I guess I’m thinking here that I’ve been reading about angry game consumers complaining about how legally untenable EULAs and TOS agreements and the like are literally since the days of UseNET in the 1990s, and have been reading since then that all it’ll take is one big push by a very strong legal challenge, and it all comes crashing down.
And to be sure, there have been legal challenges to EULAs and similar contracts, and they’ve resulted in some small wins and settlements. But the cumulative effect seems to have been incremental legal clarification of language in them over the years, but nothing that’s threatened to overturn the licensed for use model on its ear, either.
And in the end, I come down on this sort-of flow-chart here.
Is there money to be made here, if a successful challenge is won? Absolutely. You’d not only get UBI and EA, but also perhaps Steam, Apple, Microsoft, etc. There’s gold in them thar hills. One of the things that most civil action requires to make it something class-action representing lawyers want to go after hard is one party’s ability to pay. Suffice to say, that particular hurdle is cleared here.
Are there people who feel an injustice has been done them? Seems to be a pretty constant refrain, whether it’s MMO players in WoW or folks playing always-live MP or even single-player games. So yeah, I think so…
So…there’s certainly money to be made here, and people who are angry and willing to be represented…but where’s the big class-action suit? I cannot help but think if there was going to be a big upheaval to these standard operating procedures that it would’ve happened already.
To me 1) says “has lots of money for lawyers” and, sure, people might be annoyed but I’m not sure there’s much of a case for major damages, nor I suspect would most of the people who complain on forums be sufficiently motivated to engage in legal action.
I dunno. It just seems like assuming something hasn’t happened because it wouldn’t work, when there’s plenty of other possible reasons, including the possibility that just nobody’s gotten around to it yet.
Unfortunately and again, it’s been something that people have been saying since online discussion was a thing. Since Prodigy. CompuServe. UseNet.
And maybe some big suit will eventually happen.
But what seems far more likely to happen is continued iteration and incremental legal fine-tuning of such agreements, and legal arguments that, essentially, the marketplace in this sphere essentially is what it is and is established for such transactions. Basically, the inertia itself becomes part of the legal defense of the thing.
No value judgment on whether it should be that way or not. Just pointing out that the newness and youngness of this industry and business milieu isn’t so new or young anymore.
Not really. There’s some cosmetic stuff in the store (for the ship), but the majority of it is unique legendary gear and ship lieutenants that absolutely have stats and unique perks, and are auto-leveled to whatever your current level is. The best you could say about it is that you don’t really NEED it, but it absolutely has a material impact on gameplay.
I’m actually kinda staggered by how Ubisoft have managed to skate by with minimal criticism for this kind of monetization, considering Origins had the same stuff, and it’s somewhere between “just cosmetic” and “pay to win”. Especially in a $60 product.
They also do the shitty thing where you have to buy things with an in-game currency, and they price things to make it difficult to actually spend it all without having a balance left over.
EA get a lot of deserved hate for their monetization schemes, but Ubisoft have really pioneered some of the worst stuff. I still remember AC Unity with it’s in-game chests tied to a mobile app that was designed to be frustrating (energy meters and timers) unless you paid for the PREMIUM tie-in app.
It’s an exaggeration to call it “pay to win” or something even close to that. I wouldn’t call it “material” either. You can easily “win” the game without anything from the shop, it just gives you some additional options regarding perks (none of which are must have), or boosted money or xp, which are easy enough to come by in game. Doesn’t seem to be that big a deal to me.
I didn’t say it was pay-to-win, and I acknowledged that you didn’t necessarily need it. I said it exists somewhere on the continuum between “just cosmetic” and “pay to win”, because they aren’t purely cosmetic assets either.
They absolutely have a material impact on gameplay, and this is especially true between lvls 70-99 or so, when it can cost you thousands of materials and 50k+ drachmae to upgrade a single legendary item, versus buying a powerful piece of gear for a few bucks that is auto-leveled to whatever your current level is.
Likewise, boosted money and XP also absolutely have a material impact on the game, for obvious reasons.
[quote=“ShakesMcQueen, post:32, topic:142839, full:true”]
They absolutely have a material impact on gameplay, and this is especially true between lvls 70-99 or so, when it can cost you thousands of materials and 50k+ drachmae to upgrade a single legendary item, versus buying a powerful piece of gear for a few bucks that is auto-leveled to whatever your current level is.[/quote]
If you don’t need it, as you admit you don’t, then how can it be “material”?
There’s plenty of XP and money around to gain/grab. I’d call it “convenient” but hardly “material”.
I seem to be doing fine without any of these weapons/armor and no xp/$$ boosts.
This seems like a very semantic argument to me. If you can pay real money for stuff that has a gameplay function, it practically by definition impacts gameplay if purchased. That doesn’t mean it is required, or even that the design is necessarily influenced, but let’s not pretend it has no impact at all. And so the word “material” seems perfectly appropriate to me. I think if you don’t you are perhaps reading a different meaning into it.
But if it impacts gameplay in a single player game, we’re fine with that right? People were generally fine with EA essentially selling cheat codes, and this sounds similar.
I am not okay with either. I am 1000% okay with people taking their singleplayer experience into their own hands in both authorized and unauthorized fashion, but I think it’s gross to charge them for it.
It also impacts design. Once it’s OK to charge players to speed up the gameplay, there’s clear financial incentive to design a game where that’s what players will want to do.
I suppose charging for it could mean that they will make it harder to mod the game. So if back in the first DOOM if id software charged for God Mode, there would be no idkfa code.
@vinraith: In this case, we have reports from players in the AC: Odyssey thread that this is not the case. That there’s more than enough content to scale with the player at a normal rate, it doesn’t sound like they designed it with the faster rates in mind. Though there are those, obviously who prefer a faster rate of advancement anyway.
Can’t speak to XP boosters, but the game is absolutely designed to nudge you towards buying drachmae and materials. Those final ship upgrades alone, are clearly designed to extract money from obsessive completionists. As are the obtusely expensive legendary upgrades.
The purchaseable legendary gear also start to look appealing when you’re staring down the barrel of spending a neverending avalanche of money and materials on keeping your stuff upgraded.
None of it is “necessary”, which is their convenient out. But “necessary” doesn’t mean the game isn’t designed to nudge you towards the convenient solutions to your entirely game-created problems.
