Games, Industry's Greed and Faux Ethics

[Moloch]

Rules and Ethics are important. Without them there is no trust.
The Video Game Industry expects rules and ethics from consumers while being unaccountable for similar standards.
Their priority has never been ethics, but greed.

 

[fake-kun]

In other news, water is wet.

 

[Mork]

Limitations of a new industry, loads of passion and boatloads of hucksters to exploit them.

 

[NotGodlike]

Wow, who would have thought that corporations are greedy

 

[Pearly]

Unfortunately this is the same reason Tron could've not seen the light of day and was denied any awards as the use of computing was "cheating". Computing related media was ignored and passed on by these types till 15 or so years ago, unless it was related to physical products, computers, laptops phones. They weren't interested in software so much till recent years.

It's too many business types overseeing products made by creative types that use technical skills to make their creativity a reality. Computer science types love open source and in all honesty that mindset is why we get so much entertainment value for arguably so little compared to all other forms of entertainment.

It's been argued by business alumni for years, especially the bottom line-marketing focused ones, that we've been paying too little all this time, and they've been saying this crap since it became a billion dollar industry that makes more money than TV and movies.

They were nowhere to be seen before Halo 3 caused movies to do poorly the few weeks around halo 3's release.

They've been trying to bleed consumers dry since they all started infiltrating gaming companies.

In computing for example, we essentially need "scrum leaders" to shield the programmers from angry, hostile and all round unreasonable business alumni that are tyring to get products out on time and to make things reach marketing hype that they make up. Intels current woes are in fact in line with ridiculous marketing claims that their marketing people make, of which, some of these types lost their jobs during the layoffs.

The video game industry is starting to become in line with the mainstream tech companies, squeeze every penny out of us as possible, and tell us to smile whilst we get ripped off.

I'm disappointed to see it, but it's going to become the norm as gaming makes too much money now, and attracts pure opportunists that would water down alcohol and sell it back to us as light beer.

You'd be surprised why law modules are in certain business degrees, it's because of their tendency to exploit and mislead. Business people are thought to care about profit and clean money trails. If you make lots of money, they will come for you and have you act in accordance to all other multi million or billion dollar corporations.

To put a long story short, money types have become the advisors and consultants of all the programming teams in all companies. it's gone from wanting us to get a hundred hours out of a $59.99 game to a 100 hours of copy paste, unfinished garbage with a season pass 3 day early $150 price tag with zero replayablility. Slice up the cake and sell it back to us.

I personally wouldn't go into game development for this reason.

 

[Hourai]

Rules and Ethics are important. Without them there is no trust.

Trust means nothing. Remember when blizzard absolutely eviscerated every singular shred of their credibility, and then walked away basically unscathed? Remember when not long after, they were a part of the biggest business sale ever?

People love to pretend it means something, but when all it took was for people to like Dragonflight and Overwatch 2 enough to pay money for them to be redeemed, the fact that it means nothing is very damningly on display.

 

[Action_Hank]

You'd be surprised why law modules are in certain business degrees, it's because of their tendency to exploit and mislead.

Oh come on! How else are you supposed to get filthy rich? Don't you always need MORE?

 

[Moloch]

Oh come on! How else are you supposed to get filthy rich? Don't you always need MORE?

Filth is indeed an accurate keyword for all this.

 

[Yousef]

I guess someone also found out Santa isn’t teal

 

[fake-kun]

I guess someone also found out Santa isn’t teal

Santa is obviously green!

 

[Graves Ruinwalker]

Its not only greed that ills the gaming industry .

Its the lack of passionate and competent developers and visionaries . Combine that with people that squeezes politics and agendas in everything that ressembles a hobby , you get this whole industry which extremly limited itsself , lost touch with their customers & fanbases and tries to be formulaic while selling utter generic slop .

But we arent completly innocent in this travesty too . Many excused many things , let stuff slipping through and deny the facts because of comfort and even ignorance which i can hardly blame because we had it way too good back then .

 

[Retro Doomer]

Ethics and big companies don't get along; it's simple: the bigger the company, the less personal and less accountable it becomes. This means the people in charge often don't care about ethics—they only care about their money. Back when these were small companies with few employees, there was more emphasis on ethical practices because they had to be. Early gaming companies were often made up of gamers themselves who loved gaming and creating games. Nowadays, however, many of these companies are solely comprised of greedy businesspeople rather than passionate gamers.

 

[Tonberry]

Remember when blizzard absolutely eviscerated every singular shred of their credibility, and then walked away basically unscathed?

If you're referring to the frat boy culture stuff/lawsuit etc, I wouldn't say unscathed.
The people responsible for the messed up behavior were let go and the entire thing led to a company-wide paradigm shift that helped democratize their entire workflow.
It's also probably the entire reason Dragonflight was good to begin with, because people were finally allowed to make good changes that the old fucks were too set in their ways to change.

They're still greedy though, that's for sure.

Post automatically merged: Apr 22, 2025

Nowadays, however, many of these companies are solely comprised of greedy businesspeople rather than passionate gamers.

What's even worse is that the soulless businesspeople still hire the passionate gamers to be actual devs, but they're at the will and whim of their corporate overlords and have nothing to say, and are treated like gig workers.
Passion is dangerous fuel when the higher-ups treat you like an expendable workforce even though they're the ones crafting the great experiences people readily pay top dollar for.

 

[Izzy]

It's a bit of everything involved and who are the biggest suckers out there? Gamers. It's not so much the people involved with direct and indirect development, but we are the loudest audience when it comes to seeing more. Prime example would be last weekend when the Lunar Remastered collection came out. Now you want avid fans? Working Designs written the book on it when this came out back in the early 90s and it's one of the most wanted games ever wanting to see make a comeback in a long time.
Now as for whose involved, we get some heartfelt words from the composer himself, Noriyuki Iwadare, wanting for people to enjoy the series and yet we still get people crying bullshit for not getting what they pay for. Messed up online orders, the scalpers and this beef with GungHo for some reason. Now don't get me wrong, the game was well-received by us but the time you start bitching a fit over something off, think long and hard on who to blame. It's not the people who worked hard on the game themselves, nor are the suits who fund the company however they see fit, but it's us.
When a company ask their fanbase their input, do we give it to them? No, we don't. You want something better, you tell THEM. When I used to write letters to various companies, I gave them honest feedback, not some lazy ass reply (ie: this sucks). Feedback makes everything better, they want to hear both sides of the spectrum, like what you like/didn't like, what you want to see more/less etc. They want to do better in what they do for us, but we don't give them what they ask for. It's like this, another example would be SRW. Now how do you think they lasted as long as they did? They went to the people and wanted to know who they wanted to see make a return, albeit in an indirect way and they took that input and did something about it and it WORKS.

Market-wise, many fall for the Day 1 release and that's where most of the problems lie. Whether the order stockpile didn't expect an overflow of customers, or the system going down or even the one issue that most people fall victim to, the game being bugged. I used to be one of them who had to get my copy before the rush and I stopped doing that since then. Now you got DLC that should've been from the start and that's like more money out your pockets just because of being a 'Firsty'. We pay hundreds for a premiere box edition of the same game that originally came out in 1992 and we just only needed the game. There's no honor in preordering either if the stock isn't there so again, it's a waste.
I'd rather get the same game later on down the line with everything included. And hey, I don't mind emulation to get it either. I feel for those who put their heart, soul and guts into these projects because they love the series as much as we do and I'm not about to blame them for giving all the energy they had into bringing it back in hopes the series could finally be concluded.

We as gamers should take a moment to just say thank you first, feedback second and third, support every person whose name ended up on the credit crawl just because they worked hard so we have something to play. The biggest and higher form of gratitude you'll get are these words:

Thank you for playing our game.

 

[NotGodlike]

Market-wise, many fall for the Day 1 release and that's where most of the problems lie. Whether the order stockpile didn't expect an overflow of customers, or the system going down or even the one issue that most people fall victim to, the game being bugged. I used to be one of them who had to get my copy before the rush and I stopped doing that since then. Now you got DLC that should've been from the start and that's like more money out your pockets just because of being a 'Firsty'. We pay hundreds for a premiere box edition of the same game that originally came out in 1992 and we just only needed the game. There's no honor in preordering either if the stock isn't there so again, it's a waste.
I'd rather get the same game later on down the line with everything included. And hey, I don't mind emulation to get it either. I feel for those who put their heart, soul and guts into these projects because they love the series as much as we do and I'm not about to blame them for giving all the energy they had into bringing it back in hopes the series could finally be concluded.

The inevitable and dire consequences of Oblivion horse armor

 

[gwardojones]

Unfortunately this is the same reason Tron could've not seen the light of day and was denied any awards as the use of computing was "cheating". Computing related media was ignored and passed on by these types till 15 or so years ago, unless it was related to physical products, computers, laptops phones. They weren't interested in software so much till recent years.

It's too many business types overseeing products made by creative types that use technical skills to make their creativity a reality. Computer science types love open source and in all honesty that mindset is why we get so much entertainment value for arguably so little compared to all other forms of entertainment.

It's been argued by business alumni for years, especially the bottom line-marketing focused ones, that we've been paying too little all this time, and they've been saying this crap since it became a billion dollar industry that makes more money than TV and movies.

They were nowhere to be seen before Halo 3 caused movies to do poorly the few weeks around halo 3's release.

They've been trying to bleed consumers dry since they all started infiltrating gaming companies.

In computing for example, we essentially need "scrum leaders" to shield the programmers from angry, hostile and all round unreasonable business alumni that are tyring to get products out on time and to make things reach marketing hype that they make up. Intels current woes are in fact in line with ridiculous marketing claims that their marketing people make, of which, some of these types lost their jobs during the layoffs.

The video game industry is starting to become in line with the mainstream tech companies, squeeze every penny out of us as possible, and tell us to smile whilst we get ripped off.

I'm disappointed to see it, but it's going to become the norm as gaming makes too much money now, and attracts pure opportunists that would water down alcohol and sell it back to us as light beer.

You'd be surprised why law modules are in certain business degrees, it's because of their tendency to exploit and mislead. Business people are thought to care about profit and clean money trails. If you make lots of money, they will come for you and have you act in accordance to all other multi million or billion dollar corporations.

To put a long story short, money types have become the advisors and consultants of all the programming teams in all companies. it's gone from wanting us to get a hundred hours out of a $59.99 game to a 100 hours of copy paste, unfinished garbage with a season pass 3 day early $150 price tag with zero replayablility. Slice up the cake and sell it back to us.

I personally wouldn't go into game development for this reason.

This is why I'm so confused about people saying we should be paying more for games. They act like the companies selling them at an increased cost are poor devs struggling to keep the lights on, not multibillion dollar, international entertainment corporations.

In the early days of games, the price in the US was often $60 (sometimes more) because of the cost of cartridges and chips, not because "we're spoiled" as fans of gaming. Those developers were often charging the necessary price to keep the lights on and to make enough to develop another game. Very few games sold copies in the millions. And because they weren't mass producing copies like today, the cost of manufacturing was more expensive, hence the price point. These days, selling anything under five million copies is considered as "not meeting expectations."

Now we have Nintendo trying to increase that price, as if the rest of the industry isn't going to move in that direction AND further increase it. Dev teams are bloated, the companies copy-paste the same schlock over and over and are actively and outwardly hostile to their own consumer base.

As far as I'm concerned, there is never a good reason to defend a corporation. Get what you want as a consumer. If a company won't give it to you, go to someone who will.

 

[The Missing Link]

Rules and Ethics are important. Without them there is no trust.
The Video Game Industry expects rules and ethics from consumers while being unaccountable for similar standards.
Their priority has never been ethics, but greed.

Corps are all greedy, I stopped giving them the benefit of the doubt, money is the only thing on their mind. Thats why most games nowadays are half working online games, or AAA games which have a ton of day 1 bugs because it was rushed or some other nonsense.

 

[Krazy Kat]

today video games to produce single game it require 4-7 years
old ps2 era it just release per season
that is why no game for ps5

 

[Moloch]

Corps are all greedy, I stopped giving them the benefit of the doubt, money is the only thing on their mind. Thats why most games nowadays are half working online games, or AAA games which have a ton of day 1 bugs because it was rushed or some other nonsense.

Agree (95%). :-) Although many indeed so, due to lack of standards and regulations, I am not sure that we can say that all corporations engage on unethical practices in service of greed. A profitable company does not always mean being a greedy company, and vice-versa. Greed is some sort of myopia, a short-term thinking, that can lead, actually, to very bad outcomes.
It does not have to be this way. For example, as many know back in the 1980's, Atari, despite practically holding a monopoly, prioritised greed in detriment of quality. They missed many opportunities. Furthermore, because their arrogance, they despised new companies with new ideas and missed important strategic alliances. And we know what happened to them after that.
But nothing would have changed if consumers would keep buying their products: their over-rehashed (what would be considered back then) AAA games, lacking creativity and innovation, their consoles with crappy sound and visuals quality, and so on.
It's important to say also that these things are often coming from the corporate departments these companies, CEOs and directors with no vision, only considering plain and short-term financial gains, and not from the creative minds, the actual developers and dreamers - who are also often exploited by those same fat corporations. The good salaries and bonuses go to the bosses, while lower-in-chain-of-command workers and consumers get xxx behind.

 

[DanCalibur]

They won the battle on the day they convinced us that copying something is a crime.