Today I was about to boot up Rocket League and sell my inventory so that I can leave the game behind, only to learn that Epic/Psyonix has removed player-to-player trading...

For those who never played RL, trading was a huge chunk of the community, especially since crates were earned as rewards for playing but also had a lot of value, meaning anyone could save up for their favourite item and trade for it without ever spending a dime on keys. Then the game became free to play and thus begun the new rules.

Crates were replaced with "blueprints", untradeable and valueless items. Keys became "credits", since crates no longer existed. Credits became the only usable currency, allowing them to set awkward prices. And to make sure nobody could dodge their changes, players become restricted from trading amongst each other.

Is it just me or does all this feel shockingly familiar?

Now, none of this is revolutionary. The part that's wild is how willingly they took a working, stable, game with a happy community, and flipped it upside down to earn a few extra peanuts. Who cares about 1/3, if not more, of our demographic? Who cares about the creators and pro orgs who now hate our guts? Who cares about our company's reputation? They don't care at all.

Look how they massacred my boy...

It's the same old shit, it's executives maximizing profit and kicking sand in everyone's faces doing it.

Anything that doesn't have an impact on the bottom line has to go and it only stays as a loss leader. I'd imagine any mid-level manager with a heart that speaks up against orders from the top either gets demoted, fired, or replaced with sycophants afterwards.

The only companies that care and address customer concerns are small to mid-sized indies where management still has a heart in growing their communities and/or doing the right thing. But when they get too big, they turncoat and then it's all about protecting executive / shareholder / investor profits or their own headcount instead.

I read somewhere that gaming companies shouldn't even be public. Evidently when public trading is involved, the customers become targets to bleed dry rather than valued patrons.

There's a few things that have happened in the last ten years which have increasingly caused gaming companies to view their audience as a hostile target.

One, the developer pool became oversaturated with ideologists and activists, who view any video game as a medium to tell their personal truth to as many people as will listen. There is nothing wrong with making a game political, but not every major game from every major studio needs a politics injection.

Two, there were a couple of periods where the gaming industry had big booms. This led to the executives chasing money, because here in the USA, corporations (publishers included) are viewed as fiduciaries who are mandated to chase the highest dividends possible for their shareholders.

Three, many formerly private gaming companies got bought, sold, or went public. See point two for why public companies in gaming are bad.

Because gamers are viewed as hostile targets, the executives increasingly try to use any means necessary to get you to part with your money, even when developers in their companies openly mock the gamers that they're developing for.

Tis the way of mankind, the way of the world. To take all possible, to fill all available space; to propel ourselves into our own destruction ignorant or even cognizant of the dangers that lie ahead: be it a lust for power, fame, riches, recognition, or just curiosity and advancement. To teeter over the edge, and risk dashing everything against the rocks. You must, for if you don't someone else will, and seize everything for himself. They don't hate their customers, they're just playing the game.

They may not hate their customers, but they certainly disrespect them way too much and way too often.

It's no longer, in many cases, about them being grateful we bought their product. It's about us, that we should be grateful they created something they knew we should like, that they can milk us dry with.

We are their bread & butter, but they treat us like shit.

Welcome to Capitalism gone rabid & feral.... dog eat dog.

The sad thing is a number of players will pay up. Oh well, look on the bright side: you'll have more time for other games :) One example would be a certain DRM free gaming store. Once they went public everything started to do a brown slide downhill.

It is mostly American video game companies that hate their customers and push for micro-transactions and woke agendas in their games like EA did with the newest Veilguard game AND warner brothers with the suicide squad game.

Japanese and Eastern european, russian gaming companies still respect their customers.

Tell that to Nintendo!

Money. Anymore questions?

Just a little remark about making a game political. There are some topics, decision or aspects of the game that they are going to be political since there isn't a neutral decision. For instance, les's do a boxing game, will we have female boxer? male boxer? etc. In the real world, boxers can have different genders. I am a man, and I have trained with women boxers and they can be very good and some of them were better tham me. If in our game, we let boxers to have different genders, we will be more realistic, however, some peaple will complain about political issues. If "our" game only deals with male boxers, we are hidding things, filtering things of the real world because female boxers exists and they can be very good at boxing. If we hide we are doing it because of a reason (maybe because of a political think (?))

This is just a stupid example, you can change it wherever you want and you will find that there are many decision that are tough because people are going to complain to be poliitical.

Because trust goes as far as the money... and no further.
You are nothing more than a wallet.. you are human and developers are lizard people...

Acting like gods when their barely edjucated

Forked tongues, forked open source projects, customers forked of money; what aren't these lizard people forking?

And not a single day where i ask ,what the fork is going on?

Yeah - about that...