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A company in the end is nothing more than a entity "accumulating power"... which in exchange may control other peoples actions... no matter be it devs or users... it is affecting everyone.

Good example: Google... is by far the most powerful "internet-power" available and its power is still growing. Roughly about 85% of its income is done by advertisement and its entire purpose is to provide its users and the whole net with advertisement. This is mainly done by control and controlling the entire environment including every standard involved. So... almost any browser for example is using a Chromium based "code base" which makes all the browers using it "perfectly optimized" for... and even MS or Apple is bowing down in front of this massive force... so even those are taking over "Chromium Standards"... kinda the same way the gamer base is bowing down to the power Steam got.

There are a few "stubborn" companies... yes... such as GOG or Firefox... which are using "different standards" and because there is so few support those standards are not working to well. However... the users having a powerful system who does not go down to its knees if there is lack of optimization... may not care if it is "Chromium", Steam... or simply Firefox or GOG... they can chose whatever they enjoy without serious consequences.

The mass... the majority... will have to use the ones with "biggest power" as they lack own power... which means to use the stuff the powerful ones are using. This is the way how they remain "in power"... oh and besides, sure... Google is doing a lot for security... especially "their own security", so... at some point no one can block their advertisement anymore because of a "locked" codebase which will not allow for it.

What i want to say with all those hints and stories... the mass is usually fully supporting the ones already strong in order to balance out their own weakness... like a universal law. A company which is truly seeking out power simply knowns how to "control" the environment... and i have to admit... the strongest ones are insanely successful... which is not a coincidence... because they know how to become supported.

Yes i use Firefox (sure, very safe because most hackers are to lazy attacking it... it is simply not used by the masses) and GOG... but the majority is clearly not.
Post edited 2 days ago by Xeshra
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UnashamedWeeb: It's the same old shit, it's executives maximizing profit and kicking sand in everyone's faces doing it.
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botan9386: 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.
That's with any public company. Getting listed on the stock market is always presented as this great ceremony but it means the company becomes all about pleasing shareholders, which equates to maximizing short-term quarterly revenue by any means necessary and screw all other considerations. If you like what a business does, it dies as soon as it goes public.
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Devyatovskiy: I'm surprised that RL had ANY player-to-player trading system for as long as it did. Such systems are a complete anathema to games which sell microtransactions and have gambling mechanics (loot crates).
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botan9386: But do you know what the developers had instead? A happy community. Some people just played the game, others grinded for crates, some bought the keys to open those crates, some bought DLC for additional cars. And the game wasn't even free! So all of these purchases were extra. It was pretty difficult to find something negative to say about the game.
Yep, you're preaching to the choir there. Pretty sure the people who need to heed that are not on these forums. To play the devil's advocate for a sec though, gamers truly do not know what they want. Seemingly every decision that we think should tank a gaming company, ends up rewarding them heavily. It's a bizarre clown world when it comes to whales.
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FarkOfDoge: Tell that to Nintendo!
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Xeshra: People still buy their stuff like mad, so even lack of respect is apparently lovely in some way.

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Devyatovskiy: Thus, if they just allowed player trading, their own wallet would get hit. I guarantee that execs would rather be branded with a hot iron than let something like that happen.
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Xeshra: Not much different when it comes to many of the big companies... they constantly seek for "even more coins" because if they do not increase their capital even more they actually "go down in power".
Most of these decisions are not for the benefit of any one individual. It's for the market share of a company to go up and continue going up. Top brass usually just gets recognition and accolades (deserved or not). The needle moves ever slightly, and the company and its shareholders become slightly bigger, richer, and more powerful.

How to you think most of these titans of gaming came to be? Tencent didn't become Cthulhu of gaming because they were pleasing their customers. They were ensuring that some whales of gaming have some nonsense to spend their money on. Individual CEOs and execs probably saw only a marginal bump.

All of my references to wallet are that of companies as a whole.
Post edited 2 days ago by Devyatovskiy
Does not matter what it is for... fact is that it is often very hostile toward the customer and for some weird reason the customers mostly keep being loyal.

Examples: Sony was merging Funimation and Crunchyroll together. The "owners" of Funimation movies was apparently losing their movies... after.

In many cases... movies or series at some point suddenly has been removed from the library... so, nope... it is not owned "forever". It may not even be the case for games, although at least they may still be accessible after they have been taken down by the shop. However... if the account is lost... usually the game is lost as well because it is usually bound to the account. A IP holder... no matter be it a game, movie or whatelse... is either only offering it for a limited time or can at some point simply "take it away"... and no customer ever know the exact moment it may happen... so this is usually a surprise. Although this knowledge seems to be open to the public... they usually do not care because they are "consumers" and a consumers is consuming something for a while until the moment they simply "throw it away, for the next better or newer thing"... in this regard the GOG mentality is surely different. Nonetheless... even GOG may have to remove games in their library all of a sudden and even without a warning.

Some users say "the internet will never forget"... not true... a lot of stuff can suddenly become forgotten and at some point very hard to find. I even fail to find the source of my Avatar... which was a Deviant work that has been taken down at some point and no search machine in the whole net is able to find my picture... so i am actually the only one with this picture left... yet... my version is heavily "cut" in order to fit into a avatar. The original is probably gone forever... as i did not make a copy of it... because i never had in mind "it could be gone all of a sudden... and forever"... as the internet is able to "forget".

People who are collecting or archiving... in my mind, do a important duty... because it is pretty possible many data... even good ones, can suddenly become lost at some point, perhaps even forever. If something is precious, perhaps just an avatar.. i recommend to archive it... else it could suddenly disappear... sometimes forever.

Sure... another big concern to me is the unfair treatment toward certain countries and/or their customers. Either they may have to pay way more than others... so kinda getting ripped off, or they may not even become the same offers or no offer at all. In the end they simply are not treated equally and it is not the first time a lawsuit is happening because of it... and it is unfortunately only truly effective against the most powerful companies because those are the ones "leading and enforcing the rules". The smaller companies such as GOG simply will have to "follow this rule" as they have close to no saying here. The rules are mainly being made by "the most powerful players" and those are the ones usually being targeted by lawsuits. Of course... those companies may as well use even more lawsuits in order to "protect their in their eyes legitimate rules and rights"... so this is in some cases always a fight and a "test of power". For sure... a company without a customer is broken... although, there are many different customers... and the majority is not necessarily the most wealthy one. I told already... the hierarchy, between classes and just about everything, is strongest in the entire history and the trading system is in many cases probably broken already.
Post edited 2 days ago by Xeshra
Because it's a business and if they could pick your pocket clean, they would.
Y do the ruling elites everywhere hate the peasants?
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rambo919: The problem with an ideologue activist is when he tells a story he disrespects the medium he uses to tell it.

It's the reason that 90% of all religious movies are trash.... the idea behind the story matters more to the teller than the actual story does. The difference is the woke activists refuse to even acknowledge they are part of a religious movement, they start from a position of dishonesty.
I don't really understand what "woke" in its present usage is supposed to mean, really. To me, it's just a new variant of cultural bolshevism, a catch-all term designed to badmouth what makes all narrative media great: the ability to walk a mile in the shoes of somebody else.

George Orwell, the famed socialist author of "1984" wrote: "Every writer, especially every novelist, has a 'message,' whether he admits it or not, and the minutest details of his work are influenced by it." This quote directly relates to your thesis that the "idea behind the story matters more than the actual story does". Of course it does, and it could not be any different. That's not to say that each story has to be allegorical in some form (and it definitely doesn't mean that overt allegory would be great storytelling). It doesn't mean that stories have to be inclusive, diverse and/or preachy.

What it does mean is that if you don't express your values in your art, you don't create art.

And there's more from Orwell: "All art is propaganda". Although we'd define 'propaganda' a little differently today, there's an important truth to be recognized here. What you'd call "the idea", what Orwell calls "the message", I'd call "the soul". Without it, your work in fact isn't art, because you didn't imbue it with your innermost self. You didn't pour yourself into it. You did not give it what you'd give your own child, a huge chunk of yourself.

If you ever dabbled in writing, and fuck me running I did, you'll find that without idea, message or soul, you end up with drivel every time. That's why the wokeism cryers scare me. They don't understand art, least of all the art of storytelling, and the oppression they openly intend to introduce is a kind of censorship that the developed world has not seen in 80 years.
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Vainamoinen: And there's more from Orwell: "All art is propaganda". Although we'd define 'propaganda' a little differently today, there's an important truth to be recognized here. What you'd call "the idea", what Orwell calls "the message", I'd call "the soul". Without it, your work in fact isn't art, because you didn't imbue it with your innermost self. You didn't pour yourself into it. You did not give it what you'd give your own child, a huge chunk of yourself.

If you ever dabbled in writing, and fuck me running I did, you'll find that without idea, message or soul, you end up with drivel every time. That's why the wokeism cryers scare me. They don't understand art, least of all the art of storytelling, and the oppression they openly intend to introduce is a kind of censorship that the developed world has not seen in 80 years.
For me it scarier when people do not realize that they are playing a very dangerous game. I mean, it is said that "pen is mightier than the sword" and "a lie repeated continuously becomes the truth". For me that means that some "ideas", "message" can really hurt people and they can be more dangerous than weapons. So, should we allow any kind of message just because its their "work"? I do not agree with censor art but we should explain the wrong ideas and the context. And in some contexts, we should not allow some opinions because they are not acceptable. For me free speech does not mean can you say whatever you want. I know that many times there is not one unique truth, but lies are not free speech. I know that sometimes it is very difficult to know when an opinion is acceptable or not, but for me, we should know how dangerous they are and be aware of them
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Vainamoinen: That's why the wokeism cryers scare me. They don't understand art, least of all the art of storytelling, and the oppression they openly intend to introduce is a kind of censorship that the developed world has not seen in 80 years.
They feel that the [insert whatever medium] wronged them because they're forced to realize that people or concepts they don't want to see do exist. Different people, different concepts, different anything, ALL BAD ALL EVIL ALL POLITICAL

and for some reason these people often miss that these are non-issues. Game companies load up their games with DLCs and microtransactions and DRM and everything not nice, they're willing to pretend none of that exists just because there's a black woman in the game.

Well it's no wonder some game companies hate their customers. They've implicitly agreed by using their rallying around the meaningless word "woke" that they'd be otherwise fine with the game. Plus they still get money. So they're doubling down on all the above.

Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
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P. Zimerickus: hi, can you tell me why rocket league changed their ingame trading policy

Sure! Rocket League removed player-to-player trading in December 2023 to align with Epic Games' overall approach to game cosmetics and item shop policies. Essentially, Epic Games wants to ensure that items in their games aren't tradable, transferrable, or sellable1. This change also opens up future plans for some Rocket League vehicles to come to other Epic games, supporting cross-game ownership.
Fookin Sweeney!
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botan9386: 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.
That's exactly right. Players are a resource to make money for their real customers, the shareholders.
My two cents on the topic:

Gaming companies (or the 'corporate') don't hate their customers.
They actually have no idea who their customers are or what they really want.

Since gaming became the most profitable industry on the world, many started to venture on it, even if they are not gamers themselves.

The logic is simple:

> Big corporations see numbers go up on gaming industry
> They check for who are the bigger journalists on this area (or those that are said to be the "good" references)
> Seek for guidance from big gaming journalists or profit advisors
> Those say that they need to follow ESG and Hyper liveservice designs, because "that's what the industry is saying they should do"
> They do that, following imprecise data from years ago, based on a minority of customers or a minority of gaming journalists that are being paid to say what big corporations want to hear

Result is:
> Big Gaming companies based industry is falling apart
+ the 'revolution of indie gaming' rises
+ customers are tired of big gaming companies with the "don't question, buy product, enjoy product, wait for next product, don't question, buy product ..." mentality

Thus, wrapping up:
Companies seek for data on how to do the job, but the data on how to do the job is corrupted because those who hold the data (mostly big gaming journalism companies) are not hold accountable for their imprecise data, instead, they are pushed to say what big companies want to hear (mostly to follow ESG policies to have big scores on lists) so they do what such policies require them to, therefore, true and pure gaming design is not the priority.

Instead, companies end up doing so many things that have nothing to do with good gaming design, gamers communities or what is really good for the industry that everybody suffer in the end.

...but this seems to be changing.
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.Keys: Companies seek for data on how to do the job, but the data on how to do the job is corrupted because those who hold the data (mostly big gaming journalism companies) are not hold accountable for their imprecise data, instead, they are pushed to say what big companies want to hear (mostly to follow ESG policies to have big scores on lists) so they do what such policies require them to, therefore, true and pure gaming design is not the priority.
Neatly put. It's no surprise that every other AAA release seems to follow the same themes/strategy. They're getting that information from somewhere. Sadly the source has nothing to do with gaming.
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.Keys: > Those say that they need to follow ESG and Hyper liveservice designs, because "that's what the industry is saying they should do"
Who plays a ton of games and are also the most impressionable? Children and teens. Same with other avenues, this is the real reason messaging(left or right or square flavored) is shoved into any sort of media. Years ago it was cigarette companies trying to get kids to smoke, now companies are helping to make kids mindless cattle. Since many people know little better they will gleefully cheer it on and/or do damage control online "for the greater good".
Post edited 2 days ago by FarkOfDoge
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P. Zimerickus: hi, can you tell me why rocket league changed their ingame trading policy

Sure! Rocket League removed player-to-player trading in December 2023 to align with Epic Games' overall approach to game cosmetics and item shop policies. Essentially, Epic Games wants to ensure that items in their games aren't tradable, transferrable, or sellable1. This change also opens up future plans for some Rocket League vehicles to come to other Epic games, supporting cross-game ownership.
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FarkOfDoge: Fookin Sweeney!
2023 was a good year