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Comment by otikik | Hacker News Reader

That’s not the gaming department, that’s the gambling-but-with-extra-steps department.

The skinnerbox whaling department; now with built-in hardware support!

If you want a "gaming department" you should try to show demand for premium games when they come about. But we failed 12 years ago to do so, so I'm not surprised to see history repeat itself.

If the gaming support strategy is "we'll try once and completely give up if it isn't immediately a wild success", the chances to succeed are pretty small.

That's not how you get the Xbox, you'll barely get a Stadia shaped hole if you give it a fair shake.

It's more like they tried a few times and realized they have no way to sell a game given the absurd amounts of piracy. 2010 (aroind the time of Infinity Blade) to 2013 was the golden age of premium games. By 2015 almost every game pulled out or went the f2p route.

This wasn't some 2 year flash in the pan like Stadia, I could still name a dozen premium games from this time I greatly enjoyed. But if Zenonia 2 had 70% piracy rates and the ftp Zenonia 3 (or maybe 4) made more money in a day than Zenonia 1+2 combined, what you going to do?

(note these figures are made up, I don't know the Zenonia piracy rates nor sales. But 70% is the average Android game piracy rate in 2015).

> 2010 (aroind the time of Infinity Blade) to 2013 was the golden age of premium games. By 2015 almost every game pulled out or went the f2p route.

I remember this too.

We had a period with plenty of premium pay in advance games, then a period of games with ads that you could pay to remove, then the companies decided that the most reliable monetization strategy in the face of widespread theft was microtransactions.

> then the companies decided that the most reliable monetization strategy in the face of widespread theft was microtransactions.

A wise man once said that widespread software theft is a service problem. Legend has it that he still runs a successful game storefront to this day!

On the main point, yes, piracy on PC/mac was a huge issue.

But then, Windows PC were in the same boat. Looking from the sidelines, Windows gave publishers a lot more freedom in implementing anti-pirating (super invasive) features, and when push came to shove Microsoft stepped in to add OS supported anti-piracy features that the games could hook into (Microsoft using the same system for its own games).

I think we can at least blame Apple for doing nothing in a situation where a whole group of developpers are stuck with an issue that could be alleviated with the platform's help.

Irrelevant to the point, but Stadia was 3 year and half (nov 2019 start, to the death announcement on sept 2022, and actual shutdown on jan 2023). So basically the same span than the 2010 ~ 2013 miracle for Apple.

I forgot a lot about these early days (was absolutely not into PC gaming), for people in the same boat a nice refresher:

https://www.cultofmac.com/73192/why-2010-was-the-year-mac-ga...

The fun part being that 2010 span was triggered by Valve, so from beginning to end Apple just didn't do anything.

I would counter that an earlier step would be not to adopt that language in the first place. The options are not “Premium games” or “games”. They are “games” or “Microtransactional experiences”.

Brash, but like it or not there are enough "Microtransactional experiences" out there with fanbases that will react poorly to that language, that the PR hit isn't worth it. Genshin players probably overlap with the audience you want to target.

Also, in general im not a fan of "hate marketing" to begin with.

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