It’s like buying a tiara for your fetus, before you even buy a crib.
ALSO, MICROTRANSACTIONS = DLC.
Good point, but Crowder can suck a dick.
I’m pretty sure you’re threatening him with a good time.
His affinity for homoeroticism and drag is even stronger than your average manosphere chud.
Oh, for sure. I forgot that was even him. In twenty or thirty years, this useful meme template will be the entirety of his legacy. I find that funny, so I’ll continue using the template.
We can keep the meme, but give him what he deserves - 30 seconds more in paint with the eraser tool keeps dickheads in the past 👍
Agreed. I will do that in the future.
Here’s a better template
Who is crowder and what did he do?
I’m not entirely sure what his deal is or why he’s famous, but I’ve seen a handful of videos that he’s posted to YouTube.
He’ll set up a little table like the one in the meme at a college campus, and his sign will read something divisive and clickbaity like “there are only two genders CHANGE MY MIND”
He basically invites people to debate him on camera, but he isn’t sincere in any way and the whole setup is just a mechanism for him to generate content of him owning the libs. For instance, he uses a system where there’s just one microphone between him and the other person, but he always holds the microphone and he can cut people off any time he wants. Any time he loses ground in an argument he’ll say something like “the point isn’t to be right; it’s to change my mind” or some dumb shit.
He’s a right wing guy with dumb opinions and he argues in bad faith. That’s pretty much his whole deal
There was a video that came out a while back of Crowder being abusive to his pregnant wife and acting like an all around entitled fucking man baby.
Then she divorced him and now Crowder wants No Fault Divorce to end because a married woman is property or some such shit.
Damn thank you for telling me will certainly avoid using that meme
failed comedian turned right wing grifter recently exposed as a raging misogynist, and now trying to bolster his reputation by doing high profile media campaigns he calls journalism but are really specious, salacious smear campaigns.
i mean he might be onto something with this blackrock thing but he’s probably the worst possible person to bring it to light.
I heard he is a nazi
Well fuck me. I always thought that was Tom Hanks. No idea who “Crowder” is.
Some chud right wing grifter who has terrible debate skills yet positions himself as your typical “common sense” thinker. He used to be the voice of Brain on Arthur. He’s Canadian but larps as if he’s a red blooded American. He’s also a domestic abuser. Nice guy.
Tell us how you feel about Star Citizen.
Actually gotten good recently.
Ok but actually? I’m an original backer with nothing but the original dinky ship and I’m still waiting for a game worth playing for the money I already spent. Haven’t looked in a year or two.
Is squadron 42 even playable end to end yet?
I’m not the one who said it’s good so can’t comment on that part, but sq42 is supposedly feature complete and in the final polishing phase atm.
So the answer is “no”.
Same as always.
I don’t even play the game man, just reporting the news. No need to be a jerk about it.
Not being a jerk, just clarifying that the game that was promised 11 years ago doesn’t exist, and won’t exist for some time.
Marks have been saying this for literally over a decade.
With my penis.
It has DLC?
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Is your name ironic?
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Nah.
But but but… Your username!
Yeah, it was a mistake. Or, like, aspirational.
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Holy shit you’re a psychopath.
Wanting people to be punished for horrible things they did? That’s psychopathy, now?
You realize that there are poor souls out there who have spent their life savings on that piece of shit, right? Now, here comes the best part: the part where YOU tell me that those people don’t deserve sympathy. They chose to get scammed, they’re suckers, they deserve what they got for speculating on fake starships, etc.
Which one of us has empathy? Which one of us is pointing the finger at the actual criminals?
the part where you tell me
I don’t have to tell you shit. You’re a psychopath who’s clearly beyond reason. You can’t be helped.
Care to give me a list of other criminals and villains who you think shouldn’t be punished?
I’m fascinated by this through-the-looking-glass mentality you have, where wanting vicious and destructive criminals to be punished is evidence of psychopathy.
Namaste the fuck away from you.
I just see this as you continuing to defend the actual psychopaths, in the situation. Let me try to make this clearer, for you:
The scammers who sell pretend starships have been happily doing so for YEARS, by now. They know about the stories of people compulsively spending thousands of dollars on their bullshit. They know there are people out there, who have had to break down and tell their spouses “I spent the kids’ college fund on a bunch of in-game starships…BUT HONEY, WE’LL BE ABLE TO FLIP THEM FOR TEN TIMES WHAT I INVESTED! WHY ARE YOU CRYING?”
That shit has happened. To real people. And the asshole scammers absolutely know about it. And they DO NOT CARE, AT ALL. That’s what psychopathy is. They calmly and happily continue to spend those people’s hard-earned dollars. Not on the game. Not investing it back into the game. Oh, no. If they had been using all that fucking money to develop the game, it would have come out years and years ago.
They’re funding their own investments, their own lavish lifestyles, their own egomaniacal satisfaction. They will never feel any guilt about what they’re doing, because they don’t feel guilt. Again: they are actual psychopaths.
The only way to make them feel anything negative about what they’ve done would be to imprison them, in that horrible place in the desert, where they can only see a tiny rectangle of sunlight, and barely have enough space to stretch to their full height. They won’t ever feel bad about the pain they caused other people. They can’t. They would only ever feel sorry for themselves. But I want them to feel that pain.
I don’t see how you can disagree, knowing that most of their victims will NEVER be financially okay again, and the perpetrators of the scam are just freely living the good life. What passes for a concept of justice, inside your head?
How is it a scam?
Did I mention the fact that you can pay thousands of real-world dollars for a not-real spaceship?
Do you need any other fucking definition of a scam?
That’s what’s called a microtransaction. Sure, the prices are insane, but that doesn’t make it a scam.
Micro transactions in games are scams by default.
Not by definition, at least
noun - a fraudulent or deceptive act or operation
If you design a game with psychologists to maximize serotonin hits instead of gameplay and then charge money to keep getting a hit is, by definition, a deceptive act, and ergo – scam.
Because Steven Crowder doesn’t deserve to be a meme
Ya know, Calvin really has more in common with Crowder than you might think.
They obviously both childish. They’re fundamentally selfish beings. They have incredibly vivid imaginations, but they only ever use them to amuse themselves and reinforce their delusion that they’re the most important person. They believe themselves to be rebels against a banal and suffocating system, but in reality they’re just irritating little shits, constantly acting upon every rogue impulse of their raging ego and id, with no regard for how they’re making life hard for the people who have to live near them.
didn’t like crowder show is dick to all the bros at his work tho?
Imo, Calvin at least is an imaginative, creative individual with an imaginary tiger that frequently gives him shit for his flaws. Kids also notably grow through self absorbed phases while Crowder acts a similar way as an adult.
Calvin is also only six years old, so he has an excuse.
Man I really hate how right you are.
Basically, if he ever stops seeing Hobbes as a talking tiger, that’ll be the day he just turns into someone like Crowder. Hobbes is kind of a dick, too, but he’s Calvin’s conscience. He’s Calvin’s connection to empathy and vulnerability. When he wakes up one day, and just sees a lifeless stuffed toy, he’ll be a true monster.
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I thought we were going to use the Calvin and Hobbes template from now on?
Yeah. It’s a shame we still use this asshole for these meme templates out of habit, but he is definitely not ok.
Stop fucking buying fucking early access fucking games. Companies do shit like this because it’s profitable
If that was strictly true, I would agree, and I wouldn’t bother talking about it.
But it’s NOT strictly true. There are Early Access developers who actually use the model to get funds for developing games, within reasonable timescales, and without doing exploitative shit.
It’s important for Early Access to exist, because it’s a way for independent developers to exist, completely outside of any big business control. A truly independent developer never has to deal with corporate jackals, breathing down their necks, demanding that they add more microtransactions and gambling into the game. They can make games that are truly outside the mainstream genres, without having to justify themselves to traditional investors.
These are GOOD THINGS. If I truly believed every single Early Access developer was just a scammer, I wouldn’t bother saying any of this. I think Valve needs to get a handle on the system, rather than just letting it twist in the wind, the way they have been. There needs to be a time limit, before a game has to either be released, or else be cut off from further Early Access sales. They need to disallow DLC and other forms of microtransactions, within Early Access games. They need to establish rules about Early Access developers having connections with outside investors, and what exactly would be considered acceptable, within the system.
The developers who use the Early Access program the way it’s supposed to be used are not making massive profits from it. They are paying for the up-front development costs of a game, and hoping that it will turn out to be a big enough success that it will continue to be profitable, after development is complete.
When people do annoying, scam-adjacent shit like selling DLC content for an Early Access game, it fuels opinions like yours. It makes people throw their hands up and say “Early Access is all a scam.” And that fucking sucks. Because if it goes away, there’s no alternative but for indie developers to sign up with traditional corporate psychos, who always try to make games worse.
As an indie dev myself, I really appreciate this take. Spot on.
Same. We’re almost 5 years into an indie project and while the dream is to release as 1.0, the reality is, building games is really fucking hard and going early access brings about a more forgiving mindset from the consumer and enables our team to further invest in the polishing needed to feel good about calling it 1.0. If only we had the bank roll these AAA studios have, but we’re working with pennies and loads of passion to see our dream to fruition.
Good shit, dude. As a fellow indie struggler, I wish you luck!
Thank you! You too homie. One script at a time, one asset at a time… Keep that flame burning until the job is done ✊
I agree that Steam should regulate early access more. The best buyer’s policy in my opinion is to only buy games you know you’ll enjoy in their current state. Any future features are a bonus.
I had great success that way with Dave the Diver, Subnautica, and Satisfactory.
I’ve avoided buying Kerbal Space Program 2 despite 400 hrs on the original because it still feels like a cash grab with not enough content yet.
Weirdly, if you look at it from a purely price-per-hour-of-enjoyment perspective, the two all-time champions in my library are probably Vampire Survivors and Hot Dogs, Horseshoes & Hand Grenades.
You couldn’t pick two more different games, in virtually every aspect. One is a minimalist, top-down autoshooter game that established its own genre. It cost me 3 dollars in Early Access. It has come out of Early Access, with flying colors. I have spent 170 hours in it. It is a poster child for the “came out of Early Access as a huge hit” phenomenon.
The other is a VR-only firearms simulation sandbox game, with a whole bunch of different game modes, thousands of meticulously simulated weapons, and a wiener fixation. It entered Early Access in 2016, cost 20 dollars, and is still in Early Access. I have spend 502 hours in it, and it’s by far my most played VR game. It exemplifies a weird third-way philosophy, where a game is literally constantly updated, throughout the Early Access period, to the point that it really doesn’t matter how long it remains in Early Access, because anyone who even vaguely enjoys it has spent so much time in it, and gotten so much value from it that…well, it really doesn’t matter if it ever releases, in ANY state.
BeamNG.drive is another example of that sort of game. Because I’m a weirdo who plays weird sandbox games, it should be no surprise that I also fuck with that game. Although I didn’t pick it up until a couple months ago.
Just to piggyback off of this/give an example of good usage of early access: to me BG3 was great usage of early access. It stayed there for a long time and actually used the early access to get player feedback to improve the game. When the game finally released the only dlc they had was given for free to everyone who played early access, and it doesn’t really change the gameplay experience at all, it was only stuff like an art book and some references to their older game.
There have been many truly amazing early access games though that might not have been made without it (rimworld, factorio, etc)
So glad I got Factorio when it was in EA and before it shot up to twice the price! Incredible game though, I would have gladly paid full release price.
Nah there are actually good early access game (Palworld, and predecessor come to mind although predecessor is f2p) but one should use caution when buying Early access games
Holy shit, someone mentioned predecessor on lemmy? Goddamn.
Palworld is pretty good but it is so fucking buggy it actually makes me want to stop playing sometimes and I feel a lot of resentment for having paid for such trash. It will definitely make me more careful to check bug reports and gameplay videos before investing more time and energy into a game in the future.
Bugs I have found so far include:
- Invaders getting stuck really far away from my base and never reaching the base
- Enemies tunneling through the floor and getting stuck there permanently
- Pals being hungry even though the feeder has plenty of food (had to move my feeder to fix it, but still annoying)
- Pals randomly floating in midair and getting stuck there
- Pals getting stuck at the edge of my base and having to pick them up to get them unstuck
- Escape button (in menus) being super flaky (have to press it twice sometimes)
- Click to attack (with melee weapon) sometimes doesn’t work, have to try pressing random buttons to fix it
- Graphics glitches with the pal sphere that I’m holding - randomly flashes between blue and green, so I can’t tell which one I’m about to throw
Controls also suck bigtime. I still keep accidentally throwing pal spheres with Q and I really suck at using 1/3 to switch between pals. They should make it so you have to left click to throw the pal sphere. Should also maybe allow alternative ways of selecting left/right for pals and in menus, other than 1/3. Maybe Ctrl+scroll or something, idk
It also is taking fucking forever to get a gun. I am level 17 and so far do not feel like it’s “Pokemon with guns” at all. I have a shitty spear which is the most powerful melee weapon at my level, yet does almost no damage to level 18+, and a semi-shitty crossbow which is super annoying to get the arrows for (arrows don’t drop from enemies and the grind to manufacture them is super boring)
Get a base and put a fixy in a pen. They drop arrows spheres and coins. No need to farm the arrows. Also lvl 17 is like 3hours of game time Max. So quite early in the game
Meanwhile, ConcernedApe is out there quietly adding more and more free features to an eight year old game: Stardew Valley. All while working on a completely new title that will release… eh, eventually.
I have no issue with people shipping unfinished products, as long as they’re transparent about it. But using it as a way to lower expectations for a buggy “final” product, while charging more for the updates, is just crummy. At least bundle it in, turn off “early access”, and raise the price appropriately. If it has DLC, the core game is “done” in my book.
Edit: thanks for the robust conversation on this thread.
I’ll add this clarification: clearly there are outliers and exceptions to all this. It’s entirely possible to have something incomplete, and still be worth treating like a full release, DLC and all.
To me, I think the key dividing line is determined by the overall “buginess” or “playability” of the product. If something has broken mechanics or is full of game-destroying bugs, and it negatively impacts the overall fun factor, that’s the case I’m talking about here. As a game’s main job is to package joy for other people, it’s pretty easy to see how a developer or publisher is just seeking a payday at your expense.
Same for Wube and Factorio, and Re-Logic and Terraria. I think we’re on the 8th “final patch” for Terraria.
Terraria is a truly extreme case, the developers truly just can’t stop making updates.
Factorio isn’t amazing in this way, but the developers have a lot of integrity - they delivered their plans for 1.0, released some good extra updates, continue fixing bugs, and went to work developing paid DLC. I do suppose the DLC will come with a major update to the base game, but that’s also because they found they needed to make changes and additions for the expansion.
Motion Twin are finally wrapping up the updates of Dead Cells after the 35th (!) one. While they’re working on a board game and an animated series. Now, granted, they released several paid DLCs, but that didn’t stop them from pumping out free updates with content in between them
I’ll give them a pass. The game has been very playable at nearly every pre-release right up through the present. Granted, for a while there was no mid or late game, but what was on offer was relatively bug free and fun.
Minecraft has been going on this model for over a decade, too.
And people give it shit for some reason, there’s always people claiming the latest update ruined the game. MY GUY, you can literally choose what version of the game you want to play from within the launcher. Which is another underrated feature more games should have. Especially like minecraft does it.
Capitalism makes great games.
people make games. capitalist extract wealth from the working class.
People give companies money for games they want to buy.
I’m so hyped for the new stardew valley update. I’ll absolutely be buying the haunted chocalatier as well.
I often play a game called Sailwind. Very relaxing, but impressively deep sailing sim. It’s been early access for a couple of years, but the (solo-)dev is active, new features are added all the time. If he would release a paid, cosmetic dlc: I’d buy it in a heartbeat. I think it would be nicer than to “get him a coffee” or sub to his patreon.
What I’m trying to say is: not all early access is bad, not all paid dlc is plain greed. And the combo is not necessarily toxic.
I’ll give you that. Someone up the thread mentioned Dead Cells, which is/was in the same category for a while. I’ll revise my premise a bit, thank you.
Stop using this fucking idiot for your memes, there’s alternatives if you need them, but this dude objectively sucks.
Who is it?
Stephen Crowder.
Y’all keep buyin that shit tho why would they stop
I used to be vehemently against EA games but there are some good ones. Project Zombiod for one. But a big part of the fun of that game is modding it. And the mod scene is expansive and quality, but I understand lots of people not wanting to mod games.
What pisses me off more is “Released” games like RimWorld that are broken as vanilla and require modding to work properly. That shit needs to stay in EA.
Use Calvin and Hobbes template or something like this instead
Like I said before, I forgot who that dipshit even was, especially since the template for the meme is so incredibly low-resolution. Hilariously, his actual dipshit sign looked so stupid that I thought it was a fake, when I saw it in the image search, when I went to get the blank one.
He’s a fucking clown, beyond all description.
Holy shit. I’ve always seen this thing pretty low res, never looked closely, and thought that was billy eichner doing a bit from his on the street show or something!
For real. Now that I realize who it is, I can’t see anything but how punchable his fucking smirking face is.
Crowder, Shapiro and Kirk somehow all have the most punchable faces on the planet. Their personalities sure don’t help them.
Krik always looked like he had to cobble together a working head, from a skull and a face that weren’t sized to fit each other. That has been true, the whole time. Even before those memes where his face is really tiny. Those memes just pointed the situation out, in stark clarity.
Yikes, I’d never saw the original photo before now. What a dick.
Fuck that bigot
Someone needs to make a new template with that bigot photoshoped out
Found it on the Internet
Is that Aflleck? 😂
Who is that? I dunno if I’ve ever seen the original and don’t recognize the person
Stephen Crowder, he’s a right winger YouTuber.
It’s from a series where he’d set up a table like this at a university with a right-wing opinion on the front and debate students over it.
And by “debate”, they mean “talk over the other person, make a thousand shitty arguments a minute, and call it a win when the other person gets frustrated and walks away”
A spouse-abusing right-winger. That’s the key detail at this point.
In case anybody else is curious, Stephen Crowder is not the same person as David Crowder (stage name, Crowder), a popular Christian musician.
I mean, do that, and they’ll just stop labeling the games as early access while still being in the same unfinished state, meaning people can’t even decide if they want to avoid a game or not based on that label.
So they’ll have to avoid games based on what people say about them, and nobody will be able to hide behind the excuse of “but it’s still in Early Access, maaaan.”
Steam’s refund system is really good. I say get rid of Early Access and let every game stand on an absolutely equal footing, with no excuses anywhere in sight, for anybody. No privileged “oooh, but you don’t get to judge this game yet” roped-off section for people to play shell-games with.
Start selling your game any time you want, in any state you want. But beware the wrath of the consumer. That’s fair.
EDIT: I realize this could seemingly contradict another comment I just made, where I defended the Early Access program, as a vital means of securing funds for independent developers. To be clear, I think that the function of Early Access should essentially remain, but not be labeled, in any default way.
I think all the games should be on the store, all the time, any time. And it should be up to each developer to make their case, on their own, as to why the customer should be willing to spend money on their product.
Then companies could just say that it’s not finished, add micro transactions and have the same thing as before except without the little early access box.
That’s why I do have some complex feelings about how Early Access should be. I think it’s highly necessary for it to exist, in order to fund truly independent developers, so games that fall outside the mainstream marketable sludge can be created. On the other hand, yeah, there are real pitfalls and attractive nuisance situations, associated with it.
As I said in another comment, I think one option would be to just completely remove all labels and categories from the store. If a game is Early Access, let the game’s own developers say so, in the description. Make the case directly, that this is a game that is still in development. No special, “official” box that says “you should judge this game more favorably, because it’s not finished.” Make the developer tell everyone that situation themselves, in their own words.
Then, if people play the game and realize it’s shitty, they can use the refund system. And if they play for longer than the refund system will allow, then they can tell everyone that the game sucks, and it should be avoided.
That way, the access to early funding remains, but nobody is propped up by an artificial notion of Early Access-ness.
For sale: baby tiara, never worn.
Don’t call it stillborn, call it vaporware.
You know that would only lead to more games being published as ‘a finished product’ eventhough they really are not. It would make the problem worse, not better.
“early access” is just an expectations management thing that lets companies release buggy shit and hide behind the “its in beta” argument.
Beta testing/piloting/early access is a real, legitimately valuable, strategy that allows devs to get real-world user feedback so they can make their finished product better, but the way its being used by big companies and game studios is a perversion of the initial intent.
You may be wrong though. It might not make it worse. Think of all of the push-back and review bombs that happen when companies release finished products that are buggy af. Cyberpunk is an example of this. They got so much shit, rightfully so, at launch.
Exactly. Like I’ve said in various comments in this thread, I have complex feelings about how the situation could actually be fixed. Basically, it comes down to two options:
A. Valve should start to actually regulate the Early Access program. Add rules about when and how DLC can be added (basically never, in Early Access), how long a product can stay in Early Access (someone mentioned the possibility of a ‘long-term early access’ category being established). Add a separate grade system for people to rank how well the game is doing, in terms of customer’s satisfaction, in terms of progress toward a finished product. I would also suggest that forced monetary transparency might be a good thing to add, as a requirement for Early Access participation. If the storefront page openly displayed the amount of revenue the game has generated, since coming to Early Access, it would help to instantly make some judgments about the whole product. If the game in question is a dinky 2D platformer, but it has raised $800,000 over 8 years, I’m gonna be questioning why it hasn’t just been completed, at this point.
B. Valve could also remove the entire Early Access label, and just let anyone start selling anything, in any state of completion, and simply make their own case for why people should buy it. If the game is basically an Early Access game, but the game’s description doesn’t make that clear, people will refund the game and shit-talk them, all over the internet. If they make a good case, in their own description and trailers and other media, then people may decide “I will fund this thing, based on those merits.” The benefit would be the lack of the “its in beta” label, for people to hide behind. If devs just had to make their own pitch, in their own words, people would be more likely to judge that pitch, with an appropriately critical eye.
I would consider selling something like a soundtrack acceptable but no game content dlc, absolutely.
Fuck that. Why is that acceptable? A soundtrack is a basic part of a game. You’re so used to paying for extra shit that you forgot that options like those are part of the game that you paid for from non bullshit companies.
OST in a straight audio format has never been part of buying the game unless you ripped the files yourself. Be more entitled.
Be more entitled
Lol, whatever. Keep paying for stupid shit I guess. The studios definitely know their market.
I don’t pay for it, my man. If anyone making video game music was talented they’d be making actual music.
Define “actual music”. Does it become real music when it’s part of a movie sound track? Or when it’s played on pop radio stations? When it gets performed by middle schoolers in band classes? When the London Philharmonic performs it? When it reaches Billboard 100? When the artist wins a grammy? Do you need to be in ASCAP to make music? I’m a little confused as to what would differentiate music made for digital entertainment from any other music.
dang, honestly one of the worst takes I’ve seen this year
Right? There are so many OST for games that are absolutely amazing. It’s “real” music whatever that was supposed to mean.
exactly. The first thing that came to my mind was Hollow Knight OST, if it’s not “real” then I guess I must’ve imagined how much it slaps
You’re just dead wrong for that. You can’t be serious?
You don’t know shit about how remuneration for composers works, huh.
Are you trying to imply that the only way a game music composer can make money is if the game studio sells you their music as dlc? So all the games without dlc soundtracks just got their music off some hobo in an alley and nobody got paid?
🤡
I’m not a programmer or a gamer (or a musician), just curious. What does make it different?
They get paid for their work, obviously, but often a significant portion of their ongoing pay is based on soundtrack sales, whether physical or digital.
For one example, you can look into how Id screwed over Mick Gordon with the doom eternal OST, but it’s a long and frustrating read.
Also also: can we make it that developers have only one Early Access game at a time. Finish the game before moving on to the next one, or abandon it and release it without the EA label.
YES! That’s maybe the most important point I could make, but I forgot to make it.
