That isn’t really a defense of DRM’s. The acknowledgement swings both ways; if DRM doesn’t play a part in game sales, it is unnecessary.
The post’s characterisation is still accurate because of what the impact of DRM is imagined to be by game studio execs, rather than what it materially is.
Migrated away from .world over a year ago due to their shitty admins, possibly even worse than r*ddit
Despite the headline, the length of cutscenes wasn’t their justification for the length of the game, just a separate question.
It’s going to be a story-driven action game, of course it’s gonna have hella cutscenes but from what’s been shown so far, I’m actually looking forward to it.
From around 2016-2020 the most popular devices were just a series of incrementally adding more pointless shit, which is why it’s like that. They’re not that popular anymore.
On the other hand, it’s not like we have 600lb bears charging around. Pretty much all kinds of attack by our land animals can be thwarted using the ancient & mysterious art of wearing enclosed shoes & pants.
In the startup I worked for, the HR lead was the CEO’s significant other. They had made fundamental contributions to the operations of the company since its inception and relatively humble beginnings. Once it had grown beyond a certain size, there wasn’t really any particular executive position within a logical company structure for them to fill. The individual departments were run by people more qualified in those areas. I think it made sense for the company to continuously recognize their contributions (and obviously the boss isn’t going to fire their partner), but HR ended up being mostly just a cushy job for them to fall into.
It was one of those companies that likes to say its “like a family”, but really there’s an in-crowd (i.e. the founding staff) and everyone else. I was part of the former, so I could be honest and open with them with regard to HR issues and be supported, and that was nice. But on the other hand, I witnessed HR actions related to incidents involving other staff that caused me cognitive dissonance, because it would’ve been handled differently if I were the staff member involved. More than anything else, because I had found myself in the right place at the right time. Because I was a part of the landed gentry, as it were. That’s fucking bullshit, and the experience made me realize that they weren’t actually different from other companies like I had thought.
Could do that, or sideload the APK from https://repo.jellyfin.org/files/client/androidtv/
D4 has shortcuts for battle pass tiers, i.e. cosmetics. There aren’t any level skips like there is in WoW.
You can skip the campaign at the time you create a new toon, if you have already completed it. It is faster to level that way, because you can stick to activities that reward more XP and don’t have to turn in quests/listen to dialogue. You still start at level 1 though, so it’s not really a shortcut. Rather there are certain things in the game that you’re only required to earn once, given it’s intended to play multiple characters/builds. It’d be a slog to have to continuously go around the game world collecting the minor stat boosts for finding altars, for example. Instead the ones you’ve found will carry over between characters and seasons.
Yeah, P2W is what I mean by paying for power and it’s a good thing for players that it isn’t in D4 (like it is in Immortal for example). I edited my earlier comment to include that other games have come up with more creative ways to monetise cosmetics like you mentioned, but that they aren’t really possible in Diablo for technical reasons. It is very poorly optimised for online play by design - when you load an instance, your client loads the full loadout of every player character in that instance. Their full inventory, stash, everything. That’s part of what I mean - it’s an opportunity to monetise which many players would be amenable to, totally missing from the game.
Personally though, I think that there being minimal compulsion to buy MTX post-game purchase is exactly the way it should be. I wouldn’t expect them to continue a live service with no ongoing revenue, so if MTX is how they do that it should be relegated to rich fuckers with nothing better to spend their fortunes on, so I can point and laugh at them while they fund additional content for me. It’s just weird that a dev would subsequently use “hey 150m big number” to try and claim the situation as some sort of business success, as much as it’s weird players (like some in this thread) would consider this revelation as additional points against D4. Are they completely oblivious to the absolute hellscape in which we exist?!
From a developer perspective, tonnes of stuff. Shortcuts, power (edit: see Diablo Immortal for some live examples). From a gamer perspective, it’s really the ideal scenario in this day and age, but Blizzard’ll cop hate all the same.
Other similar games like Last Epoch are doing paid alt animations for skills, but Diablo team just aren’t that creative, and the game wasn’t designed well enough to accommodate something like that.
Lineage OS doesn’t include google apps or services. Jellyfin works though.
Do you need an in-remote microphone? If not, I’d suggest a degoogled nvidia shield tv (i.e flash it with lineage OS or similar)
My experience: I do the game sharing trick on xbox where you and a friend can mutually access both of your digital libraries. Preordered collector’s edition, which included 5 days of early access before launch. Blizzard had implemented a special access control on the server side which checked for a unique collector’s edition license. My friend could download and launch the game using my license but couldn’t login during early access. I refunded my purchase because the point of the extra cost was invalidated by that.
I later bought the standard edition. My account still had all the preorder and collector’s edition bonuses, including MTX currency & a battle pass token. Said token was later redeemed by mistake via Blizzard’s dark pattern implementation at the start of S1. There was some backlash about that at the time which was certainly valid, but personally I didn’t feel affected because I got it at no extra cost.
I’ve played for 1000s of hours since but never spent the free in-game currency. I had never seen another player in-game using MTX cosmetics until the wings items were recently added as preorder bonuses for the upcoming expansion. It’s not surprising that only 15% of the revenue came from MTX because the paid cosmetics are pointless, expensive and they aren’t substantially better than the free ones. Using transmog at all robs the player of any sense of cosmetic progression. Paid portal skins are kinda cool the first time you see them, but the free activity-specific ones like for infernal hordes are cool too.
I’m left confused at why someone would boast about these figures given they’re evidence of not having implemented any solid post-launch monetisation strategy, and more generally the half-baked nature of the post-launch development for the game. The MTX is purely for vanity and it doesn’t even achieve that. The skins might as well be a dork sign. I wouldn’t be surprised if their revenue figures included my original purchase as well.
tl;dr my read is that this dude has done more to unintentionally subvert blizzard’s MTX sales than he’s done to generate them
Same, the last straw for me was the ‘white lives matter’ Yeezy fashion show.
You could just refund it if it doesn’t work well for you. GOG are usually pretty generous
Everyone is better off without game pass (though MS have had the capability to do it for a long time before they launched it, and that infrastructure was largely just going to waste). IMO it doesn’t change that the millions that show up to buy CoD every year will be direct marketed game pass as a way to get it for $20 instead of $70 and that will be highly successful
Game pass numbers stalled out because Microsoft stalled out on adding blockbuster games since Starfield, which was poorly received. Check the numbers once the new CoD, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., ARK, Indiana Jones all get added towards the end of the year. CoD in particular will likely show the reports about them reaching full saturation to be false
I’m really meaning the lack of option not to consume fast-moving consumer goods, rather than the option to pay a premium for them elsewhere. When their market position is similar to like an outlet for government rations except for private profit, their net is essentially what was skimmed off the top of free enterprise. 2.66% is just the current maximum amount that is justifiably worth without doing societal harm
That’s an expected tradeoff of operating an essential service is the point. It’s not as though their margin is that slim by mistake, or out of goodwill, or bad business sense. It’s meant to lead to the situation where we shop at Walmart not by choice, but in lieu of other options.
Tell it to shut the fuck up (it works, that’s why my grandfather likes it)