this post was submitted on 24 Dec 2023
222 points (85.8% liked)
Games
32603 readers
1303 users here now
Welcome to the largest gaming community on Lemmy! Discussion for all kinds of games. Video games, tabletop games, card games etc.
Weekly Threads:
Rules:
-
Submissions have to be related to games
-
No bigotry or harassment, be civil
-
No excessive self-promotion
-
Stay on-topic; no memes, funny videos, giveaways, reposts, or low-effort posts
-
Mark Spoilers and NSFW
-
No linking to piracy
More information about the community rules can be found here.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
CS2 is just a bad game tbh, but the loot boxes are still the same as they were when they put them in tf2. Fortnite specifically grinds my gears because of the active pointed targeting of kids. I like gambling, I dont mind adults choosing to gamble. I used to play mtg, the actual inventor of loot boxes. But fortnite wants to be the childrens gaming hub, and also sell loot boxes and battle passes. Thats pushing the line past where it was set.
But, like... Again, valve did these things and then set the line. Epic is pushing that line further. If the conversation was "hey why is valve shitty?" you would have a point. But thats not the convo. The conversation is "why is epic worse than valve?" And the answer is valve set shit standards that it holds to, but epic is trying to take those standards and push them further so it can be valve2, with worse established practices.
Youre saying "well valve made these bad decisions, whats the statute of limitations?" Ok, epic is actively trying to repeat those decisions. Why shouldnt we have learned from history, and not reward them doing the things you wish valve hadnt done?
Or do you prefer we have this same conversation in a decade, about epics decisions in the past tense?
No, you're not listening to me.
Epic. Took the lootboxes. Out of Fortnite.
Altogether. No loot boxes. None. They're gone.
So no, they're not pushing that line further. They were actually relatively early in reacting to regulator pressure by backing off from those. I'm gonna guess because they were caught having poorly designed underage checks and slapped with an exemplary fine, so it's not like they didn't get strong external incentives.
But if your argument is that Epic does it worse on a purely moral standpoint... well, you're objectively wrong and have been for about four years. The more interesting question is why do you not know this?
That's been my point all along. Valve's big win is branding. Their brand is absolute solid gold. They get a crazy amount of free passes no matter what they do. They're not bulletproof against controversy, but they're maybe the closest to that I can think of in the games industry.
Plenty of competitors have been more consumer-friendly than them in specific issues. EA started unconditional refunds when Valve was actively whining about regulators wanting them to do them. Epic backed out from loot boxes while Valve is actively adding them to new games. They are known to be the worst profit sharers, and it gets rougher the smaller a dev is... They're great at features and they do take very compelling stances in specific issues (many of them driven by the lifelong blood feud between Gabe and his former coworkers at Microsoft), but they are disproportionately seen as a league above every other first party regardles of facts.
That the kind of branding work you build a masters around right there. It's nuts.