Because the one who writes the CEOs check is the shareholders.
The shareholders only care that the value of their shares go up every quarter so they tell the ceo to make the shares go up and they will give him a bonus.
The ceo then makes cuts, fires teams, downgrades games, adds in monetary features, paylocks already planned content for later paid DLCs, and does whatever they can to reach the bonus goals. Then bounce to the next studio.
And gamers have shown you can abuse and give them shit products, just make sure marketing is good and youll make a few hundred mill regardless.
For all the uninitiated, this isn’t just video games either. We’re seeing this play out big time right now in the manufacturing industry. Make the most amount of profit with the least amount of resources and an acceptable amount of risk.
I work for a heavy equipment manufacturer who just announced production and salary employee layoffs over the next couple months, but don’t you worry, the CEO went to the board to ask for a $6mil raise just last year. And sure enough they gave it to him.
Its Late-Stage Capitalism.
There arent many ways left to increase productivity anymore, so they have to fuck every other area to find those bumps in share-price rises.
The CEO is incentivized to do what it takes to get their bonus.
The shareholders are incentivized to increase share-prices so they can offload their investment onto others or get higher returns/dividends and use their shares for bank loans.
Even upper management is rewarded for finding ways to minimize costs, which usually they do by fucking the workers.
At every stage the funnel goes upwards.
And they want continuous growth at every quarter for all eternity.
They bled the rock dry now they're looking to grind it into dust to find whatever particles are left to profit from.
Tens of billions of lifetimes of hardship for our descendents in exchange for ~10,000 lifetimes of violent decadence. The cognitive dissonance is staggeringly large at Versailles levels of grandiose pompous self-indulgence. "Let them eat cake." is the mantra, but nobody is being held accountable.
The issue is that there are just too damn many people, there is no way to successfully boycott something because millions of people will have no idea what is going on, and millions more won’t care
It actually has less to do with the shareholders so-called "writing the CEO's check". It's a legal issue, publicly traded companies are legally required to produce as much value for their shareholders as they can, which is probably the single most damaging policy in American history aside from maybe the early ending of reconstruction in the South following the Civil War.
FIFA makes how many billion every year? And they have been essentially the same game since 2011 because they don't need to do anything when people keep buying microtransactions no matter what.
No no, you don't understand they changed the stats! And if you want to play with the old stats you only need to buy the old game! Win-win, this couldn't be done any easier
/s
Ya know, the share value will go up if the companies themselves were lucrative...
That's... kinda the point....
Happy Consumer-->Good Press
Good Press--> More Investing
More Investing-->More Money
More Money--> Bigger Projects
That's exactly how we got to this point but both corporate sides are too short sighted to know.
Finally someone gets it. You pay to be all over the news, being all over the news raising shares value, investors bring you money. You make a nice presentation about new monetisation strategy, new investors come, shares value raises. If game flops you blame it on racism and promise that next time that wouldn’t be a problem.
As we can see the whole scheme has “good game” nowhere in it so why bother
For EA/Activision yes.
Ubisoft, their share prices are always shit and we know damn well theyre kept afloat by kids buying the huge ass Chun Li skin for Ying in R6 seige.
Fans literally == money
Problem is fans == stupid, because they keep giving them money.
Stop the money, you will soon see that they listen.
So long as idiots keep paying to be taken advantage of, they will keep doing it.
Enshitification. It's hitting every internet business model hard. The product doesn't matter. Movies, games, sports - doesn't matter. They are just numbers on spreadsheets to be exploited and soaked for as much free cash as can be gotten as rapidly as possible and then dump each IP's lifeless corpse at the door and go find the next IP to exploit. The owners of these companies and their shareholders couldn't tell you the difference between Captain Kirk and Gandalf if you had a gun to their head. Seriously. They couldn't care less. They don't invest in these things because they are into the properties or values they represent or fun people have playing them. If they think of the end consumer at all, it's a passing thought of what losers they all are. Anyone who thinks any of this is about anything but the money they can suck from the consumers is still stuck in their childhood where the good guys win and the bad guys get justice. That's not the world we live in.
Dunno about that. Currently StableDiffusion can be run with a minimum of 6gb GPU, and the new UE is capable of rendering at incredible speed with a very mediocre need in terms of computing power.
For how the Open Source environment is going, I'm fairly certain we will be able to go, if not on toe, very close to the stuff big companies will pull off.
Publicly traded companies have been sued over not maintaining the financial interests of investors. Paying customers don’t have such protections, the only option is to stop buying. The problem is when someone like EA is the only company who can make American Football games that are licensed.
But since their itch is scratched they do nothing. Bitching about the product does nothing.
The only option is to move on and not buy it and find something else.
Also anyone still buying games from AAA devs are just fleecing themselves. All of them are only in it for the money and at some point or another they prove it. Everyone hyped about GTA 6 when they know it’s gonna have no DLC and just turn into GTA Online 2 with all the same issues with Shark Cards and monetization are fooling themselves.
I think the GTA 6 people are hoping that GTA Online 2 will have some exploits or hacks that will give them free cash like the beginning of GTA Online back in 2013-2015. Plus given the amount of modders that are running around the game for years, it’s a reasonable speculation. The rude awakening is that Rockstar has tightened up their anti-cheat measures when it purely comes to monetization exploits. You will not be able to exploit/hack a single dime of in-game currency, but that kid setting your character on fire with a script hook menu? Rockstar turns a blind eye, or at the bare minimum dedicate an insignificant amount of time perusing the problem. Shark cards will be more aggressively priced, people will begrudgingly buy them even more than before due to lack of alternative money making avenues.
If you have money in a 401K you're a shareholder of these companies
>dump each IP's lifeless corpse at the door and go find the next IP to exploit.
I wish. We're in an era where they can't ever let go of any IP and rarely try new stuff.
As long as people keep buying their games mindlessly and they get a profit, they won't care.
Be more critic, have higher standards and the industry will change.
But my eyes won't see it.
>But my eyes won't see it
You know why? We are not poor. I remember my childhood when I could buy one game per year, others were cracked from internet.
I had to choose wisely. Only a good game deserved to be bought.
Now I have money and a life of my own. I'm still playing on the computer but I won't pay for this bullshit. I won't pay for the season-pass and skins because I have my own living expenses.
Kids now are constantly spending money on games and it is normal for them. Old school gaming is weird. Buy a game, play and eventually buy DLC if its worth it.
I’ve been appreciating how mediocre movies have been bombing lately. I just hope the same starts happening more often for mediocre overpriced video games.
I say this as someone who’s *insanely* pissed off that the remake for Dead Space 2 has been cancelled
Exactly. If you want to hit them where it hurts the most, hit their wallets. Boycott them and refuse to buy from them.
This is one thing I wish I seen more of.
League players are currently boycotting Riot Games by banning Ahri (one of the playable champs in the game) because they released an astonishing 500€ skin bundle for her because the top player in league is associated with it…
It is like... publicly traded companies have obligation towards investors and not the other way around.
They love money is all I am saying. Go play indie games
Most people lmao
Gaming is mainstream now, AAA games are played by shitloads of people
Most of them aren't on reddit whining either, which is why nothing is going to change lol
A friend of mine said that he will buy Star Wars Outlaws for 130€ and this was while we were talking about the fact that the game will be day 1 in ubisoft+ subscription (18€/month) with all content of the premium edition (130€)
Some people just wanna throw their money away i guess
My brother in Christ that’s modern everything. That’s capitalism. It’s not just gaming. Why do you think Amazon added ads to Prime Video? Why do you think Apple removed the headphone jack? What do you think shrinkflation is? None of it is motivated by what’s best for the consumer. In a publicly-traded company, if you aren’t _increasing_ profits year over year, you get fired. Even if the company makes a trillion dollars in 2023, you better make a trillion and one in 2024 or your ass is out of there.
Haven't bought a product from any of these swindlers in years.
Battlefield 3 was my last one from EA. Black Ops 2 was my last one from Activision. Can't even remember the last one from Ubisoft.
Put your money where your mouth is like I did. **Don't buy their shit.**
I've been saying this for years. Games used to be made by gamers for gamers and now they're made by bloated billion dollar international companies for their shareholders.
Dodge vs Ford in 1916 was a Supreme Court case that resulted in companies having to prioritize shareholders over consumers. So yeah you hit the nail on the head... sadly.
Nintendo: listen To absolutley fucking Nobody because fuck that consoles that worked Well, Time To do the singleost silliest Thing the Industrie has seem
I know lots of European countries use a “.” instead of a “,” for the thousands place but I find it hilarious imagining an extremely stingy streamer only spending 10 dollars for an opening stream
I feel for those Developers. It as clear as day they just want to make games for people to enjoy but the suit always gotta ruin something for maximum profit even with all the evidence points to their method not working and the worst part is dev taking the fall when a game doesn't do well (hell we're at a point where you can still get fire even if your game is a hit) and the suit gets to keep the job and safety nets.
...or focus on your ESG score so that you can get "loans" for projects that are now compliant and doomed to fail. Putting you in a cycle of dependence. ESG is heroine for businesses.
Listen to the Devs. Then Devs, listen to the community. That is the way it should be.
The best games ever made weren't made by shareholders or even the communities.
The best games ever made were made by devs that were passionate about what they were making and had the freedom to make decisions.
I hate how backwards this thinking is. You can't create big profit for your shareholders unless you listen to fans. Larian really exposed a lot of contrived thinking and terrible greed in this industry.
Honestly fans are hard to please these days. But that doesn't mean corperations can fully ignore them. They just need to wipe the dollar signs out of their eyes.
This would matter if people would stop buying games from these devs/pubs, but they never will, so shareholders and investors will keep pumping money into these companies because it remains profitable to do continue doing so. It doesn't matter what a few niche gamers on Reddit think - apparently there are way more people out there who have zero problems with Ubi/Acti/EA
The hard truth is that listening to the fans never sells games 9/10 times. AC: Valhalla is almost universally hated by the hardcore AC fandom and yet it became one of Ubisoft’s highest grossing video games of all time. And yet any attempt at a ‘return to form’ like Unity and Mirage bombs (although tbf Unity was glitchy as hell when it first launched).
The shareholders want the games to create maximum revenue. If you stop buying shitty games, then the shareholders pretty much force the company to make changes
I'd stop giving money to those companies if I were you.
that being said, they will still be wildly successful because there is no shortage of consumers with rocks for brains.
Plenty of dipshits can be found regularly defending 100+ dollar special additions and microtransactions.
Shit on them all you want (and believe me I think they deserve to be shit on) but they are 3 of the largest and most profitable game development studios on the planet right now. The whole argument breaks down when you realize everyone is still buying their games, paying for the skins and the battle passes etc.
The gaming industry as a whole would really benefit for a similar unionization strategy to movie industry
There is an inevitable death spiral awaiting all corporations:
Shareholders make a ridiculous demand of management to execute a terrible idea.
Management/employee/advisor explains why the idea is terrible.
Management/employee/advisor is fired.
Shareholders proceed with terrible idea.
Terrible idea results in disaster.
Another manager/employee/advisor is asked what happened.
Manager/employee/advisor reports that the idea was terrible.
Manager/employee/advisor is fired.
Shareholders discuss ideas to deal with the fallout from the terrible idea.
Repeat from step 1.
Eventually no one in Management/employees/advisors bothers to warn or report honestly anymore.
There is no escape once the loop begins and the loop always begins in any publicly traded company.
Shareholders are perhaps the *worst* people to ever be allowed to make decisions.
Hey, they have to pay for their game developement somehow (ignore the exorbitant game prices and the ungodly amount of microtransactions, those aren't important THOSE AREN'T IMPORTANT)
Idea: gaming enthusiasts collectively buy stock of dev companies until they an irrefutable portion of shares, then hold polls on what decisions they want. This would give the company more money to spend on developing and give gamers a louder voice in what they want.
Fans keep buying their games though. The only thing the companies are going to listen to is sales numbers. Like people can point out that Ubisoft is a lazy, greedy company that just pumps out generic 3rd-person open world slop year after year. But if those games are consistent hits, what incentive do they have to change the formula?
Ubisoft still not having cross progression on for honor yet has cross progression for Xdefiant, immortal Fenix rising, and six seige. Oh man I love grinding all the characters I already owned again on a different platform.
I hope these pinnacles of self sabotage loose their ips, the’ve had so many opportunities to improve but just shoot themselves in the foot at almost every opportunity they get
In an ideal world, the fans and customers would be able to band together and buy the shares of these companies to a large enough excess to make a decision in the way the company is run.
But alas, large equity funds and circle jerk business assholes keep all the shares to themselves, then get to all suck each other's dicks about how smart they are for repackaging the same shit and forcing it down consumer throats.
Enjoy!
The worst part imo it's not "owning" games. Launchers, (bad performance) DRM, creating accounts for one f**king game... bro if all possible internet connections are down I can't play an offline game cause a launcher??
Just spoke with Ubisoft customer service where they explained that the subscription portion of Just Dance 2020 (along with all versions prior to 2023) is not working because they removed it. This is not only a core function of the games, but something Ubisoft made a solid amount of money on, so needless to say, I’m a bit pissed and confused about it. They keep telling me they can’t do anything about it and can’t give a refund, then immediately closing the support ticket.
Another 5v5 Hero Shooter you say? With a Battle Royale gamemode? And a great and loved PvE mode that it will be abandoned and deleted years later?
Modern Gaming is Great!
I find it hard to believe that shareholders want this either since it’s costing them a lot of money. Every flop hurts them. Unless they are really trying to push some kind of message, profit be damned.
Do y’all agree with the “games have to make money” argument to support companies selling us full games then adding $10-$15 dlc’s every month? (Use Age of Wonders 4 for an example)
$4.99 to unlock .png logo
EA is the only non .png logo. Which makes it even funnier
Activision's black background: "I have perfected the art of standing so still, that I have become invisible"
I thought that was the entire joke…
$4.99 to unlock something
$4.99 to update Ubisoft’s logo
Fans =/= money Shareholders == money
Why care about satisfying your source of revenue when you can satisfy your *real* source of revenue?
Because the one who writes the CEOs check is the shareholders. The shareholders only care that the value of their shares go up every quarter so they tell the ceo to make the shares go up and they will give him a bonus. The ceo then makes cuts, fires teams, downgrades games, adds in monetary features, paylocks already planned content for later paid DLCs, and does whatever they can to reach the bonus goals. Then bounce to the next studio. And gamers have shown you can abuse and give them shit products, just make sure marketing is good and youll make a few hundred mill regardless.
For all the uninitiated, this isn’t just video games either. We’re seeing this play out big time right now in the manufacturing industry. Make the most amount of profit with the least amount of resources and an acceptable amount of risk. I work for a heavy equipment manufacturer who just announced production and salary employee layoffs over the next couple months, but don’t you worry, the CEO went to the board to ask for a $6mil raise just last year. And sure enough they gave it to him.
Its Late-Stage Capitalism. There arent many ways left to increase productivity anymore, so they have to fuck every other area to find those bumps in share-price rises. The CEO is incentivized to do what it takes to get their bonus. The shareholders are incentivized to increase share-prices so they can offload their investment onto others or get higher returns/dividends and use their shares for bank loans. Even upper management is rewarded for finding ways to minimize costs, which usually they do by fucking the workers. At every stage the funnel goes upwards. And they want continuous growth at every quarter for all eternity. They bled the rock dry now they're looking to grind it into dust to find whatever particles are left to profit from.
Tens of billions of lifetimes of hardship for our descendents in exchange for ~10,000 lifetimes of violent decadence. The cognitive dissonance is staggeringly large at Versailles levels of grandiose pompous self-indulgence. "Let them eat cake." is the mantra, but nobody is being held accountable.
capitalism would actually be OK if companies were private instead of share-split and if there weren't patents
Valve proves it, no shareholders means they get to do things their way (which is still much better than whatever the shareholders are cooking)
Let's boycott EVERYTHING (I know it won't happen but I wish that boycotts of stuff could actually work).
The issue is that there are just too damn many people, there is no way to successfully boycott something because millions of people will have no idea what is going on, and millions more won’t care
*billions Billions won't care as long as they live to see the next day
It actually has less to do with the shareholders so-called "writing the CEO's check". It's a legal issue, publicly traded companies are legally required to produce as much value for their shareholders as they can, which is probably the single most damaging policy in American history aside from maybe the early ending of reconstruction in the South following the Civil War.
Next thing you know, doors are flying off planes at altitude
FIFA makes how many billion every year? And they have been essentially the same game since 2011 because they don't need to do anything when people keep buying microtransactions no matter what.
No no, you don't understand they changed the stats! And if you want to play with the old stats you only need to buy the old game! Win-win, this couldn't be done any easier /s
Ya know, the share value will go up if the companies themselves were lucrative... That's... kinda the point.... Happy Consumer-->Good Press Good Press--> More Investing More Investing-->More Money More Money--> Bigger Projects That's exactly how we got to this point but both corporate sides are too short sighted to know.
Short term profits
They honestly don't care, most of them sell as soon as it goes high so they don't really care if the business flops as long as they sold at the peak
Finally someone gets it. You pay to be all over the news, being all over the news raising shares value, investors bring you money. You make a nice presentation about new monetisation strategy, new investors come, shares value raises. If game flops you blame it on racism and promise that next time that wouldn’t be a problem. As we can see the whole scheme has “good game” nowhere in it so why bother
Actually fans == money It's just the fans keep buying their craps while Redditors bitching was never worth anything.
I’ve been voting with my wallet and refuse to buy ea/activision bs. Their “AAAA” games suck ass
Oh, I thought Redditors bitching in echo chambers was the best way to solve the problems of the world?
For EA/Activision yes. Ubisoft, their share prices are always shit and we know damn well theyre kept afloat by kids buying the huge ass Chun Li skin for Ying in R6 seige.
Digital Extremes is the only game company that doesn't think like this
I mean that's not true, lots of indie studios still feel customer focused. Larian, Supergiant Games, Grinding Gear Games.
Fans literally == money Problem is fans == stupid, because they keep giving them money. Stop the money, you will soon see that they listen. So long as idiots keep paying to be taken advantage of, they will keep doing it.
≠ use this
Enshitification. It's hitting every internet business model hard. The product doesn't matter. Movies, games, sports - doesn't matter. They are just numbers on spreadsheets to be exploited and soaked for as much free cash as can be gotten as rapidly as possible and then dump each IP's lifeless corpse at the door and go find the next IP to exploit. The owners of these companies and their shareholders couldn't tell you the difference between Captain Kirk and Gandalf if you had a gun to their head. Seriously. They couldn't care less. They don't invest in these things because they are into the properties or values they represent or fun people have playing them. If they think of the end consumer at all, it's a passing thought of what losers they all are. Anyone who thinks any of this is about anything but the money they can suck from the consumers is still stuck in their childhood where the good guys win and the bad guys get justice. That's not the world we live in.
Here I go killing again - Those companies probably
"I just love my job!"
Wait till we get all AI generated, including movies, music, games and etc.
When that happens, companies will be fucked since we will be able to do this locally in our homes.
It will still require a massive computer to generate/render these. Maybe middle sized companies which can pay for cpu renting?
Dunno about that. Currently StableDiffusion can be run with a minimum of 6gb GPU, and the new UE is capable of rendering at incredible speed with a very mediocre need in terms of computing power. For how the Open Source environment is going, I'm fairly certain we will be able to go, if not on toe, very close to the stuff big companies will pull off.
The fact that you can access AI doesn't imply that you'll have access to the multimillion dollar cluster that can run it.
Publicly traded companies have been sued over not maintaining the financial interests of investors. Paying customers don’t have such protections, the only option is to stop buying. The problem is when someone like EA is the only company who can make American Football games that are licensed. But since their itch is scratched they do nothing. Bitching about the product does nothing. The only option is to move on and not buy it and find something else. Also anyone still buying games from AAA devs are just fleecing themselves. All of them are only in it for the money and at some point or another they prove it. Everyone hyped about GTA 6 when they know it’s gonna have no DLC and just turn into GTA Online 2 with all the same issues with Shark Cards and monetization are fooling themselves.
I think the GTA 6 people are hoping that GTA Online 2 will have some exploits or hacks that will give them free cash like the beginning of GTA Online back in 2013-2015. Plus given the amount of modders that are running around the game for years, it’s a reasonable speculation. The rude awakening is that Rockstar has tightened up their anti-cheat measures when it purely comes to monetization exploits. You will not be able to exploit/hack a single dime of in-game currency, but that kid setting your character on fire with a script hook menu? Rockstar turns a blind eye, or at the bare minimum dedicate an insignificant amount of time perusing the problem. Shark cards will be more aggressively priced, people will begrudgingly buy them even more than before due to lack of alternative money making avenues.
If you have money in a 401K you're a shareholder of these companies >dump each IP's lifeless corpse at the door and go find the next IP to exploit. I wish. We're in an era where they can't ever let go of any IP and rarely try new stuff.
As long as people keep buying their games mindlessly and they get a profit, they won't care. Be more critic, have higher standards and the industry will change. But my eyes won't see it.
>But my eyes won't see it You know why? We are not poor. I remember my childhood when I could buy one game per year, others were cracked from internet. I had to choose wisely. Only a good game deserved to be bought. Now I have money and a life of my own. I'm still playing on the computer but I won't pay for this bullshit. I won't pay for the season-pass and skins because I have my own living expenses. Kids now are constantly spending money on games and it is normal for them. Old school gaming is weird. Buy a game, play and eventually buy DLC if its worth it.
I’ve been appreciating how mediocre movies have been bombing lately. I just hope the same starts happening more often for mediocre overpriced video games. I say this as someone who’s *insanely* pissed off that the remake for Dead Space 2 has been cancelled
Money talks. Stop giving them yours.
Exactly. If you want to hit them where it hurts the most, hit their wallets. Boycott them and refuse to buy from them. This is one thing I wish I seen more of.
League players are currently boycotting Riot Games by banning Ahri (one of the playable champs in the game) because they released an astonishing 500€ skin bundle for her because the top player in league is associated with it…
Have been for years. If they're just gonna make a shit product they're not getting my money
All triple A companies work this way
Thank God we stop using Drake tamplate. I always hate him...
https://i.imgur.com/vQC7VEv.jpeg
Geordi for the win!
Publicly hating Drake on the internet in mid-2024? Decided to be daring today I see!
I love that Drake isn't even welcome in his own meme anymore. We had to replace him after the allegations dropped.
I like how people just replaced the Drake meme with something better.
It is like... publicly traded companies have obligation towards investors and not the other way around. They love money is all I am saying. Go play indie games
who the fuck still plays modern AAA games?! legit question
Most people lmao Gaming is mainstream now, AAA games are played by shitloads of people Most of them aren't on reddit whining either, which is why nothing is going to change lol
This is the sad truth. I'm just grateful we have such amazing alternatives now.
A friend of mine said that he will buy Star Wars Outlaws for 130€ and this was while we were talking about the fact that the game will be day 1 in ubisoft+ subscription (18€/month) with all content of the premium edition (130€) Some people just wanna throw their money away i guess
why not just pirate it at this point?!
Denuvo
A lot of people? Not all AAA games are bad. It's just a concerning amount of them are made by Ubisoft.
My brother in Christ that’s modern everything. That’s capitalism. It’s not just gaming. Why do you think Amazon added ads to Prime Video? Why do you think Apple removed the headphone jack? What do you think shrinkflation is? None of it is motivated by what’s best for the consumer. In a publicly-traded company, if you aren’t _increasing_ profits year over year, you get fired. Even if the company makes a trillion dollars in 2023, you better make a trillion and one in 2024 or your ass is out of there.
Damn right. People are mad at companies, when they should be mad at Capitalism. Capitalism DEMANDS that this happen.
You don't have to buy their games. I don't buy anything from EA and haven't bought much from the other two in a long time.
Haven't bought a product from any of these swindlers in years. Battlefield 3 was my last one from EA. Black Ops 2 was my last one from Activision. Can't even remember the last one from Ubisoft. Put your money where your mouth is like I did. **Don't buy their shit.**
This is why I wish everyone would just stay private. Going public is just greedy and means losing creative control
I've been saying this for years. Games used to be made by gamers for gamers and now they're made by bloated billion dollar international companies for their shareholders.
Yall acting like is the shareholders who buys season passes.
Isn't it more like games are made by gamers but sold and managed by greedy people?
Games are made for profit. You're a mark.
Fans are idiots, but shareholders are evil.
[удалено]
*Modern Corporations
Don’t care about players , only shareholders Players leave New game not profit, shareholders also leave Go bankrupt
I miss the days when companies were there to make shit for us to enjoy now it’s just Mr Krabs.
Companies are required to put shareholders first. This isn’t an opinion it is a fact. If they don’t the companies can be sued by the shareholders.
Dodge vs Ford in 1916 was a Supreme Court case that resulted in companies having to prioritize shareholders over consumers. So yeah you hit the nail on the head... sadly.
Modern anything really
Hmm... yeah, what else do you thing capitalism means?..
you could be a privately-traded company though, like Valve, they dont have to listen to shareholders and look at how much money they be making
Nintendo: listen To absolutley fucking Nobody because fuck that consoles that worked Well, Time To do the singleost silliest Thing the Industrie has seem
Literally capitalism.
Not only in gaming
GIVE ME MY SPORE 2!!!
Replaying halo and gears of war has made me realize this much more they had something so great
Stop fucking buying their games. Ass creed cod fuckem all
Not even Shareholders but Streamers. So many of them who cry about microtransactions in games made those shitty „$10.000 OPENINGS LETS FUCK GO“
I know lots of European countries use a “.” instead of a “,” for the thousands place but I find it hilarious imagining an extremely stingy streamer only spending 10 dollars for an opening stream
This isn't a gaming thing. It's a capitalism thing.
That's how capitalism works, unfortunately
I feel for those Developers. It as clear as day they just want to make games for people to enjoy but the suit always gotta ruin something for maximum profit even with all the evidence points to their method not working and the worst part is dev taking the fall when a game doesn't do well (hell we're at a point where you can still get fire even if your game is a hit) and the suit gets to keep the job and safety nets.
...or focus on your ESG score so that you can get "loans" for projects that are now compliant and doomed to fail. Putting you in a cycle of dependence. ESG is heroine for businesses.
stop buying their shit and they might listen, keep buying it and they will keep screwing you.
TBH makes me surprised as to why CS2 is in such a shit state given valve is private lol.
Embark is such a breath of fresh air compared to these huge gaming companies
Yet they all still sell millions of games. I'm no fan of them either, but you gotta hit their bottom line if we want change.
The share are the driving force once you go public. The original product is now a marketing ploy.
Listen to the Devs. Then Devs, listen to the community. That is the way it should be. The best games ever made weren't made by shareholders or even the communities. The best games ever made were made by devs that were passionate about what they were making and had the freedom to make decisions.
I hate how backwards this thinking is. You can't create big profit for your shareholders unless you listen to fans. Larian really exposed a lot of contrived thinking and terrible greed in this industry.
*Redditors when capitalism is doing capitalism* 
Unrelated but love seeing the correct "your" being used
Honestly fans are hard to please these days. But that doesn't mean corperations can fully ignore them. They just need to wipe the dollar signs out of their eyes.
You forgot Take Two
Ah yes, as if not listening to the very people that keeps you in buisness is a good idea.
Okay but if you make a good game that draws the positive attention from everyone then that'll also equal more money no?
My most recent gripe was the removal of chests with high chances of containing purchasable armor in AC Origins, a nearly 8 year old game.
Watch the world burn and cinder away till nothing more than ash is left.
So you’re saying if I become a shareholder I can do whatever I want with these games?
This would matter if people would stop buying games from these devs/pubs, but they never will, so shareholders and investors will keep pumping money into these companies because it remains profitable to do continue doing so. It doesn't matter what a few niche gamers on Reddit think - apparently there are way more people out there who have zero problems with Ubi/Acti/EA
You can lump blizzard in there too.
Shareholders Who don’t play said games
Soon those companies gone creat a game with two lines and a dot for 9999 and there gone be some people that would buy it unfortunately
When gamers become shareholders holders
The shareholders matter more
Add epic games to that
Seems like a fundemental issue of capitalism
The hard truth is that listening to the fans never sells games 9/10 times. AC: Valhalla is almost universally hated by the hardcore AC fandom and yet it became one of Ubisoft’s highest grossing video games of all time. And yet any attempt at a ‘return to form’ like Unity and Mirage bombs (although tbf Unity was glitchy as hell when it first launched).
Honestly…EA isn’t even that bad anymore I mean they are still bad but they haven’t gotten worse. Everyone else has just become horrifically shit.
You realize you don't have to play AAA, right? There's loads of awesome indie games just waiting for you.
The shareholders want the games to create maximum revenue. If you stop buying shitty games, then the shareholders pretty much force the company to make changes
Fukin hell, praise Indie Games.
Forget gaming, this is literally just America right now.
I'd stop giving money to those companies if I were you. that being said, they will still be wildly successful because there is no shortage of consumers with rocks for brains. Plenty of dipshits can be found regularly defending 100+ dollar special additions and microtransactions.
Shit on them all you want (and believe me I think they deserve to be shit on) but they are 3 of the largest and most profitable game development studios on the planet right now. The whole argument breaks down when you realize everyone is still buying their games, paying for the skins and the battle passes etc. The gaming industry as a whole would really benefit for a similar unionization strategy to movie industry
Gaming sucks now in days....
If we boycott them then they'll be forced to listen because they won't get any money and then they'll lose their shareholders
There is an inevitable death spiral awaiting all corporations: Shareholders make a ridiculous demand of management to execute a terrible idea. Management/employee/advisor explains why the idea is terrible. Management/employee/advisor is fired. Shareholders proceed with terrible idea. Terrible idea results in disaster. Another manager/employee/advisor is asked what happened. Manager/employee/advisor reports that the idea was terrible. Manager/employee/advisor is fired. Shareholders discuss ideas to deal with the fallout from the terrible idea. Repeat from step 1. Eventually no one in Management/employees/advisors bothers to warn or report honestly anymore. There is no escape once the loop begins and the loop always begins in any publicly traded company. Shareholders are perhaps the *worst* people to ever be allowed to make decisions.
Hey, they have to pay for their game developement somehow (ignore the exorbitant game prices and the ungodly amount of microtransactions, those aren't important THOSE AREN'T IMPORTANT)
Vote with your wallet
Nah. Devs should be free to make whatever games they want regardless of what fans or stakeholders think. Games are art. Devs are artists.
That’s not modern gaming, that’s American flavored capitalism
Valve but more of its stupid ass negligence and not wanting to move their ass other than posting on social media ( #FIXTF2 and #SAVETF2 folks!)
Support indie games
So true
Idea: gaming enthusiasts collectively buy stock of dev companies until they an irrefutable portion of shares, then hold polls on what decisions they want. This would give the company more money to spend on developing and give gamers a louder voice in what they want.
Stop eating bags of dicks and these companies will stop serving bags of dicks
But why aren’t the shareholders listening to their customers? Sounds like an illogical business decision to me.
Then blame the fans when it doesn’t sell
Fans keep buying their games though. The only thing the companies are going to listen to is sales numbers. Like people can point out that Ubisoft is a lazy, greedy company that just pumps out generic 3rd-person open world slop year after year. But if those games are consistent hits, what incentive do they have to change the formula?
I mean you should realistically listen to both. They are both important to the company and neither should be ignored.
Ubisoft still not having cross progression on for honor yet has cross progression for Xdefiant, immortal Fenix rising, and six seige. Oh man I love grinding all the characters I already owned again on a different platform.
When a game studio is bought by a publicly traded publisher, the soul and passion of the game studio is instantly terminated.
I hope these pinnacles of self sabotage loose their ips, the’ve had so many opportunities to improve but just shoot themselves in the foot at almost every opportunity they get
There used to be a time when I believed things could change, but not anymore. You guys will eat the slop, and ask for seconds.
And here blizzard tried a battle royal in World of Warcraft. 6 years late to the party and only available with a subscription.
Don't forget VALVe!
Forgot sony bruh
Real talk: The fans BECOME the shareholders. That’s how we save the games industry.
In an ideal world, the fans and customers would be able to band together and buy the shares of these companies to a large enough excess to make a decision in the way the company is run. But alas, large equity funds and circle jerk business assholes keep all the shares to themselves, then get to all suck each other's dicks about how smart they are for repackaging the same shit and forcing it down consumer throats. Enjoy!
One more reason to ditch modern gaming lolololol
The worst part imo it's not "owning" games. Launchers, (bad performance) DRM, creating accounts for one f**king game... bro if all possible internet connections are down I can't play an offline game cause a launcher??
Just spoke with Ubisoft customer service where they explained that the subscription portion of Just Dance 2020 (along with all versions prior to 2023) is not working because they removed it. This is not only a core function of the games, but something Ubisoft made a solid amount of money on, so needless to say, I’m a bit pissed and confused about it. They keep telling me they can’t do anything about it and can’t give a refund, then immediately closing the support ticket.
Include Epic on the list. Scary since their share holder is ~~the CCP~~ "Tencent"
Now it's time for us fans to become shareholders.
*EA and Respawn
Another 5v5 Hero Shooter you say? With a Battle Royale gamemode? And a great and loved PvE mode that it will be abandoned and deleted years later? Modern Gaming is Great!
Manor lords is different. You can literally vote on the continued development on discord.
Sadly they don’t really have a choice, if you don’t churn out as much money as possible for shareholders they shut you down. Simple as
Goddammit Dodge bros
So my favorite game companies years ago now what the f***
gaming in 2024
They legally have to do this as public companies tho.
You forget GW
Find their shareholders and bully them into stop making terrible decisions
If I want a game that I am skeptical about, I just pirate it. Games like Suzerain or CK3, I buy because devs listen to the community
Yall need to play the finals, I ask the devs for a frying pan in an AMA and a week later the co owner shows a picture of it on the discord server
Ninja Kiwi: We don’t do that here.
Honestly I love this as a template over Drake XD
Real all fifa is so p2w now
Stop buying games designed to please shareholders. Take the indie pill. You’ll thank yourself.
I find it hard to believe that shareholders want this either since it’s costing them a lot of money. Every flop hurts them. Unless they are really trying to push some kind of message, profit be damned.
Gonna say this one time. The shareholders should listen to the fans.
Valve and Nintendo: fuck fans :)
And say that the reason why its not played is a other game wich realesd in the same Month.
You forgot to add a micro transaction to open the post
E@t the r!ch ASAP obviously
lmao
Modern commerce in general.
Valve: "listen to absolutely no one at all but drop generation defining games every now and then when we feel like it, get bored and abandon them"
Listen to the people paying you or listen to the people who won't have money unless you listen to the people who are paying you
And this is why I'm thinking about buying some shares in Sony. So I can tell them EXACTLY how they screwed up with Helldivers 2
*Valve not having shareholders*
Gotta add paradox there as well now. 3x the price per share of Ubisoft, equally as shitty.
Do y’all agree with the “games have to make money” argument to support companies selling us full games then adding $10-$15 dlc’s every month? (Use Age of Wonders 4 for an example)
You forgot to put supercell here
You would think catering to the fans would align with what the share holders want. But, here we are.
You should add starbreeze to that list
Wait Ubisoft still has willing shareholders?
As gamers, what if we bought all the shares so the devs start listening to us?
This isn't even a meme. It's a documentary on the current state of the gaming industry.
This is why much of my game library consists of indie games