Ah, my hard line stance of “never buy anything ubisoft” is still working out for me.
Ubisoft, epic, ea, Blizzard/Activision…
I wont say Bethesda because I’m hoping for another Doom or Quake.
_EA is the fucking devil. They bought my favorite game, Ultima Online, and ruined it. _
That’s tragic and I feel your pain.
I’m glad that game had such a community surge of custom shards to keep it going, but it sure fractured the community. :(
get in line. ubisoft is the same by the way. they own the rights to my favorite IPs: prince of persia and flashback and all they’re doing is releasing shovelware.
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The way that Bethesda has handled Doom has been nothing short of excellent. Hopefully they continue to support Id however they need it to keep on making great games.
Generally, yeah. The way they worked with Mick Gordon last game was awful though.
I didn’t know about that whole fiasco. At least the end product was good. I feel bad for Mick Gordon though. I’m even more impressed that he did so well despite having to deal with that nonsense.
If you didn’t say it I was gonna.
Well Doom 2016 at least. Doom Eternal fucked over Mick Gordon and DLCfyied the game. The cracks are forming.
Can’t complain about the quake update.
What’s the problem with Epic Games, besides No Tux no Bux and anti cheat rootkits?
I mean those suck, but it has to be more than that right?
Delisting and shutting down the Unreal and Unreal Tournament games. General lootbox bs.
Talk about forgetting your roots…
Delisting the single player games that don’t require a master server to be maintained was just salt in the wound.
Owned in part by Tencent
They haven’t made a decent game in 15 years so…there’s that.
I would a very happy person if most things in this World that reliably make one feel as “I’m doing the right thing” and frequently make one “Give oneself a pat on the back” required so little expense, time and effort as “never buy anything from Ubisoft”.
It’s like winning the “well done dude” lotery once every couple of months without spending a cent.
Ah, my hardline stance of “don’t buy profitable products you can get for free” is still working out for me.
Always testing the line… This wasn’t a mistake. They know you’ll be upset, they are testing HOW upset and then they’ll make their decision.
If you’re “upset” but buy another Ubisoft game anyway, then you weren’t that upset --> Ubisoft will keep doing it.
(you as in generic you)
Ubisoft doesn’t give a shit. Never did. They are the ones who added booster packs after certain time in game so you can progress at a normal pace instead if you pay them extra. Am actually surprised someone reacted this time since usually they are fiendishly defended by dedicated fans.
They don’t give a shit but if everyone rejects their bulshit, like that NFT nonsense, they will back off (and try again later)
True. And it usually works or at least to a degree, otherwise they wouldn’t keep doing it.
Something you’re paying for should be completely ad free, period.
I wish that’s how the world worked, unfortunately it’s not
The World worked that way, but people accepted the new ad contained products they paid for.
People even think it is fine to buy a product you don’t own
And people are making excuses for the forever inflating greed…
I mean, how do you accept inflating prices and costs while your salary has been stagnant for decades?
It just doesn’t make sense how costs, on individuals, are growing and growing.I don’t I just pay the same amount since I was born /s
And get less and less for the same payment :p
It does work like that. You vote with your dollars. If you buy these companies’ products, you confirm they made the right decision.
If enough people abandon their products, they change the model or die.
What you say you like and what your dollars say you like are 2 different things. The sooner people realize this the faster things will improve. But, if people are unwilling to avoid buying products from bad companies, things will get worse. Welcome to capitalism.
Unfortunately you’re not quite right with this one. As an individual, me choosing not to buy a new Samsung TV which has ads on the menu isn’t going to directly effect the sales and/or profit of the model to any measurable significant margin. Especially if I was going to buy LG anyway.
If the entire population was able to communicate as one hive mind and apply your utopian strategy it would work, but unfortunately its exceptionally difficult to convince that amount of people.
This is the exact same concept and difficulty behind battling climate change (not buying and doing things which hurt the environment)
Yes I agree capitalism is … Well… Capitalism 🤣
You don’t have to be a hive mind to make a difference. Everyone gets one vote (or one bank account) to make things better or worse, even if it is only a very small amount. You can contribute to the society you want or the society that is convenient. Sometimes you have to sacrifice comfort (or entertainment) to influence the things you want society to be. If enough people agree, things get better. If you are just bitching about how you are being taken advantage of but willingly allow it to happen… c’est la vie…
Society is a collection of individuals. If enough people buy into the “1 person can’t change things” then everyone makes things worse a little but at a time. Buy what you want, vote how you want, but you are making things better or worse with every choice you make.
It would if everybody votes with their wallet.
They do. That’s the problem.
I like to compare that argument to climate change. If everyone voted with their wallet to not buy/do things which are bad for the environment we would stop climate change over night.
Now think about how impossible that is and then remember, that collective effort is just as difficult as stopping people buying things which contain ads
No it wouldn’t. Corpos would just put in more effort to hide the damage. Climate change can’t be stopped by individual consumers because they have no means to verify whether a product they want to buy hurts the environment.
There are products which you can guarantee have a major negative effect on the environment yet people still purchase them. This is exactly the same as people buying games and products with ads baked in.
Unless it’s a billboard!
I pay for my phone and my phone and my internet access. What gives?
This, but unironically.
If I had the means to pirate my internet connection, I’d do it in a heart beat.
Oh absolutely. I used to get free data on a blackberry I had, and it was great. Free YouTube all day!
Enshittification infects all.
I think we can stop this one at least
E: word
This is what I thought when micro transactions in paid games started around 10 years ago. I was wrong.
Ubi will pull the classic pretwnt it was an accident, then in two years slowly roll it out. People will kick and scream, but still buy their shit. Then it’ll become normalized and slowly get worse. Next gen of kids growing up used to this won’t know what the big deal is when we complain.
Same cycle over and over with all kinds of stuff over the past 20 years.
Fair AAA will always have a core demo who don’t care as long as their addiction is fed, but I think the fuss we raise should at least keep it out of the majority of games, and make people implementing it feel kind of scummy, so that’s something.
Like MTX are relegated to a very specific “type” of game which is instantly identifiable, and not that well regarded compared to more, uh, pure (?) games.
Summed up: ads and dark patterns will always work on a certain segment of the population, but they don’t necessarily get to be seen as normal or cool.
And they will get away with it because nobody does what will really hurt Ubisoft, which is NOT buy the games. No. They will simply come on reddit or here and complain, and then throw their hands up and accept it when that fails to produce any results.
I am a little slow - what exactly I am looking at here¿? Many of them seem to be playing modern warfare 2
It’s a Steam Group for an MW2 boycott, you’re seeing the members of that group and what they’re playing.
And then theres the one dude playing fucking half life 2 deathmatch.
I always found this to be a bad example. 15 people out of the 51 on that page are playing the game they’re in a boycott group for. That’s a clear minority, even if that had been representative of all 1557 members.
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It’s page one, so I don’t think this is a selected subset.
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This is just the people playing right now, and only people playing on steam. This doesn’t show all of the people who bought the game or are playing on console.
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Obviously none of the gaming boycotts have worked, and we’re both putting way too much thought into one image.
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Haven’t bought a ubisoft game in 10 years and I have missed nothing
That’s why those who “jUsT pAy PReMiUm” are at fault. These companies are just pushing the line to see what sticks, and you’re perpetuating it by paying
Yeah, it’s like all the useful idiots doing mental gymnastics to justify paying for youtube premium forget how subscription services like netflix and amazon routinely get worse over time.
Who says that? It’s not down to the people, you can’t control every individual as one hive mind. If you could climate change would stop overnight.
It’s corporate greed, ads will forever be interpolated into games and movies for the foreseeable future until it’s specifically outlawed to do so.
I’m sure given the opportunity as CEO the overwhelming majority of people on Lemmy would do the same for a bigger pay packet
I think it’s both. Corporate greed and people helping keep this up
Gamers continue to tell these companies that they’ll put up with anything while complaining online and continuing to purchase shitty games from shitty companies. Rinse and repeat.
This is 90% on consumers. Stop buying shit if you want change and I mean in any industry.
this is what companies want you to think. it’s like expecting drivers to be sensible so that we can reduce deaths from traffic accidents. it’s not a solution. we have traffic lights, seat belts, all sorts of security systems and regulations on car manufacturers (though not nearly enough).
consumer protection doesn’t happen by telling everyone to be sensible. regulation is needed.
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where did you get “don’t go outside” from?
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neither statement is true. we just talked about this.
And how are you going to convince, let’s see, something like 130 million people to just go along with that plan?
Do you actually want change or are you just bitching?
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though not nearly enough)
Yes…there’s enough. There’s a reason a new car costs 30k. We don’t need radar, adaptive cruise, and fucking front facing cameras (yes, thats a real thing) standard.
I just want a heavy duty roll cage, a 200cc engine, and seat belts. All for 2k.
(The car safety standards are a sore point for me)
And how do we get that, bud?
One congressperson at a time.
Hahahahahahahaha hahahahahah…
You got a better alternative, than pulling down your pants and bending over?
You think voting in a system built to keep those in power and those like the ones in power isn’t functioning exactly as intended? Are you 12? Grow up.
Are you 12? Grow up.
Noticed you’re not answering the question…
You got a better alternative, than pulling down your pants and bending over?
Gamers as a population really have to stop FOMO’ing into the newest games because their friends do.
Even if it’s blatantly obvious it’s going to be or is a bad game people still buy them because of the network effect.
90% on consumers? I don’t know I’d go that far… If a company is evil but provides a service people still desire, that doesn’t make the evil company being evil the fault of the consumers. Like saying gun control in America is resisted primarily by its citizens when we are well aware that company lobbying is mostly at fault and most citizens are actually for some amount of gun control.
Anyone who supports a company knowing how they conduct their business causes harm etc, is complicit. Once that information is learned a choice has to be made.
That only works if there’s meaningful competition. With megabrands like Nestle who make 1/4 of the grocery store, or game publishers like Ubisoft who receive 1/4 of the industry’s revenue any kind of boycott is dead before it begins.
In a society with a functioning government, megabrands who abuse their neighbors and/or customers would be hit with significant fines and be heavily regulated out of the bad behaviors, but the US hadn’t had a government interested in helping the common person for over half a century
Way to shoehorn your opinions on gun control into a thread about forced ads in video games. If we ask nicely, will you share your thoughts about Trump as well?
He’s a cunt
he’s a cunt.
Stop buying shit if you want change and I mean in any industry.
so we should boycott every industry out there?
yes
I mean, do you want things to change or do you just want to complain?
They said nothing about boycotting the industry. Buy games from good companies and good indie devs, that’s not a boycott.
The death of the sun will arrive before gamers actually do a boycott that is successful, because boycotts (especially for popular franchises or products) don’t work. If you rally up 10,000 people for a boycott, it’s less than 1% of sales AAA studios get and 70% of the boycotters are still going to buy the game regardless.
No change is going to happen ever, so the best thing to do is to start ignoring the AAA gaming industry altogether on a personal level.
A boycott only works if there’s meaningful alternatives. When one publisher effectively owns an entire genre of games. Expecting consumers to boycott is exactly what the big publishers want because it’s inneffective, what the publishers don’t want is for regulators to start paying attention
Voting with your wallet doesn’t work. Nobody will call you to ask why you didn’t buy a product, and marketing will just come up with a bogus reason on why sales are poor.
Talking about it on social media helps a lot more.
You can do both you know.
The first time I saw Ubisoft doing this was actually kinda neat because it was done well.
It was Rainbow Six Vegas/Vegas 2 and the billboards and posters scattered around were real ads. I thought it was a clever way to improve immersion.
Funny, cause nothing breaks immersion faster for me than product placement.
The way they did it was actually, dare I say, tasteful. Basically the only time you’d see ads is when realistically it’d be likely for a poster or bill board to be present.
I remember one map was set at an exports event and they had esports sponsors everywhere.
The way they did it was actually, dare I say, tasteful. Basically the only time you’d see ads is when realistically it’d be likely for a poster or bill board to be present.
Placement isn’t the issue though.
If you recognize it as a legit/real advertisement, that breaks the immersion.
Your mind thinks “Why am I paying money to watch commercials?”, and that breaks the immersion of whatever virtual world you’re in at the time.
If the game is set in the “real world”, an advertisement for a fake brand of a real product is, to me at least, more immersion breaking than it being a real brand for that product. Now if the game isn’t set in our world it’s a completely different story.
The thing though is that the real advertisement will remind you that you paid money to watch a commercial, and that’s where the immersion breaking happens.
With a fake ad you know you didn’t pay real money to some other real human being somewhere else, and that your purchase went just for the recreational value of the game you’re playing.
In other words, it’s not the content of the ad, but the realization that it’s a real ad, regardless of it’s content, that’s immersion-breaking.
When you swing downtown to time square in spiderman, does your brain really care if it’s a real product on all those signs?
Yes, advertisements in game environments have always been the place to make stupid puns.
I loved the Pißwasser ads in GTA IV.
Clever or not, you’re not paying to watch advertisements, you’re paying to play a game as a recreational activity.
I did think it was clever, but I distinctly remember for R6V1, every single billboard, truck side, and bus stop poster, was Shia LaBeouf staring at you with binoculars for the movie “Disturbia” lol.
I guess in the R6 universe that was going to be the biggest film release of the century hahaha. Maybe they just didn’t get a ton of takers?
I think they did this in certain regions for battlefield 2142 also
I want to note since people are not happy with this example and still talking about the good old days, this method is pretty old-school In X-Men Mutant Academy is a pretty bad example but that’s why I remember it and I want to provide some sort of proof
I stopped buying Ubisoft games years ago. It was around that that time where they forced always-online mode on their single player games.
I stopped playing their games (literally) because I was sure from that point on the user experience is only going to get worse. I thing I was right in that decision.
Oo I think you got out before the custom launcher with it’s own BS currency that constantly “lost” your “cd keys” so you couldn’t even play singleplayer games you bought on steam huh? Good move. Well played.
It’s been so long I wouldn’t be surprised to find that they just cancelled my account but all my “keys” were used already and my games just won’t work anymore lol .
Meanwhile Black Flag occasionally downloads an update and I’m like “Yeah maybe one day…” Lol
Assassin’s creed and Siege ruined ubisoft.
They just stopped trying because they learned they can just milk loyal fans for all eternity.
Corporate culture killed Ubisoft.
Late stage capitalism ruined or will ruin every corporation FTFY
I stopped when I saw Valhalla didn’t have achievements on Steam. To me that represents either extreme pettiness or extreme laziness on their parts and I won’t support either.
That’s enough for me to never buy any of their games ever again.
Remember when they said that if we pay for the product, we dont get ads? :)
I also remember when they
artificiallydeliberately reduced XP gained after certain time in game so you either had to grind harder or buy booster packs. And they said it was adding value to the game because you get more playtime.This is such transparent bulshit excuse. Who wants their playtime to be more grind? But it’s probably why Assassins’ Creed even adopted XP systems at all.
If anything I want to go back to the days games had baked in cheats to become invincible and unlock everything so we can fuck around when we feel like it.
And yet franchise is thriving. AC was never my thing, especially because of boring fetch quests and collect-a-thons. WoW also had bunch of annoying quests like that, but at least the world building was awesome and lore was plentiful to enjoy the game.
I like the franchise because I’m into history. I was really looking forward to Mirage after the grindfests that were Origins, Odyssey and Valhalla, but news like this make me consider not even waiting until Mirage is 50% off at some point.
You don’t need to say “artificially” here because the whole game is made by humans.
Deliberately or maliciously is more like it.
True true.
Sometimes you don’t even get the product if you pay for the product. AC: Odyssey will be in my Steam library forever unplayable because I had to delete my Ubisoft account for being hacked into and their support team absolutely refused to let me associate the game I purchased and thought I owned to a new Ubisoft account.
Fuck those guys. I will never pay money for their games ever again.
Gaming has been following the shitty trends of video streaming companies for a while now. I bought RDR2 on the Steam sale to finally play through and immediately refunded it when I saw they force you to sign in with a Rockstar account. I don’t want any offline games where I have to sign in.
I remember putting a cartridge into a console and powering on to an immediate start screen. There shouldn’t be EULA or T&C prompts or inescapable splash screens on timers for any of these games. There shouldn’t be standalone studio launcher applications that take up nearly a GiB of hard drive. Nobody wants them, nobody is impressed by them, and it takes away from the fun. It seems I’m done with all Blizzard, Origin, and Rockstar games for good now, where in the past I would’ve gladly shelled out $$$ for deluxe and ultimate editions like a chump.
Guess who doesn’t have to login to a Rockstar account? That’s right, pirates.
Pirating games isn’t nearly as attractive as other media. Big studio Games are usually released in a broken state and pirate sources rarely keep titles updated.
Mostly a paradox issue, and they already admitted it’s intentional:
“What we want to do is provide people who bought the game legally a better service. With frequent updates; good and convenient services; that’s how we fight piracy,” he said. “I hope it works. I keep my fingers crossed.”
This happens mostly with less popular games. Stuff like GTA, Call of Duty, RDR, Starfield, etc, stays up to date in pirate sites.
The forced rockstar account is 100% of the reason I refunded GTAV without ever playing it, and it’s the reason I wont ever get RDR2.
Rdr2 sucks anyway, it’s the Avatar of videogames.
What sucks about the game? Having to use the Rockstar launcher is a pain but imo the game is brilliant.
The whole game is a confusing mess.
Fundamentally, the game acts like it’s a huge open world game where you live a cowboy, but in reality the whole thing funnels you into a boring and annoying story.
Hours of tutorials on all the things you can do in the game, but while you’re playing you can’t be bothered to sit through the same skinning, cooking, hunting, tracking crap over and over when baked beans do the job better.
This pretty much sums the whole game up, you have so much money from the first storyline bank job, you never need to do a single side quest and all the features are repetitive busy work so they’re not worth doing on their own merit.
The morality system is pointless when the character’s arc is completely set by the story other than the last 1 decision which makes any difference at all.
Nothing in the game is difficult, so just using the same tactics of revolver or rifle solves literally everything. Or the pre mentioned baked beans if you actually need a heal at any point.
The whole thing feels like too many ideas that don’t work together.
To each their own. Thanks for the detailed response!
Honestly, I think the bank job at the beginning of the game as part of the story being removed could fix a lot. Nothing makes sense when the plot revolves around making more money and you have so much you never have to worry about it. I thought I accidentally found an exploit or something.
But there’s so many strange ideas. Like you reach st. Denis and are able to buy fancy clothes, but your character looks like shit at this point which ruins the whole thing. Who thought that was a good idea?
That doesn’t sound like hyperbolae at all.
“Most agreed that promos about new games and other content are slightly more tolerable on the main menu before the game starts,”
If I see as much as a small banner ad in a game, I’m immediately refunding, and never purchasing a game from that publisher ever again.
I don’t mind a little ad in the menu, about stuff directly related to game I’m playing. Those little “Hey we released a new content dlc to this exact game” infos can actually be informative. What I really can’t stand is stuff breaking the immersion of the game. I’m not even mad about product placements, when they fit the theme and are sparsely used.
Baldur’s Gate 3 was probably the best game of this year (?), but it has an advert for the DLC as soon as you launch it
However, it’s also probably one of the least-bad “triple A” games of this year when it comes to overall monetisation, that singular DLC of cosmetics and the soundtrack being the only one available
Unfortunately, I think this one is a losing battle
Advertising dlc is ok in my opinion, it’s for the product you’re using and not everyone checks for new dlc
I was going to ask where the ad was, but I forgot that I turned off the launcher specifically because of that. I have no idea about PS but you can add the following on PC to skip the lau8
--skip-launcherYeah, you absolutely can, but knowing to do that means that the advert has already delivered its message to you.
Futzing around with the launcher settings seems like more work than just clicking “no” on an advert that pops up.
You’re right, once. But adding that one time means I never have to see the launcher again. Clicking no means extra launch time and looking at it every time I launch the game.
But different strokes for different folks. If it’s not worth it to you then that’s cool. It was worth it for me and I thought I’d drop that for anyone else who may want it.
I have the same launcher settings set, so I mean I kind of agree? But you’ve seen the advert, and that’s basically all they want.
I just think it’s kind of weird how people react to things once they’ve filtered their thinking through the hivemind of the internet versus before.
Baldur’s Gate 3 has no dlc at all. It has no dlc even announced, let alone available for purchase. Stop making shit up lol. Their launcher has info about the different games they’ve made and their prices, but when you actually launch the game it has NO ad of any sort. You could only barely call the info in their launcher an ad in the first place.
kind of awkward that this both:
it’s absolutely coconuts that you’re currently attempting to die on the hill of a giant “buy now” button not being an advert
also, you do realise that the launcher is an advert? that’s its whole reason to exist. your take is essentially “you’re dumb because after you’ve clicked through the adverts, there aren’t any adverts”
I was looking forward to buying that game after upgrading my PC. This makes me sad. Divinity never had any ads. Maybe the pirated version gets rid of the ad.
I mean I guess Divinity never had ads unless you consider the launcher an advert for their other titles, given that that’s basically what it’s there to do?
If you don’t consider anything in launchers to be adverts then I guess you can play BG3, because that’s where the advert for the DLC lives?
I really feel like if Larian had only given you the soundtrack and not the cosmetics, and just not called it DLC, that people really wouldn’t be so up in arms about it.
Sony didn’t have both versions readily available in the Playstation Store. While I did eventually purchase the DLC (which is the deluxe version, not a typical DLC), I’ll be damned that Sony didn’t make it easy to find the OG version in the store.
And I put that on Sony, not the game publisher. Regardless, BG3 has been a breath of fresh air to gaming this year. About time a studio put out a full game without divvying it up into expansions and DLCs.
I agree that BG3 is a great diversion from the usual. My point is kind of that if you’re a purist about this, you’re missing out on it, even though on the whole it bucks the trend.
How much fucking money do they need?
all the money. literally nothing less than all the money in the entire world is enough.
And even then, they’ll want more. That’s capitalism
Yep. For that you need a finance industry, so you can get people to give you money they haven’t even earned yet. The important thing is you don’t stop spending or else the whole thing collapses
Most video game companies, or at least the huge ones, are all paying a negative tax rate.
They’re a publicly traded company – stock price has to go up.
So more. Always more.
As much as we let them keep making.
I wonder if adguard for desktop or portmaster would be helpful for this issue. I can’t get portmaster to work on my system, mostly because some of its processes require the execution of BAT files, my antivirus will block those.
It’s not how much. It’s how much more. They expect and require infinite growth.
Forza Horizon 4 did this but worse. It would be an unskippable 2 minute video ad ignoring your volume settings. It only played 5 times in my 45 hours of gameplay but it was so damn unacceptable that it’s reminding me to give that game a negative review.
Forza Horizon 5 does not do this. Get that game or something else instead.
Fuck Ubisoft
Simple, but it speaks the truth.
