Games Journalism 2017: Gaming news in a post-truth world

Games
223

G2A’s official statement.

[quote]
G2A.COM’s goal is to provide the best possible conditions for both buyers and sellers, while providing the best prices for legal games. We do everything in our power to uphold the best possible relationships with developers and ensure the highest standards in the fight against dishonest sellers.

At the same time, we respect our critics and believe that they have the good of the industry at heart. Unfortunately, sometimes they do not understand how G2A.COM works and as such this misunderstanding causes them to mislead the public about our company. The best proof of this are the four ultimatums formulated in part by John Bain, which, it turns out that were completely unnecessary as all of the issues raised have long been a part of the G2A.COM marketplace. Most of the allegations levied against us are based on both a lack of knowledge, and a lack of desire to learn the other side of the story. The best example of this is quoting false and defamatory statements while ignoring the facts. This is why we constantly emphasize that we are open to meetings and discussions with anyone who has doubts about how our marketplace works.[/quote]

224

I thought paying for protection of getting a legit key was a known extra cost or a sub or something that’s been discussed here a few times.

Also… wth, they don’t want to do business with TB anymore. What kind of official response is that? There are professionals that work at G2A right?

225

It’s G2A Shield. In G2A’s own words:

[quote]
If the buyer does not have a Shield subscription:

The buyer reports the problem to the seller. If the seller sees that the problem resulted because of the seller’s error or fault, then the seller either refunds the buyer’s money or provides a new key – and the matter is solved instantly.

If the seller does not agree to the buyer’s complaint, the buyer writes a message to the G2A Resolution Center. The message receives a case number, and our employees (G2A.COM’s customer support team is fluent in nine languages, six of which are available 24/7, and the average wait-time is barley a few minutes) begin to investigate. Our customer support then contacts the seller, to give them a chance to clarify any doubts, and then our customer support team does everything they can to bring about a satisfactory resolution for both parties. The buyer typically receives a resolution in a matter of hours, in contrast to many other marketplaces where users sometimes must wait a few weeks to receive an answer (or never receive an answer at all).

If the buyer does have a Shield subscription:

The buyer opens and connects with live chat, which is available 24/7. The buyer does not have to contact the seller – but simply needs to describe the problem to G2A.COM’s customer support team. The buyer will most likely receive a refund during the chat which last a few minutes, and G2A.COM takes it upon itself to contact the seller and resolve the case on that end.

G2A Shied is very well-priced given the benefits it offers. This of course does not mean that we do not realize the service still requires a lot of improvement. We are constantly working on Shield and we will debut many new solutions over the coming months.[/quote]

Essentially, if you don’t have Shield, you have to wait for the key seller to make things right with you. If you have Shield, G2A will make it right with you and the compensation is between G2A and the seller on the back end.

The issue is that Shield gets added to your order automatically and you have to opt out when you go through the cart process. If you accidentally opt in, G2A makes getting out of it kind of a PITA by limiting the cancellation window to a 3-day period just before the automatic renewal goes live. They’re banking on people forgetting.

Edit: I think recently G2A changed the order opt in to a one-time instance of Shield, but that’s actually more expensive than the monthly option.

226

They sound like kids, they behave like kids, and they are trying to come up with a new form of irregulated insurance company scam. They seem fit with the company that wouldn’t let Duke Nukem die his immature death: so sad people are trying to make them part ways :(

227

The Dread Pirate Roberts (from Silk Road) went to jail so so someone should be able to prosecute these shady fucks. I’ll add this site to my cursed business list.

228

[quote]The first Japanese game on Steam, as far as I can tell, was Capcom’s Devil May Cry 3 in June 2007 (despite its stated May 2006 release on the Steam store). At that point Steam was still young, and only about 100 games were released for the platform in the entire year.

Capcom followed DMC3 with Lost Planet two weeks later. Music puzzler Lumines made its way over to Steam in 2008, and FromSoftware’s Ninja Blade and Square Enix’s The Last Remnant arrived in 2009… The modern era of Japanese PC games really began in 2010, with a charming indie sim about running an item shop and a large dump of classic Sega ROMs.[/quote]

Umm, did they leave some Japanese Steam games out of the list from 2007 to 2010, or was that really it??

229

I love Recettear . I don’t know what genre that is but we need more shop games out there!

230

Sadly, my favourite games in that genre, developed by Inu to Neko, got a single translation attempt, and it seems to have been one of the worst ever.…
For the last couple of years, Inu to Neko switched from doing those lovely shop/clicking game, to focus on so-called “puzzle” games, which I don’t find interesting at all.

To get back to Steam and Japan, not helping its growth is the fact that most Japanese games, even indie ones, are released on Valve’s platform stripped from the Japanese original language, probably to mimick the big companies and their attempt to “control” prices and market. While the Japanese indie scene got attention from the West since Dokutsumonogatari, I also have the impression that scene is considerably waning, compared to what it was in the early 2ks - but that may apply to Japan’s gaming production overall, besides phone games, maybe?

231

Part of the problem is that doujin game devs spent about a decade focusing on Touhou fangames and very little else, which has only finally changed a bit in the last couple of years. That said, with regards to independent devs outside of the convention scene, the Japanese “indie” movement is a much more recent development, and has seen most of its works released primarily on the 3DS eShop or on phones - Japanese gamers just don’t do PCs (outside of MMOs and visual novels) or consoles (outside of certain Japan-oriented franchises and Nintendo games) these days.

232

Is there anything more petty than game journalists firing off on each other about technical aspects of an article?

Kotaku posted this article about Horizon Zero Dawn’s rendering tech:

Polygon posted this story partly as a response and partly to show developers ridiculing the Kotaku article.

Jason Schreier at Kotaku apparently isn’t pleased.

[quote]
Thirty minutes ago, I had no idea that there was any sort of “kerfuffle” involving my Horizon article. Then I saw a Polygon article about how “developers are mocking” my work, based on four tweets by people I’ve never seen before. The tweets don’t bother me that much, since, as I wrote in my original article (and comments), I was using Horizon’s documentary as a springboard to talk about common graphical tricks and techniques, and I don’t really care if those people didn’t pick up on that. What bothers me is Polygon making it seem like this is some sort of widespread phenomenon.

I’ve built a career around talking to lots of game developers about how games are made, to the point where I literally wrote a book about it. A Polygon article creating meaningless drama and making it seem as if “developers” are mocking me is shitty and infuriating. Even if the article does wind up trying to defend what I wrote, the premise – that “developers” are making fun of what I wrote – is baseless and makes me look bad. Hence me flipping out.[/quote]

233

The truth is both sites are plenty mockable, each prone to meaningless drama and posing in their own silly-assed way.

234

Dude, you need to post more. That’s awesome.

I do read Polygon, though. I just like the site layout.

235

schrier is in the right here. Kuchera is being an asshole.

236

So… about average then.

237

Schreier-Kuchera is pretty much the Godzilla-Gojira matchup of prissy game journos being dramatic on the Twitters. Excellent.

238

Except Schrier is actually a capable journalist and author of a good body of work. Kuchera is an emotional and reactionary wreck who happens to luck into different jobs yet never seems to demonstrate much expertise on any topic.

239

So you’re saying that Schreier is Godzilla then?

240

All I care about is who gets to be Mecha-Godzilla.

241

I got dibs on Godzooky!

242

I don’t know him personally and don’t follow him on Twitter or something, but Schreier does come across overall like a decent person, and I find many of his longer features worth reading and well researched. Kuchera, on the other hand, always seems to try very hard to fill op-ed space no matter the cost.