> It is so sad that "make good game, sell it" model no longer works. It's all a wonky curve of "free - couple of dollars - hundreds and thousands of dollars".

What I find really sad is that multiple games have proven that there is a middle ground and that making a f2p while making enormous amount of money is possible (League of Legend ...) and using such predatory system that are so prevalent on mobile is not the only solution.

There is probably already enough monetisation around skins in the games that they would have easily turn up a profit.

The rest is just greed and disregard for players but then when they don't care that the game is banned in two countries at launch because it violate gambling laws what else to expect ...

If you need to reference LoL/Fortnite to make a point, you are not making a point.

In fact, there are very few games that have done the f2p walk successfully, sustainably, and all of them pale in comparison to the few extraordinary exceptions.

There are a _ton_ of successful f2p games with reasonable monetization models - Valorant, CSGO, Warzone, Dota, Path of Exile, Lost Ark, Hearthstone, etc. It's just that games in general are a power law industry - I don't think monetization model is really what will prevent a game from being successful. In fact, much of the discourse around Immortal is that the gameplay itself is in fact top notch. Blizzard has the dedicated fanbase to make a healthy profit and more with a reasonable cash shop - they don't _need_ to resort to these extremely cash-grabby mechanics.

And how do those compare to the cash-grab market revenue? (Actual question). Let's include games like Genshin and FGO.

Cash grab will always be superior especially when you factor in the effort making the game. MMOs will be magnitudes harder than making mobile cash grab games.

I honestly thought it was inevitable for Blizzard to go down this route the moment I saw the revenue slides post acquisition. In that slide it showed that King’s mobile games made way more than Blizzards games. At that point, all the MBA suits in the board must have started thinking, “why go through all the hoops of making a good game when you could spend way less money and effort to milk the cash cows?”

Thus the pressure started mounting up on Blizzard to create more “efficient” games like Hearthstone and newer releases instead spending long time creating and refining a game like they have before.

Precisely this, I feel like the only middle-ground here is not to sell your company to corporate overlords, we learned that lesson with many other companies.

Stay profitable, stay calm, stay mediocre in size => delight customers.

Greed & corporate min/maxing has failed us.

Simon Sinek has a really good point in his book "Start With Why" that basically says selling your company is a complete failure, because you basically lose your autonomy and ability to adapt to unique market conditions that let companies be successful in the first place.

If you sell your company, presumably you don't care about its future success anymore and now you have a bunch of money with which you can do whatever you want.

Partially yes, your incentives change and skin in the game as well

Lost Ark and Genshin manage to be both very cash grab and very reasonable as a free-2-play. You can spend a lot of money on both, and pay-2-win in both, but still get to experience the whole game at a reasonable pace as a f2p player.

Diablo Immortal seems to do many of the same things, but just in a much more egregious way. So far I've heard a lot about how much money you can spend on the game, but not much about how bad it makes the f2p player's experience.

In Lost Ark and Genshin most players don't care that much about whales spending 10k to deal 100% extra damage because it's purely player-vs-environment and that sort of damage boost is totally excessive and unnecessary.

But many games make progress feel extremely slow or otherwise aggravating to push purchases.

I haven't really heard much about where Diablo Immortal lies on that scale.

As an anecdote, in Genshin F2P is totally adequate — its key feature is that max character level is constrained and easily achievable, so the main difficulty becomes getting new rare characters, especially if you’re impatient.

Back when I was in the industry there was very few games that did better than breaking even. It's the same reason you don't see a lot of independent large studios any more. If you need to hit the top 15-20% to make it only publishers who can afford to spread out the risk are able to stay afloat.

I believe there is a deep disease of extreme and growing wealth inequality, whose symptoms are erupting in every area of our way of life. This is a good example. In a more wealth equal society you're financial motivated to build good products for all users. Now the entire system is geared to the whims of the rich

the entire system is geared towards getting money from poor people

it's easier to afford ~£5 in 99p microtransactions every month for a year than it is to afford a £60 triple A

of course this isn't where the bulk of money comes from for these games (whales), but it's still a big factor

Also, F2P isn't the only option, we could pay (once) for games like we used to.

> It is so sad that "make good game, sell it" model no longer works. It's all a wonky curve of "free - couple of dollars - hundreds and thousands of dollars".

What makes you say that? I mostly play single-player games where I just buy a game and then play it. There are loads of those out there, with more released every week. Even with my underpowered Linux laptop I have plenty to choose from.

I guess I should have added "no longer works on mobile". PCs/Consoles have plenty of good, paid-upfront games.

I never got much into mobile gaming, but have recently been having a lot of fun playing PC or console games on my phone (using a controller) with streaming services. I've played with both Geforce Now and Xbox Game Pass and (at home on my decent cable internet connection) it's working really nicely. I also have the Nvidia shield, so when I do want to game on the TV I can pick up where I left off very easily.

If you're looking for a game to play on your commute it's probably not going to work, but for at home on the couch it's great.

My phone runs games up to ~PS2 in emulation, FWIW.

Ah right, I don't play games on mobile, but I think there are still mobile games with simple straight-forward pricing models. For example the Baldur's Gate series got released on mobile (already a few years ago), and Wadjet Eye Games releases most of their adventures on mobile too I think. There are undoubtedly others.

But I guess they're harder to find/more rare. As others mentioned, most people spend nothing to little on these "free" games, so as a no-spend gamer you can choose between 1) free, or 2) pay $10 (or whatever they charge) to play a game. Not necessarily a hard choice if the "free" game is "entertaining enough".

Diablo 4 will probably just be a normal PC game too. Those freemium mobile games are always scammy but that doesn't mean there aren't endless classic business model games.

A publisher that has tasted fast cheap low value entries has a hard time justifying risky quality entries when the risk of failure is much higher. We're seeing the reality-tv moment in video games with mobile freemiums and it's frightening. I feel like Square-Enix is the perfect nexus if these market forces. I'm not even sure they'll bother with AAAs after making so much money off their low effort mobile cash cows.

Not only that, but many studios are one bad selling title away from closing up permanently. They can't afford to take risks. Check out "Press Reset" by Jason Schreier for multiple examples.

At least sqeenix just sold off a number of their studios and franchises so at least someone else can still make good games with them.

Perhaps.

I still plays Diablo 2 and 3 quite a bit. I don’t think I’d call myself a “hardcore” player — I’m not very good — but I’m definitely in the Diablo 4 launch demographic.

I’ve been keeping an eye on Diablo Immortal as sort of a canary. I can say with absolute confidence that I won’t be buying D4 at launch if Blizzard doesn’t fix the DI mess.

Among longtime players of the franchise, I can’t imagine that I’m alone.

“ It is so sad that "make good game, sell it" model no longer works.” What makes you say that? I mostly play single-player games”

it doesn’t work for the developers. obviously you can play a single player video game.

> It is so sad that "make good game, sell it" model no longer works. It's all a wonky curve of "free - couple of dollars - hundreds and thousands of dollars".

Same can be said for software. Now it’s all SaaS where you have to pay monthly and choose from different pricing tiers or ala carte feature options to ‘win’ in a business sense.

> Now it’s all SaaS where you have to pay monthly and choose from different pricing tiers or ala carte feature options to ‘win’ in a business sense.

While some businesses abuse SaaS pricing (e.g., MS office for very basic uses, acrobat pro for basic uses, etc.), I think the SaaS pricing model has aligned the interests of developers and consumers (esp. smaller devs and smaller consumers) in a way that has allowed a wider market to have access to a wider range of affordable software and ongoing support/updates than would be possible under the previous system.

There are definitely folks, often a small niche, who really just need an old version of a piece of software for one or two small functions, and maybe those folks should be built in to the SaaS pricing model somehow, but overall I think that the merits of SaaS pricing almost always outweigh the demerits by quite a bit.

The SaaS pricing model doesn't mean just one thing, so you should probably define what you mean.

As commonly practiced, if you stop subscribing, you lose all access to the software (or get bumped down to the functionality of some free version). This moves a large portion of the risk of developing a new version from the developers to the customers. If the customers don't like the new version, it's not easy for them to switch; and as commonly practiced, they often can't continue using the old version.

I do agree that the JetBrains model aligns both developer and consumer interests. JetBrains carries the risk of developing the new version. If customers don't like it, they can unsubscribe and continue using their existing software.

For nearly everything users should be able to pay once and then pay for updates. The model Jet Brains was forced into should be the norm and not the abusive model Apple has normalized and forced onto consumers

Office web apps are free with OneDrive and 5GB storage. $20/yr for 100GB. Office 365 personal is $70/yr. What would you rather see instead?

Disclosure: I work for Microsoft.

One time $70 for standalone, no phoning home version of Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint).

Office Home and Student, the cheapest retail option for office, was $149.99 for a permanent license, no upgrades, per computer.

365 gives you $70/yr for latest version per computer.

Or, the real win, $100/year for up to 5 people. That's $20/year/person, which is cheaper than buying Office Home and Student for each person and upgrading periodically.

Good question.

Fwiw, I personally have no issue with the price.

That said, I know people who do, and I have pointed them to Libre Office.

Folks who complained, but who would probably like to know about a free version (I didn’t know there was one):

- retirees on very limited income

- unemployed people

- folks of limited means who only use any of these tools 1-5 times a year, but really need the specific MS tools those 1-5 times

I will point these people to the free web app option moving forward.

I realize that the free version won’t get a lot of marketing since it produces no revenue, but it may be prudent to have an evangelist hang out in online communities of old people, caregivers, and unemployed people and keep them informed. It would help the MS image.

I realize that such a person might exist, but the relatively large number of people who complain to me about Office pricing makes me think that the word is not being spread efficiently.

I hope that the free web apps option works for this group of folks. I don't work for the Office org, but I'll see if I can't figure out a way to channel your suggestion about online community engagement to someone who can do something about it. Thanks for the follow-up!

I still don't understand how people sell small SAAS products with the per-country VAT rules.

By using SAAS payment product that solves that for them!

Which makes for a reasonable SAAS model given changing nature of tax system.

Or by generally not giving a shit about per-country VAT rules.

There’s plenty of US based SAAS companies that sell to the EU without charging any tax, and vice versa.

Of course, this doesn’t scale well. But if your turnover in those regions where you haven’t implemented proper tax rules is less than 6 figures a year, and you have no presence there, you’ll probably get away with it.

At the heart of every SAAS offering is the core of the proposal: It takes money to make money. The same reason why finance related journals have largely kept alive while lifestyle magazines have shrivelled. If a thing costs money but ends up making you more then it's still a win-win.

> Now it’s all SaaS where you have to pay monthly

You have to upgrade eventually, though. In theory, the SaaS product could be priced the same as the shrink-wrapped version, just divided by 60 months. I suspect it's more expensive, though.

All things being equal, if I ran IT, I'd rather have the SaaS model because I'll always have the latest version and not have to deal with the drama of upgrades every 5 years. I'd also prefer it as the vendor because I don't need to support multiple versions of the software long-term.

Elden Ring was exactly "make good game, sell it" and it sold very well.

The "no longer works" comment clearly refers to the business model, ie. ignoring the quality or popularity of the product itself and just looking at the balance sheet. The gambling (microtransaction) model is enormously more profitable than the classical "just sell a game" model.

Elden Ring was spectacularly well received and has sold millions of units, but it's "only" a game. There's no casino in the back, and therefore no gambling-related revenue stream.

Maybe I misunderstand you, but if the "no longer works" comment refers to the business model as you say, then the person you replied to is saying "no, it can still work as a business model — here's an example."

It may not work as well or as easily, but I don't think that's the point being made.

The customer might want to buy a product, and the studio might want to make it, but isn’t there someone they forgot to ask?

Business models that are lower-risk and higher-return are systematically preferred by investors. Games are expensive to make. FromSoft has been successful enough to stay in business for now. They’ll always be in competition with studios that sacrifice product quality for profitability. Many studios literally cannot afford to do things their way.

But the reputation of Elden Ring far outshines the reputation of Diablo. Activision Blizzard is dying for reason

Are they though ? All of their numbers are positive

Sure, positive from people who are happy to pay their way towards a victory. Blizzard as a gaming company is dead and if you never played their games you probably shouldn’t involve yourself in this discussion.

People are still buying Skyrim and that was made in 2011

The cynical response there is “It would’ve performed even better if it was a subscription”

Elden Ring shouldn't be even treated as the same sort of thing as an addiction focused mobile game.

Indeed. One is a work of art and the other is a disguised slot machine.

diablo immortal is going to make A LOT more money than elden ring, so your example is not a good one. not even in the same universe.

Everything I've reads says the opposite. Elden Ring has sold at least 13.4 million units so far[1], which is >$800 million in revenue. The only revenue figure I could find for Diablo Immortal is $800k [2]. They're not even in the same ballpark.

[1] https://www.polygon.com/23070948/elden-ring-sales-chart-npd-...

[2] https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/06/03/diablo-immortal-gen...

Diablo Immortal earned $800k in its first 24 hours.

Elden Ring earned $720m in the first 2 weeks, which averages ~$51m a day.

> which averages ~$51m a day.

Until it doesn't. We're not talking about the same thing here because one is a one-time payment (license) vs on-going (loot boxes / SaaS). I'm highly critical of loot box (p2p) games, but you're on-going payments do pay for content in the future. Companies who charge once have very little incentive to maintain the software (assuming it requires it to).

That's actually an incredibly weak number.

an incredibly unverified number

True, good point.

Because Elden Ring took 4 years to develop, 5 years if you include the DLC release time. You would need to amortize its very front-loaded revenue over those 5 years, because a live-service game like Diablo Immortal would be generating somewhat consistent revenue throughout that entire time.

Let's say ER reaches 20M + 8Mx2 for it's two upcoming DLCs @ $40 each. That's $1.8B lifetime. Pretty amazing! DI would need to make $360M per year to be an equivalent business. So 800k in the first 24 hours is not too far off track to being equivalent.

We should be mindful of the biggest difference between Elden Ring and Diablo Immortal - the latter has a constant revenue stream via its in game microtrasaction capability.

Whereas the former, despite being a good game, may not provide the revenue model desired by its stakeholders.

Elden Ring isn't going to be a standalone game. The publisher (Bandai Namco) says it's the start of a franchise, which fans are almost certain to lap up for a long time to come. Had Elden Ring included microtransactions or other questionable features, it's likely fans would be far less enthusiastic about future installments, which means revenue from the franchise would dry up faster.

Someone made a video that imagined changes a company like EA or Blizzard might make to Elden Ring, charging for extra arrows, fees for questlines, microtransactions for boss assists, and so forth. It made me feel sick. I could totally see a marketing-driven game studio making similar decisions.

ER impressed me so much that I bought three earlier titles from From Software, an additional $120 spent. Regrettably, you show consumer behavior like that to a mercenary games industry exec, and they'll just see "lost opportunity to put the screws to the market" and not "we should make better games."

(This is the first time that I've literally worn out a controller playing a single game).

It seems like a good example to me. It was a sales model that worked. That's all. It doesn't have to work better than every other sales model out there. It just has to be profitable and successful on its own.

Indeed. I'm personally not a victim of loot boxes and exploitative P2W tactics because I just don't buy them. But I just want to pay some amount once and have a good game in my Android phone, without ads and without constantly nagging me to spend more! I'll pay $60 also if the game is good, I just don't want to be put into a Skinner box constantly trying to milk my "engagement" and my pockets. Is that so much to ask?

Mind you, there are some games like that (my usual routine is to go to Google Play Games, navigate to the bottom, choose "no ads" and "no in-app purchases"), but it seems that they are like 1% of the total.

If you like a specific niche subgenre, a franchise, etc. it's very likely that all games you find will be of the exploitative variety.

It's sad that I have a pocket computer with an awesome screen in my hand the whole day, and other cool features like gyroscope, GPS, etc. that can be used for gaming; and I find myself going back to my good old PC (or lately, the Steam Deck) when I want to play.

It’s even worse on mobile as the app might forcefully update you to a new Free to Play version. I spent $8 on Galaxy On Fire 2 HD which was acquired by another company then suddenly dropped the price and added ads and in app purchases. Very frustrating.

Similar experience for me. I bought the no ads version of plants vs zombies- “no ads” was even in the title. A few years later EA changed the app name and added ads.

This is really annoying. Possibly Apple Arcade blocks from this situation?

Yes. No ads and no in-app-purchases in Apple Arcade games.

I wonder app developer could pull the app from Arcade and release "Free" version.

They can have an Apple Arcade version, and a "Free" pay-to-win version simulatenously. They don't even have to pull the Apple Arcade version.

It sucks that the model of pay once ($60) or subscription doesn’t gel with the in-app purchase or advertising models.

For example YouTube premium is a worse product than it could be because the entire platform has been designed with advertising and engagement in mind.

YT Premium is not the product it could be because it only needs to be better than what it is replacing, or normal YT.

Say this as someone who just subscribed this month.

> Indeed. I'm personally not a victim of loot boxes and exploitative P2W tactics because I just don't buy them.

You are still subject to the game design that is made to push you towareds paying instead of focusing on making the game fun.

It does work though.

"Escape from Tarkov" and "It takes two" are just some of the more noteworthy ones. There's tons more on steam.

It's just the mobile market that's screwed entirely. Which I find odd, because I'm convinced there are opportunities for games that work especially well on small screens with touchscreen (like Nintendo demonstrated half a decade before mainstream smartphones)

Precisely, Nintendo tried a sane sales model with Super Mario Run back in 2016. You would have access to some levels, then pay and unlock the rest. No more in-app purchases, IIRC.

The reaction was a lot of angry comments about the game being locked and that it should be free-to-play, etc.

Their next games (like Mario Kart Tour) went back to the exploitative loot box model.

Mario Run was also just not a very good game (this is obviously an opinion, but still…). I wonder how it would go if Nintendo tried releasing an actual good game for $10 or some other amount, not an infinite runner with a Mario skin.

It wasn’t an infinite runner. It was puzzle levels with blocks you stopped on and timed jumps.

Anyone who describes Mario run as an “infinite runner” didn’t play it.

Yes it does work. Elden Ring is another example of a hugely successful product which is solely focused on being an excellent piece of entertainment.

It’s just more optimal for Profitability to create addictive garbage like this. Blizzard has chosen to be greedy and predatory rather than trying to create art of entertainment.

Whats Elden Ring got to do with it?

You are comparing a full AAA game for PC and console made for hardcore gamers versus a mobile game with loot boxes designed to attract and exploit kids or people that addicted to this kinda crap and disguise it like a game, pretty much like slot machine do.

> It is so sad that "make good game, sell it" model no longer works. It's all a wonky curve of "free - couple of dollars - hundreds and thousands of dollars".

I think the assumption that another model was even considered is what people are getting wrong. The game was made explicitly and intentionally for this p2w / gamble business model. There was never an attempt to make it anything else. Blizzard lent their IP to make a cash grab. They’re milking their IP while they can, and monitoring both back lash and revenue, and will be repeating it.

It's a pretty great Diablo experience on an iPad with a controller. It is sad that you can't just pay a decent amount of money to get a classic experience. Maybe people will discover a path where you could pay a reasonable sum of money to get a fairly normal grinding experience with Diablo. I'm not opposed to in-app purchases, but I'm not a gambler, and I don't support gambling business models.

I saw some reviews and write-ups saying that it would be more fun as a $10 game, but I think that's part of the problem. This is not a $10 game. It should be fully priced.

For whatever reason, proper up-front never took hold on mobile. I know Apple really pushed 99-cent apps early on, and maybe that is part of the genesis of this. It has been even harder to convince Android users to pay for apps and games. And so here we are.

I suspect it would be really hard to convince people to pay $60 for a mobile game after all these years of cheap and free games, no matter how good and how expensive it was to make. It's kind of illogical when you think about it. The latest iPhones are at least base PS4 in terms of power. The iPad Air And Pros are well beyond that.

As others have noted, there are ways to make f2p work well. You can do season passes and cosmetic stuff. You don't have to go whale hunting.

Realistically, we probably need legislation to make this kind of whale hunting illegal. We also need Apple and Google to step up and start caring about business models that support great software.

It's not just games, we aren't getting great mobile software in general -- at least not at the rate we saw with desktop computers.

Proper up-front never occurred because Apple refuses to implement a simple free-trial-period mechanism. And it is impossible to filter store searches in a way that tells you which apps would behave roughly in that way (therefore anything with IAP I just assume must be a gambling/gem-bags/garbage model).

Really no video game lets you do a free trial. To me the start of all this was Google. Google completely changed the way we interact with services and technology. It’s amazing and completely “free”.

Back when games were distributed as a physical media, there were demo version you could get with a game magazine for free, or early downloads via Internet. Plus Google Play in the beginning let you try any purchased app for, what? 48 hours? I don't recall exactly now.

Demos are on the way back. A lot of indie games on Steam feature them.

Steam also made every game an effective demo with their return policy

Honestly, the gameplay looks like a slightly-polished Diablo 3. It isn't that exciting to me. What's more-interesting to me, though, is your comment about people discovering a path to get a normal experience. Diablo 3 was reworked a year after release to move to that model, and honestly it's a very fun game. They dropped the auction house stuff, tuned gear drops to help you find your own kit, and added rifts and bounty stuff. It's still a very fun weekend experience. I think you're right about mobile pricing. That said, with Apple's recent campaign promising to replace computers with iPads, it's possible we are in for a shift.

The issue is fundamentally that releasing a single game for a single fee yields linear growth, which is to say the amount your growing by is stagnant. Stagnant growth, to an investor, is essentially a signal that your company is currently failing. So unless you can grow your growth, you fail, and the only way to continue growing your growth is if new products remain cash generating indefinitely.

Not sure why you’re being downvoted. Your insight connects the software industry to the larger macroeconomic environment of low interest rates and growth-seeking (rent-seeking?). A one-off’s sales have a ceiling, where a recurring revenue source is an indefinite fountain of sales.

The same could be observed of Hollywood. How much of the derivative sequels, reboots and spin-offs are driven not by a lack of creativity as is often bemoaned, but rather by a greater-than-ever desire to develop “fountains of sales” rather than one-off artistic hits?

I've played to around level 30 or so also and it feels just like any other recent Diablo. So far it seems like I can pay to speed things up/improve the drop rate, or just keep playing without just fine. Is there some spot I'm going to hit that I can't progress without paying?

The article mentions that you can get the best gear for free but it will take you about 10 years. So I'm sure you can play it and have fun. If you try PVP however then you would be at a great advantage if you pay money for upgrades.

But these games are explicitly designed to be frustrating and not fun when played for free.

The math and game design are expertly crafted to make you play compulsively. They most certainly have been designed to cause psychological pain when you don’t play it you don’t pay. They are not designed to cause fun or joy.

The free aspect is like your heroin dealer going “the first dose is free”. That is exactly what they want you to do.

It's not like you can get the "best" seasonal gear in D3 (which is paid upfront) without a ridiculous amount of grind. Well, not as ridiculous as 10 years, but still.

Without knowing how money scales in this game it's very hard to judge the 10 years / 110k figure. In D3 sometimes you're grinding exponentially for 1% or even 0.1% improvements at a time, and you don't have to.

Time is money. Paying for progress or items provides accessibility to that experience for people who just dont have the time to grind.

Don’t play the “accessibility” nonsense argument with us old-time gamers. You know what I could have done in D3 to skip the grind, if I wanted to? Use cheats or trainers or a save file from the internets, in a single player game, for which I paid for. Not this nonsense today, where even single player games are gated behind “sErViCeS” backend to prevent cheating, aka DRM for the payed DLC stuff, that is already on disk downloaded, in a single player games. Please stop.

D3 is in fact not very single player for all but the most casual players who stop at finishing the story solo.

Really? I did plenty of pushing into high-tier rifts solo in D3. It's definitely more stable and reliable with multiple people, but I did plenty of grinding solo and have a good time.

How?

The article is really quite confusing. Early on it says F2P can't get the best gear, then later says they can. Then they say even for paid players it's random so I'm not even sure how they come up with 100k figure.

It's just hard for me to get upset about a game that's always been a pretty skin over a blatant Skinner box.

The way those games are designed most of time there is a way to get good gear for free, but its usually behind hundreds of hours of same monotous gameplay.

I’ve played Homeworld mobile recently. The progress is great for first 15 hours but then game drops at you timegates. Wanna spaceship strong enough for later content? You can do god know how many missions hoping you get ship design, or you can do god knows how many missions to earn money to buy that from one of factions for cash. Or you can buy credits for cash. But only on Android because game is in public beta and Apple forbids monetization in those.

And once you get the ship design, you need to mine resources for it (this is manageable) but then you need to refine those, which takes around 70h of wait, but if you have other premium currency named „adamantium”, you can cut that wait in half for 100 adamantium, then another half by another adamantium and half of that.

And then you need to build ship in shipyard which takes between 10 to 15 days, but with adamantium you can slice that time down like for refining.

Every day you can collect 100 adamantium for free and buy 1000 extra for $9.99.

I mean, it's been like this since the first Diablo. Even the sounds and animations when killing major bosses sounded and looked like a slot machine. It's nice that people are upset about it as they should, but this is not a new phenomenon and I'm puzzled why the hate is directed at DI specifically. At the end of the day a grizzled old-school gamer could not play multiplayer, ignore all paid options, and end up with the exact same experience as Diablo 2.

DI is high profile release, which is why the uproar is large enough to reach the mainstream. But its nothing new and happens in every fandom when favorite brand enters the mobile gaming.

It’s rumored that EA lost exclusivity on Star Wars games because of their mishandling of license and time-gating legendary Star Wars characters behind hours of gameplay (it took 42h of grind to unlock Darth Vader, but you could just pay extra on in-game roulette to unlock him sooner). This also caused uproar that reached mainstream media and commentary from members of state governments.

Yeah I mean the game is intentionally confusing.

You have these things called eternal crests which cost 160 “gems” (the real money currency). These let you run a special dungeon that guarantees a drop of a legendary gem rated between 1 and 5 stars. In fact if you fail the dungeon somehow it’ll refund the crest and let you try again.

Apparently the drop rate for the 5 star gems is 4.5%, so my napkin math works out to around $50 per 5 star legendary gem.

I can’t go back and check my math because I uninstalled the game.

> Yeah I mean the game is intentionally confusing.

I agree there.

I think my char is ~38 and I have 4 legendary gems mixed levels 2-3. I haven't and won't pay any money, but so far the game has been fun. I haven't been limited at all in my progression, in fact the game has felt too easy. Will I ever have 5x5star gems? Probably not, but I would have gotten bored way prior anyway.

I dislike F2P/micro tx games as much as anyone, but so far I haven't been limited in any way. When it does (or I get bored) I'll stop playing.

People are mad as hell for no reason about this one. It's honestly decent monetization and the free game is great.

I spent $7 and just finished the main storyline. Then I joked to my friends “okay I’m level 60 I’m done now”. But then I thought about it and I uninstalled the game. I beat it, I get how the game works, I got an authentic Diablo experience. I’m done now.

What limitations do you run into if you don’t pay that stop it from being fun after the first 30 levels?

Yatzhee posted a video on how the mobile gaming space is basically dead because of this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q30qZSEnI9Q

you know, this helped me realize why I rage-quit C&C Rivals. I was having a lot of fun, thinking I'm good at the game, going on 40-game win streaks.... then suddenly I am facing opponents with characters 2 levels above mine, getting creamed 90% of games and coming nowhere near being able to upgrade my characters... unless I spend and unknown amount of money on crates.

So, I'm not just a quitter, I ran into the trap.

> It is so sad that "make good game, sell it" model no longer works. It's all a wonky curve of "free - couple of dollars - hundreds and thousands of dollars".

Fwiw, I would be onboard with some kind of model where one pays a small monthly (or additional fee) for continued updates. For instance, I play a few multiplayer games (overwatch, hunt showdown) and I'd be ok paying $1 a month or so to support continued updates / balancing etc. It seems like companies are missing the boat on the nominal recurring fees (vs say, the WoW level subscription of tens of dollars a month).

I play Overwatch too and I'm kind of worried about what's going to happen when Overwatch 2 releases. OW 1's monetization policy is extremely generous, at this point in the game's lifecycle I have about 1000 hrs of playtime and have nearly every single cosmetic, and the only money I've sent Blizzard's way is the CD key and the pink charity skin.

I worry that the pendulum will swing too far in the other direction and we'll see P2W elements, particularly in the PvE mode that eventually releases.

It works.

But nowaday, you cannot just be profitable. You gotta make your investers very happy.

And no matter how well it does, investors will expect growth. So what further sliminess does Diablo Immortals 2 do to get growth? This behavior is unsustainable.

It works, just that the incentive of a BigCo is to maximise shareholder value and thus revenue which results into hacking everything we can and exploit user behavior to squeeze the most out of the pockets of consumers.

Basically the mechanism of incentives just works against us.

We do really need a renaissance of authentic & sustainable products which are profitable and are there to delight, not to min/max our savings.

When it comes to games, best bet is finding games from privately owned companies who don't have to answer to shareholders

VR is so fun if you want basic graphics and fun gameplay

Do you have some recommendations?

Depends what you are into: Driving: Assetto corsa, iRacing, basically most racing simulators

Flying: VTOL VR, DCS, MS Flight Sim 2020, Ultrawings

Shooting: Onward, Pavlov, Contractors, Hot dogs horseshoes and handgrenades

Social: VRChat, Rec Room

Story/single player games: Half Life Alyx, Boneworks, Skyrim or Fallout 4

Stealth: Budget Cuts

Others: Beat saber is a must

I'd say VR is finally at the point where there are great games in most genres, and we are finally past the point where a stupid, 2 hour "experience" costs $40, in other words, most games being released for it now are not gimmicks. Honestly my recommendations are a little out of date. I've pointed out what I would consider "the classics" at this point

it's the exact model that has taken over everything, just wearing a slightly different coloured hat.

give you the item for free or at a discount, then desperately try to enslave you to their payment model

people have been getting loans, mortgages and paying rent for centuries, but now it's moved onto phones, cars, apps, games, SAAS, free trials for streaming services, klarna, etc, etc, etc

they're all some variation on rent-seeking behaviour, they just vary in the form rent takes, and how they put the product in your hands in the first place

more modern iterations often don't forcibly take the rent, but use social pressures to coerce their userbase to the point where a % "voluntarily" pay rent. some still do forcibly take the rent.

the end result for you is a product in your hands, nearly always for cheaper than it would have been 15 years ago, but at either a lower quality, or a higher future cost

the end result for the "landlord" is almost a guarantee of projected earnings

>> It is so sad that "make good game, sell it" model no longer works.

That model still works very well, probably as well as it ever has. But now there are also other models for your phone and computer. If people rejected them, only the "make good game, sell it" model would be left.

> It is so sad that "make good game, sell it" model no longer works. It's all a wonky curve of "free - couple of dollars - hundreds and thousands of dollars".

It does work, but not at the profit multiples that venture capitalists and private equity currently demand. Speaking of gaming overall, not iOS specifically.

Lots of folks disappointed at Diablo Immortal are comparing it to a PC game which it isn’t. It’s a great game that lets you play and experience Diablo on the go, during your lunch breaks, and on the porcelain throne.

Once you adjust your expectations and understand that this is a filler game before D4 you’ll see that it’s a great game that can be enjoyed for the content without paying a cent

I mean, you can literally play Diablo Immortal on Battle.Net on your PC right now. It’s even advertised for PC.

I feel like we're well past due for some kind of price hike on AAA video games. Games were $60 when I was a kid, and inexplicably, they still are, for the most part.

Unfortunately, since investors have figured out that the subscription model extracts the most profit possible, I have a feeling we're going to be seeing more and more of that rather than a simple price increase.

Wouldn't surprise me if we even see Steam unveil something like Xbox Game Pass for their marketplace within the next few years. Maybe the worst part is the fact that you no longer actually own anything when all you're paying for is a subscription, but that's more or less how Steam already works, minus the recurring payments.

People keep saying games should cost more, and yet games routinely gross orders of magnitude more than in the past due to sugnificantly expanded market.

The market has been rapidly expanding for a long time, hence less need to increase prices. That plus if you include special, gold, ultimate editions, dlc packs, microtransactions, etc prices have been going up.