Disclaimer: The word “developers” are used in the context of game publishers, not the actual devs that code up the game. It is more about the generals than the footsoldiers.
Lets start this rant with a quote from one of my previous post:
Cyberpunk 2077 is really on the verge of falling over the hype cliff these days
And it fell…
With a loud thud…
More than CD Projekt RED and its employees, I am sure many gamers feel extremely emotional about it, because this company was the poster boy of consumer-friendliness in the now otherwise mostly anti-consumer video game industry. If this company could do what it did, whom can we use as an example on our side?
For some years now, many AAA games have had one or more of these issues:
- Always online single player
- Microtransactions/ grindfest, Lootboxes (outright gambling)
- Performance impacting DRM, redundant launcher apps
- Unfinished game at launch, gigabytes of day 0 patch
- Campaign endings hidden behind DLC
- Refund policy
Added to that are the more dire examples of where the developers lie about features which are not available at launch, was meant to be a DLC, or just beyond the scope of original design. And no, redemption is not a justification, dear No Man’s Sky fanboys, when the issues are about design itself and dishonesty, rather than glitches and bugs.
We can all blame the developers for this mess, but there is another thing which puts the blame on the consumers rather than devs. And that is the practice of “pre-order”.
How much more anti-consumer can it get, when you spend money on a product without even trying it out, just on the basis of “promise”? How can a gamer, irrespective of financial ability, just blindly give money away to a for-profit organization?
Who is responsible for this mess? The one implementing the scam or the one letting the scam be implemented?
All of the above are anti-consumer practices. Even then gamers still pre-order from the same companies that do them! Even buying the game at launch from such developers, without any incentives like free DLC as such, probably should be avoided. By buying it at full price we are supporting these tactics. We are ensuring that they make the maximum profit without even a rap on the knuckles that hey, don’t do this next time. We could have waited for a year and bought at 50% discount just to teach them a lesson.
Today CDPR says their costs are overcome with just the pre-order sales. To be fair, they seem to be worried about their reputation and will probably fix this mess. But it is not about CDPR alone.
It is because of some gamers who pre-order, that we get unfinished products from so many AAA companies.
Always online single player
Some companies justify that always online is required to prevent piracy. But the games get pirated anyway, then what is the point? When the handshake happens in online mode, a new code is generated. We already have offline 2-Factor Auth apps that emit rolling codes to do the job, then why can’t we use them instead? Such 2FA apps are relied upon by thousands of tech companies everyday, where stakes are far higher than a video game. Rockstar Games, one of the developers in context, had a very good implementation of offline activation system in GTA 4, where you could activate the game from another PC altogether, after installing the game in one PC through the discs. That also generated a code which used a similar approach. So this is not something new, it is already tested and in wide practice today. I hope Rockstar Games does not think that their video game is worth more protecting than the security of multi-billion dollar software industry.
Hitman 2 is another example. They have 2 profiles – online and offline. The profiles are not inter-compatible, which is fine. But why put the ranking and XP system in the single player campaign mode behind online? Older Hitman games could rank you a Silent Assassin just from your stats in the level; it does not need to connect to any server. I am not picking challenge from a leaderboard, neither do I want to upload my score. So no reason why this cannot be available in offline mode.
Micro-transactions and loot-boxes
To “force” gamers into spending more than the $60 already spent on the retail price, games are being designed to be grindfest, and then they “charge” some money to reduce the grind. And there are evidently suckers for such games, who buy same iteration every year and then even more in lootboxes. Probably these people have never earned a penny in their life yet on their own.
To be honest, I am not much into any of EA Sports titles for a long time now. From the last 15+ years or so, their FIFA games have just been a roster update without significant improvement in design. All these games on a yearly release cycle cannot have significant improvement anyway. However, EA Sports goes too far with micro-transactions and loot-boxes. They are also facing a big fine in Netherlands and Canada as per the recent news.
One franchise that should be applauded here is WRC series. It is also on a yearly cycle, but unlike EA Sports they do not have micro-transactions or lootboxes. So being on a yearly cycle cannot be a justification for these.
DRM and launcher apps
Again, justification for these are anti-piracy, but again the question is, does it solve the problem? Rockstar Games has its launcher and always online single player. Can they confirm GTA 5 was not cracked? Assassin’s Creed Origins has a Denuvo infested exe, which is found to make the game stutter irritatingly. It also needs Ubisoft launcher. Can Ubisoft confirm that Assassin’s Creed Origins have not been cracked?
To ensure a game is not pirated, instead of implementing cost-effective measures, they bloat the gamer’s PC with unwanted software and infected exe. To me, a DRM infested exe is same as a virus. If not for the nexus between these companies and antivirus products, which just run largely on supervised algorithms (i.e. certain signatures are predefined to be virus and others not), an antivirus product using unsupervised algorithm would have flagged the Denuvo infested exe as a virus.
Launcher Apps are often the only reason a game does not work on Linux. It is a big deal for many people, because a video game cannot have a specific OS as a requirement. Many games run perfectly on Linux, with the recent advancements in Steam Proton/ Vulkan APIs. Nvidia/ AMD, the GPU makers, also actively support Linux by launching updated drivers and Vulkan support. Doom Eternal had introduced a DRM infested exe that broke on Linux. (The publishers were quick to remove it though.) That incident highlighted how Linux refused to run an executable with instructions that should not escape user space; it is an OS that has earned respect. Not to mention numerous examples of when Windows itself broke due to OS updates.
Launcher Apps have redundant dependency on the game servers, and they also need to be updated often involuntarily. (This is a complain applicable to Steam too, which is a launcher by definition, but Steam works in offline mode flawlessly if the game supports it. So the onus is on the game developer here.) Another issue is the game updates. The launcher may force the game to update to a version which runs unstable on a PC with old hardware. The least these launchers could do is to make any update (game/ client) optional.
Is there another hidden agenda of collecting user data, now that we have seen that these tactics don’t actually prevent piracy?
Unfinished game, Day 0 patch
I remember GTA 5 PC Retail was 56 GB spread out into 7 DVDs. Once you passed the ordeal of installing the game by changing 7 discs one by one, the least you could expect is the game to immediately launch. But surprise! Once it activates the game, another 8 GB “patch” awaits you! Let this sink in – you bought physical copy of the game instead of a digital one. Why? Most probably because you don’t have a good internet connection (something true in India until 2014-15) to download the game instead. Otherwise, who uses a DVD drive these days anyway? The real reason is, that the developers did not finish the game before shipping, so they continue to work on it until the launch day, and just dump the new changes on the consumer. So that the consumer does not get to know that the game was unfinished. And this is exactly why day 0 patches are not optional.
This just means that the scope of the product was not calculated correctly. Someone in the management under-estimated the game complexity and does not have an idea of how software development works (games are software after all). But shareholders are breathing down your neck, so what to do? You ask for a day 0 patch, You promise all certification bodies that you will “fix” issues with a “day 0” patch, which invalidates the option of not wanting to download gigabytes of data in metered connections. This should have been an exception, but it has become the norm. If it is the norm, why do we even have retail versions? Everything can be digital right? As we anyway need to download that patch involuntarily.
Refund Policy and Digital vs Retail
Which brings us to the refund policy. Certain storefronts like the PlayStation do not refund a digitally purchased game if you start downloading it! How can you know whether you like the game or it runs smoothly in your system without playing it? And in order to play it, wont we first have to download? If there was a demo of the game, this policy might still hold by logic. But otherwise, the least we can have is the policy of Steam – as long as you have played less than 2 hours within first 14 days, you can ask for refund and they usually grant it no questions asked. It seems to be a good compromise.
Another issue is the difference in policy between digital and retail version. In some countries like Australia, they don’t distinguish between digital and retail versions. This should be the case everywhere. Both should be treated same, because both cost the same. And digital version is also “one” license like the retail one.
This is something that Steam should also consider, i.e. allowing trade of digital versions within the community – but that is another discussion.
Curse of the DLC
The original concept of Downloadable Content is actually good. You buy the base version of the game, and if you like it and want some more, then you buy the DLC. No point in putting all effort into base game for something that everyone may not like, and thereby increase base cost and timelines. Of course DLC should be additional content, rather than stuff which should already have been included in base version. Games like Skyrim did it brilliantly. Original game itself was huge, without cutting corners, and if one needed even more, then they had Dragonborn DLC to offer.
However, DLC soon became another money-making excuse, and games started having campaign endings in it. So you buy the base game, invest hours into it, but the game does not end, instead points you to a DLC you have to purchase extra. It is plain cheating. Hitman 2 for example, with all the praise it received, ended the story with 2 maps/ missions that were sold as separate DLC. In fact Hitman 2 purchase itself is a puzzle. It is designed to confuse the customer, whose money they need to survive. It is not acceptable and I hope they don’t do the same thing with upcoming Hitman 3.
Even in Cyberpunk 2077, some stuff seems to have been there originally but taken out later, maybe to put them back in a DLC? Only time will tell. For example, the skill tree is designed for 6 categories, but the middle slot in lower set is empty.
Stop pre-ordering video games
Consumers who bought the game should not be treated like pirates. If you are not able to prevent piracy, work on the design of software accordingly, instead of frustrating genuine buyers. No buyer deserves to have performance impacted, or always be online even when entire content is installed, or the need to download gigabytes only because the publisher screwed up with SDLC estimation. Games are software products, sold to consumer at a price, by for-profit organizations, who are not doing any favor to us by making it. They make it because we pay them for it.
But this payment should only be after the product is ready.
In no other industry do consumers “pre-order” something other than in the video game industry – they pre-order consoles, games, etc. Imagine someone pre-ordering a car based on the manufacturer’s reputation, but the car in a hurry to ship out of assembly line, comes with only driver’s seat and no AC or electronics. Because the car can run in this state, those things were not considered a priority. After some time, you are eligible for the “patches” at a service station “for free”. Would that be ok? Forget about this; a car will undergo thorough pre-delivery inspection before registration. So why grant exception to video game industry?
No for-profit company should be trusted with money before receiving the product, especially in an industry where crunch is common and management will find ways to cut corners. Especially if the company is listed where management only cares for reputation so that stock prices rise. What started as an exception have become the norm. Let us ensure we stop it now. Let Cyberpunk 2077 be the last such example ever.
Hello, new world! 