It is so sad that "make good game, sell it" model no longer works. It's all a wonky curve of "free - couple of dollars - hundreds and thousands of dollars".
What I find really sad is that multiple games have proven that there is a middle ground and that making a f2p while making enormous amount of money is possible (League of Legend ...) and using such predatory system that are so prevalent on mobile is not the only solution.
There is probably already enough monetisation around skins in the games that they would have easily turn up a profit.
The rest is just greed and disregard for players but then when they don't care that the game is banned in two countries at launch because it violate gambling laws what else to expect ...
In fact, there are very few games that have done the f2p walk successfully, sustainably, and all of them pale in comparison to the few extraordinary exceptions.
I honestly thought it was inevitable for Blizzard to go down this route the moment I saw the revenue slides post acquisition. In that slide it showed that King’s mobile games made way more than Blizzards games. At that point, all the MBA suits in the board must have started thinking, “why go through all the hoops of making a good game when you could spend way less money and effort to milk the cash cows?”
Thus the pressure started mounting up on Blizzard to create more “efficient” games like Hearthstone and newer releases instead spending long time creating and refining a game like they have before.
Stay profitable, stay calm, stay mediocre in size => delight customers.
Greed & corporate min/maxing has failed us.
Diablo Immortal seems to do many of the same things, but just in a much more egregious way. So far I've heard a lot about how much money you can spend on the game, but not much about how bad it makes the f2p player's experience.
In Lost Ark and Genshin most players don't care that much about whales spending 10k to deal 100% extra damage because it's purely player-vs-environment and that sort of damage boost is totally excessive and unnecessary.
But many games make progress feel extremely slow or otherwise aggravating to push purchases.
I haven't really heard much about where Diablo Immortal lies on that scale.
it's easier to afford ~£5 in 99p microtransactions every month for a year than it is to afford a £60 triple A
of course this isn't where the bulk of money comes from for these games (whales), but it's still a big factor
What makes you say that? I mostly play single-player games where I just buy a game and then play it. There are loads of those out there, with more released every week. Even with my underpowered Linux laptop I have plenty to choose from.
I still plays Diablo 2 and 3 quite a bit. I don’t think I’d call myself a “hardcore” player — I’m not very good — but I’m definitely in the Diablo 4 launch demographic.
I’ve been keeping an eye on Diablo Immortal as sort of a canary. I can say with absolute confidence that I won’t be buying D4 at launch if Blizzard doesn’t fix the DI mess.
Among longtime players of the franchise, I can’t imagine that I’m alone.
But I guess they're harder to find/more rare. As others mentioned, most people spend nothing to little on these "free" games, so as a no-spend gamer you can choose between 1) free, or 2) pay $10 (or whatever they charge) to play a game. Not necessarily a hard choice if the "free" game is "entertaining enough".
If you're looking for a game to play on your commute it's probably not going to work, but for at home on the couch it's great.
it doesn’t work for the developers. obviously you can play a single player video game.
Same can be said for software. Now it’s all SaaS where you have to pay monthly and choose from different pricing tiers or ala carte feature options to ‘win’ in a business sense.
While some businesses abuse SaaS pricing (e.g., MS office for very basic uses, acrobat pro for basic uses, etc.), I think the SaaS pricing model has aligned the interests of developers and consumers (esp. smaller devs and smaller consumers) in a way that has allowed a wider market to have access to a wider range of affordable software and ongoing support/updates than would be possible under the previous system.
There are definitely folks, often a small niche, who really just need an old version of a piece of software for one or two small functions, and maybe those folks should be built in to the SaaS pricing model somehow, but overall I think that the merits of SaaS pricing almost always outweigh the demerits by quite a bit.
Which makes for a reasonable SAAS model given changing nature of tax system.
There’s plenty of US based SAAS companies that sell to the EU without charging any tax, and vice versa.
Of course, this doesn’t scale well. But if your turnover in those regions where you haven’t implemented proper tax rules is less than 6 figures a year, and you have no presence there, you’ll probably get away with it.
As commonly practiced, if you stop subscribing, you lose all access to the software (or get bumped down to the functionality of some free version). This moves a large portion of the risk of developing a new version from the developers to the customers. If the customers don't like the new version, it's not easy for them to switch; and as commonly practiced, they often can't continue using the old version.
I do agree that the JetBrains model aligns both developer and consumer interests. JetBrains carries the risk of developing the new version. If customers don't like it, they can unsubscribe and continue using their existing software.
Disclosure: I work for Microsoft.
365 gives you $70/yr for latest version per computer.
Or, the real win, $100/year for up to 5 people. That's $20/year/person, which is cheaper than buying Office Home and Student for each person and upgrading periodically.
Fwiw, I personally have no issue with the price.
That said, I know people who do, and I have pointed them to Libre Office.
Folks who complained, but who would probably like to know about a free version (I didn’t know there was one):
- retirees on very limited income
- unemployed people
- folks of limited means who only use any of these tools 1-5 times a year, but really need the specific MS tools those 1-5 times
I will point these people to the free web app option moving forward.
I realize that the free version won’t get a lot of marketing since it produces no revenue, but it may be prudent to have an evangelist hang out in online communities of old people, caregivers, and unemployed people and keep them informed. It would help the MS image.
I realize that such a person might exist, but the relatively large number of people who complain to me about Office pricing makes me think that the word is not being spread efficiently.
You have to upgrade eventually, though. In theory, the SaaS product could be priced the same as the shrink-wrapped version, just divided by 60 months. I suspect it's more expensive, though.
All things being equal, if I ran IT, I'd rather have the SaaS model because I'll always have the latest version and not have to deal with the drama of upgrades every 5 years. I'd also prefer it as the vendor because I don't need to support multiple versions of the software long-term.
Elden Ring was spectacularly well received and has sold millions of units, but it's "only" a game. There's no casino in the back, and therefore no gambling-related revenue stream.
It may not work as well or as easily, but I don't think that's the point being made.
Business models that are lower-risk and higher-return are systematically preferred by investors. Games are expensive to make. FromSoft has been successful enough to stay in business for now. They’ll always be in competition with studios that sacrifice product quality for profitability. Many studios literally cannot afford to do things their way.
[1] https://www.polygon.com/23070948/elden-ring-sales-chart-npd-...
[2] https://gameworldobserver.com/2022/06/03/diablo-immortal-gen...
Whereas the former, despite being a good game, may not provide the revenue model desired by its stakeholders.
ER impressed me so much that I bought three earlier titles from From Software, an additional $120 spent. Regrettably, you show consumer behavior like that to a mercenary games industry exec, and they'll just see "lost opportunity to put the screws to the market" and not "we should make better games."
(This is the first time that I've literally worn out a controller playing a single game).
Until it doesn't. We're not talking about the same thing here because one is a one-time payment (license) vs on-going (loot boxes / SaaS). I'm highly critical of loot box (p2p) games, but you're on-going payments do pay for content in the future. Companies who charge once have very little incentive to maintain the software (assuming it requires it to).
Let's say ER reaches 20M + 8Mx2 for it's two upcoming DLCs @ $40 each. That's $1.8B lifetime. Pretty amazing! DI would need to make $360M per year to be an equivalent business. So 800k in the first 24 hours is not too far off track to being equivalent.
Mind you, there are some games like that (my usual routine is to go to Google Play Games, navigate to the bottom, choose "no ads" and "no in-app purchases"), but it seems that they are like 1% of the total.
If you like a specific niche subgenre, a franchise, etc. it's very likely that all games you find will be of the exploitative variety.
It's sad that I have a pocket computer with an awesome screen in my hand the whole day, and other cool features like gyroscope, GPS, etc. that can be used for gaming; and I find myself going back to my good old PC (or lately, the Steam Deck) when I want to play.
For example YouTube premium is a worse product than it could be because the entire platform has been designed with advertising and engagement in mind.
Say this as someone who just subscribed this month.
You are still subject to the game design that is made to push you towareds paying instead of focusing on making the game fun.
"Escape from Tarkov" and "It takes two" are just some of the more noteworthy ones. There's tons more on steam.
It's just the mobile market that's screwed entirely. Which I find odd, because I'm convinced there are opportunities for games that work especially well on small screens with touchscreen (like Nintendo demonstrated half a decade before mainstream smartphones)
It’s just more optimal for Profitability to create addictive garbage like this. Blizzard has chosen to be greedy and predatory rather than trying to create art of entertainment.
You are comparing a full AAA game for PC and console made for hardcore gamers versus a mobile game with loot boxes designed to attract and exploit kids or people that addicted to this kinda crap and disguise it like a game, pretty much like slot machine do.
The reaction was a lot of angry comments about the game being locked and that it should be free-to-play, etc.
Their next games (like Mario Kart Tour) went back to the exploitative loot box model.
Anyone who describes Mario run as an “infinite runner” didn’t play it.
I think the assumption that another model was even considered is what people are getting wrong. The game was made explicitly and intentionally for this p2w / gamble business model. There was never an attempt to make it anything else. Blizzard lent their IP to make a cash grab. They’re milking their IP while they can, and monitoring both back lash and revenue, and will be repeating it.
I saw some reviews and write-ups saying that it would be more fun as a $10 game, but I think that's part of the problem. This is not a $10 game. It should be fully priced.
For whatever reason, proper up-front never took hold on mobile. I know Apple really pushed 99-cent apps early on, and maybe that is part of the genesis of this. It has been even harder to convince Android users to pay for apps and games. And so here we are.
I suspect it would be really hard to convince people to pay $60 for a mobile game after all these years of cheap and free games, no matter how good and how expensive it was to make. It's kind of illogical when you think about it. The latest iPhones are at least base PS4 in terms of power. The iPad Air And Pros are well beyond that.
As others have noted, there are ways to make f2p work well. You can do season passes and cosmetic stuff. You don't have to go whale hunting.
Realistically, we probably need legislation to make this kind of whale hunting illegal. We also need Apple and Google to step up and start caring about business models that support great software.
It's not just games, we aren't getting great mobile software in general -- at least not at the rate we saw with desktop computers.
The same could be observed of Hollywood. How much of the derivative sequels, reboots and spin-offs are driven not by a lack of creativity as is often bemoaned, but rather by a greater-than-ever desire to develop “fountains of sales” rather than one-off artistic hits?
The math and game design are expertly crafted to make you play compulsively. They most certainly have been designed to cause psychological pain when you don’t play it you don’t pay. They are not designed to cause fun or joy.
It's just hard for me to get upset about a game that's always been a pretty skin over a blatant Skinner box.
You have these things called eternal crests which cost 160 “gems” (the real money currency). These let you run a special dungeon that guarantees a drop of a legendary gem rated between 1 and 5 stars. In fact if you fail the dungeon somehow it’ll refund the crest and let you try again.
Apparently the drop rate for the 5 star gems is 4.5%, so my napkin math works out to around $50 per 5 star legendary gem.
I can’t go back and check my math because I uninstalled the game.
I agree there.
I think my char is ~38 and I have 4 legendary gems mixed levels 2-3. I haven't and won't pay any money, but so far the game has been fun. I haven't been limited at all in my progression, in fact the game has felt too easy. Will I ever have 5x5star gems? Probably not, but I would have gotten bored way prior anyway.
I dislike F2P/micro tx games as much as anyone, but so far I haven't been limited in any way. When it does (or I get bored) I'll stop playing.
I’ve played Homeworld mobile recently. The progress is great for first 15 hours but then game drops at you timegates. Wanna spaceship strong enough for later content? You can do god know how many missions hoping you get ship design, or you can do god knows how many missions to earn money to buy that from one of factions for cash. Or you can buy credits for cash. But only on Android because game is in public beta and Apple forbids monetization in those.
And once you get the ship design, you need to mine resources for it (this is manageable) but then you need to refine those, which takes around 70h of wait, but if you have other premium currency named „adamantium”, you can cut that wait in half for 100 adamantium, then another half by another adamantium and half of that.
And then you need to build ship in shipyard which takes between 10 to 15 days, but with adamantium you can slice that time down like for refining.
Every day you can collect 100 adamantium for free and buy 1000 extra for $9.99.
It’s rumored that EA lost exclusivity on Star Wars games because of their mishandling of license and time-gating legendary Star Wars characters behind hours of gameplay (it took 42h of grind to unlock Darth Vader, but you could just pay extra on in-game roulette to unlock him sooner). This also caused uproar that reached mainstream media and commentary from members of state governments.
Without knowing how money scales in this game it's very hard to judge the 10 years / 110k figure. In D3 sometimes you're grinding exponentially for 1% or even 0.1% improvements at a time, and you don't have to.
So, I'm not just a quitter, I ran into the trap.
Fwiw, I would be onboard with some kind of model where one pays a small monthly (or additional fee) for continued updates. For instance, I play a few multiplayer games (overwatch, hunt showdown) and I'd be ok paying $1 a month or so to support continued updates / balancing etc. It seems like companies are missing the boat on the nominal recurring fees (vs say, the WoW level subscription of tens of dollars a month).
I worry that the pendulum will swing too far in the other direction and we'll see P2W elements, particularly in the PvE mode that eventually releases.
But nowaday, you cannot just be profitable. You gotta make your investers very happy.
Basically the mechanism of incentives just works against us.
We do really need a renaissance of authentic & sustainable products which are profitable and are there to delight, not to min/max our savings.
Flying: VTOL VR, DCS, MS Flight Sim 2020, Ultrawings
Shooting: Onward, Pavlov, Contractors, Hot dogs horseshoes and handgrenades
Social: VRChat, Rec Room
Story/single player games: Half Life Alyx, Boneworks, Skyrim or Fallout 4
Stealth: Budget Cuts
Others: Beat saber is a must
I'd say VR is finally at the point where there are great games in most genres, and we are finally past the point where a stupid, 2 hour "experience" costs $40, in other words, most games being released for it now are not gimmicks. Honestly my recommendations are a little out of date. I've pointed out what I would consider "the classics" at this point
give you the item for free or at a discount, then desperately try to enslave you to their payment model
people have been getting loans, mortgages and paying rent for centuries, but now it's moved onto phones, cars, apps, games, SAAS, free trials for streaming services, klarna, etc, etc, etc
they're all some variation on rent-seeking behaviour, they just vary in the form rent takes, and how they put the product in your hands in the first place
more modern iterations often don't forcibly take the rent, but use social pressures to coerce their userbase to the point where a % "voluntarily" pay rent. some still do forcibly take the rent.
the end result for you is a product in your hands, nearly always for cheaper than it would have been 15 years ago, but at either a lower quality, or a higher future cost
the end result for the "landlord" is almost a guarantee of projected earnings
That model still works very well, probably as well as it ever has. But now there are also other models for your phone and computer. If people rejected them, only the "make good game, sell it" model would be left.
It does work, but not at the profit multiples that venture capitalists and private equity currently demand. Speaking of gaming overall, not iOS specifically.
Once you adjust your expectations and understand that this is a filler game before D4 you’ll see that it’s a great game that can be enjoyed for the content without paying a cent
Unfortunately, since investors have figured out that the subscription model extracts the most profit possible, I have a feeling we're going to be seeing more and more of that rather than a simple price increase.
Wouldn't surprise me if we even see Steam unveil something like Xbox Game Pass for their marketplace within the next few years. Maybe the worst part is the fact that you no longer actually own anything when all you're paying for is a subscription, but that's more or less how Steam already works, minus the recurring payments.