[whstl]

When people say "greed of game developers" they're clearly not talking about rank-and-file devs, they're talking about development companies.

> An album is the work of one or a few individuals for a relatively short period of time with very little cost

Kind of ironic that you're saying that.

[SXX]

Majority of "development companies" are also shit poor and go bankrupt in after 1 or 2 projects even if they're moderately successful. Basically it's just hard to make profit in this industry and well over 90% of games never recouperate development costs.

Gamedev is just hard and there are very few exceptions like Epic or Rockstar that even get an option to become "greedy".

[whstl]

> are also shit poor and go bankrupt in after 1 or 2 projects even if they're moderately successful

Fair point, but those are clearly not the ones being pointed out as greedy by most people.

...except for maybe scrappy mobile companies that churn shitty microtransaction games looking for whales, but those are greedy indeed, and I doubt they have the sympathy of you or OP.

[SXX]

I personally not making mobile games or ones with microtransactions. Yet you can basically choose: either there will be microtransaction games for mobile or there will be none. This is not because of developers greed, but because it's the only way to monetize this audience. People voted with their wallet.

Microtransactions in PC games are there for the same reason - because you can't just go and sell your game for $25 if all of the competitors with similar production quality in last 5 years released for $15. Gamers simply wouldnt buy it and nobody care that with inflation $15 back then and $15 now are very different money.

Yet you can put microtransactions in the same $15 game and the same people will pay for them. And you'll reach desired $$$ of profit per copy sold. If everyone refused to pay for microtransactions and would spend more money on buying games without them instead there wouldn't be any microtransactions by now.

[cassianoleal]

> People voted with their wallet.

Not really. Most of these games are preying on weaknesses. These people are not voting with their wallets. They're being duped into giving away their mental health, and their wallet is taken away when they're not looking because of they're high in dopamine induced by images and sounds.

[rockskon]

That's about as sound an argument as saying people vote to go to casinos with their wallet.

While technically true, it omits a pretty damn significant detail behind the appeal.

[belorn]

Mostly this is not even about development companies, but the distribution platforms which are even further away from the game developer. It is the distribution platforms that makes policy and generally dictate the conditions on which a game is "sold".

The design and blame of microtransaction/gambling is more on the game developer, but even here we keep hearing stories on how such design is being pushed by the publisher (who act as investors) rather than the game developers.

The discussion is not about developers with passion for the profession.

[SXX]

Microtransactions exist because there are people who happily pay for them, but not spend similar amounts on high-quality pay-to-play single-payer games. It's just a market with supply and demand.

As about distribution platforms neither investors, publishers or game developers have any leverage against Valve, Microsoft or Sony. They just do whatever they want. So you're totally right here. These kind of monopolists can only be regulated by large political bodies like US or EU.

[yetihehe]

> Microtransactions exist because there are people who happily pay for them, but not spend similar amounts on high-quality pay-to-play single-payer games.

I can't speak for everyone, but I think this may be because with microtransactions you pay for additions to some product already known to be good (you tested it and you like it enough to buy some more), while with single-player games you typically have to pay upfront in hope it will be good. So risk-aversion sets in.

[glimshe]

This is like saying that drugs only exist because there are people who will happily pay for them, but not spend similar amounts on high quality coffee (although that's debatable!).

[glimshe]

To be fair, games often include an album (or more) worth of music...