It’s why you should listen because they’re telling you how they’re going to abuse the consumer next.

Since people don’t read anything past the headline, which is why we can’t have nice things, in an interview the CEO started the following:

So, we’ve established an $80 price point and a $100 price point for the regular edition and the Premium Edition of GTA 6. And I think most people felt that if we wanted to exert it, we had a great deal of pricing power.

This is basically the CEO trying to justify the new, and very much sounding temporary, price floor for games. Taking what Nintendo started and trying to provide more bullshit to solidify the new price.

Probably going to be the new temporary price floor considering gamers are reportedly buying the 100 USD premium edition that has sliced content from the main game. Consumers give an inch, these assholes will take a mile and gamers are more than willing to take the abuse.

Really shows that people don’t read past the headline.

Not having a physical disc is probably the least of our worries with this and other game companies at this point.

They’ve historically made a game with good writing in it, with good side quests that really immerse a gamer into the world and a lot of people like that style of open world play and those interesting side stories that wasn’t just superfluous padding that would give a player tens, if not a hundred hours, of just good fun. That seemed to be the draw for the game with just enough refinement of the original game play that was serviceable. Heck even I enjoyed GTA V single player quite a bit with all of the weirdness with Trevor.

I just don’t particularly like their online component where it’s all pay to win and massive amounts of what I would consider psychological abuse of addiction that they’ve devolved to and literally admitted what their target of console players was.

These games were not boycotted because of bad, predatory, literal psychological manipulation. They were simply bad games that were built without the proper dopamine loop, not understanding the original source material, looking at you Suicide Squad, to keep them addicted.

And they still made a lot of money, just not enough for their bloated development since these companies are still around and pumping out more games with these shitty practices and making millions of dollars, including even more of these extremely predatory GaaS, which Rockstar has even been on record stating that they were targeting console players first instead of PC because they’re more susceptible to their psychology department and spend more money on crappy FOMO microtransactions.

Same man. People on this forum who can see what’s going on outside of the bread and circus are the minority of the money spending gaming community. Most are just more than happily mildly complain and buy their next distraction from the horrors of life, which at times I don’t blame them.

Considering that even the EU squashed the 'Stop Killing Games" petition and declined to address any new laws, it might be a while for any country to do so.

At this point it doesn’t even have to succeed, just be the only choice as the tech fascists kill the ability to buy hardware and software.

The tech bros like him, Bezos, Huang, and all those other tech fascists are working extra hard to make sure we don’t have the software or hardware to buy in order to play or do anything independently.

Hence why we should be fighting for rights with digital goods. eBooks can be checked out at the library, albeit not without multiple fights to get something relatively fair, and there’s no good reason why this can’t be implemented for all other digital goods, other than like you said, corporate greed.

Well said.

I disagree. They’re are a multi billion dollar company that is the defacto/largest distributor, they’ve got the clout to push for effective change and they’ve been vocally against the secondary market or transfers, including on death.

Also you said it yourself, they could easily do this for the games they publish and yet here we are.

I do appreciate they keep delisted games around at least.

That’s nice. You’re wrong, but that’s nice.

Sure, here are my small list personal list of gripes, mostly minor except the first one.

• Their continued stance on loot boxes and enabling of gambling.
• They did try to do a paid mod system back in the day and got shutdown by gamers pretty quick.
• Their initial discontinuation of batteries and LCD screens for their steam deck after only four years.
• Their continued stance that they are selling revokable, non-transferable licenses and not games that you own.

Steam’s a great company and overall very pro-consumer company in my opinion, more so than most of the other companies in the PC gaming realm but I’ll criticize Steam when I see something I believe is anti-consumer regardless of my like for them because end of they day they’re still just a corporation that prioritizes profits over people and it’s just one death away from being enshitified like the rest of them.

Ah, moving goalposts now I see. CAH has provided the forms to submit your receipt and get your refund and go ask about how effective it is yourself because I wasn’t arguing or making a case about effectiveness.

I’m simply arguing that there are companies that are trying to be decent companies and pro-consumer, not arguing about the effectiveness of their pro-consumer stance.

While we’re at it let’s just get your whataboutism that you’ll also try to pull out of the way, yes most corporations will also not be making any moves to refund their customers when they get their illegal tariffs refunded and that also makes them anti-consumer asshats.

Yeah, like Cards Against Humanity spotted the difference and decided to not be anti-consumer asshats.

https://www.fastcompany.com/91500865/tariff-refund-cards-against-humanity-trump

Yeah, it’s honestly very sad to see people defend these gaming corporations blindly, yes, including Steam, when they’re doing anti-consumer things.

100% agree.

It’s also like to add that passing on my games to my kids and the ability to sell my keys should also be on the table.

It should be simply required by law of companies if you ask me and why I donate to groups like Stop Killing Games.