The comparison is wrong. If the products you demand require continuing revenue - a subscription model allows rational consumer decisions. That’s why most consumers look at it and say ‘no thanks.’ Real-money charges inside games make more money than subscriptions, not because anyone wants to pay $130 for a video game, but because it obfuscates that price.

The real question is, if FighterZ has now been funded by all those piecemeal sales, and is - in its current state - your favorite game… why the fuck isn’t it $60 to buy it all once?

Like, you don’t want the Street Fighter IV model where each normally-priced game is a tiny upgrade. But you can buy whatever the last version of SF4 is, at a normal price, and it’s the whole goddamn game. If FighterZ doesn’t seem to be getting any more updates or content, why is it still priced for excuses about development costs?

Doesn’t seem to be.

The business model’s still intolerable.

Can you grasp that distinction?

We’ve been talking about a concrete example, one where you say this example is pReDaToRy

I have repeatedly, specifically, and explicitly pointed out this is a lie.

You don’t care.

You don’t get to sneer about a word choice I’ve told you over and over that I did not use, in the context you’re sneering about.

‘Stop calling everything predatory, you’re killing the word!’

I didn’t call everything pr–

‘You know what’s predatory? Paying for services!’

I’m out.

‘This is the gentle end of a spectrum where the far end is clearly predatory.’ ‘So this is predatory?’

Fucking aggravating.

Horse armor was above-board, relative to this.

I keep telling you the precise shape of the problem, and you keep going ‘yeah, something else.’

The DLC is content in the video game.

That’s why you can see it, even if you haven’t paid for it.

Welcome to the conversation.

For the love of god, do not make me rub your nose in this a seventh time.

Should the games I know and love be able to exist in the form that made them the games I know and love?

Are we still pretending that paying for whole editions doesn’t serve the same function? Are we still ignoring subscriptions because they make you feel icky? Are we still not acknowledging games that get updated for years, to keep sales up, and then have sequels?

It is not a model that we should ever go back to

Well there’s one question answered, albeit still on the basis of ‘ick.’ It existed - it was profitable - but we can’t do it ever again because that’s the same as a whole existing game being banned. Blah blah blah.

I understand that compatibility is preferable. I am telling you it’s not worth preserving this business model. This is the gentlest this business model could possibly be, and it has still created a typical 1v1 with a total price that’s fucking bonkers.

Compatibility is also possible through the just-update-the-damn-game model. Like how nobody charges five bucks for improved netcode. That also costs money to create, and is surely a key part of improving past the initial version. Funny how it’s just taken for granted as part of the game you already bought.

I literally didn’t. I said it’s inseparable from this business model, eight hours later. The comment you’re replying to explains how it’s all one spectrum - including the things you, personally, would call predatory. The only specific examples I’ve given are skins and skip-the-grind.

What I get in response is ‘do you still beat your wife?’ over the apparent impossibility of updates that already happened, and repeated misrepresentations of how this thread started. You have quoted me directly and then been wrong in the next comment. I sound aggravated because you’ve been aggravating.

That is what it means, to sell content. That is what actual expansions are. This song-and-dance where you have the whole game, but you’re not allowed to really have the whole game, is inseparable from everything you would call predatory. It’s only a matter of degrees.

One of the several alternatives you’ve repeatedly ignored is that these additions can be added to the game people already bought. Surprisingly, this does not involve slave labor for artists, because games that stay popular keep selling more copies. Do they make as much money? No. But it turns out maximum corporate revenue is not a guideline for ethics.

Nothing inside a video game. That part is not optional. I’ve dealt with too many cranks who see me arguing - JUST SELL GAMES - and then go ‘you want it for free!’

I’d sound less hostile if you didn’t need this explained five separate times.

And it’s not incidental, because you are now that crank, insisting “you don’t seem to want anyone to get paid to make [content].”

Stop fucking that strawman.

“Pay to skip the grind” is weaponized frustration.

Free games that somehow make a billion dollars only exist to drag people across their wallet-hooks.

This is trolling.

It’d be fine if we never talk again.

I did. I just didn’t give you the clean yes-or-no you’re prepared to posture about.

The alternative is we either break compatibility, or the content doesn’t get made at all since you don’t seem to want anyone to get paid to make it.

Do you have object permanence?

Because you keep pretending we didn’t go over the obvious alternatives, repeatedly. You forgot your own examples include games that did not have this business model, but still plainly got made, and had major updates, and took a shitload of your money.

Do you honestly not know the difference between “nothing inside a video game should cost real money” and “everything should be free?” Because that impossible confusion would explain a lot of this conversation.

I know you understand charging money for things inside a game can be abusive. You have no trouble calling gambling or FOMO “predatory.” Would you respect someone telling you, that just means you don’t want those games made? Fortnite, banned! Call of Duty, deleted! Never made it past 1.0! How much of that shit would you take, from someone insisting “at least it’s not pay-to-win?” Pay-to-win is worse, surely. So anything less abusive than that must be fine. And if you don’t respect all the money developers get from pay-to-win, you must want them to to starve.

We don’t have to leave your stated examples to find disproof of your pet dichotomy. SF4 had the same kind of evolution while selling versions like they still came on cartridges. It’s possible. You just don’t like it.

Unless you mean one single byte of FighterZ being different would be a completely different game, in which case, just, shut up. You keep trying to treat any change what-so-ever as equivalent to the whole game ceasing to exist. That’s horseshit. You need to stop.

And you keep pretending I said “nothing should ever be sold.” Or “nothing should cost money ever.”

Do you need a diagram?

Scams work by choice. Putting a gun to someone’s head is a mugging. Scams, you walk into freely, and still get robbed. You don’t quite get nothing… but for the money, you don’t get much.

What game could sell for $130, on sale, and be taken seriously? That shit only works because breaking it up into little pieces obfuscates the total cost. Same shit as “five easy payments!” in TV infomercials.

And $130 is the low, low end. So many of these games, especially the ones that slog on for years, have thousands of dollars in stupid shit you can blow your money on. Gambling makes it worse - but worse isn’t necessary, for it to be bad.

calling everything predatory

Can we please go one interaction without you lying to me about my own opinions? I called skins predatory. Because Jesus Christ, have you seen Fortnite? They could ditch whatever mechanisms you consider beyond-the-pale, and the whole game would still exist as a funnel to exchange your whole wallet in exchange for playable references.

I will again grant that this is the gentle end of the spectrum. But it’s all the same spectrum. There’s no hard cutoffs between thirty-seven characters at five bucks apiece, and pay-to-win weapon unlocks. Grinding instead would be worse. It’s even less like an actual product. All incentives point straight toward maximum revenue through engineered frustration.

‘I consider this game’s business model fundamentally intolerable, and its total price divorced from reality.’

‘So why aren’t you playing it?’

You are not a serious person.

You’re repeatedly misrepresenting my stance after several clear and specific corrections.

You’re deliberately ignoring the path to get from point A to point B if you think that in your world it would just be the final version right away.

Who are you talking to?

We just discussed how to incrementally build a game, without this specific business model. I am only against the business model. Do you know how to address that, without slapfighting a strawman? ‘Game design is hard’ doesn’t excuse this creeping systemic abuse.

Again: this is the low end, and it still expects $130 for an eight-year-old 1v1 fighter. 70% off. This business model inflates prices to the absurd extremes, even when it’s not an antipattern vortex.