Skate players were explicitly told map areas would not be “locked behind a paywall”
Is the game not ass anymore at least? I’d rather play the OG THPS without any qol additions added by the good remake than this game after I had tried it.
I tried it and it’s shitty compared to skate3. SkaterXL is a better option and has better controls but a lot less content.
But SkaterXL has mods. Soooooo many mods.
The suckers who buy this trash and pay for it deserve it. There’s so much good gaming to be had, at this point it’s a choice.
I don’t think that’s really fair, especially considering this game was popular among kids & teens who don’t have the lived experiences we have
This is the gaming industry, though; their primary target market is children. They’re naive because they’re children. Maybe there’s some masochists out there volunteering for the abuse, but this is really adults failing to protect kids, by allowing it to be legal to use psychology tricks and gambling mechanics on minors.
An important detail is that this rental option is paid for in grind currency, not paid currency. Yes, “for now”.
Yeah, that’s just to normalise rentable levels. Once it has been begrudgingly accepted, there’ll be one that requires premium currency. Never buy EA.
You’ll still be able to buy them with ingame currency, but itll be days worth of farming or BEST VALUE 4.99.
They’ll still be able to hide behind an ethical “no mtx required” label.
Why days worth of farming? To help give the player a sense of “pride and accomplishment” of course.
Yet people have zero self control and keep giving them money.
Exactly. EA do it because enough people allow them to do it.
I really don’t understand people like that, though. There are plenty of great games that don’t have predatory monetisation. Yet millions and millions opt to get fleeced. This shit won’t stop as long as people keep falling for it.
let them I’ll keep adding more hours to megabonk.
I would say this tracks for Saudi Arab-EA, but they did this kind of shit before the Saudis owned them.
Honestly from a business perspective, EA is one if the smartest publishers out there. They made a game and stripped away most of the functionality and then sold it for full price. They then slowly added the content back in content packs and people gladly paid. That was The Sims. And it’s had like three sequels, all monetized the exact same way. And people keep paying them.
My brain just shuts off when I read stuff like this.
Man, I dunno. Fuck AAA gaming, I’ll go play something else.
Indies are where its at. Or classic games, especially with mods
Games are a modern media and I think suffer from a lot of modern engagement mechanics.
We need to stop viewing them as a constant stream of “new content” and more as an established library.
Absolutely the problem. They’ve stopped trying to make fun and started trying to exploit psychological weaknesses and hijack our internal reward systems to rinse us of both time and money.
Fun is no longer the driving factor, and it makes me feel not quite angry or nauseous, but somewhere around those emotions.
They’ve stopped trying to make fun and started trying to exploit psychological weaknesses and hijack our internal reward systems to rinse us of both time and money
Exactly, and the fact that Jeffrey Epstein was pro microtransactions really tells you the kind of scum we’re dealing with here
I shifted to that view a long time ago. I have a selection of “classics” I play on rotation and I add a few indies or modern ports every now and then.
The multiplay scene went in a direction I don’t intend to follow. Some old friends are thinking about hosting a retro lan party, but I’m going to make it clear that I’m walking if they try sneaking in any modern shit.
Fucking lol… This is the Metaverse with extra steps.
Obviously ridiculous.
That said I dunno, it’s very easy for me to just play the game and never give them a dime.
All I want from the game is to dick around from time to time and it gives me that for free.
Every time I play I just find things to launch my ass off over and over. I just accept the free shit and play occasionally.
Obviously not going to defend EA for this decision but I dunno, it’s still maybe blown a little out of proportion. I guess it depends on how invested in the game you are as a player, and as someone who has Skate 1-3 still and had good fun with them when they came out, the current game gives me what I want in a way that I don’t have to pay for so I’m fine with it.
What kind of sucker buys from EA?
EA gives their studios the ability to decide their own revenue models.
This change likely came because they weren’t as profitable as predicted so they had targets to make up for.
Split Fiction and It Takes Two were pretty great.
Add Mass Effect, Dead Space and Star Wars Jedi series…
But yeah I wish all of these were DRM free, without any online connection and on GOG.
I only bought Split Fiction because it didn’t come with the EA launcher. It seems to be a recent decision of theirs to not include it on some games on Steam, but they’re not doing it retroactively. It Takes Two I played on Game Pass for a dollar, because I’m not willing to put up with EA’s additional DRM.
I have it takes two, played the whole thing on steam without EA launcher. Was on my steam deck, so maybe linux dodged that somehow?
I believe it’s still running in the background and makes it an extra pain in the ass to play without internet. I ran into that one with Jedi: Fallen Order when trying to play on the train (I only paid $4 for it and still felt ripped off). The store page still lists that it’s there. It’s why whenever I get around to the Dragon Age games, I can play the first one on GOG and the fourth one on Steam (no EA launcher), but unless something changes, the best option appears to be pirating 2 and 3.
It Takes Two actually removed the EA App in a patch a while back.
I think they allow studios they only publish for and don’t own like Hazelight the freedom to remove the EA App DRM now, but EA won’t pay for the dev time for their back catalogue.
Thanks for the link, though the store page does still say it requires an EA account. Is that just outdated? Dragon Age: The Veilguard also doesn’t have an EA app requirement, so this is a thing they’re doing with studios they own too.
IIRC it still requires an EA account for online play, but not if you play offline.
What’s Andrew Rousso doing in the image? Seems completely unrelated to the content of the article.
I was wondering the same thing…
I think of this practice as a tax on herds.
You want to belong in a trendy group, you board the hype train and pay the tax to belong in the herd.
Same logic as “Lottery is a tax on those who didn’t pay attention in math class.” And I agree.
Paying for a game you don’t own, only to have to rent the gameplay inside the thing you don’t even own to begin with. Presumably all content also being locked on company servers meaning it will get EOL’d and inaccessible at some point in the future.
Immaculate.
Skate is free to play
I was moreso talking about the future of gaming monetisation.
I absolutely hate the whale hunting that developers go through these days.
It’s more profitable for them to find a few whales spending $10,000 on their game every year than making a good product.
Man, remember back in the day when you just went and bought a game and then played it?
I understand the sentiment here but let’s note that you do not go buy Skate. because it’s free to play.
Remember when free to play meant free to play?
I remember shareware.
Free to play games are similar to old shareware though… You get to play some of it for free then pay for the rest.
But… shareware was literally designed to paywall the majority of an application or game until you paid for it. It was a free shareable demo.
In American-style neo-liberalism, everything must have a price tag. If it doesn’t generate a profit, it can’t exist.
Then people should stop buying, otherwise nothing will change. People complained about Nintendo switch 2, yet they bought it.
This is actually good advice… in isolation. Encouraging people to spend their money more wisely can bring awareness to an issue but it ultimately does little to implement change. Sure, you and I (and the Fediverse as a whole) might be hyper-vigilant about these kind of things but the average consumer isn’t. Continuing with your Nintendo example, Nintendo has decades of brand recognition and a zealous fanbase to satisfy the demand. An eager gaming press will gladly take free hardware from Nintendo for positive coverage.
Real change won’t happen until the tap is turned off, so to speak. These companies are taking advantages of gaps in the law that permit them to get away with this. Antitrust law in the US dates back to a time when steam-powered trains were still common and the last breakup involved a telephone company. When AT&T was broken up, the home computer (desktop in modern parlance) was just starting to take off.
So, yes, we should spend our money elsewhere when we see this kinds of corporate abuses but until you starve the beast, keep expecting these kinds of behaviors.
I still have Skate 3 installed on my Xbox for those times when I just want to chill for an hour. It makes me a little sad when I see what its become nowadays…
