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Comment by tyrfing | Hacker News Reader

It's a great business model for multiplayer games. They live and die on the basis of network effects, and gating access behind a $25-60 upfront payment means most games die from gradual attrition - which is just sad to watch happen when it's an enjoyable but niche game. Subscriptions are dead, with even Blizzard struggling to make it work, and most DLC models just don't work for multiplayer.

Looking at my Steam library, I only regret the $60 AAA titles I've bought and never found interesting enough to play beyond a few hours. $60 for 15 hours of gameplay, or an optional $100 after 150 (or 1500) hours? I know which I prefer.

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To expand, DLC models for multiplayer either split the community (only people who purchased the DLC can join this lobby) or they inevitably make the game pay-to-win. If I'm going to get shot by a $20 sniper rifle, I'd rather it have the same stats as the one I have access to.

I will say it sucks when the cosmetic item you want is only available via lootbox, but at least for Counter-Strike Global Offensive (another Valve title) you can buy either boxes or the exact item you want. I think Valve is pretty far from the worst offender here.

The most famous one, fortnite, splits users by being able to express themselves or not.

If you pay, you're a member of the community, if not, you're not

Are you referring to emotes? (I don’t play fortnite)

Most likely, almost verbatim, to that video specifically

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPHPNgIihR0

I don’t play fortnite and have no interest in it. But this always sounded weird to me. If it’s so extreme to be seen as F2P… can’t you just buy a single cosmetic outfit and call it a day? There’s no way people are keeping track of whether you rotate your wardrobe or care if you happen to like a random skin, right?

It’s like, $1 for an arbitrary skin, no?

It's a business model that works off of whales. It's predatory and exploits the same people that gambling does.

I'm a whale and I don't feel exploited. I don't like gambling but I like buying chests. People spending money on trips or cars, things I have no interest in, are also exploited in that case.

But you do like gambling! Buying chests is exactly that! Just like a casino gambler might prefer blackjack over roulette!

No, in most games I know what I'm getting so there's no randomness. I buy a chest of 1000 gems in order to buy X in game. How is that gambling? Sure, some games force the randomness on me through chests with unknown content but that's not what I'm paying for.

"Chest of gems" != Loot box (which is probably what freedom2099 meant when they said "chests")

Not sure why you're telling me that. freedom2099 is the one conflating things. The article is about Rocket League, a game without loot boxes.

Ah good point

So what's the problem? Everybody is getting what they want.

>most DLC models just don't work for multiplayer.

I vastly prefer the freemium model because of this. It's great compared to before when we had sequels, expansion packs or even map packs that was the only way to get new content. But that new content wasn't available to people who didn't buy it, so now the playerbase will be split each time new content is released.

Back when I played games we used to make our own maps, and share them for free on various sites

I'm always the wrong guy to ask as a customer what business model to use to make money, but I remember reading some Call of Duty required people to buy maps or else you couldn't join multiplayer servers with them. There was a lot of predictable complaining that there weren't many players on the servers using the new maps. It honestly sounded exhausting to keep track of as a player to me and like it would server to repeatedly split the player base until the population died out.

I'm not a console user, but ran into this when Modern Warfare 2 brought it to the PC (I think. If not MW2, then one of the early Black Ops titles). I was too young to have my own way to purchase them, but never felt the motivation to pay up, so I'd just get auto-kicked by the system if a lobby started with a map I didn't have access to.

I haven't played Call of Duty in a long time, but when I heard that Modern Warfare Remastered would have some maps locked behind a DLC[0] (along with the rest of the shitshow surrounding its release), I knew that I'd probably never buy another one of those titles again. I think the last I bought was MW2 or BO2.

On PC, in Modern Warfare 1, the maps were made available for free, while they cost extra for consoles. Modern Warfare Remastered 'conveniently' left them out of the base game, but charged a higher-than-original price for the pack, for all platforms. Consider that a remaster is generally supposed to contain all content (i.e. game + DLC), and this was a slap in the face to my younger self.

[0]https://callofduty.fandom.com/wiki/Variety_Map_Pack

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