cross-posted from: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/post/18457741

I realize that, after all this time, I have never payed for my all-time favorite games I grew up playing (Fallout 3 & Skyrim). I can pay for it, but I really do not want to pay the money to the Bethesda’s marketing team, CEO, and whoever bullshit middle man who wants a cut of that. I want to give directly to the team that made the damn game, the artists, the sound designers, the voice actors, the programmers. If there was a way to do that, i’d be more happily inclined to spend my money on a decade year old game.

Just thinking

What are your ideas on how this could actually be implemented?

  • Alex@lemmy.ml
    472·
    3 months ago

    Buy games from indie developers on platforms like itch.io. You may have a negative view of the other people involved in funding and marketing a triple AAA game but they all contribute and get a share of the retail price. You don’t get to pick and choose who deserves to get their slice.

      • Umbrias@beehaw.org
        3·
        3 months ago

        The point is that game developers don’t get royalties the same way say, book writers do, not that the distribution is uneven or exactly unfair in a direct sense.

      • jsomae@lemmy.ml
        2·
        3 months ago

        Is anyone seriously advocating for literally even distribution of the rewards? Some people barely touch the game and others are in it from the start. Not to mention putting work in early is much more risky than working on a nearly complete game.

        • Dymonika@beehaw.org
          2·
          3 months ago

          I meant that the uneven distribution may be unfair, not that fairness = evenness. But yeah, I guess there’d be no way to tell what the optimal redistribution should be…

      • slembcke@lemmy.ml
        1·
        3 months ago

        Eh, guessing from a distance or playing favorites won’t be better though. Like I might get grumpy about a C-level guy or investor getting more than their “fair share”, but marketing for example is still an important job done by people that aren’t paid gobs of money. Without the ability to let the people that would buy it know about your product, it effectively doesn’t exist. We all love the story about a game that came out of nowhere, but that’s the exception, not the rule.

        • mark@programming.dev
          3·
          3 months ago

          WOM has and will always be the best form of marketing and you dont need big marketing teams to do it.

          The problem is that a company doesnt need that many people to push a product. They can just pay the few they need, well. But instead, they’d just rather hire a shit ton of people and under pay all of them.

          This reply reads like we should have to pay for these big unnecessary marketing teams these companies hire, which shouldn’t be the case.

          • deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz
            2·
            3 months ago

            Marketing has to be one of the most fungible business activities there are. That any business maintains its own marketing department (you’d still need someone to be the marketing director) is a waste of resources.

            “Here’s $1m, put my products in front of 200,000 of the best market segment. Oh here’s some art to use.”