PC Gaming

8515 readers

864 users here now

For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki

Rules:

Be Respectful.
No Spam or Porn.
No Advertising.
No Memes.
No Tech Support.
No questions about buying/building computers.
No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
No off-topic posts/comments.
Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Ahri ban rates soar as League of Legends players commit to protest [due to absurd skin cost: $435] (www.pcgamesn.com)

submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

28 comments fedilink hide all child comments

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

I feel like if anything has the right to be ridiculously expensive, it's art.

It's not a necessity for survival.
It's not a necessity to live a fulfilling life.
There's so much else available to us that can fulfill the same purpose that are cheap/free.
A one time $435 cost feels a lot more expensive than lots of small purchases adding up to the same amount, meaning this is more likely to be purchased exclusively by people who can actually afford it, unlike the latter which can trick people into spending more than they can afford.
It funds free entertainment for everyone who don't have the ability to pay.

What's the downside?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

What’s the downside?

Customer manipulation.

You could say "of course don't affect me" to FOMO, p2w, whales, dark patterns and alike... but just because you personally ignore it, it doesn't mean it's going to vanish. Industries live and evolve through money, the next iteration of video gaming is made by where money went.

LoL players came from a mod of Warcraft III; Riot is slowly cooking (put in warm-to-boil water) their frog customers in something people don't consider healthy (generally with "they are them, not me, so I don't care").

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Worse than what they've been doing for the last decade? It seems to me like this is a better state of things because it's clearly a lot of money for one big purchase, so you know immediately that it's not something you can afford. Better transparency, so less manipulative.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Worse than what they’ve been doing for the last decade? It seems to me like this is a better state of things because it’s clearly a lot of money for one big purchase, so you know immediately that it’s not something you can afford. Better transparency, so less manipulative.

Clearly so it seems to you. There are companies that, more simply, don't do this at all: they don't need to be transparent on how dishonest they are... because they aren't.

If your argument "in secret they may be"... well, if your point is "entities that seems honest are the most secretly dishonest", I think the first entity that we can apply your logic is your very self: you pretend to be honest in defend companies who behave transparently dishonest... it simply mean that you're honesty is just a show off, while in truth you're just shilling.

That's your logic: next time behave openly dishonest, so we know how much transparently dishonest you are.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I think I'm missing an important part of your argument here. What are they doing that you consider to be dishonest?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago (1 children)

F2P games target need big number of people, by necessity their biggest customer share is low-income people: proposing them luxury range product and peer-pressure ("to look good") is what I call dishonest.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 4 months ago

Ah, I see. Though I would call this manipulative, not dishonest.

entities that seems honest are the most secretly dishonest

It's the converse. By definition, dishonest entities (that are good at what they do) will appear honest.

Definitions aside, let's go back to my original argument. To rephrase it a bit: A transparently manipulative entity is better than a deceptive and manipulative entity. So why protest the added transparency and not the manipulation?