- cross-posted to:
- games@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- games@lemmy.world
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It’s not “surge”, it’s not “dynamic”, it’s not “personalized” pricing… It’s price gouging. Look forward to paying more for games during peak times and months. It’s never enough for these greedy giant corporations.
I might be part of the problem. I bought a PS5 years ago, thinking GTA6 was close to being released.
Turns out no.
But what I’ve discovered is that with how the gaming industry has gone, I don’t see any need to buy games anymore.
I’m sick of games being an online focused experience, which requires subscription costs.
I’m sick of every game needing a multiple deluxe collectors editions that are the only way to play the full game, but cost $200 each and come with cheap plastic junk “collectables” to justify the cost.
“But you won’t get the super rare coin and lapel pin if you don’t get the collectors edition!”
“Thats fine. Just sell me the full game at $60.”
“The full game requires the collectors edition. But it comes with this lapen pin and rare coin!”
“How many copies of the collectors edition are there?”
“About 2 million.”
“So, not exactly rare, is it?”
Then I will continue my 20 year Sony boycott.
What was it that initially sent you down that path?
Steam and PC gaming if anything. That and changing life priorities in my 30s and 40s. GoG and epic too. Between them I have almost 1000 games I didn’t pay for. Combined with hundreds on steam from humble etc. I probably spend more time trying to decide what to play than playing it.
Valve is also the only company out of these big gaming companies who do lot of Open Source (working on it and funding other projects) and care about Linux. It maybe coincidental, but these care and goals align with my personal interests. No other company in the gaming industry does that to this extend, plus its an open platform. And being a private company brings also lot of freedom to not listen to shareholders.
The only thing is, that Steam itself is not Open Source… and the uncertainty what will happen if one day Gabe will no longer control…
That last note. Ughhh… Don’t put fear in my heart. Every generation it’s “all you have to do to come out on top is not step on your own dick” and every generation these massive companies manage to find at least one way to fuck up spectacularly. Steam ISN’T just doing nothing, but even if they did, it would be a lot better than most of the major players most of the time
Not the person you asked, but for me:
- The music CD rootkit
- removing OtherOS from the PlayStation 3
- trying to push various proprietary formats like MemoryStick and MiniDisc
- DRM in ATRAC3
- etc.
Take your pick!
Omg their stupid ass 4x normal price proprietary memory sticks lmao
Trying to only establish proprietary media in the past, mostly ignoring open standards.
Oops I didn’t fully read, you got it ♥️
I’m still pissed about the rootkit scandal. That was 21 years ago now, and I haven’t spent a penny on Sony products since.
Ugh God. I remember that “Magic Gate” bullshit when the PSP launched. They started a trend with the Walkman and they’re trying to get lightning to strike twice. Never could do it though. Good.
Those greedy assholes need to engineer and innovate in other areas.
Don’t buy anything from Sony, got it
I wonder why steam is so successful
It’s almost as though Valve provides a valuable service and respects their customers. Rare traits in the corporate world. Answering to a board of directors is a hell of a lot easier than answering to shareholders.
Enshitification hasn’t struck there…yet.
Doesn’t valve also do this for different regions?
They do but that’s regional pricing, meaning that basically if the median income of a country is lower, game prices are lower as well. According to the article, that you apparently did not read, Sony is showing different prices (up to 18% lower in some cases) to different users. I take that to mean that the geographical position of the users could be the same.
Yeah I misunderstood the article
Yeah I’m testing out dynamic buying. If it’s too expensive I don’t buy it.
I’ve been doing that for years 🏴☠️
I’ve been going back to all the previous generation games I didn’t play since they’re all very easy to access these days in various forms!
GOG 💪
That’s nice…
Meanwhile, I am testing piracy: one game - same price on my private torrent tracker.
the PS4 can be jailbroken with a €4 disc from aliexpress nowadays, and it has a great catalog of games. slap a 1tb external hdd on it, download games from archive.org, presto
Intriguing…
this will do the trick, scroll down to the product recommendations and you might find an even cheaper listing
In some cases the ps5 can as well but only older firmwares have the full chain of exploits. That said you can run game backups and if you get an old enough firmware you can even install Linux and run steam games
true, the only issue i see is that newly released games might have higher firmware requirements. the ps4 is de-facto end-of-life, no need to put much thought into modding that
Might have to snag a used PS4 now…
probably not a bad idea :) ps3/xbox360 are also totally worth it and easy to crack, if you have one lying around or are on a budget. my xbox360 is rocking ~120 games on 1tb (including xbox classic games), more than i could ever play in a lifetime
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exploits are getting fixed over time 🤷♂️ check out modded warfare on youtube if you want to learn more
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The dynamic pricing will not affect my static boycott.
Dynamic pricing = unbridled greed
Fuck dynamic pricing, anyone even considering it should be jailed.
So tired, so tired of these ultra rich finding new and creative ways of squeezing the plebs and we just, again, let them
🏴☠️ might be the answer to this conundrum
Next up: highly personalised dynamic pricing by analyzing your bank account, payment behaviour, your age, gender, location, your app and website interaction patterns, the color of your shit, the time spend on digital media and breathing, your credit score, your biometric data, whether you are white or a terrorist, your political voting behaviour, the number of hairs you have, your likely age of death, your medical and mental health history, your probability of being captivated by addictive patterns anf gambling mechanics, and maybe even your game collection, to maximize squeezing each and every last penny of your barely or even non-existent disposable income.
Well, the only game I was looking forward to from them was Ghost of Yotei, budt since they killed the PC port for whatever reason, i don’t even want to buy anything
Man people like slop games. No wonder they keep pumping them out.
Are you suggesting Ghost of Yotei is a “slop game”?
I would really love to know what isnt a slop game if that game is one
I have no idea what you are trying to say
If you played first Horizon but thought the second was a boring version of the first, that’s how Ghost of Yotei was for me. Assassins Creed Valhalla too. It’s like everything is the same game.
The next game from the Returnal devs will be released soon. Now that is something that sounds exciting! Returnal was amazing! I hope they port to PC.
I’m not sure I follow the dynamic pricing explanation. This article shows evidence of A/B price testing with different sized discounts, but not specifically dynamic pricing. It seems to be regional at most. If I’m missing anything let me know.
Exactly what i was thinking. A/B testin is the best way to get data.
What worries me more is what they are going to do with that data and if it will lead to predatory business model or not.
It absolutely will be used in the most shitty predatory way. They’re not going to simply delete the data and most digital marketplaces are excited at the prospect of dynamic pricing.
Yes, predatory use is what i fear.
What i can gather from the article at the moment they are testing what is the percentage they can discount the game and make most profit still from it. I dont inherently see any proof they are aiming for full dynamic pricing.
If they give for group A, 50% discount and make 1000 sales from 70€ game they make 35 000€.
But if they give group B, 25% discount from 70€ game they make the same 35 000€ with only 667 sales.
Then they have group C as a control. If the control group will make as much money as the other groups they know for sure discounts are not good busines.
Simple so far.
After the initial numbers they most likely will follow the retention. If i were there i would follow each group weekly and take a note how much money each group generates. At this time it would be best that each group gets the same discounts and adds etc. My hypotesis would be that people who buy only games from big discounts are more unlikely to buy games at full price. Meaning that even if there were more sales there would be less income and the customers have lower CLV. It does not mean they are bad customers per se, but it would mean they are not the core customer group they should focus their effort on.
If they are doing what they are doing to figure out their audience really is, this is not predatory. A/B testing is unfortunaly the best way test it, and to company as big as Sony, the data they collect is unmeasurable in value. Everyone of us had been part if some companys A/B test at some point. Adds, news site headers, youtube videos, hell even telemarketing calls do this all the time.
Im not saying they are not looking into to dynamic pricing, but with what information the article gave me i cant say that they are.
Sorry for the long text. I wanted just to justify why i dont see this for a reason to immediadly jump in to conclusion that Sony is trying to screw everybody up.
Being transparent about stable prices without shady experiments is the first step of trust. Years ago Steam got rid of dynamic prices during sales, where prices during sales for games would change. While not exactly the same thing as Sony does, its still good we got stable and reliable prices.
testing if there is a call to boycott or people swallow it I assume
Doesn’t matter if there is boycott or not. They are letting the cat out of the bag and it’s not going back in.
This is the start of normalizing surge pricing in gaming.
