespread and sudden. A widespread build and a sudden strike, through multiple companies and thousands of developers. Sounds impossible- but the first push for equal pay happened like that- I can't remember when (I think it was 50's or 60's) but in Wales, about 90% of women suddenly striked over equal pay. Their value was soon determined then when there was almost no one in certain departments in factories losing the companies millions by slowing production to a crawl. Developers need to do something like that. And hey, they're kind of disposable in the eyes of those they work for anyway, so losing a job shouldn't be their greatest fear
Im getting a self defeatest sort of vibe from some of these replies. So...what, people shouldnt try to get fair treatment because the overlords will take their jobs to India? Lol sure. Well let them have them. That fear is the exact kind of mentality they want. Keep people licking their boots and thanking them for gracing the lowly artists and programmers with a shit job. Gimme a fucking break
yes.. But.. it gets a little more complicated when millions upon millions of dollars are spent to misinform people about things like unions. You are not wrong but... people are paid a lot of money to make sure people are antagonistic about unions and workplace regulations.
I knew microtransactions were making AAA publishers richer, but goddamn. Almost two-thirds of their current revenue? And despite this, they exploit tax havens and purge studios full of devs, anyway? Utterly disgusting. On a side note, Jason Schrier's response last week was very disappointing. His investigative work is better than 90% of other game journalism (his takedown of plagiarist Filip Muchin was especially brutal after Muchin tried to shame him), but his response demonstrates the perils of getting too cozy with the big publishers. Does this mean Schrier now lacks credibility? Probably not if he learns from this, but he sure as hell revealed his own personal blind spot.
I worked at this small company where the management had their heads up their asses everytime, and we paid for it with stressful overtime weeks. Its not funny, or cool or something to brag about. It is a reason to quit that job and prefer a few months of unemployment rather than having that bullshit. It is pure incompetence by people that shouldnt be allowed to own and manage companies. Life is not about working overtime. Time is the most valuable thing we have.
cartmann94 100 hour work weeks. The last time I heard that was in my history lessons when we talked about the industrial revolution. You know, the reason why we have unions nowadays.
And there's at least one famous game dev that doesn't doesn't rely on crunch time and avoids it happening through proper management. Imagine that. And these other companies try to act like it's impossible to not have crunch time... sigh.
Capitalism will kill your entertainment, too. Having a bunch of rich dudes who only want more money actually pulling the strings(shareholders) rather than the people who do the work(developers) will drive that shit into the ground just like everything else.
I've also never understood gamers who defend these companies like they were their family. It's ridiculous. They are corporations who want to make as much money as humanly possible. Yes they CAN make for us a great game which we buy for fair price and profit and that's ALL they deserve and need. Satisfying their greed is not what us consumers are meant to do. But this is just beyond so many gamers comprehension for some reason...
Triple Dip sound quite darn correct - First pay for the base game - Then pay for a season pass just to get the whole game and just to top their bank account off they add a lot of grind so you will be "encouraged" to pay to skip those game destroying parts. Triple Dip games is the 100% accurate term of today's so called AAA games!
Normally, I'd be in the camp of "If you don't like it, then don't buy it. Vote with your wallet! ect." but in the case of video games it is objectively true that the inclusion of microtransactions also means the inclusion of factors to make said microtransactions appealing! Devs don't put microtransactions into a game not caring whether people buy them or not, of course they want you to buy them! So they have to make them appealing; which in turn affects all of us "Not-Retards" who didn't like it, didn't buy it, and still get shafted by excessive grinds, arbitrary gatekeeping using wait periods, and overall fucking with the games progression. Bottom line, the excuse of "player-choice" is horseshit! If it is about player-choice and not about money, put an "instant unlock" toggle in the options menu for free....where all the other fucking player-choices are!
Also worth noting something Jim said in a video a few years back. "don't like don't buy, vote with your wallet" doesn't actually work in the gaming industry. Publishers refuse to acknowledge that their practices are the reason that people aren't buying a game, so they immediately shift blame to the developers or even the players themselves. So the people who are responsible receive no consequences and studios get shut down for making games that didn't sell for reasons they had no control over.
@@althelor Eh, if things underperform, people sell off stock. Get enough underperformers in a row, investors start hesitating to buy that stock back even at deflated prices, and put their money behind more reliable earners. That's how you hurt their pocketbook. It's the long game.
I was saying this back when people thought it was a feature to have "progression" in multiplayers now, and there was a whole system of hate set up against "boosters" and the idea of choice in servers that were treated on par with bullshit random matchmaking, as if letting you play the game enjoyably was a crime. Now look, just as they obviously would since it was literally driven right out of F2P with their "progress" systems, they have monetized it, hold back content, and host artificial "events" to force you to grind by times and so on. You didn't have a choice to just get the gun you wanted to play with on a game you put down $60 for, and you didn't get a choice on even which damn map you or server you played on, and you didn't get the choice of a united community when new map packs came out. You just had to sit through it and grind for hours on end while people pretended this was the great feature of our times. I want that sort of time again where the community mods were you DLC, and the game didn't need progress because you could modify and change up every feature, and join crazy servers of your choice... it would also help of course if the games themselves were deep enough that you didn't die in a blink and had actual mechanics to play and get into. The mechanics were replaced by progression, and that inspired more people than ever to play and get hooked into these systems by cheap and fresh thrills and constant rewards. Jim himself is even an example, having a past history of dismissing older features for COD's big new thing, before they got insane and even he realized "oh shit". They get people hooked in with happier newer, casual and accessible new methods, and then a large massive catch-all demographics is laced in and there to either buy shiny new things, or go sit in a corner waiting. In a round about way it happened to other genres and games as well. Nobody copies and storms off with millions on top of Bioshock or the latest Mario's success anymore, when its easier to use the likeness of COD, or make a massive checklist of generic open world traits, or boil another down to some simpler formula, and you're just expected to slog through it, pay for it, or get off the train and wait for another exception to the rule.
There are so many problems with how creative work and creative people are valued, it's baked not just into the systems of production, but society. For one, by many it's not considered "real work." You're supposed to have a separate job to support yourself, and if you can't make it on creative work alone you're supposed to get a "real job". It's a snideness and dismissiveness of language. Second, the public and your boss are super willing to remind you, "you can always leave." The public to dismiss your complaints, and the boss to reinforce that YOU ARE REPLACEABLE. As companies consolidate, what are your options? If you want a job working on X Genre or Y Style of game, your options are realistically limited. And finally, there's the insideous belief that suffering for creativity is normal, even noble. Pride in crunch time is a perfect example. Losing sleep to make a deadline isn't a sign that a deadline is unreasonable, it's NOBLE. It's DEDICATION to stop seeing your family, not an excessive monopolization of your time. Carpal tunnel means you value your craft, not that a heavy workload is taking a physical role. Culture had to change how it views creative work, namely acknowledging that it's REAL WORK.
The attack against organized labor need to stop in this country. The results in all cases are the same, underpaid overworked employees and billionaire CEOs.
I have never understood the american fear of unions. They have improved millions of lives across the world yet somehow the ones in the US would be communism? However you guys are a really young country maybe someday you'll wise up.
@@Hefisstos Because corporations run this country and they dont want to pay the people that do all the hard work. This system has become so disgusting. They cut pay and lay off workers and yet report record profits and pay millions in bonuses to the ceo for squeezing more out of the little guy. The fact they control virtually every memeber of the government is the problem. People of the world do not allow this to take place in your country.
@@Hefisstos Germany in its current form is (at best) 149 years old (technically 70 and if youre realy nit picky its 30 years old), and thereby younger than the US and has WAY better working conditions, so age doesnt realy matter here
I’m glad that Sony Interactive and Nintendo exists, they still know how to make good quality games. I can live without the 3rd party AAA developers/publishers that bluntly promotes micro transactions and loot boxes. I love Warframe and it has micro transactions, but the big and obvious difference is that game is f**king FREE!! Micro transactions and loot boxes does not belong to a full-priced AAA game.😅✌🏻
all that aside, warframe offers plat 3 times a week, 1 for each platform, and it's a rather generous 1000 platinum, as well as weekly updates, and hotfixes, any money spent on WF is more of an investment than anything else
Yeah like warframe, above all else, cares and puts in the effort. They aren't perfect and I wish they had developed outside of a capitalist structure so they didn't have to include the stuff, but I think they do their best with what they have I think.
Not to mention you'll get random discounts on the in-game currency too. You get 75% off once in a 50 day period, and 20% or 50% off randomly throughout that period as well.
Sonny is a AAA publisher. The only difference is they're 1st party AAA since their games are exclusively on their machines and EA, A/B is 3rd party AAA because you can run their gambling apps on any machine. They're both horrible AAA publishers. I'm pretty sure Jim even did a went in a tangent about how bad sony was during one of his more recent videos. Edit: Warframe's great tho.
Kyle Buehne Yeah, Sony and Nintendo have problems. Lots of problems. However, they are certainly better than most other publishers. Neither do loot boxes and are pretty tame in the microtransaction field. Neither seems to cut content and sell it back to you. They also have quality games. If there are publishers to support, it's Sony and Nintendo. We can still call them out for bad practices. We can do both.
If you bought a $60 triple a game and then found micro transactions then you've been exploited even before you spent an additional dime. You've been sold an incomplete product that isn't what it promised to be. A game is balanced for proper challenge to keep you feeling rewarded by playing without being so difficult and grindy you quit. With micro transactions the whole point is to gate content behind an impossible grind. So if there are micro transactions the developer is holding the game that you already paid for ransom.
I agree in general, although I have to argue this isn't always the case. The big talk right now being the purchasable red orbs in DMCV. I can't tell for sure till I see it, but it's very likely that there will be no increased grind attached to that. For some perspective, DMC4's special edition had the same MTX and do you know what the devs also did in DMC4:SE? Increase the drop rate for red orbs within the game itself. That one really is a case of the devs including it because they have to, would be my guess anyway. And there are other games out there like that as well.I still fucking hate microtransactions tho
Amen. The _instant_ any developer makes a game _intentionally_ worse and less enjoyable than it could otherwise potentially be in the name of making extra profit, they're not a games maker any more- they're a scammer. _Their entire reason for existence_ is SUPPOSED to be to make the most enjoyable gaming experience possible- but since the publisher-centric games industry has come to fruition, their entire reason for existence has become "make as mcuh money as possible by any means possible". Making a fun game isn't the end any more. It's the _means,_ the means to the end of making more money. I remember a time when games developers made games because they wanted to entertain people, because they had an artistic statement they wanted to make. That time is long gone outside the indie and smaller developer scene.
I agree, because even if you are not paying for MTX, the content you paid for is LOCKED behind a massive grind wall. I did not buy a game so I have to grind 300h for what I paid for.
There are always window-lickers that will keep buying their "live services" and defend the micro-transactions. That's why the "AAA" publishers can keep doing that shit.
can't disagree with any of what you've said and I'm a MASSIVE DMC fanboy. Microtransactions aren't right in full price games, crunch is not acceptable in ANY working environment either. Things like this make me sad I love videogames.... :(
Krishan Pandya I've been gaming since I was 7 I'm a grown 38 year old man now who still enjoys playing but seeing the direction gaming has gone breaks my heart! As a single player gamer 90% of the time the disgusting things have infested my games now aswell as multiplayer! Fuk mts and loot crates and special editions of special editions in partnership with who fukin ever! Lol, the last game I bought I felt appreciated for buying was Witcher 3 as I got more than a disc and flimsy leaflet for season passes etc!
No, no, no, sir! You cannot _censor_ Jim Fucking Sterling, Son's name! Say it with me. "Jim Fucking Sterling, Son" "Jim _Fucking_ Sterling, Son!" Thank God for him!
All this boils down to one this: Why are people now defending paying for data on the disc? More specifically, the a server changing a file on the users console. That's all a microtransaction is. It's not actual content coming to your machine. It's already there. This isn't a case of Street Fighter having the costumes in a update so both users can see it if someone bought it. In a single player game, you're paying money for a text file edit that alters stats for your character or whatever. Resident Evil 5 had $5 DLC multiplayer vs mode on the disc and the internet nearly lost it's mind. Now you're paying for STAT alterations and that's okay?? Know what has more worth than that? DLC/Expansions. Things that expand and make your game/purchase more fun and valuable.
Pretty perfect arguments as always, and good research I must say. How can Rockstar state that its employees work 100 hours a week, without realizing how stupid the statement is? It basically means "Myeah the game we're selling you was made by tired overworking and underpaid interns that we may lay off right after because of how unproductive they will have become." Now I'm sure that some of them were willing to work hard on the game (at least that's what we often hear from devs) but that's neither an excuse for the publisher itself making that statement, nor the fact that employees would need to work that much instead of delaying a release if it's necessary for the game to be good. It probably all boils down to shareholders again. Every dev should quit the AAA gaming industry and make super-teams of indie devs. B-)
Geez less than 50 hours of work a week fucks with me, I can't even imagine going for 100. I wonder how many nervous breakdowns Dan Houser or Hauser or whatever is responsible for? How much metaphorical blood is on his hands?
Jim, don't you get it? Those billions clearly are not enough to keep servers running. they are being generous by offering all those micro transactions. smh
People think we should support developers by paying microtransactions... to stop massive layoffs. When getting them a union... would actually stop unfair layoffs.
You are such a unique personality on this website. Please continue the work that you do as it is both illuminating and invigorating to hear someone so well educated on the workings of the gaming industry. You're a true treasure comrade.
@@SaitoGrayNo it doesn't, stop muddying the waters. If that's all it takes for you to consider yourself a socialist, you're giving yourself too much credit. It's like calling yourself an anarchist becausee you graffittied "fuck the police" on a wall one time.
Lol Jason Schreier defending micro transactions. Gotta defend those (publishers) that feeds you, I guess. Lost alot of respect. But not really surprised by it. Alot of review(ers) and/or RUclipsrs constantly sugarcoat/ hype up every fucking EA, Activision-blizzard and Ubisoft game like they have amnesia. Or... you know, deliberately ignore the BS to keep the money flowing in. Just wow, sometimes.
It's even more fun cosidering he's defending ubisoft, a company that put kotaku on black list for leaking assasins creed news. Licking boots that kicked him.
This isn't new, it's been going on for many years. Hell, even Jim was talking about this years ago. These shills fear that if they don't suck Actiblizz/any other scummy AAA publisher's dick, and swallow the load, they'll lose the only advantage they have (the early review copies) (They probably would lose them though). So they happily drink up that salty, salty juice, even if that hurts the people they've supposed to be doing the reviews for. Not to mention the often so obvious bias towards certain games, even without the threat of losing their bs advantage.
Unfortunately, this problem is not limited to just the games industry. High paying engineering jobs across all areas generally aren't unionized and crunch periods are widespread. People regularly need to work until 8 or come in on weekends before big releases. The only way to fix anything would be to have a huge movement of high-skilled workers organizing and making demands or to introduce new legislature. People also need to stop acting like this is isolated to just the games industry so the rest of the world might take it seriously.
These are industries full of folk raised under unquestioned capitalist indoctrination, at workplaces lacking the more critical cultures you'll find in a lot of manual labor. They are the ideal servants, with a culture of self-crippling servitude as a source of pride.
Knowing many game developers that left the industry I can say it is far far worse in gaming than anywhere else. I work for a tech company that almost literally rolls out the red carpet for its engineers. It’s really normally for tech companies to have long hours but it’s also normal for tech companies to offer amazing compensation and benefits. AND these tech companies are actively trying to find ways to make the lives of their workers better overall and decrease hours worked. The gaming industry has none of that. Many of my friends that studied game development ended up getting jobs that have nothing to do with game development because they were offered better job security and better compensation of benefits almost anywhere else. The video game AAA industry pays low, offers no job security, a toxic work environment, and long hours with none of the perks. This effects the gaming industry because I suspect the best developers stay far away from it. And even if this weren’t the case, Jim is not a phone or technology expert he is a gamer. He tackles issues in gaming. Just because it is the same everywhere else (which it isn’t) does not make it okay.
Killed it, as always. My Fiance loves spending money on Overwatch lootboxes, and she defends them with her life. She uses the term "They're just cosmetic" as some sort of excuse. To which I often reply with "But you're still buying them, so they apparently DO have intrinsic value to you and other players..." ANY FEATURE in a game that has VALUE is liable for microtransactions. Any. Because WE AS A CONSUMER do NOT own the games we purchase. We only have a license by the producer to play that game, and they reserve the right to do whatever the hell they want with the game as time goes on. Activision Blizzard does NOT care about you. My favorite recent info I've learned is that in WoW, you can't make your name say Pagan because it's an inappropriate word. That shows you how little they care about you and your opinions.
I mean if your screen name just so happens to have the combination of P A G A N in it, then it's flagged. It's a small thing, but why flag pagan as inappropriate, y'know? It's not like shitfuckstack or finger-bang666. Bet you could name yourself Cheesus Crust though.
@@thorsffe5712 They already do. The "RUclips Red" or whatever the fuck it's called, essentially a "premium" version of RUclips. I genuinely fear what will come of that
After youtube red first came out I stopped hearing anything about it. Some youtubers like Vsauce stopped making their regular content to just do youtube Red shows, but I dont think youtube red is much of a success. Not enough of a success for youtube to push it on us anymore.
@jdawg: Let me see. It's true for architecture, engineering, product design, the movie industry, illustration work... Yep, a plentiful of working places are equally screwed up! However, this is a gaming channel, so of course the focus here will be the gaming industry! 🙃
I know it's anecdotal but I hope I'm not alone in this but I've had numerous occasions where I decided not to purchase a game because it was revealed to have microtransactions. I'm talking about things I had been excited about too like Dead Space 3, Shadow of War and AC Odyssey. Those were franchises I enjoyed at one point but I just don't want to put up with the whole predatory nonsense of MTX in my full priced game. The only times I've ever been okay with MTX are League of Legends and Path of Exile because both games only offer cosmetics that don't impact player skill, both games are free to play and I've put thousands of hours into both.
What really shocks me is how much cosumers will vihemently and aggressively defend the full priced games with MTs. Not people just accepting it as a reality, but passionate about it being ok. Lately if you criticize one of these games (for example: AC Oddesy) for having progression advancing MTs on RUclips, Reddit, Steam, etc. you can expect an overwhelming amount of spiteful replies. I'm personally of the belief that I won't buy (not pirate, I mean I just won't play it) any game with single player MTs, unless it's on deep deep discount (like 75%< off); then it's basically fremium. It gives a message to the publishers/developers that the practice is ok if you buy the game. But at least I can understand if someone still gets the game in spite of it and just accepts the reality of MTs. The people who somehow act pretensious about how "stupid" other that don't want to get actively screwed over, just baffles me. Is their will power that low that they need to justify their purchase so much they have to act like it's a benefit to have MTs? I seriously am in awe and impressed by the game publishers for how they've manipulated the market so brilliantly.
Knew a guy trying vehemently to explain and justify COD WW2's lootboxes to me because they didn't affect him. That's really the problem here, it really is like some people are incapable of empathy, and think that just because it doesn't affect them, it isn't a problem for other people.
@@Peasham It's despicable on so many levels. For all gamers it hurts the quality of the game, never knowing what was actively nerfed to entice MTs. And worse regarding what you just said.
@@moviemanreviews5577 It's mind boggling. I recently had this argument here on YT regarding Devil May Cry 4 SE, where I said I'm purposely buying the original version since it has no MTs and people got *angry* . Like I insulted their religion or something.
People act like their business models are immoral actions when in fact they are amoral. Check the difference people. I may not like some companies either, but they are in it for a reason and it isn't to provide free entertainment for smelly, gamer masses.
It is fine for anyone to have profits on their own company but the problem is those driving the system. And sometimes the law doesnt reach that far. Like i was saying those who are behind the scenes, can be moral or not, but how far are they going in the private and public sector to the point It will break the economy and say, "we have to do this because things are getting expensive" , well... Trade in resources can have that excuse sometimes but you are actually partially responsible for rising costs, wanting more, doing ludicrous contracts with investors, feeding wallstreet, wasting money, money under the table, corruption and sometimes paying millions to lobbyists on the upper ranks. All that equals as a billion market that doesnt go where it should, rent, work, production, and then who pays for that? Us the consumers, the taxpayers, everything connects.
EA, the Scumbags of Gaming no, the other industries have had many of those laws stripped away during the 80s and 90s, and those laws that *do* still exist are disobeyed at-will by companies worldwide. They get away with this because the agencies tasked with enforcing the few protective regulations left are either headed by industry insiders or so completely underfunded that they can't do their jobs even if they wanted to.
Okay but I don't know anything about it the pharmaceutical industry, or steel milling. I know video games so that's where the focus is. I'm not going to go around demanding higher pay for firefighters without knowing what the salary is at currently
I'm a pretty conservative businessperson, but it's really impossible to argue against the lack of character and integrity certain larger business and corporations exhibit. Sterling talks about it plenty. When businesses grow so larger, a lot of the more compassionate and earnest character really disappears under the sea of bureaucracy and profit driven shareholders. If more leaders of companies were like Satoru Iwata, who was a simple programmer in love with video games who grew through the ranks for his skill and talent and knowledge, we could get somewhere.
If people are calling him a communist, then they dont know what communism is. Having well regulated capitalism that doesn't allow corporations to write their own laws isnt communism. It's sad that the ownership convinced the workforce that being exploited is a good thing.
@LeaderOfTheStarrySky The bar for calling oneself a socialist is really low apparently. Now defending a welfare state is enough to think we are big revolutionaries. Capitalist realism is just so fucking bizarre.
MMOs like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV need to be called out more often, when it comes to this topic. You buy the game, you buy the expansions, you pay ~$15 every single month just to be able to play it. And on top of that, they have the gall to sell exclusive items, pets, mounts, level boosts, etc. for money. I think it literally *can't* get worse than this; they've hit the logical ceiling on just how many different kinds of cash-grabs they can do. The worst part is, the fans of these games just lap it up, make excuses, and become hostile toward those who criticize it.
And those exclusive items are expensive as hell too!! As a long-time FF XIV player, I absolutely love the game, but the cash shop is something that always irked me. It's not cheap to play this game and they have the gall to sell super expensive stuff on the side! One of the worst things I find is also the fact that buying an expansion (which is priced almost as much as a AAA new release at launch) does NOT give you a free month of play!
I'm particularly annoyed by the cost blizzard charges for moving a single character to another server (when the game is mostly serverless at this point, really only guilds are server bound). $25 per character per transfer.
At least blizzard lets players earn store $$ via in game gold from wow. Efficient players play for free and can buy other games. I personally bought destiny 2 with the expansions by doing in games things (leveling professions) i would've done anyways
Massive financial exploitation from big publishers basically started with WoW. Blizzard was all like, "Hey, let's see if we can charge people for a game, and then charge them more money to let them actually play it." I called it out when it happened, but holy shit, I never thought then that the game industry would get to where it is now.
I played Ffxiv for a long time too, i think they did well regards to content updates, with amazing things such as the gold saucer being completely free. I recently now started to play ESO and wow, its great. Sure you can play for free, but it takes longer and you have to buy dlc. If you take a subscription however you get all dlc besides the expansions for free plus crowns to spend on the store, mounts, pets, houses, costumes and whatnot, its nice of them to add plenty of crowns for each month subscribed. If you can't pay per month, theres plenty of shitty korean games for you to play. The difference in quality is massive compared to a pay to play game.
I've gotten to the point that I A: Heavily dislike manipulative business practices in games. B: Care a lot for game developers and the products they work on. C: Decided that refusing to purchase anything tainted by greed is the right call. If by any measure it gets a game dev laid off, hopefully that is one more opportunity for them to get a job they deserve instead of need. And we will all have something more to appreciate from it.
I love how contradictory your B and C points are. On one hand, you "care a lot for game developers". But on the other hand, you couldn't give a fuck less if they're laid off because of a decision made by executives they've probably never even met. Do you hold the same beliefs for other global corporations? Are you as conscious about where you shop and what products you buy outside of video games? Or does your vision not extend that far?
I agree with you, but unfortunately, people have been conditioned to fear losing their jobs if they even mention unionization. That's not a word corpos take lightly, so they swoop in quick to shut it down. In such a volatile industry, people aren't exactly jumping at the opportunity to risk their jobs, even if it'd benefit them all in the long run.
Reasons like that are why I now oppose open shop laws. You need to in some cases force people to band together to stop corporate snakes from squeezing the life out of everyone.
yeah definitely. I totally get that--at the same time, it has to start somewhere. More to the point, when unionizing, it's important to not just unionize the devs or the voice actors. Everyone working in that shop should be in the same union. That is, we should be organizing industrially. Pls join the I.W.W.
@@nullite4589 Too bad people have been taught to freak the fuck out when they hear "socialism" or "unions". They'd rather back the shitty situation they're in because they've been fed a bunch of lies their entire life.
@@nullite4589 Oh yeah I totally agree. I'm tempted to go full "Workers of the world, unite! You have only your chains to lose!". Might've misquoted Marx right there, but I'm sure you'll correct me.
Jim Sterling is my notification bell. ALSO! I really appreciate the talk at the beginning about whether or not a person is the target demographic for a microtransaction. I absolutely never felt pressured into even looking at the store in AC Odyssey. I never felt pressured to buy lootboxes in Star Trek Online in over 2k hours playing it. But, it's telling that I was hesitant to recommend either of those games to friends who I knew *would* be susceptible to them. I'd felt that almost subconsciously, and hadn't really realized it in the front of my brain mind until you pointed it out in this video. This is why I thank god for you, Jim.
Dear AAA Game Industry,
It's not your games that are too expensive, it's your executives that are too expensive.
Damn, very accurate
This... so much this.
Don't forget the shareholders.
Exactly... I mean making witcher 3 cost what 100 milion dollars? And these fuckers like Andrew Wilson and Soderlund get 20 mil fucking bonuses. I'm not even talking about salary. So two fucking CEO's get bonus and you have half of "the best game of all time" (overdoing it but you know what I mean).
When is Jim Sterling going to talk about unionizing the Games Industry?
Consumer: I want a good game?
Employee: I want healthcare?
CEO: I want a Bugatti?
I think it is more like;
CEO: I want a private island.
Investor: I want free money
Thank you, EA. You introduced me to Socialism and how right it is.
@@proletariandisciple Socialism is just the political equivalent of synergy in business- an economic ideal that everyone claims to strive for, but is actually impossible on large scales and winds up standing for something almost completely unrelated to the term and usually exploitative and morally abhorrent.
Yeah really calling it as u see it hey man
"Just dont buy the microtransactions if you dont like them"
*does not buy them*
"Do you want the game industry to fail!?!?"
nani the fuck
So badly. I want this whole corrupt shithole to crash and burn.
How do you win a war?
You find sides that will never stop fighting and sell to both of them.
Is that not victory?
His point is that kids and certain adults don't have the sense to stay away from them so it's up to the rest of us to look out for them. It's a little thing called preying on the weak and that just isn't cricket is it?
It already has before, guess what genius? If it does the only people who will lose out are us and the devs, the people in charge though will laugh their happy asses to the bank, think before you speak you fucking idiot
Fun fact: If everyone who worked on the game got $0.00001 off every dollar of GTA5's $6,000,000,000 lifetime sales and micro transaction revenue, each one would have made an extra $60,000 so far (assuming they were there since day one of sales). Figures say that more then 1000 people have worked worked on it, so I'll vastly overestimate at 2000 and assume all of those were there from day one... That would have been a paltry $120,000,000 off their total raw unbridled profit to pay people a fraction of the fruits of their labor. Wait, that's not a fun fact, that's sad fact. Game developers, when you unionize, please take a cut of the micro transactions too, we beg of you.
That gave me the idea to run some math for 10% of the revenue, which even for major corporations is reasonable (if you're a human and not a money obsessed Captain Planet villain). If you dedicate 10% of the revenue to the developers, you'd be paying 2000 developers $300,000 each at $0.00005 per dollar.
@Agent 005 I'll be honest I would love to see what would happen to the AAA publishers if they attempted to get high-end programmers, designers, artists, etc. from third world countries... if nothing else I somehow suspect it would be the ultimate admission they're glorified mobile game studios.
Also funny how since releasing GTA5, they haven't released a new title in over 5 years despite releasing about 1 new game per year before that. Funny how that works. And the content they did put in Online pales in comparison to the story campaigns from GTA4. I've never heard a single person talk about GTA Online and praise the storytelling. It's just cash shop items and repetitive cheaply produced heist bullshit.
I would prefer they just completly remove microtransactions actually.
RIGHT ON! Otherwise whats the point of even buying legal games?
60$
Everyone=ok
AAA companies=NOT ENOUGH
100$
Everyone=TO MUCH
AAA companies=STILL NOT ENOUGH
Hell, most people (including me) at least begrudgingly accept the whole season pass thing, and the "silver" and "gold" editions as a compromise. However, seeing they could get away with that, the publishers just decided to push even further, and they will continue to do so. Because there will never be such a thing as "enough" for them.
@@JimSterling Those ungrateful corps
And yet you get the full experience for just 60! Amazing that isnt it!
Contrarian Know-it-all John: "lol, if you can't afford a $100 game and microtransactions, you shouldn't be a gamer."
160$
Everyone: WE CANT PAY FOR THIS
AAA Companies: ENGAGE LUDICROUS SPEED!
100-hour work weeks. Let's break that down:
24 hours in every daily cycle, so that's 168 hours total in any week. Subtracting those work hours, we get 68 hours left.
Assuming that any of these workers are getting a healthy 9 hours average each day for sleep (but let's be real, they're probably not), we get 63 hours total for sleeping.
That leaves 5 hours. What're those five hours for? Family? Free time? _Eating?_ How does someone live if their job consumes their life like this?
Better question: Are they paid overtime for this?
Given that the average work commute is around 25 minutes nearly three of those hours would be just getting TO work assuming these workers are working 7 days a week (as that is the only way they could possibly get a 9 or even 8 hour sleep).
I sure hope so! If I'm being cynical though I wouldn't be surprised they're not, because the employees are "willfully dedicating those extra hours to a project they believe in" some other Newspeak-ish bullshit.
Yeah.
I used to try to jump on every workshift I could get when i was younger (20-ish). Then I learned somewhere down the line that isnt fucking worth it. Yes you may get some more money, but you dont have the time to enjoy it.
If I was forced to do 80-100h week I would change job in the blink of an eye
9 hours/day for sleep?! LOL holy fuck.
try working on an oil rig. its 12hr days for 21-28 days in a row without a day off. Then you go home for 7 days and see how much money you can spend before you have to go back.
rather work in retail or hold two jobs then doing that type of crunch, im glad i gave up being game designer
"Ubisoft throws shade at EA"
*twospidermenpointingateachother.jpg*
Thanks, now I know how to actually put images on RUclips
I believe the plural of Spiderman is Spidermans.
@@JubJubtheWonderHippo true
Proper nouns take on singular firm when plural
people going in to bat for big companies, billionaires etc, i just don't get it. they're not your friends and they'd sell you down the river in a heartbeat to make an extra buck.
Blind fanboyism. Its a condition where socially desperate individuals feel the need to have a connection to the corporate brand that robs them.
They don't need our defense. They have an Armada of Lawyers for that.
Let's be honest here: they're Americans.
It is called having first principles.
Standard bootlicking
None of these CEOs will ever match Satoru Iwata, a man who understood cuts had to be made at the TOP first in order to maintain morale and avoid layoffs. I'd like to see any of these guys cut their own salaries.
Hell freezes over first before any of those CEO fuckers from triple AAA games give a single dime to anyone else than themselves or their investors.
RIP iwata! 😇
Much less cut their own heads off. But they're too greedy for that sort of thing.
I'd like to see that in every industry across the culture. Absolutely no excuse for a CEO to make 300x their average employee. And that was the number a decade ago. It's like Jim said, the money those guys make is like the entire GDP of some small countries. You can get a heck of a lot done with a fraction of it.
BossPanzer Hell, that statement pretty much applies to all CEOs in every industry actually.
Can't believe people defend this bullocks. Thanks for being a voice Jim.
@@pvsweetypie What are you doing for the world?
We have the voice, now we need the hand of the people to crush this bullshittery. How can we act on this?
my favourite thing about Iwata is that he took a paycut during the dark times of the wii u era to help the rest of the company, that's good leadership you don't see a lot of in such big companies
Well this is Japan we are talking about. the country where you have to apologize to all your fellow employees if you take a sick day.
Seriously. All of them. Failure to do so is unforgivable and a "shamefur dispray!"
+Angry Applesauce After that last racist little comment, I'm not so sure I believe a word you say.
Scott Elder nintendo is probably the best company out of all these “AAA” publishers
Easily. For all the things they do wrong (a lot of which is tied to Japanese corporate culture where the company is paramount), Nintendo at least remember what they are- _entertainers._ They make _games._ Their reason for existing is to _entertain people._ Unlike other "triple-AEYYYYY" publishers whose sole reason for existing is to make all the money in the world, possibly in a manner involving entertaining people but not necessarily.
Japan, the country where workers are worked to DEATH. Literally. I'm pretty sure the owner of that company felt dishonored so he took the pay cut instead of laying off workers or anything else.
Rules for running a games corporation in 2018:
Rule #1
*Make nontaxable billions while your workers have to sleep on the cold office floor during crunch time*
Rule #2
*Place your headquarters in a tax haven despite your host country barely making up 0.01% of your consumer base*
Rule #3
*Remember to cram in unwanted **-microtransactions-** **_recurrent user spending_** *systems that break game balance*
add in hire the modern day equivalent of Pinkertons to crack down on worker attempts to organize, and release games by their due dates regardless of the game's actual stability
The term is scab
Hold up, hold up, hold up. You're saying it doesn't cost $7 billion to maintain a server?
It 100% does. EA's servers for Fifa are bad because they don't make enough money from FIFA points
Pfft nigga please, we all know it costs billions more than that. You wouldn't want all those people working that server to lose their jobs do you? PAY UP!
@@animelytical8354
Kek
0_0
I have a idea......what about stop pushing all the "always online" garbage and make good old single players game like old times
Jim you should totally reference figures in the millions and billions as "Digital Homicide lawsuits", e.g. "Sixty million dollars, that's four Digital Homicide lawsuits".
Lmao
That's brilliant, nice!
Yesssssssss
Have @Jim notice this!
That's funny.
I hate when people defend loot boxes and mtx, saying it helps developers. When it never does, it helps publishers, they rarely ever share
Yeah. Especially because devs often have to shoehorn these in the game... That's even more work for them.
I'll defend MTs to a point. And by to a point I mean of all the games mentioned in this video I would only excuse DMCV provided things don't change for the worse.
+RippahRooJizah That's the issue though, they ALWAYS change for the worse. Companies have proven you can't give them an inch with out them taking the whole fucking ruler and flying all the way around the world with it. You play apathetic to one practice, they'll only try and see what else they can get away with until before you know it BOOM DMC7 has you rolling lootboxes just to unlock weapons and stages. Or hell they could just shove them into 6 since companies have already proven they're not above shoving microtransactions into single player games that never had them before.
@@aliciafraser1835 And until they do that I will continue to not mind what DMCV does. I am not going to fault DMCV for something a game that doesn't exist theoretically might do. There are worse examples now in other games, Published by far more insidious companies.
But thats the thing, we cant do that anymore...the whole "well at least they arent as bad as other guys" is what is making this worst. Companies are getting away with this nonsense, but they are still being shitty, we need to stop with this "lesser than two evil" bs. Need to put the foot down now, to all mtx, even the "gateway" ones.
I'm so glad you gave Iwata a nod Jim... Nintendo may do their fair share of shitty things, but mistreating employees isn't one of them
RIP Iwata :(
Nintendo does its fair share of shitty things, but it at least doesn't have multiple special editions and microtransactions in its games.
Still, they should bin the team that thinks RUclips videos are not free advertisement for their products, and I have their entire library of games up to the Cube and DS backed up onto multiple physical media copies spread out over several counties out of sheer spite.
That would mean binning their legal team.
Nintendos problem is that they are stuck in 1990 legally.
Rip Iwata
I love Nintendo's games but I'm not giving them too much credit. On a consumer level at least, their online service sucks balls.
Love Nintendo, Buuuuuut Have you met Donkey Kong Mascots?
Heh. Yeah... RUclips is kinda... Not being nice to creators right now.....or ever....
If you're not paying for the service? _You're the product._
Really starting to think we need a new RUclips-esque site.
RUclips is going to shit, recently.
We need both new RUclips and Vine-esque sites. And I stupidly bought premium because I am so sick of adverts.
@@cyberrobotnix5147 its not recent, youtubers have been complaining about youtube for years about money or ads its nothing new
I have an incredibly non-addictive personality and have never bought a microtransaction, but that doesn't stop me from despising them due to the effects they have on others, and for the effects they have on the games.
It is like a Peanut Allergy... If said Allergy was sprinkled around without anyone knowing it. lol
*The Year 2099:*
Gamers will play PvP battles online by literally throwing money at one another.
I have an addictive personality and still haven't bought a micro-transaction
Anyway, you guys talk the talk and all that but even though you don't buy them, it still ruins the games for other people who don't buy them because of the idiots who *do.*
*Microtransactions were like:* ruclips.net/video/Wgf0HzbVqPc/видео.html *this year.*
They weren't fucking around and called our bluff, caught us off guard, and yeah...you know the rest.
thank you
It is outright disgusting how the gaming industry became a prime example of what kind of abusive situation a unregulated market will eventually lead to. But thank god for you, Jim Sterling, for not becoming tired in pointing out industry bullshit.
criticise EA: Yeah!
criticise Ubisoft: Yeah!
criticise Overwatch: Whoa hold on now, Overwatch is the best shit ever it's optional it's only cosmetic, it's about player choice.
Some groups of people claim to be free of microtransaction bullshit but they're just brainwashed for specific games and defend them no matter how deep the whole they dig for themselves is. More and more people fight against the bullshit but you always see these people around.
They are called ''boot-lickers''.
hole*
Laurence Barnes I like Ubisoft somewhat. They’ve invented some great games and franchises but some of their practices are shady
@@andrewhailstorm4081 well this comment sure aged poorly
Satoru iwata was an honorable man even when Nintendo was down he was the savior taking a pay cut to make sure his employees could push on R.I.P Iwata San.
Oh how I waited for this. Kotaku, please watch and learn how microtransactions are cancer to $60 games.
Kotaku? LEARN?? Hah!
Kotaku ist going to learn, when folks at Polygon figured out how to use a controller. Then also IGN ist going to give out honest reviews instead of paid ones. Also M Night Schamalan will make a good movie again. If all that happens then suddenly Isis will start loving gays and it starts to rain milk and honey...
Kotaku is more shit that ISIS. I can't wait for them to go bancrupt.
Stop paying attention to kotaku except to mock people who read it.
Kotaku is dogshit no doubt, but can it possibly be worse than Rock Paper Shotgun?
I will never understand why people would so fervently defend a large corporation, corporate entity or corporate product. Especially if they’re not being paid. What do they honestly think is going happen? The only one who benefits from this is the corporation in question, not them in any conceivable way. I just really don’t get it.
Oh trust me, there are so many it shocks and disgusts me
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Choice-supportive_bias they spent a lot of money on it, so it must be good, else they would be idiots...
They've been domesticated like cattle. The shareholders are the consumers.
Corporations spend millions of dollars on marketing. They don’t need sycophantic fans doing it for free.
@@doktoroswaldo3940 That says all.
"I spent a hundred quids on that ultra limited edition, I can't say that it's bad because I would feel like I wasted money..."
And I know how it feels when you finally see that you spent too much money on a game that is not worth at all. I burned myself two times (AC: Revelations and AC3) and I learned my lesson.
*Yeah, its time the corporate lie around Unions are torn down.*
No one gets anything without leverage. Yet employers act like you dont need it. Greedy companies also say you dont need consumer protection, you dont need a higher wage, you dont need to have too many hours off, you dont need to complain when there is crunch time without overpay and so on. At what point are you going to get that corporations do not have your best interest in mind when they "recommend" you should not support a Union!?!
Than that's the type of companies people shouldn't work for
unions ALWAYS become just as corrupt as the big coorporate fat cats they try to fight. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Unions are like a necessary evil just like the coorporations themselves.As someone who has been a part of several unions I can personally attest to their corrupt practices across several industries. It cant be escaped even outside factory and construction work etc. for example, My current engineering teacher literally berates us with highly inappropriate sexist, racial stereotype, religion, and politics jokes and has pop midterms and tells us that hes untouchable specifically because of unions. At past work sites workers refused to do their jobs because of bullshit union excuses like
"there was a tiny tarp convering the concrete so we couldnt start work since the people who set up the tarp(tiny 1lb tarp) arent union"
Guess what?
Unions don't want people to work themselves into a hospital bed or even an early fucking grave, and the worst the actual unions do is ask for a cut of your paycheck in order to pay for lobbying to increase your fucking paycheck and make sure you aren't demanded to tear yourself to pieces in order to make a basic living.
What you just described are what people who are a PART of a union do because they have no knowledge of how a worker's union works.
If you reported that shithead teacher's behavior to his union, then I doubt he wouldn't be changing his tune.
Stop trying to play "but they did this thing" with the organizations made and consistently proven to improve the lives and livelihood of people.
@@httohot listen to the start of the video again: your personal ancedotes don't represent the full story
LOL stop getting all defensive and taking it personal. Unions are most definitely corrupt but that does not mean they dont serve a necessary function. All I was doing was pointing out how unions should not be blindly followed or praised because they are usually equally or at least significantly corrupt in the same fashion and frequency as big corporations. My personal anecdotes are just for perspective on what is culturally known and accepted. Many politicians are corrupt, does that mean we should stop using politicians?
Nothing proves Jim's point more then playing a game that was put out before the Xbox 360 era. He's mentioned it before, like you could just unlock costumes and content through skill and time, not money.
So, the only reason games were still good back then is because.. The publisher COULDN'T make them bad?
You're not exactly making who you're defending clear here.
Remember Act Raiser, on SNES?
@@-Trauma. hell, yeah, I loved both those games!
@@watermelonmonsterman6027 I'm sure you would, I don't play online games so I have no real practice. But good for you!
@@Mernom I'm just saying it's been a constant slide into greed, like Jim Sterling mentions. So I guess I'm arguing in his favor? I'm certainly not trying to defend aaa developers.
The "AAA publishers have employees so exploiting customers is ok" argument is eerily similar to the argument made by banks before and after the crash of 2007/8 that because they manage Grandma's pension fund you absolutely can't regulate them in any way or her money will be at risk.
The fact that banks or big corporations can hold your money or their employees hostage really isn't a compelling reason to let them do as they wish. Quite the opposite.
Thing is they dont even treat their employees that well either. Crunch time, crunch time without pay, mass layoffs after projects are done, its all bullshit.
"This can apply to a lot more than just video games"
I don't understand what's going on in the head of someone where they think telling you the problem is more widespread is some kind of rebuttal.
Whataboutism: Maybe if I point out someone else is bad in a similar enough way to me, they'll get distracted and leave me alone.
Yeah, I feel like it's some variant of "There are children starving in Africa." Red herring of minimal meaning once you look at it. I dunno, maybe other than, "Oh, okay, I guess I'll have to go yell at those people next."
As someone who has worked for a few years in big pharma (until I changed due to pure disgust) I can't emphasize enough how true that is.
The fact is companies exist to make profit for their shareholders, and we need to find other business models for certain industries (and healthcare is the first). These alternatives have their own issues (e.g. kickstarter) but we have better and better alternatives to the AAA model.
... Ajit Pai...
There's a fancy name for it: "fallacy of relative privation".
AAA PUBLISHERS HATE HIM! Journalist demolishes excuses for microtransactions in under 20 minutes. Learn how.
I clicked and then I got a warning that my computer was infected! Thankfully, there was a very nice person, with a sexy foreign accent, who helped me when I called the number provided.
Once I gave him control of my computer through teamviewer, he was able to fix all those errors for only a hundred dollars! But I hand to send it via money gram, which was a little odd- but he was so nice I just had to trust him!
So then I tried again, I clicked "learn how," and the same thing happened! Thankfully, my hero came through again for another hundred dollars, but I finally was able to click the link and learn about the scam that is microtransactions!
It is just terrible that people would scam others like that, and I can't believe that people would be dumb enough to fall for it!
What a world, right?
Hydro Cannons Asshole complains about shit he doesn’t have to buy for 20 minutes.
@@noahgray543 Good premise, but lousy execution. Don't stop trying, though...good writing doesn't usually happen without practice.
@@sheriffaboubakar9720 The so called "asshole" explains, why he doesn`t want to buy that "shit" and why no one should.
@@sheriffaboubakar9720 BAIT
No paid game should have "in-app purchases" and DLC needs to have proper post release work to warrant paying for it (this is why I'm lenient with fighting games, balancing is a pain)
Jim Sterlings videos will make youtubes algorithms cry like a anime fan on prom night.
He's saying Anime Fans are peedos and will cry on prom night because they're in prison with no body pillow to hug
@@PaulBadman You are correct, weebs are sad
@Jibo Da Grey r/woosh
Life is good when you're anime fan on a prom night that looks like a fucking prick.
Make the bad guys cry- like an apple.
Jim Sterling DESTROYS video game publishers with LOGIC and FACTS
Unfortunately, no; Jimbo is right and everything, but publishers are still the ones laughing all the way to the bank and poor Jimbo just ain't influential enough to change that.
This sounds like a porn title.
(MUST WATCH) Publishers hate this one trick!?!
5 Reasons why you are WRONG about publisher!
Libtards owned epic style
All the ways people try to defend the greedy business practices in games miss the big picture. Which is that years ago games didn't have ANY type of micro transactions in them and did completely fine. So the excuse that companies need them to try to stay afloat is simply not true.
Infinite Spawn
Blind fanboyism. Its a condition where socially desperate individuals feel the need to have a connection to the corporate brand that robs them
And because we *like* games (or their predecessors), we instinctively feel that fanboyism. The same thing would apply to oil and power companies if we weren't conditioned to taking those things for granted. People like Devil May Cry, so they shill Capcom. I've never seen anyone shill BP or Alinta Gas.
Not to mention, games used to be better.
The real reason they do now is to maximize profit at all costs, in any way they can get away with. They have no regard for the customers, only their money and the companies’ shareholders that expect infinite growth (which is impossible ofc)
sooner or later, the “AAA” game industry’s predatory, greedy, anti-consumer behavior is gonna bite them in the ass. I secretly hope they all suffer some consequences and either change for the better or die.
All of the shenmue games have been total fucking failures financially and we got three of those, so what’s the fucking excuse for companies that make billions on a regular basis
If this industry can only live by exploitation, I don't want to be a part of it. And I don't know why anyone would willingly want to.
the whole world runs on the exploitation of someone somewhere.
@@alinbarba1418 ah so by that logic we should just shut up about it and pretend it never happened yeah...? Fucking clown 🤡
@@alinbarba1418 I just ate a vegan shawarma made from ingredients purchased at a fair price from self-employed farmers at a small local business. If you really care about not exploiting anyone, you can.
@@user-pu6pn8vt5d ma man, the very devices we are using to communicate now have minerals mined through slave labour from the Democratic Republic of Congo, the whole country is a decades long proxy war where all the major world players fund various armed groups to keep the country in perpetual turmoil so that the resources can be plundered at will.
The problem is not you or me for using these products, the issue is systemic, the very structure that has a vested interest in keeping things the way they are. Through individual actions such as buying local, cruelty free etc. you are buying only your personal peace of mind while the system perpetuates the same horrors. The only way in which you wouldn't participate if you go and live deep in some forest using only whatever grows around you.
R.I.P. Satoru Iwata.The only decent CEO of video game company that dosen't act greedy & actually taking responsibility when Nintendo is in a financial crisis.
And for being the only CEO I've heard of that took a pay dock during said time. I know there are more CEOs, but he sticks out in my mind
The reason he's easy to remember as a good CEO,is because the fact he does speak from the heart & straight to us the truth.
From my memory, the higher ups taking a pay cut during times of trouble is a common thing in Japanese society.
Also when obsidian went through financial troubles their CEOs took pay cuts so they won't need to lay off as much stuff.
Being total dicks seems to be mostly (but not exclusively) an American thing with big companies. Smaller American publishers and Devs like devolver digital don't seem to be infected by such actions.
@White Templar yeah no lol. You would not want to be in a world dominated by imperial japan, trust me.
Or the nazis ... they also lost the war
To anyone who says they need micro transactions to stay afloat. Remember even infinity wars made less then some of the biggest AAA games in the past few years and that movie had far more people and royalties to pay then any single AAA game in the past 20 years and still made a butt load of money.
While the microtransactions don't typically target me, I can't deny that they ARE predatory. I've never even considered buying lootboxes in a paid game, and just quit playing the game if I feel pressured. I would love to see microtransactions in paid games disappear, but it's never going to happen.
Whenever I drop a F2P game at the point that I'm feeling the pressure of not using microtransactions, I always think to myself, "how better this game could have been if there was no microtransactions".
Whenever I drop a full priced game at the point that I'm feeling the pressure of not using microtransactions, I always think to myself, "how better this game could have been if there was no microtransactions".
It's easy to see what's wrong when both sentences can be used side by side, doesn't it?
The business model preys on low iq idiots which there are many of in this world.
Hadn't thought of this, solid point Saxie.
couldn't disagree more, smart people don't have gambling addictions because they do a risk assessment of the situation and see its not worth it. Back in the day this industry was a niche product that catered mostly to nerdy intellectuals that would not stand for the bullshit that is going on today, in recent years however theres been an huge influx of idiots and low iq normies that AAA companies are milking dry year after year. In short 'a fool and his money are easily parted'
It can happen, but you'd have to convince most people not to buy games they want if they have MTX. The problem, of course, is that _consumer_ can be a derogatory word for a reason.
This video is essentially a recap of 2 years of the Jimquisition. There's a reason I moved onto primarily indie games.
but indie games do all of that and worse?
@@StrazdasLT not always. Case by case
@ So? There are good indie games and there are good AAA games. Most are crap on both fronts.
i just check if the publisher is the same as the dveloper. Otherwise i dont consider them indie. Still the best thing would be that any programer earn a share from profits.
@@StrazdasLT yeah no.there are good indie games and there are crap indie games.there are bad AAA games,and there are predatory AAA games.
I laughed when i saw the AC Odyssey editions and the standard edition be like *includes game* LOL
QuantumTV i might mean the disk, since a lot of physical copues just include a pass to download the game online. Just a guess, don't own it or plan on it.
Oh you must’ve missed the mass effect andromeda (I think) special editions. Only some had the game.
These days you can't even take that for granted.
it should say "includes SOME of the game"
@@jrs4516 Yeah, and by the sounds of it you should be "happy" you get the game at all at that full aaa price!
I work in life and medical insurance and have a union bargaining agreement. My company only clients are ones that works with unions.
Unions aren’t _(inherently)_ bad. They literally save thousands of jobs and lives. Including mine, cause I have a pre-existing condition. In fact, companies with happy employees improve the economy a lot more because they actually CIRCULATE money in the economy.
They're good as long as they don't get corrupt and turn mafia-esque, which has happened sometimes in the past with some of them. So it's like most things in life: you need a good balance in the middle. (Just for the record though, I agree with everything Jim is saying in this video, if that wasn't clear.)
But none of that money is in MY pocket...
Unions are like people.
SOme are good.
Others...
Oh boy, is that a union or a terrorist organization?
I am speaking from experaince with that. A foster Dad was in a union and got hurt, the company tried to cheapo out of medical bills. Union was not amused and made it known. Still being pay full benefits.
Another time with my Adopted father was fulling for a strike. This one poor excuse of an Union decided it didn't like that and nearly started a riot. Nearly cause one of the members decided to take a swing at a 9 your old kid who was waiting for his single dad to finish fulling in for them. The New Crews got that live, and the nearby Cops reacted angrierly. That union was forcely disbanded with the entire up management jailed for corruption charges, and later smuggling.
So you need to treat each union on its own and decide if its a good one or a bad one.
Cause each one is different...
Unions aren't bad, but they aren't good either. They defend the jobs of terrible employees, just as much as good employees. They get terrible employees just as much money as good employees. They remove meritocracy from the workplace which harms the productivity of a company.
i mean your right but if corporations werent such slimy bastards we wouldnt need unions i would rather have shitty workers at least having a job and not starving instead of some fuck head ceo gettting his 3rd yacht.
That's because Iwata actually played games.
And he was a passionate programming genius who taught himself at an early age, and he was roped into his position because the old president knew Iwata was the best man for the job.
"Defenders of the Games Industry" are really all that one kid in high school who discovered Ayn Rand and was just happy that an ethos existed to justify their sack-crushingly awful worldview.
'Sack-crushingly' is an incredible adverb
You've outdone yourself here, Jim. That episode is even better than Anger.
People who say triple a games need micro transactions, don't actually have a full grasp on how much money 1bil is.
I've never been susceptible to loot boxes because I honestly don't give a shit about stuff in them, and I refuse to spend money on something that only gives me a CHANCE of getting what I want (except charity raffles, if I know the charity isn't a scam).
But yeah, that shit's exploitative to those who get hooked on it. I only took a few years of psychology in college before changing majors and since then have just sort of casually studied it on my own, but the basics of operant conditioning explain why those games generate compulsive spending behaviors. That was shit we got into in the 101 class, so even the most basic grasp of psychology will tell you that, yes, they are exploitative.
Yeah I almost feel like a crazy person because I just don't care at ALL about character skins or hats or costumes or anything. I played Overwatch for a while and enjoyed getting the lootboxes that came naturally from the game, but never once wanted to buy some. I also just end up using the default skins anyway. Like there's something oddly "impersonal" about a developer designing a skin for you and then you getting to choose which one you want. It doesn't feel special or expressive in any way. How people can spend money on this crap in this game and Fortnite and others just boggles my mind. That's also why I kinda don't care that they're there: If people wanna spend money on useless aesthetic crap, let them. Fuck it.
@@CodyHazelleMusic yeah, it isn't my money so fuck it. At the same time, I will explore the edges of every game world, if it rewards me with those things instead, and I have to actually find them, because I find that to be enjoyable. But to just buy them, yeah, I don't see anything special about that, like, yeah anyone could find them in their game like me, but, maybe we explore different areas and find different ones, so our games were different respectively, but when it's offered on sale, we can all just buy the same thing. It's kinda silly honestly, to spend so much money on just *looking* different. I've never understood it, but hey, I'm glad it isn't my money.
Since I had my son my gaming hours per week have dropped to maybe 2 to 3 down from 10 or more if I was really into a game. I'm time poor mid 30's with a decent disposable income and not so much loot boxes but stats boosts and time savers to beat the grind are directly targetted at me. I hate it particulary in single player games. That shit was supposedto be my escape and relaxation and now my gaming experience is being locked behind grind walls just to pressure me to spend more money.
@Andy Ramsay I'm glad you brought this up. There's obviously been a lot of discussion around AC Odyssey's use of "time saver" microtransactions and many people are saying that they are there for people who "can't be bothered with the grind/side missions" which isn't true in many cases. Right now, I'm a post-grad student so I get super busy at times, there was a time in my life where I was working three jobs so I had hardly any game time. These "time savers" are there specifically to exploit people like that.
> sort of casually studied it on my own
You mean, watched a few episodes of Extra Credits?
The only way to fix the problems inherent to the system is to make the employees themselves the shareholders or owners of the company. Co-ops should be the default corporate structure not the exception.
That'd be an interesting experiment.
@@negromancer.2685 and it seems to be a workkng concept. Many of the bigger companies here in Sweden are cooperatives.
@@09csr Really? I never knew that. I'd love to see how a game dev cooperative would work.
@Xadion There needs to be these kinds of alternatives explored.
With the bit at the end: that's like Pepsi saying that coca-cola is unhealthy
These companies are literally the same as "real world" corporations. No matter how much they earn, the top 5% of work pyramid, general "somethings", executives and all the sort always take the lion cut of any profit. Sure, they should earn more than average coder or animator, because their heavy responsibility includes making decisions successful enough so that these average coders and animators would actually have a job.
Unfortunately humans are garbage beings and just like hundreds of years of history proved, 99% of the time those at the top have no problem using their power and position to conveniently pocket more than they should ethically and definetily more than they should officially, "by contract".
With that in mind it's just baffling how some people act like Activison and such are not the same as some major pharmaceutical, oil, electronics or any other corporation. People at the top keep getting away with being greedy, so they keep getting greedier and exploit both their workers and clients more and more.
great observation! These corporations are just like corporations! WOW! what a revelation! Are you a prophet?
But people tend not to think about these corporations in the larger context of all corporate entities in the economy. They think that the game industry lives in a bubble when in fact it's affected by everything around it and is a part of the whole.
>because their heavy responsibility includes making decisions successful enough so that these average coders and animators would actually have a job.
you do know bosses are unnecessary to the well functioning of a corporation/business right or have you never heard of co opratives?
the only purpose the "boss" or executives serve is to act as a sockpuppet of the investors and to leech away money from the devs/coders who go trough bullshit 24/7 crunch periods just to finish the newest generic bland cash grab the video game industry would be quite a bit better if they adopted something akin to valve's (steam) system where the devs are allowed a bit of breathing room and creative freedom or a sort of workplace democracy/discussion making.
@Jamthis Would you agree that's a tremendous problem and likely the root of 90% of the outrage we've seen over the past year?
Hearing the the RDR crew are putting in 100 hour work weeks really just makes me want the game less. Seriously, push it back a month or two. I don’t want to play a game made under such conditions. That’s like a conflict diamond or some shit, it’s an unethical product.
Spiral Jumper The guy who did the interview already responded saying that the only people affected by the whole 100 hour weeks was him and 3 other people from the writing team and it was by their own accord. None of them were forced or asked to stay that much time on overtime and it was for 3 weeks, not months or even years.
Yeah I saw that too, really relieved personally. I've been a fan of Rockstar since back in the day, I even loved Oni. So I'm glad I don't need to feel guilty about my RDR pre-order.
I just don't touch GTA online. GTA is a great single player game and I can easily earn everything I want in single player via actual heist missions and stock manipulation. As far as I'm concerned RDRO and GTAO can fuck right off.
But you turn a blind eye to the ones who work the same or more hours for far less money making your 4k tvs, iPhones, and consoles that play those games....
Boycotting RDR2 because it's a Rockstar game and I don't trust Rockstar after the GTA Online bullshit.
I used to love gaming, i don't anymore. At first i thought it was a problem with myself, now i realize its just because the games are just cheap trash churned out year after year, with the "game" part just an excuse to shovel some gambling into peoples lives.
There are some devs delivering great experiences without all the bs but I absolutely see your point.
Gaming is still fun as long as you look past the bs like AC and CoD and the likes. Games like Hollow Knight and Subnautica are gems that will restore your faith in gaming :)
I've taken to replaying old games in my library back before things went down this path. I've actually been reminded of the dead space series from this video and may play 1 and 2 soon to occupy myself.
Many indy games are created with integrity.
Heck, right now I’m playing a game from nearly ten years ago and having the time of my life without a micro transaction in sight. Sadly it was also the last game Pandemic Studios ever made before EA double tapped them in the back.
There was a time when i was fine with Overwatch's loot boxes. I thought "well i'd never buy the things, they're just some virtual costumes" I figured the only people who would buy them were just going to spend a few dollars maybe, or had more money than they knew what to do with. But then i saw my friends saying how they bought loot boxes, paying the full 60 dollars for 50 loot boxes, either saying they got what they wanted or they didn't. I can't condone this kind of business, the kind that makes sensible people waste their money on virtual garbage, not even guaranteed to get something from it. You could buy another game for 60$, maybe a game with a unique story, maybe something with deep tactical gameplay, or a tough beat-em-up, instead they spend that 60$ on a few skins and sprays for Overwatch. And that is a damn shame.
This ×100. Overwatch has become so shallow. I went from playing daily to short bursts here and there.
Alsi had someone purchase the 99,99$ pack in several games. That is literally more than he paid for the game. It's crazy
While I can happily say I never bought any Overwatch lootboxes, I am ashamed to admit being guilty of partaking in similar schemes in other games to some degree. it's something I have been making a conscious effort to identify and avoid for a while now. People like Jim bringing attention to the problem and keep talking about it has certainly helped reinforce that resolve not to reward these tactics.
The lootboxes and limited time skins are ultimately what killed my desire to play Overwatch because it left that much of a bad taste in my mouth, being forced to grind my ass off for hours or shell out even more cash just for the *chance* to get what I wanted.
That was his money. Why you have to manage his money ?
If he have fun with this then. Its their right.
@@hellatze I haven't read anywhere where he stated that he's managing his friends money. I took as an example that no matter how much lootboxes you buy you probably cant pull what you want due to RNG.
I don't really have anything to say, I just want to help Jim's video engagement numbers.
+1
Gotta pump up dem metrics
pump pump
Saaaaame
fuck youtube
Glad you know what you're doing, Jim.
Took him long enough to make this video, though.
Who is this blue tick wanker?
I have two kids. This does nothing to me that sleep deprivation doesn't do better
Aren't you the guy who got roasted for having a fake Japanese girlfriend?
@@excusablegold roasted is the wrong word, slandered is more appropriate, but that implies that having a fake japanese girlfriend is a bad thing, which if you have one, it's probably not healthy, but if that's your deal, cool.
They once said mobile games would kill console gaming. We laughed at such an absurd statement. Little did we know, how true that statement really was...
That is basically what I said. We thought they meant companies would stop making games for consoles and instead make them for phones and tablets. When gamers didn't jump on it, they brought the mobile games to console. They shoved mobile game shit (such as microtransactions) into console games, and they are killing console gaming. Thus, my original comment.
I love that Iwata actually cared about his employees. Other companies and their CEOs can really learn a thing from Iwata. It's a shame that man is gone now :'( .
True. His philosophy and practices should be adopted into a particular style of upper management in all industries - I can actually see that becoming a sort of quasi-religion in terms of nurturing a "healthy" company that a CEO can actually take pride in.
I have long argued that if you truly enjoy something, you should be even more critical of it than people who hate the thing you like, because you should want something that is good to get better. The exploitative greed of AAA developers only makes things worse, never better (at least not for the customer), so don't defend Free-to-Play mobile game exploitative BS in $60 AAA games!
I've said it before, but it needs repeating. AAA publishers like ActivisionBlizzard and EA are not your friend. A friend would loan you $10 to buy lunch if they saw you were starving. These AAA companies would snatch your wallet off you, take the money and the credit card out, then try to sell you back your empty wallet.
Wrong, they'd pawn off the wallet instead. Why give you a chance to get anything back at all?
Single-handedly the most important video you've ever made on the topic. Thank god for you - I'm sharing this everywhere. You are doing such important work advocating for the player and the developer and shining a light on the immoral and illegal practices by these corporations. Thank you again!
@Agent 005 . It could matter. People like Jim need to be more reasonable, not just the usual reactionary-lefty type who wants to ban everything.
Eg. Restrict micrograms actions to those over 21+, most people will get behind that.
Thank you for this. Anything that sheds more light on the industry is good. As a developer myself I am constantly appalled by business practices and the horrible treatment of especially QA workers.
Yeah, Devs need to unionize. Thats really the only real world solution I can see actually helping them out. The ability to have unions is something wars have been fought over. These things are important. Those fatcats aint going to just wake up and have a change of heart
I get the feeling that if a suit gets wind of any proto-union forming they'll just kill the studio and hire another team, since there are so many springing up thanks to targeted marketing of Unity courses and the like.
I believe the word is "shenanigans"
They will just move it to India where people would kill for these jobs.
Probably. I think that's why it'll have to be widespread and sudden. A widespread build and a sudden strike, through multiple companies and thousands of developers.
Sounds impossible- but the first push for equal pay happened like that- I can't remember when (I think it was 50's or 60's) but in Wales, about 90% of women suddenly striked over equal pay. Their value was soon determined then when there was almost no one in certain departments in factories losing the companies millions by slowing production to a crawl.
Developers need to do something like that. And hey, they're kind of disposable in the eyes of those they work for anyway, so losing a job shouldn't be their greatest fear
Im getting a self defeatest sort of vibe from some of these replies. So...what, people shouldnt try to get fair treatment because the overlords will take their jobs to India? Lol sure. Well let them have them. That fear is the exact kind of mentality they want. Keep people licking their boots and thanking them for gracing the lowly artists and programmers with a shit job. Gimme a fucking break
yes.. But.. it gets a little more complicated when millions upon millions of dollars are spent to misinform people about things like unions. You are not wrong but... people are paid a lot of money to make sure people are antagonistic about unions and workplace regulations.
I knew microtransactions were making AAA publishers richer, but goddamn. Almost two-thirds of their current revenue? And despite this, they exploit tax havens and purge studios full of devs, anyway? Utterly disgusting.
On a side note, Jason Schrier's response last week was very disappointing. His investigative work is better than 90% of other game journalism (his takedown of plagiarist Filip Muchin was especially brutal after Muchin tried to shame him), but his response demonstrates the perils of getting too cozy with the big publishers.
Does this mean Schrier now lacks credibility? Probably not if he learns from this, but he sure as hell revealed his own personal blind spot.
Red Dead 100hr. work weeks by Rockstar.
No Redemption for the management.
I worked at this small company where the management had their heads up their asses everytime, and we paid for it with stressful overtime weeks. Its not funny, or cool or something to brag about. It is a reason to quit that job and prefer a few months of unemployment rather than having that bullshit. It is pure incompetence by people that shouldnt be allowed to own and manage companies. Life is not about working overtime. Time is the most valuable thing we have.
And that's why I will never purchase a Rockstar game again. Shit company with a shit CEO.
@Tristen, I don't blame you mate.
cartmann94
100 hour work weeks.
The last time I heard that was in my history lessons when we talked about the industrial revolution.
You know, the reason why we have unions nowadays.
And there's at least one famous game dev that doesn't doesn't rely on crunch time and avoids it happening through proper management. Imagine that. And these other companies try to act like it's impossible to not have crunch time... sigh.
Capitalism will kill your entertainment, too. Having a bunch of rich dudes who only want more money actually pulling the strings(shareholders) rather than the people who do the work(developers) will drive that shit into the ground just like everything else.
I've also never understood gamers who defend these companies like they were their family. It's ridiculous. They are corporations who want to make as much money as humanly possible. Yes they CAN make for us a great game which we buy for fair price and profit and that's ALL they deserve and need. Satisfying their greed is not what us consumers are meant to do. But this is just beyond so many gamers comprehension for some reason...
It's time to stop calling it "triple A" with a sarcastic tone. Call it "triple dip" with a straight face, in its full factual and deserved derision.
Triple Ayyyyyy-nal.
Call it a "number six with extra dip"
Triple Dip sound quite darn correct - First pay for the base game - Then pay for a season pass just to get the whole game and just to top their bank account off they add a lot of grind so you will be "encouraged" to pay to skip those game destroying parts.
Triple Dip games is the 100% accurate term of today's so called AAA games!
This video needs to blow up--seriously. And I need to go find more pictures of EA's CEO. Excuse me, guys.
Send me some of em. I need to turn them into a poster and pin them to a wall for.. Dart-throwing.. Yeah.. Darts..
Crunching dosen't make quality. In anything. Where human. So many hours at one time will lower effectiveness & metal state of any person.
I have heard that “Jason Schreier High Horse Armor DLC” will come to Odyssey next month.
Normally, I'd be in the camp of "If you don't like it, then don't buy it. Vote with your wallet! ect." but in the case of video games it is objectively true that the inclusion of microtransactions also means the inclusion of factors to make said microtransactions appealing!
Devs don't put microtransactions into a game not caring whether people buy them or not, of course they want you to buy them! So they have to make them appealing; which in turn affects all of us "Not-Retards" who didn't like it, didn't buy it, and still get shafted by excessive grinds, arbitrary gatekeeping using wait periods, and overall fucking with the games progression.
Bottom line, the excuse of "player-choice" is horseshit! If it is about player-choice and not about money, put an "instant unlock" toggle in the options menu for free....where all the other fucking player-choices are!
Exactly. It's a waste of time making a product you don't want to be bought. Companies would not do it if it didn't make them any money.
Also worth noting something Jim said in a video a few years back. "don't like don't buy, vote with your wallet" doesn't actually work in the gaming industry. Publishers refuse to acknowledge that their practices are the reason that people aren't buying a game, so they immediately shift blame to the developers or even the players themselves.
So the people who are responsible receive no consequences and studios get shut down for making games that didn't sell for reasons they had no control over.
@@althelor Eh, if things underperform, people sell off stock. Get enough underperformers in a row, investors start hesitating to buy that stock back even at deflated prices, and put their money behind more reliable earners. That's how you hurt their pocketbook. It's the long game.
Agreed and indeed.
I was saying this back when people thought it was a feature to have "progression" in multiplayers now, and there was a whole system of hate set up against "boosters" and the idea of choice in servers that were treated on par with bullshit random matchmaking, as if letting you play the game enjoyably was a crime. Now look, just as they obviously would since it was literally driven right out of F2P with their "progress" systems, they have monetized it, hold back content, and host artificial "events" to force you to grind by times and so on. You didn't have a choice to just get the gun you wanted to play with on a game you put down $60 for, and you didn't get a choice on even which damn map you or server you played on, and you didn't get the choice of a united community when new map packs came out. You just had to sit through it and grind for hours on end while people pretended this was the great feature of our times. I want that sort of time again where the community mods were you DLC, and the game didn't need progress because you could modify and change up every feature, and join crazy servers of your choice... it would also help of course if the games themselves were deep enough that you didn't die in a blink and had actual mechanics to play and get into.
The mechanics were replaced by progression, and that inspired more people than ever to play and get hooked into these systems by cheap and fresh thrills and constant rewards. Jim himself is even an example, having a past history of dismissing older features for COD's big new thing, before they got insane and even he realized "oh shit". They get people hooked in with happier newer, casual and accessible new methods, and then a large massive catch-all demographics is laced in and there to either buy shiny new things, or go sit in a corner waiting. In a round about way it happened to other genres and games as well. Nobody copies and storms off with millions on top of Bioshock or the latest Mario's success anymore, when its easier to use the likeness of COD, or make a massive checklist of generic open world traits, or boil another down to some simpler formula, and you're just expected to slog through it, pay for it, or get off the train and wait for another exception to the rule.
There are so many problems with how creative work and creative people are valued, it's baked not just into the systems of production, but society.
For one, by many it's not considered "real work." You're supposed to have a separate job to support yourself, and if you can't make it on creative work alone you're supposed to get a "real job". It's a snideness and dismissiveness of language.
Second, the public and your boss are super willing to remind you, "you can always leave." The public to dismiss your complaints, and the boss to reinforce that YOU ARE REPLACEABLE. As companies consolidate, what are your options? If you want a job working on X Genre or Y Style of game, your options are realistically limited.
And finally, there's the insideous belief that suffering for creativity is normal, even noble. Pride in crunch time is a perfect example. Losing sleep to make a deadline isn't a sign that a deadline is unreasonable, it's NOBLE. It's DEDICATION to stop seeing your family, not an excessive monopolization of your time. Carpal tunnel means you value your craft, not that a heavy workload is taking a physical role.
Culture had to change how it views creative work, namely acknowledging that it's REAL WORK.
Same reason why people shit on being a RUclipsr or streamer as not being a 'real job'.
The attack against organized labor need to stop in this country. The results in all cases are the same, underpaid overworked employees and billionaire CEOs.
I have never understood the american fear of unions. They have improved millions of lives across the world yet somehow the ones in the US would be communism? However you guys are a really young country maybe someday you'll wise up.
@@Hefisstos Because corporations run this country and they dont want to pay the people that do all the hard work. This system has become so disgusting. They cut pay and lay off workers and yet report record profits and pay millions in bonuses to the ceo for squeezing more out of the little guy. The fact they control virtually every memeber of the government is the problem. People of the world do not allow this to take place in your country.
@@Hefisstos Germany in its current form is (at best) 149 years old (technically 70 and if youre realy nit picky its 30 years old), and thereby younger than the US and has WAY better working conditions, so age doesnt realy matter here
I like the way jim says "triple a"in a funny voice
Triple AAAAYYY
I love when he says "live services", it's the best
Welcome to the Jimquisition.
I’m glad that Sony Interactive and Nintendo exists, they still know how to make good quality games. I can live without the 3rd party AAA developers/publishers that bluntly promotes micro transactions and loot boxes. I love Warframe and it has micro transactions, but the big and obvious difference is that game is f**king FREE!! Micro transactions and loot boxes does not belong to a full-priced AAA game.😅✌🏻
all that aside, warframe offers plat 3 times a week, 1 for each platform, and it's a rather generous 1000 platinum, as well as weekly updates, and hotfixes, any money spent on WF is more of an investment than anything else
Yeah like warframe, above all else, cares and puts in the effort. They aren't perfect and I wish they had developed outside of a capitalist structure so they didn't have to include the stuff, but I think they do their best with what they have I think.
Not to mention you'll get random discounts on the in-game currency too. You get 75% off once in a 50 day period, and 20% or 50% off randomly throughout that period as well.
Sonny is a AAA publisher. The only difference is they're 1st party AAA since their games are exclusively on their machines and EA, A/B is 3rd party AAA because you can run their gambling apps on any machine. They're both horrible AAA publishers. I'm pretty sure Jim even did a went in a tangent about how bad sony was during one of his more recent videos.
Edit: Warframe's great tho.
Kyle Buehne Yeah, Sony and Nintendo have problems. Lots of problems. However, they are certainly better than most other publishers. Neither do loot boxes and are pretty tame in the microtransaction field. Neither seems to cut content and sell it back to you. They also have quality games. If there are publishers to support, it's Sony and Nintendo. We can still call them out for bad practices. We can do both.
If you bought a $60 triple a game and then found micro transactions then you've been exploited even before you spent an additional dime. You've been sold an incomplete product that isn't what it promised to be.
A game is balanced for proper challenge to keep you feeling rewarded by playing without being so difficult and grindy you quit. With micro transactions the whole point is to gate content behind an impossible grind.
So if there are micro transactions the developer is holding the game that you already paid for ransom.
I agree in general, although I have to argue this isn't always the case. The big talk right now being the purchasable red orbs in DMCV. I can't tell for sure till I see it, but it's very likely that there will be no increased grind attached to that. For some perspective, DMC4's special edition had the same MTX and do you know what the devs also did in DMC4:SE? Increase the drop rate for red orbs within the game itself.
That one really is a case of the devs including it because they have to, would be my guess anyway. And there are other games out there like that as well.I still fucking hate microtransactions tho
Amen. The _instant_ any developer makes a game _intentionally_ worse and less enjoyable than it could otherwise potentially be in the name of making extra profit, they're not a games maker any more- they're a scammer. _Their entire reason for existence_ is SUPPOSED to be to make the most enjoyable gaming experience possible- but since the publisher-centric games industry has come to fruition, their entire reason for existence has become "make as mcuh money as possible by any means possible". Making a fun game isn't the end any more. It's the _means,_ the means to the end of making more money. I remember a time when games developers made games because they wanted to entertain people, because they had an artistic statement they wanted to make. That time is long gone outside the indie and smaller developer scene.
I agree, because even if you are not paying for MTX, the content you paid for is LOCKED behind a massive grind wall. I did not buy a game so I have to grind 300h for what I paid for.
There are always window-lickers that will keep buying their "live services" and defend the micro-transactions. That's why the "AAA" publishers can keep doing that shit.
I think that's sports fans. Probably sports fans. Don't quote me on that.
Plus Rainbow Six Siege and Overwatch and World of Warcraft and Call of Duty and Assassins Creed and Destiny and GTA and Devil May Cry and many more.
can't disagree with any of what you've said and I'm a MASSIVE DMC fanboy. Microtransactions aren't right in full price games, crunch is not acceptable in ANY working environment either. Things like this make me sad I love videogames.... :(
Krishan Pandya I've been gaming since I was 7 I'm a grown 38 year old man now who still enjoys playing but seeing the direction gaming has gone breaks my heart! As a single player gamer 90% of the time the disgusting things have infested my games now aswell as multiplayer! Fuk mts and loot crates and special editions of special editions in partnership with who fukin ever! Lol, the last game I bought I felt appreciated for buying was Witcher 3 as I got more than a disc and flimsy leaflet for season passes etc!
If there ever was a time when Jim needed to drop the mic at the end of the video, this was the perfect time for it.
It's his mic, and those things are expensive, yo.
Jim F-ing Sterling, Son!
No, no, no, sir! You cannot _censor_ Jim Fucking Sterling, Son's name!
Say it with me.
"Jim Fucking Sterling, Son"
"Jim _Fucking_ Sterling, Son!"
Thank God for him!
@@Saiavinn Thankyou good Sir.
-Jim Sterling?
-Fucking prick.
@@Saiavinn They gots to have dat ad revenue, I guess.
All this boils down to one this: Why are people now defending paying for data on the disc? More specifically, the a server changing a file on the users console. That's all a microtransaction is. It's not actual content coming to your machine. It's already there.
This isn't a case of Street Fighter having the costumes in a update so both users can see it if someone bought it. In a single player game, you're paying money for a text file edit that alters stats for your character or whatever.
Resident Evil 5 had $5 DLC multiplayer vs mode on the disc and the internet nearly lost it's mind. Now you're paying for STAT alterations and that's okay??
Know what has more worth than that? DLC/Expansions. Things that expand and make your game/purchase more fun and valuable.
Pretty perfect arguments as always, and good research I must say.
How can Rockstar state that its employees work 100 hours a week, without realizing how stupid the statement is? It basically means "Myeah the game we're selling you was made by tired overworking and underpaid interns that we may lay off right after because of how unproductive they will have become." Now I'm sure that some of them were willing to work hard on the game (at least that's what we often hear from devs) but that's neither an excuse for the publisher itself making that statement, nor the fact that employees would need to work that much instead of delaying a release if it's necessary for the game to be good. It probably all boils down to shareholders again.
Every dev should quit the AAA gaming industry and make super-teams of indie devs. B-)
Geez less than 50 hours of work a week fucks with me, I can't even imagine going for 100. I wonder how many nervous breakdowns Dan Houser or Hauser or whatever is responsible for? How much metaphorical blood is on his hands?
Jim, don't you get it? Those billions clearly are not enough to keep servers running. they are being generous by offering all those micro transactions. smh
People think we should support developers by paying microtransactions... to stop massive layoffs.
When getting them a union... would actually stop unfair layoffs.
You are such a unique personality on this website. Please continue the work that you do as it is both illuminating and invigorating to hear someone so well educated on the workings of the gaming industry. You're a true treasure comrade.
*The Internationale slowly increases in volume
Kokoro Wish Now I think of it, Jim is a Socialist! As am I.
@@thesovietowl7145 Being in favour of unions, or decent public healthcare doesn't make you a socialist.
LMAO, that exactly what made you a socialist. Stop being scared of a fucking word.
legion999 these days it does, the right will call you one anyways, may as well own the label.
@@SaitoGrayNo it doesn't, stop muddying the waters. If that's all it takes for you to consider yourself a socialist, you're giving yourself too much credit. It's like calling yourself an anarchist becausee you graffittied "fuck the police" on a wall one time.
Lol Jason Schreier defending micro transactions. Gotta defend those (publishers) that feeds you, I guess. Lost alot of respect. But not really surprised by it. Alot of review(ers) and/or RUclipsrs constantly sugarcoat/ hype up every fucking EA, Activision-blizzard and Ubisoft game like they have amnesia. Or... you know, deliberately ignore the BS to keep the money flowing in. Just wow, sometimes.
if Kotaku was a physically published magazine, I wouldn't wipe my dogs ass with it, and I don't even have a dog.
It's even more fun cosidering he's defending ubisoft, a company that put kotaku on black list for leaking assasins creed news. Licking boots that kicked him.
@@gelatinouscatgirl8369 Hoping to get back in bed with them no doubt.
tight with the industry, not tight with the gamers/consumers.
he's just a cog in the machine
This isn't new, it's been going on for many years. Hell, even Jim was talking about this years ago.
These shills fear that if they don't suck Actiblizz/any other scummy AAA publisher's dick, and swallow the load, they'll lose the only advantage they have (the early review copies) (They probably would lose them though). So they happily drink up that salty, salty juice, even if that hurts the people they've supposed to be doing the reviews for.
Not to mention the often so obvious bias towards certain games, even without the threat of losing their bs advantage.
I don't feel pressured to buy mtx. Because I don't play games that contain them.
I can't find the kind of games I like that don't feature Preadtory bullshit.
@@Sonichero151 then go backwards... 3 to 4 generations if it's mandatory. 100% no lie you'll find 0/zero/zilch mtx in the mcm(Memory Card Memorial).
@@Sonichero151 I play a lot of remasters, indies and metroidvanias, there's a great selection of those.
@Danny Sony and Intendo seem to be putting out games without MTXs. I only support games that don't use them.
@Eric, yeah I see these $10 'XP boosts' and think "I can save far more time by simply not playing the game, that's free"
"Why ist EA the most hated company in America? Because Ubisoft is in Europe!" Lol
Unfortunately, this problem is not limited to just the games industry. High paying engineering jobs across all areas generally aren't unionized and crunch periods are widespread. People regularly need to work until 8 or come in on weekends before big releases. The only way to fix anything would be to have a huge movement of high-skilled workers organizing and making demands or to introduce new legislature. People also need to stop acting like this is isolated to just the games industry so the rest of the world might take it seriously.
These are industries full of folk raised under unquestioned capitalist indoctrination, at workplaces lacking the more critical cultures you'll find in a lot of manual labor.
They are the ideal servants, with a culture of self-crippling servitude as a source of pride.
Jedi817 >Sees user icon
Ah, a man of culture!
I like your N7 logo, Jedi, because microtransactions had an EA dawn in the trash that was ME3...
Knowing many game developers that left the industry I can say it is far far worse in gaming than anywhere else. I work for a tech company that almost literally rolls out the red carpet for its engineers. It’s really normally for tech companies to have long hours but it’s also normal for tech companies to offer amazing compensation and benefits. AND these tech companies are actively trying to find ways to make the lives of their workers better overall and decrease hours worked. The gaming industry has none of that. Many of my friends that studied game development ended up getting jobs that have nothing to do with game development because they were offered better job security and better compensation of benefits almost anywhere else. The video game AAA industry pays low, offers no job security, a toxic work environment, and long hours with none of the perks. This effects the gaming industry because I suspect the best developers stay far away from it. And even if this weren’t the case, Jim is not a phone or technology expert he is a gamer. He tackles issues in gaming. Just because it is the same everywhere else (which it isn’t) does not make it okay.
Killed it, as always. My Fiance loves spending money on Overwatch lootboxes, and she defends them with her life. She uses the term "They're just cosmetic" as some sort of excuse. To which I often reply with "But you're still buying them, so they apparently DO have intrinsic value to you and other players..."
ANY FEATURE in a game that has VALUE is liable for microtransactions. Any. Because WE AS A CONSUMER do NOT own the games we purchase. We only have a license by the producer to play that game, and they reserve the right to do whatever the hell they want with the game as time goes on.
Activision Blizzard does NOT care about you. My favorite recent info I've learned is that in WoW, you can't make your name say Pagan because it's an inappropriate word. That shows you how little they care about you and your opinions.
That's insulting to my Pagan mom.
I mean if your screen name just so happens to have the combination of P A G A N in it, then it's flagged.
It's a small thing, but why flag pagan as inappropriate, y'know? It's not like shitfuckstack or finger-bang666. Bet you could name yourself Cheesus Crust though.
Mekova You're married to an idiot. Congrats.
EDIT: Actually, you said fiancee, so I guess you still have a chance to dump her.
@@paulomachado7328 dump someone for buying over watch loot boxes????
I mean, I've dumped people for more trivial things tbh.
I think some mobile games are doing monetization better than companies like EA and Activision. This is not hyperbole.
Then you can only imagine how bad EA handles its mobile game monetization.
Somehow, someday they will put microtransactions on youtube
@@thorsffe5712 They already do. The "RUclips Red" or whatever the fuck it's called, essentially a "premium" version of RUclips. I genuinely fear what will come of that
Of course its not. Mobile games dont have dlc and special editions
After youtube red first came out I stopped hearing anything about it. Some youtubers like Vsauce stopped making their regular content to just do youtube Red shows, but I dont think youtube red is much of a success. Not enough of a success for youtube to push it on us anymore.
You know, this can apply to a lot more than just video games.
jdawg You know this is a video game focused channel?
No way not possible that greed and exploitation can be found in other industries I just can’t believe no sir/madame😱
@jdawg: Let me see. It's true for architecture, engineering, product design, the movie industry, illustration work... Yep, a plentiful of working places are equally screwed up! However, this is a gaming channel, so of course the focus here will be the gaming industry! 🙃
Heaven forbid we paint a broader picture 😱
Capitalism is the root of the problem
I know it's anecdotal but I hope I'm not alone in this but I've had numerous occasions where I decided not to purchase a game because it was revealed to have microtransactions. I'm talking about things I had been excited about too like Dead Space 3, Shadow of War and AC Odyssey. Those were franchises I enjoyed at one point but I just don't want to put up with the whole predatory nonsense of MTX in my full priced game. The only times I've ever been okay with MTX are League of Legends and Path of Exile because both games only offer cosmetics that don't impact player skill, both games are free to play and I've put thousands of hours into both.
14:49-15:12
This hurt a lot more than I was expecting it to...
What really shocks me is how much cosumers will vihemently and aggressively defend the full priced games with MTs. Not people just accepting it as a reality, but passionate about it being ok.
Lately if you criticize one of these games (for example: AC Oddesy) for having progression advancing MTs on RUclips, Reddit, Steam, etc. you can expect an overwhelming amount of spiteful replies.
I'm personally of the belief that I won't buy (not pirate, I mean I just won't play it) any game with single player MTs, unless it's on deep deep discount (like 75%< off); then it's basically fremium. It gives a message to the publishers/developers that the practice is ok if you buy the game.
But at least I can understand if someone still gets the game in spite of it and just accepts the reality of MTs. The people who somehow act pretensious about how "stupid" other that don't want to get actively screwed over, just baffles me.
Is their will power that low that they need to justify their purchase so much they have to act like it's a benefit to have MTs? I seriously am in awe and impressed by the game publishers for how they've manipulated the market so brilliantly.
Money speaks my man.
Knew a guy trying vehemently to explain and justify COD WW2's lootboxes to me because they didn't affect him.
That's really the problem here, it really is like some people are incapable of empathy, and think that just because it doesn't affect them, it isn't a problem for other people.
Yup, never underestimate the sheer stupidity ppl are sometimes capable of.
@@Peasham It's despicable on so many levels. For all gamers it hurts the quality of the game, never knowing what was actively nerfed to entice MTs. And worse regarding what you just said.
@@moviemanreviews5577 It's mind boggling.
I recently had this argument here on YT regarding Devil May Cry 4 SE, where I said I'm purposely buying the original version since it has no MTs and people got *angry* . Like I insulted their religion or something.
Reminder that this isn't the game industry's problem alone. EVERY corporation does this. Every. Single. One. None of them are innocent.
Difference is every other industry except the gaming one has regulations and laws they must follow. Stuff the gaming industry gets away with
People act like their business models are immoral actions when in fact they are amoral. Check the difference people. I may not like some companies either, but they are in it for a reason and it isn't to provide free entertainment for smelly, gamer masses.
It is fine for anyone to have profits on their own company but the problem is those driving the system. And sometimes the law doesnt reach that far. Like i was saying those who are behind the scenes, can be moral or not, but how far are they going in the private and public sector to the point It will break the economy and say, "we have to do this because things are getting expensive" , well... Trade in resources can have that excuse sometimes but you are actually partially responsible for rising costs, wanting more, doing ludicrous contracts with investors, feeding wallstreet, wasting money, money under the table, corruption and sometimes paying millions to lobbyists on the upper ranks. All that equals as a billion market that doesnt go where it should, rent, work, production, and then who pays for that? Us the consumers, the taxpayers, everything connects.
EA, the Scumbags of Gaming no, the other industries have had many of those laws stripped away during the 80s and 90s, and those laws that *do* still exist are disobeyed at-will by companies worldwide. They get away with this because the agencies tasked with enforcing the few protective regulations left are either headed by industry insiders or so completely underfunded that they can't do their jobs even if they wanted to.
Okay but I don't know anything about it the pharmaceutical industry, or steel milling. I know video games so that's where the focus is. I'm not going to go around demanding higher pay for firefighters without knowing what the salary is at currently
I'm a pretty conservative businessperson, but it's really impossible to argue against the lack of character and integrity certain larger business and corporations exhibit. Sterling talks about it plenty. When businesses grow so larger, a lot of the more compassionate and earnest character really disappears under the sea of bureaucracy and profit driven shareholders. If more leaders of companies were like Satoru Iwata, who was a simple programmer in love with video games who grew through the ranks for his skill and talent and knowledge, we could get somewhere.
"Ubisoft is toilets"
-wall gag
I just came here to see the people calling Jim a communist.
Weird enough, this video is actually ATTRACTING commies
If people are calling him a communist, then they dont know what communism is. Having well regulated capitalism that doesn't allow corporations to write their own laws isnt communism. It's sad that the ownership convinced the workforce that being exploited is a good thing.
@LeaderOfTheStarrySky i just hope ur not an raging SJW NPC!
@Space Man Maybe he used to be an adventurer like us... but then he took an arrow in the knee.
@LeaderOfTheStarrySky The bar for calling oneself a socialist is really low apparently. Now defending a welfare state is enough to think we are big revolutionaries. Capitalist realism is just so fucking bizarre.
I deeply appreciate that intro
MMOs like World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV need to be called out more often, when it comes to this topic. You buy the game, you buy the expansions, you pay ~$15 every single month just to be able to play it. And on top of that, they have the gall to sell exclusive items, pets, mounts, level boosts, etc. for money. I think it literally *can't* get worse than this; they've hit the logical ceiling on just how many different kinds of cash-grabs they can do. The worst part is, the fans of these games just lap it up, make excuses, and become hostile toward those who criticize it.
And those exclusive items are expensive as hell too!! As a long-time FF XIV player, I absolutely love the game, but the cash shop is something that always irked me. It's not cheap to play this game and they have the gall to sell super expensive stuff on the side!
One of the worst things I find is also the fact that buying an expansion (which is priced almost as much as a AAA new release at launch) does NOT give you a free month of play!
I'm particularly annoyed by the cost blizzard charges for moving a single character to another server (when the game is mostly serverless at this point, really only guilds are server bound). $25 per character per transfer.
At least blizzard lets players earn store $$ via in game gold from wow. Efficient players play for free and can buy other games. I personally bought destiny 2 with the expansions by doing in games things (leveling professions) i would've done anyways
Massive financial exploitation from big publishers basically started with WoW. Blizzard was all like, "Hey, let's see if we can charge people for a game, and then charge them more money to let them actually play it." I called it out when it happened, but holy shit, I never thought then that the game industry would get to where it is now.
I played Ffxiv for a long time too, i think they did well regards to content updates, with amazing things such as the gold saucer being completely free. I recently now started to play ESO and wow, its great. Sure you can play for free, but it takes longer and you have to buy dlc. If you take a subscription however you get all dlc besides the expansions for free plus crowns to spend on the store, mounts, pets, houses, costumes and whatnot, its nice of them to add plenty of crowns for each month subscribed. If you can't pay per month, theres plenty of shitty korean games for you to play. The difference in quality is massive compared to a pay to play game.
I've gotten to the point that I
A: Heavily dislike manipulative business practices in games.
B: Care a lot for game developers and the products they work on.
C: Decided that refusing to purchase anything tainted by greed is the right call. If by any measure it gets a game dev laid off, hopefully that is one more opportunity for them to get a job they deserve instead of need. And we will all have something more to appreciate from it.
I love how contradictory your B and C points are. On one hand, you "care a lot for game developers". But on the other hand, you couldn't give a fuck less if they're laid off because of a decision made by executives they've probably never even met.
Do you hold the same beliefs for other global corporations? Are you as conscious about where you shop and what products you buy outside of video games? Or does your vision not extend that far?
So uh, yeah. Unionize the workplaces. Eat the rich. Boot the management.
I agree with you, but unfortunately, people have been conditioned to fear losing their jobs if they even mention unionization. That's not a word corpos take lightly, so they swoop in quick to shut it down. In such a volatile industry, people aren't exactly jumping at the opportunity to risk their jobs, even if it'd benefit them all in the long run.
Reasons like that are why I now oppose open shop laws. You need to in some cases force people to band together to stop corporate snakes from squeezing the life out of everyone.
yeah definitely. I totally get that--at the same time, it has to start somewhere. More to the point, when unionizing, it's important to not just unionize the devs or the voice actors. Everyone working in that shop should be in the same union. That is, we should be organizing industrially.
Pls join the I.W.W.
@@nullite4589 Too bad people have been taught to freak the fuck out when they hear "socialism" or "unions". They'd rather back the shitty situation they're in because they've been fed a bunch of lies their entire life.
@@nullite4589 Oh yeah I totally agree. I'm tempted to go full "Workers of the world, unite! You have only your chains to lose!". Might've misquoted Marx right there, but I'm sure you'll correct me.
Jim Sterling is my notification bell.
ALSO! I really appreciate the talk at the beginning about whether or not a person is the target demographic for a microtransaction. I absolutely never felt pressured into even looking at the store in AC Odyssey. I never felt pressured to buy lootboxes in Star Trek Online in over 2k hours playing it. But, it's telling that I was hesitant to recommend either of those games to friends who I knew *would* be susceptible to them. I'd felt that almost subconsciously, and hadn't really realized it in the front of my brain mind until you pointed it out in this video. This is why I thank god for you, Jim.