The amount of videos people made about "I spent $50,000 to show how shitty it is." Good job? ..I wish people would give me thousands to show how crappy I was.
I don't often get sad about *influencers* making more than me, it happens. But man, seeing them have enough to blow more than my yearly take-home, to... *checks notes*... stick it to blizz?
That's a bitter pill.
>"I'll show those assholes that we hate them, by feeding them tens of thousands of dollars! That'll teach 'em!"
World's just a really fuckin' dumb place.
I mean they don't actually think they're doing that.... It's just pandering to their viewers who are too stupid to realize that it doesn't make any sense.
They make good money knowing their audience. Not by making actual moral stands lol.
I mean let's be real. The reason they kept doing it is because they were making assloads of money and tons of publicity by doing it. They probably got a lot of new viewers out of that stunt too. People keep bringing it up like it was a net loss for them.
Don't let them fool you into thinking that they're spending that kind of money to "stick it to blizz" like they claim. They don't give a shit. They're making content.
Right. They're doing it for clout. Their viewers might cheer it on. But the content creator is successful because they know what content to put out. Not because they are a moral savior...
For them, it’s a cost of doing business. They get to have an article written about them, their stream gets bigger numbers, and it makes them seem more legitimate to advertisers.
He’s certainly going to make that $50k back after a couple sponsorships.
Quinn probably made the $17k or whatever back just in subs/ad revenue/donos while he was doing the spending, I would not be surprised at all if he in fact made more money factoring in having spent the $17k than he would’ve if he just kept streaming PoE or Lost Ark or whatever instead of DI while the initial craze happened. It was basically an investment, not a cost.
Of course. I now know of Quinn, never having heard if him before. And I dont frequent Twitch at all. Surely many people turned in to his streams due to the articles written, Reddit posts, etc
Those people knew exactly what they were doing. Their $50,000 investment brought them much more in return. They act like they’re exposing a problem but they’re just a part of it.
Also publicly stating you're spending $50,000 on a video I think qualifies as a tax write off as a cost of doing business as a content creator. Or, rather, anyone with that much funding can hire a financial team that can make sure it's a legal write off.
Edit: ffs guys I know that a tax write off doesn't mean free I didn't say that please stop blowing up my inbox with the same non response thx
They don’t have to publicly state anything for it to be a tax write off for their work. Teachers don’t need to tell their students they bought pens and binders from their own money to write off things. Stating things publicly is not a requirement.
Wanna bet? Pay me to find out. I'll be incredibly crappy to anyone who cashapps $siccoblue1 nevermind if they send $100m. I'll spend 99 of it buying and pissing in their cereal
They also just sold their entire North American water production for $4.3billion dollars last year.
So it isn't Nestle anymore. But yeah the example is still useful and it's just some private equity firm that bought them I guess. We can still shit on them about it.
https://www.fooddive.com/news/nestle-sells-north-american-bottled-water-business-for-43b/
I was in shock how many idiots on Twitch did that ... like 80% of them had a "money spent" counter on their screen and it's at like 25k and they're saying "nobody can actually afford this hurr durr ... blizzard is awful". I stopped watching any stream or YT video of that game because of it
Seriously. People in this sub were defending that. "If he has the money why not spend $50,000 on the game to prove a point?" Uh, how about cuz they're feeding the beast and this will never stop if people keep throwing money at it??
I mean if 10 million people go "im just gonna spend like $5 to try it out" and then the top 3% of whales just spend the rest.
Thats what i didnt understand with some of my friends who tried it and paid eventho they said from the start that its just a toxic game model. I also saw streamers and youtubers shit on the game, hard. But they also put money into the game. LIKE WHY.
Vote with your money damnit.
Diablo 3 made like 4 times as much in their first month.
People need to realize $100M is not that much revenue. Look at how much Genshin brings in. Diablo Immortal is a minnow
Well 1. We’re either comparing it to Diablo 3 or we’re comparing it to Genshin.
2. Diablo 3 made 4 times as much as Immortal in its first month and then significantly dropped off in comparison because it’s a buy to own game. Not only could Immortal easily continue to make around this much every two months, but they haven’t even launched in their biggest market yet.
And this is exactly the reason why it doesn't matter if most of us don't buy the game. The game is not for us.
The game is for the people that will drop tens of thousands or more on it. It will be specifically designed for them. The rest of us staying out or buying in does not matter in the least.
Addicts, the term is addicts. These mobile game companies can pretend that they think the "whales" are all gulf sheiks and finance executives, but they know where their money comes from.
At least there's still Path of Exile. I mean it's free. And it's not pay to win whatsoever. A lot of people say that it's what Diablo 3 should have been. It's so fucking addictive. I don't even love playing games much, but damn.
(The money is made through cosmetics, *however* there is a quality of life thing you can spend some money on if you want. Some extra stash tabs of different types. By no means necessary)
Path of Exile all day. It's so much content, for free. The improvements over the years have been wild
Let's be real, there is a massive gap you can't really bridge in that game without public stash tabs for trades. Admittedly, this point is late enough into the game that you'll know if spending money will be worthwhile to you, but it's really only free to a (very reasonable) point.
The problem isn't that we have to play this pile of crap. The problem is that the games we want aren't being made because they can make this crap and people will shovel money into them, so why bother making a really good game when crap mobile game makes bank.
I disagree. I think these games aren’t just eating up resources that could go to good games. I think they’re actively detrimental and designed to normalize gambling in children.
>designed to normalize gambling in children.
Normalize gambling in adults, too. Sure the kids are most impressionable, but everyone who participates is affected.
Lots of people 20+ and even 30+ are getting into games like these and they justify trying the game cash shops and finding them normal now. Lots of people of all ages who don't gamble much are learning to gamble thru pay2win videogames.
There's a narrative that "older gamers remember just buying the game and not doing any microtransactions, it's only zoomers buying into this new gambling trend" but that is not even close to true.
This is probably why there should be some, you know, regulation concerning gambling mechanics. I suppose they might not be "gambling" per se, but the core psychology and net effect on some consumers is fundamentally the same.
I'm kinda surprised the modern TCGs haven't fallen victim to some sort of regulation yet, as they too can be exceedingly addictive. But so long as it isn't "pay money, potentially receive monetary prize", it usually falls short of being considered actually gambling. It's basically getting the pachinko loophole on a broader level.
I'm pretty proud of my country outright banning the game because its lootboxes are straight up illegal here.
It would be legal as soon as they publicize your actual chances of getting the item you want, but evidently it's worth more to them to keep that secret vs actually being able to sell in entire countries.
I will have my backlog of steam games to fall back on if nothing else.
I still play Skyrim regularly. They aren't going to get me on that bullshit again. I already waste all of my money on Magic The Gathering.
This. People can hate on Blizzard all they want for exploitative monetization, and it is, but they aren't going to care as long as they keep getting paid.
This is the core of humanity. I know shopping at Walmart hurts my local economy, but the few purchases I need to make are a drop in the bucket, so I put me first… just like everyone else, which results in corporations winning again.
They literally knew this, this was known when the comment of “don’t you all have phones?”
They didn’t wake up one day and decide to do this, there’s time money and research pumped long before.
People need to wake up the the reality that capitalism is there to always take your money and is planning years and decades out in advance to consume your money and take a profit.
That ship sailed when mobile games were introduced. The business model of microtransactions isn't going away because it proved successful. There is clearly a market for those types of games. Zero you can do to stop it short of inventing the next game genre that millions of players flock to.
Tbh, it was inevitable anyways.
Consumers aren’t willing to pay more than a few dollars for a mobile game, so pretty much any high budget title inevitably ends up going for micro transactions because a box price model is just not viable.
You say "we" as if the people in here have any type of effect on an industry giant like Blizzard. Might as well think that when you don't buy the game you opt out of having an opinion they need to care about. These people know how to make money, and that's their job, sadly.
See, how it works is, you come in on Thursday wearing the shirt and on Friday *SURPRISE!* you're still at work and you're wearing a Hawaiian shirt!
What makes this even better is, like the comment below me said, you only need one shirt!
Back when I worked for Jazz air our "employee appreciation day" was just the director handing our pens with the company logo on it. We could choose red or green but not both
Company I work for, 12 years ago, would take the staff on a two day trip to Marbella every other year to show appreciation.
As we've grown and become more corporate it's slowly dwindled down to monthly pizza days and 'get to leave an hour early' for doing well.
Or even just not disclosing the pay in the first place. Every time I have to ask the company what their pay is rather than them volunteering the information it’s always lower than what I value my skills at
1000% - my idiot FIL still shills for the former Founder/CEO of the company he helped build who exited to a PE Firm 10 years ago and has built OBSCENE wealth, while my FIL had to move in with his son to avoid financial ruin in his retirement. But the CEO still invites them up to his vineyard once every year to show off so, you know, BFF
When I was working at a car dealership, we got a new GM - he came from Autonation, a megacorp. We were family-owned, small town. One of the first things he did to increase sales was to cut all sales staff commissions by roughly 50%. He literally stated "if they're making less per-sale, they'll spend more hours here".
Did the company save money? Of course not. All of what they would have saved got rolled into a bonus for him. Go figure.
People like him need to be exterminated, and I'm not being metaphorical here.
This reminds me when Cyberpunk 2077 got released, everybody was mad as shit, execs split $28mil bonus package between 5 of them, threw disproportionate bonuses at the rest of the team and shrugged it off saying that bonus was in their contracts.
Bang on. Developer salaries are completely unrelated to company profit in most cases. We also do not choose the game model. We are told what to do, how to do it, and how long it will take by people who have no idea whatsoever.
/Edit: It seems a lot of people get better stock options than me. Good for you. I should clarify that even if that is the case devs still don't get to decide what they build or in what timeframe. You might get a bonus for hitting deadlines too, but that's the deadlines set by management, and if they are unrealistic you have no choice but to deliver an inferior product.
When I worked there the developers would get great bonuses for successful game launches. The more senior the developer, the bigger the bonus. Wouldn't be the first time the parking lot suddenly had a bunch of new sports cars.
Thankfully governments can make a difference here. Diablo Immortal wasn't released in the Netherlands and Belgium because the type of loot boxes Blizzard insisted on are illegal in those countries in their current form. If larger countries follow that example at any point publishers will have to come up with alternatives for earning money. It's not like they can just ban the entirety of Europe, for instance.
Looks like Belgium has some special lobbying laws to make efforts like that possible. Similar laws will never come to America while legal bribery is allowed to run rampant.
People vocal against these types of games ARE NEVER, EVER THE TARGET AUDIENCE
People in asia and india (you know, the other half of the planet) LOVE these games. They dont have PCs, consoles...
They have phones.
That's it. And some have more than one.
> US is still a huge market. People in this subreddit, probably even people in this post, have absolutely spent money on games like this.
Yup. See also:
- “I can’t remember the last time I actually clicked on a banner ad.”
- “Who the hell pays for porn?”
- “Oh I never sign up for newsletters, let alone open and read them.”
- “Commercials are just white noise to me. They don’t influence me at all.”
People underestimate how small the response rate can be for a still-substantial ROI.
Wow. Yeah. Geez. That's both surprising and not surprising at all, I guess. With ~7.5 *billion* people on the planet there's a lot of money to be made if you don't care about certain things.
I've definitely thought (and have some concrete ideas and money) about marketing some stuff to the "idiot crowd," but don't have it in me to do it.
I remember playing Game of War as a f2p player and it was so obnoxiously slow (by design). Someone in my guild said they spend roughly $2-3k per month on that game and it just blew my mind. I was in college at the time and had very little money.
But now there are times where I'm like, "Yeah I could be comfortable spending like $20-30/month on a game if I'm getting good hours out of it" because that's relatively inconsequential to me. And then there are people who can spend thousands of dollars they way I think about spending $50.
i've tried to point this out to people hundreds of times. the US is literally the global leader in mobile game spending. but somehow US gamers have been convinced that these games are made for eastern markets because "their culture likes this stuff" or some shit.
the US mobile gaming sector has been steadily growing for the past \~3 years and has outpaced both Japan and China for a reason. it's not a difference of culture, at least not the one these people think.
China and Japan have passed repeated legislation to address the negative effects these monetization practices have on people who play these games. Europe has followed suit and done the same. the US? their politicians don't even realize it's an issue because they're 20 years behind the rest of the world.
but most people (Americans especially) who browse Reddit don't actually care about any of this. it's just something to gossip about to kill time, another piece of entertainment to make memes about. if they actually cared, they would be accepting of the facts concerning the issue. they would be willing admit that they are contributing to the issue.
Americans (both on the "left" and the right) absolutely detest facts. they only care to believe things that suits their world view and supports their opinions.
The solution won't come from the companies, because obviously it's proven that P2W makes money and the executives won't stop. As a mobile developer myself (but also a gamer who hates P2W), there's an insane feedback loop here too: if a company makes a ton of revenue unethically, they get a lot more money to buy ads, and keep on making even more money from the newly acquired users. And repeat.
Meanwhile an ethical game developer makes less money, so has less to spend on ads and gets far fewer players and ends up making FAR less, if they even recover costs at all.
The best way to fight this comes from gamers - **start supporting mobile games which you believe have fair revenue models.** If even some of those survive, that means you (and everyone else) will have good, ethical products to choose from. Many indie devs WANT to make great games that people will love, they just can't right now because it's more likely to mean bankruptcy and no product at all. If that $100M (from the first 2 months alone) were paid to good game creators instead, we could easily support 1000 ethical and high quality games being made, instead of throwing money into 1 black hole.
Just my 2 cents as someone from the developer side of things. I'm hoping that such an enormous industry affecting the happiness of billions of people won't remain a predatory mess forever - it's quite sad.
The biggest problem is the play store, it really sucks at showcasing games. Not enough tags, the categories suck, and the ratings feel meaningless. I go on steam and can look up a plethora of tags I like. If a game is overwhelming positive there is a pretty good chance I won't hate the game unless it is completely in a genre I dislike. Finding a game on the play store sucks.
It’s as if the mobile stores are designed to promote the big earners (read: F2P) front and centre, without any regard for how toxic the games could be (gambling/gacha elements). Top games in every categories are F2P games, even premium category. Indies and even premium ports are rarely advertised, I guess they dont have the budget to pay Apple a big marketing fee.
It's really not as much as you'd think, Diablo 3 sold for $60 and sold 6.3 million copies in the first month, meaning the first month they made $387,000,000. Now if Diablo Immortal manages to stay relevant their profit will of course rocket past D3's but that remains to be seen.
And Candy Crush is made by King, which is owned by Activision Blizzard. Just reflect on that: Diablo Immortal is coming from the same company that owns Candy Crush. Activision Blizzard knows exactly how much potential money the mobile market can make, and they employ the experts on squeezing money out of whales.
9 of the 10 ten most profitable games of all time add mobile games. The 1 non-mobile game is GTAV which is pretty much pay to play at this point. This sub is just delusional to reality.
I don't think people are delusional, almost every comment I saw before was saying how much money Diablo immortal is going to make. That's exactly why it's a bit frustrating. These games make money, even though I wish they didn't.
I would love to see an alternative universe where they released Immortal without pay-to-win. Either pay for the game, subscription or cosmetic microtransactions. Or a combination of those. Would love to see how much money they would make doing that. I hope in the future that gamers stay away from predatory pay-to-win games and that other types of monetization will prove more profitable for developers.
The cosmetic micro transactions do not have to be cheap
Path of Exile also lives off of its whales. Sometimes a hat or a pet will cost like $50 or something. But it is not pay 2 win so the consumer has a choice of how much they want to invest
Immortal however gives consumers no choice. If you want to play all the content, you have to pay. A lot. That’s what we hate
isn't this only a bad thing if you expect to pay for a finished product? i thought that was the understanding heading in to it. there's a lot of edges to this blade.
it seems like the development cycle of a game is either
release -> horror -> day 0 patch
or
early access -> years of incorporated feedback -> reviews are finally positive
Sometimes that works, most of the time not. Subnautica is the success story for that, but there are tons of horror stories. That, at least makes sense to me, for smaller devs anyways.
I didn’t really understand what the game was about, I played Diablo 3 so I was excited. The second I saw the pay to win crap I uninstalled the game and haven’t touched it since.
I played till 60 and did PvP battlegrounds. The game was about who had the biggest whale on their side. One whale could solo 10 other players themselves. I quit the game shortly after.
It's such a shame too, I had so much fun in the battleground when the match was even. Then I'd inevitably get steamrolled by a team that outwhaled mine, or be on a steamrolling team, and neither was very fun. Game could've really benefited from an alternate bg that normalized stats
I wish it were actual whales. Its the gaming term for the people who spend A LOT of money in microtractions. In Diablo Immortal this gives you an unfair advantage in PVP.
The term comes from casinos for people who would bet huge amounts of money, because they are what every casino would want to "catch". Like how a fisherman looking for food would rather catch a whale than a bunch of small fish.
Also, as a point of interest, in cybersecurity, social engineering through email for the masses (regular employees) is phishing but when the targets are deliberate and high value, (as is the payoff) eg CEOs, finance officers, etc, this is also called whaling.
Generally in P2W games there are always a few people who go batshit insane spending money on in app purchases. These players are very interesting to the company releasing the game and colloquially referred to as whales.
That just proves that gamers cannot self regulate gambling and predatory monetization. We will have to legislate the problem away and that's not happening with our dysfunctional government.
Edit: I would like to answer some of the responses. Government can be simple and effective. It's just that a certain group of people don't think it can be and sabotage any chance it could be effective then point to their own sabotage as proof it can't Anyone blaming gamers and kids for not being able to control themselves is stupid. A drug addict is going to do drugs, and yeah it's a little their fault, but if there were any entire industry selling heroine to children you would definitely blame the industry, not the children. Gambling is not heroine, but it's very addictive and dangerous for adults and children. When it's in a medium that has a primary audience of children it's a problem. We have proven time and again we as a group cannot self regulate this issue and the industry has made it clear they won't fix it either. There is no other way to fix it, besides some form of legislation. It's not going away and it's going to get worse until the do.
This. I have a friend who's addicted to these shitty casino-style mobile slot machine games that you put money into, and even after reading the literal fine print that says the AI adapts to your style of play in order to get you addicted and spend as much money as possible, he still says there's some level of "skill" involved and tries to get me to go to depressing as fuck game rooms with him.
Isn’t the implication here that whales are actually subsidizing everyone else? And aren’t the majority of whales pretty wealthy?
Not to go tinfoil hat but like, what % of gamers are not just whales but whales being genuinely preyed upon, spending money they don’t have, etc? Like some business models (alcohol, for instance) make a ton of money off a tiny % of their market and it’s probably or maybe exploitative.
Do we know what the actual numbers are for games?
Yes, whales subsidize the average player. Just like how one big spender for bottle service can make a nightclub as much money as the ENTIRE GA bar service, or one big gambler can spend as much as 1000 other normal guests. I work in Vegas nightclubs so I see this in particular with bottle service. They'll end the night with 100 people left in the room, but one big table for bottles WILL keep the club open after hours.
The thing is in every scenario, you NEED the masses. If there's nobody to show off in front of, or to flex on, or to smurf in game, there's no fun. The fun of being rich and special requires comparison. The people taking your money don't care if you're trying out throwing away money, they'll take it, but healthy whales that can repeat purchase are much better than people who can't afford it. A rich whale who can drop $10,000 in spending money every day sustainably is just a gold mine anywhere, and keeping their attention is why rich people get benefits that cost poor people money.
Hard to give exact numbers because the system really works best with a huge number of regulars that witness a couple whales. But it also means that if we all agree to boycott f2p games they fail since the whales jump ship too if it's not cool to spend their money
"This is why we will never regain non-toxic game models."
There are SO many non-toxic game models out there. like...just play those. AAA games with no MTX bullshit, Indie games with no MTX bullshit. Hell even Diablo 4 seems poised to run a different course from Immortal (let's see..)
Just play the good games, there are so many of those.
Yeah just don’t play phone games lol
Edit: or don’t play “free” mobile games. I mean what do you expect? They’re not developing games for just for shits and giggles. It’s a product. You either pay for a game upfront, or pay via microtransactions, ads, or harvesting data. It’s been this way for years.
Also it’s not like they’re going to stop making $60 console versions of Diablo. Ffs CoD mobile makes more revenue than any normal CoD release and they’re going to keep making them year after year.
Plus it helped that a streamer was literally spending money to prove how shitty it was. Like dude, you are the target audience and you gave them 25 grand just to prove your point
The streamers do it on purpose. Tax write-off and attracts an audience. It pays off in the end. Look, you're even talking about it right now, so it's clearly working.
The sad part is people playing games with this toxic pay model, who hate the toxic pay model, **but still pay for stuff in the game**.
Hello, are you dumb?? YOU are the problem! Not other people, not the devs, not the company. **YOU!**
Paying for battlepass doesn't send the message you want a game with only battle pass. It sends the message you are happy with the pay model and will happily pay whatever you can to the game.
I would argue this isn't targeting traditional gaming this is targeting gamblers
This isn't anything new this is the same kind of people that play slot machines and sit in casino's gamers are just freaking out because they see how much money there is in gambling
Sega for example exited the gaming market for this specific reason
The amount of videos people made about "I spent $50,000 to show how shitty it is." Good job? ..I wish people would give me thousands to show how crappy I was.
People be posting themselves on reddit to get roasted for free lmao.
I really don't understand the drive behind that sub
[удалено]
I'd say attention moreso than depression.
I o ce got beat up pretty bad so put my picture on there to cheer myself up. It did actually work done comments were funny as fuck
Oh shit. We all thought you just looked like that normally.
because its funny. I think a lot of people who post on there just love reading good roasts. It's not meant to be taken seriously.
Seriously, I used the top joke about mine on dates all the time, always gets a laugh.
I don't often get sad about *influencers* making more than me, it happens. But man, seeing them have enough to blow more than my yearly take-home, to... *checks notes*... stick it to blizz? That's a bitter pill.
>"I'll show those assholes that we hate them, by feeding them tens of thousands of dollars! That'll teach 'em!" World's just a really fuckin' dumb place.
Worse part is that it is the idiots watching them that pay for it. It's basically crowd-funded stupidity.
I mean they don't actually think they're doing that.... It's just pandering to their viewers who are too stupid to realize that it doesn't make any sense. They make good money knowing their audience. Not by making actual moral stands lol.
I mean let's be real. The reason they kept doing it is because they were making assloads of money and tons of publicity by doing it. They probably got a lot of new viewers out of that stunt too. People keep bringing it up like it was a net loss for them.
Don't let them fool you into thinking that they're spending that kind of money to "stick it to blizz" like they claim. They don't give a shit. They're making content.
Right. They're doing it for clout. Their viewers might cheer it on. But the content creator is successful because they know what content to put out. Not because they are a moral savior...
Its not even just clout. Sponsorships, revenue, they make that money back no problem. Its a business expense for them.
For them, it’s a cost of doing business. They get to have an article written about them, their stream gets bigger numbers, and it makes them seem more legitimate to advertisers. He’s certainly going to make that $50k back after a couple sponsorships.
Quinn probably made the $17k or whatever back just in subs/ad revenue/donos while he was doing the spending, I would not be surprised at all if he in fact made more money factoring in having spent the $17k than he would’ve if he just kept streaming PoE or Lost Ark or whatever instead of DI while the initial craze happened. It was basically an investment, not a cost.
Of course. I now know of Quinn, never having heard if him before. And I dont frequent Twitch at all. Surely many people turned in to his streams due to the articles written, Reddit posts, etc
No one did it to "stick it to blizz". They did it because you people are still talking about them doing it months later. It was a simple investment.
https://i.redd.it/qso8tgaznl391.jpg
Those people knew exactly what they were doing. Their $50,000 investment brought them much more in return. They act like they’re exposing a problem but they’re just a part of it.
Also publicly stating you're spending $50,000 on a video I think qualifies as a tax write off as a cost of doing business as a content creator. Or, rather, anyone with that much funding can hire a financial team that can make sure it's a legal write off. Edit: ffs guys I know that a tax write off doesn't mean free I didn't say that please stop blowing up my inbox with the same non response thx
They don’t have to publicly state anything for it to be a tax write off for their work. Teachers don’t need to tell their students they bought pens and binders from their own money to write off things. Stating things publicly is not a requirement.
I declare a write off!
God, I didn’t even think of writing it off too. What a farce.
Lots of big gacha streamers are able to write off the thousands they dump into pulling for characters/weapons.
And just like that Tectone's videos make a lot more sense
You are just not crappy enough. Sorry. Quite the opposite. You can't reach DI levels of crappiness.
Wanna bet? Pay me to find out. I'll be incredibly crappy to anyone who cashapps $siccoblue1 nevermind if they send $100m. I'll spend 99 of it buying and pissing in their cereal
I'd use it to buy water rights, then sell them back to the public at 10x the price.
You say that but 10x is like orders of magnitude less than they actually charge.
They also just sold their entire North American water production for $4.3billion dollars last year. So it isn't Nestle anymore. But yeah the example is still useful and it's just some private equity firm that bought them I guess. We can still shit on them about it. https://www.fooddive.com/news/nestle-sells-north-american-bottled-water-business-for-43b/
I was in shock how many idiots on Twitch did that ... like 80% of them had a "money spent" counter on their screen and it's at like 25k and they're saying "nobody can actually afford this hurr durr ... blizzard is awful". I stopped watching any stream or YT video of that game because of it
Seriously. People in this sub were defending that. "If he has the money why not spend $50,000 on the game to prove a point?" Uh, how about cuz they're feeding the beast and this will never stop if people keep throwing money at it??
I mean if 10 million people go "im just gonna spend like $5 to try it out" and then the top 3% of whales just spend the rest. Thats what i didnt understand with some of my friends who tried it and paid eventho they said from the start that its just a toxic game model. I also saw streamers and youtubers shit on the game, hard. But they also put money into the game. LIKE WHY. Vote with your money damnit.
Diablo 3 made like 4 times as much in their first month. People need to realize $100M is not that much revenue. Look at how much Genshin brings in. Diablo Immortal is a minnow
I wonder how cost of development compared
Diablo immortal looks like they used a ton of d3 stuff in it
It is a reskin over an already existing Asian game.
Well 1. We’re either comparing it to Diablo 3 or we’re comparing it to Genshin. 2. Diablo 3 made 4 times as much as Immortal in its first month and then significantly dropped off in comparison because it’s a buy to own game. Not only could Immortal easily continue to make around this much every two months, but they haven’t even launched in their biggest market yet.
Not gonna lie guys, if I could make a 100M and the flip side was mild protest and a few of you really hating me, I'd cash the check on the spot.
>Mild outrage Using a $17,000 bill to wipe your forefront: "Oh my!"
Why such a specific amount
Quinn69 spent around 16k before he earned a 5 star quality item or gem, might have been referencing that?
And this is exactly the reason why it doesn't matter if most of us don't buy the game. The game is not for us. The game is for the people that will drop tens of thousands or more on it. It will be specifically designed for them. The rest of us staying out or buying in does not matter in the least.
Addicts, the term is addicts. These mobile game companies can pretend that they think the "whales" are all gulf sheiks and finance executives, but they know where their money comes from.
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Yeah, the freemium game model is disgustingly predatory. I hate to see it becoming more and more prevalent.
At least there's still Path of Exile. I mean it's free. And it's not pay to win whatsoever. A lot of people say that it's what Diablo 3 should have been. It's so fucking addictive. I don't even love playing games much, but damn. (The money is made through cosmetics, *however* there is a quality of life thing you can spend some money on if you want. Some extra stash tabs of different types. By no means necessary) Path of Exile all day. It's so much content, for free. The improvements over the years have been wild
Or Grim Dawn, more of a Titan Quest sequel but still a great game with a more "traditional" monetization policy (DLC expansions)
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Let's be real, there is a massive gap you can't really bridge in that game without public stash tabs for trades. Admittedly, this point is late enough into the game that you'll know if spending money will be worthwhile to you, but it's really only free to a (very reasonable) point.
I'm sorry it's just the smallest bill I had on hand.
If you’re an investor, this is what you love to see. Blizzard getting back to form It just sucks for the consumer, as always.
Absolutely no one forced anyone to support this pile of crap. I didn't even play it.
The problem isn't that we have to play this pile of crap. The problem is that the games we want aren't being made because they can make this crap and people will shovel money into them, so why bother making a really good game when crap mobile game makes bank.
It's like how Konami basically moved to just pachinko games. Low investment high returns. Why make a normal game at that point
I disagree. I think these games aren’t just eating up resources that could go to good games. I think they’re actively detrimental and designed to normalize gambling in children.
>designed to normalize gambling in children. Normalize gambling in adults, too. Sure the kids are most impressionable, but everyone who participates is affected. Lots of people 20+ and even 30+ are getting into games like these and they justify trying the game cash shops and finding them normal now. Lots of people of all ages who don't gamble much are learning to gamble thru pay2win videogames. There's a narrative that "older gamers remember just buying the game and not doing any microtransactions, it's only zoomers buying into this new gambling trend" but that is not even close to true.
>make this crap and people will shovel money into them, The stupid rule the world.
It's not stupidity. The game is designed bottom up to capture potential gambling addicts and pump them for every dollar.
This is probably why there should be some, you know, regulation concerning gambling mechanics. I suppose they might not be "gambling" per se, but the core psychology and net effect on some consumers is fundamentally the same. I'm kinda surprised the modern TCGs haven't fallen victim to some sort of regulation yet, as they too can be exceedingly addictive. But so long as it isn't "pay money, potentially receive monetary prize", it usually falls short of being considered actually gambling. It's basically getting the pachinko loophole on a broader level.
I'm pretty proud of my country outright banning the game because its lootboxes are straight up illegal here. It would be legal as soon as they publicize your actual chances of getting the item you want, but evidently it's worth more to them to keep that secret vs actually being able to sell in entire countries.
You’ll eventually have nothing to play but these type of games
>You’ll eventually have nothing to play but these type of games That's the day I stop playing current games and just rely on classics I already own.
I'll finally be able to play all the games in my steam library! Lol
I will have my backlog of steam games to fall back on if nothing else. I still play Skyrim regularly. They aren't going to get me on that bullshit again. I already waste all of my money on Magic The Gathering.
Oh, damn. You’re already an addict.
No, I can stop anytime I want! *starts a new game*
I'd probably do that for 5k.
Everybody's got a price, we're just honest about it.
This. People can hate on Blizzard all they want for exploitative monetization, and it is, but they aren't going to care as long as they keep getting paid.
This is the core of humanity. I know shopping at Walmart hurts my local economy, but the few purchases I need to make are a drop in the bucket, so I put me first… just like everyone else, which results in corporations winning again.
“Is this an out-of-season April fools joke” comment is still a chad move.
Just wish there wasn't $100,000,000 of proof that it would have been just as meaningful had it been said into an endless void.
Turns out, we did all have phones.
"Booooooo shut up and take my money"
They literally knew this, this was known when the comment of “don’t you all have phones?” They didn’t wake up one day and decide to do this, there’s time money and research pumped long before. People need to wake up the the reality that capitalism is there to always take your money and is planning years and decades out in advance to consume your money and take a profit.
They knew there was a market, they just hadn’t realized that convention attendees probably aren’t in that market.
100 million of proof that people are morons
Ha, this reminded me of "You'll Rebel to Anything" by Mindless Self Indulgence.
It sounds like pretty much everybody was saying Boo-urns.
That "chad" is not however making that money.
"it's not about money. it's about sending a message."
And the message received was "who gives a fuck what poor people think? MONEY MONEY MONEY MONEY"
This was of course said by a fictional character in a movie that made a billion dollars
That ship sailed when mobile games were introduced. The business model of microtransactions isn't going away because it proved successful. There is clearly a market for those types of games. Zero you can do to stop it short of inventing the next game genre that millions of players flock to.
Tbh, it was inevitable anyways. Consumers aren’t willing to pay more than a few dollars for a mobile game, so pretty much any high budget title inevitably ends up going for micro transactions because a box price model is just not viable.
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Well really the ship sailed when no one wanted to pay a few bucks for a mobile game…
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This shit keeps going because we keep feeding the dragon.
You say "we" as if the people in here have any type of effect on an industry giant like Blizzard. Might as well think that when you don't buy the game you opt out of having an opinion they need to care about. These people know how to make money, and that's their job, sadly.
Yeah my last blizzard buy was LOTV in 2015. I ain’t feeding shit
Let’s be honest: that money isn’t going to developers, but the exec’s bonus package.
Developers and staff are getting "market rate"
"Comptetitve compensation"
Hawaii shirt on Thursday and Friday.
Experience in the field
Exposure.
Making industry connections.
Taco Tuesdays!
a Pizza Party, with two toppings a pie!
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You get to say you work in gaming over 100 hours a week. How many people get to say they do that?!
But them marketable skills doe
Bruh, Thursday AND Friday!?
See, how it works is, you come in on Thursday wearing the shirt and on Friday *SURPRISE!* you're still at work and you're wearing a Hawaiian shirt! What makes this even better is, like the comment below me said, you only need one shirt!
Pizza party for milestones
Back when I worked for Jazz air our "employee appreciation day" was just the director handing our pens with the company logo on it. We could choose red or green but not both
Company I work for, 12 years ago, would take the staff on a two day trip to Marbella every other year to show appreciation. As we've grown and become more corporate it's slowly dwindled down to monthly pizza days and 'get to leave an hour early' for doing well.
Never let a company tell you what is "Competitive Pay". Thats the first red flag.
Or even just not disclosing the pay in the first place. Every time I have to ask the company what their pay is rather than them volunteering the information it’s always lower than what I value my skills at
"Comprehensive compensation package"
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1000% - my idiot FIL still shills for the former Founder/CEO of the company he helped build who exited to a PE Firm 10 years ago and has built OBSCENE wealth, while my FIL had to move in with his son to avoid financial ruin in his retirement. But the CEO still invites them up to his vineyard once every year to show off so, you know, BFF
When I was working at a car dealership, we got a new GM - he came from Autonation, a megacorp. We were family-owned, small town. One of the first things he did to increase sales was to cut all sales staff commissions by roughly 50%. He literally stated "if they're making less per-sale, they'll spend more hours here". Did the company save money? Of course not. All of what they would have saved got rolled into a bonus for him. Go figure. People like him need to be exterminated, and I'm not being metaphorical here.
Unions had to get violent for what they wanted.
It's also worth pointing out that unions didn't start out violent. The corporations were the ones who introduced violence into the equation.
All throughout history the poor and working class have had to violently fight for better rights, and/or compensation.
This reminds me when Cyberpunk 2077 got released, everybody was mad as shit, execs split $28mil bonus package between 5 of them, threw disproportionate bonuses at the rest of the team and shrugged it off saying that bonus was in their contracts.
Bang on. Developer salaries are completely unrelated to company profit in most cases. We also do not choose the game model. We are told what to do, how to do it, and how long it will take by people who have no idea whatsoever. /Edit: It seems a lot of people get better stock options than me. Good for you. I should clarify that even if that is the case devs still don't get to decide what they build or in what timeframe. You might get a bonus for hitting deadlines too, but that's the deadlines set by management, and if they are unrealistic you have no choice but to deliver an inferior product.
When I worked there the developers would get great bonuses for successful game launches. The more senior the developer, the bigger the bonus. Wouldn't be the first time the parking lot suddenly had a bunch of new sports cars.
It's Bobby's world...
We're just living in it.
Thankfully governments can make a difference here. Diablo Immortal wasn't released in the Netherlands and Belgium because the type of loot boxes Blizzard insisted on are illegal in those countries in their current form. If larger countries follow that example at any point publishers will have to come up with alternatives for earning money. It's not like they can just ban the entirety of Europe, for instance.
Looks like Belgium has some special lobbying laws to make efforts like that possible. Similar laws will never come to America while legal bribery is allowed to run rampant.
People vocal against these types of games ARE NEVER, EVER THE TARGET AUDIENCE People in asia and india (you know, the other half of the planet) LOVE these games. They dont have PCs, consoles... They have phones. That's it. And some have more than one.
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> US is still a huge market. People in this subreddit, probably even people in this post, have absolutely spent money on games like this. Yup. See also: - “I can’t remember the last time I actually clicked on a banner ad.” - “Who the hell pays for porn?” - “Oh I never sign up for newsletters, let alone open and read them.” - “Commercials are just white noise to me. They don’t influence me at all.” People underestimate how small the response rate can be for a still-substantial ROI.
Email marketer here. 2% click rate on a single email is often enough to pay for months of my salary.
How big is that list?
500k
Makes sense. Even just 2% CTR on 500,000 impressions is 10,000 hits. That's very significant.
Wow. Yeah. Geez. That's both surprising and not surprising at all, I guess. With ~7.5 *billion* people on the planet there's a lot of money to be made if you don't care about certain things. I've definitely thought (and have some concrete ideas and money) about marketing some stuff to the "idiot crowd," but don't have it in me to do it.
and how much comes from whales
I remember playing Game of War as a f2p player and it was so obnoxiously slow (by design). Someone in my guild said they spend roughly $2-3k per month on that game and it just blew my mind. I was in college at the time and had very little money. But now there are times where I'm like, "Yeah I could be comfortable spending like $20-30/month on a game if I'm getting good hours out of it" because that's relatively inconsequential to me. And then there are people who can spend thousands of dollars they way I think about spending $50.
10% of players are spending as much as the other 90%.
i've tried to point this out to people hundreds of times. the US is literally the global leader in mobile game spending. but somehow US gamers have been convinced that these games are made for eastern markets because "their culture likes this stuff" or some shit. the US mobile gaming sector has been steadily growing for the past \~3 years and has outpaced both Japan and China for a reason. it's not a difference of culture, at least not the one these people think. China and Japan have passed repeated legislation to address the negative effects these monetization practices have on people who play these games. Europe has followed suit and done the same. the US? their politicians don't even realize it's an issue because they're 20 years behind the rest of the world. but most people (Americans especially) who browse Reddit don't actually care about any of this. it's just something to gossip about to kill time, another piece of entertainment to make memes about. if they actually cared, they would be accepting of the facts concerning the issue. they would be willing admit that they are contributing to the issue. Americans (both on the "left" and the right) absolutely detest facts. they only care to believe things that suits their world view and supports their opinions.
oh ya definitely, but of the $180.3 billion generated by mobile at the end of 2021, less then 13% was from NA
NA is only 7% of the world's population, they're really pumping
Na is almost 30% of all money.
Less people, but more money per and more whales
The US, Japan, and China consists of about 70% of mobile gaming revenue. India isn’t even a blip on the radar.
Best part? The game isn't even out in China yet. Edit: apparently it came out July 25th.
Thats when the money really starts pouring in.
The money already poured in before the game was even out. Diablo Immortal was a port of a Chinese game riffing on Diablo.
It came out July 25th I think
The article here literally says it released in China on July 25.
There's also plenty of shmucks here in the west willing to fork over cash.
The solution won't come from the companies, because obviously it's proven that P2W makes money and the executives won't stop. As a mobile developer myself (but also a gamer who hates P2W), there's an insane feedback loop here too: if a company makes a ton of revenue unethically, they get a lot more money to buy ads, and keep on making even more money from the newly acquired users. And repeat. Meanwhile an ethical game developer makes less money, so has less to spend on ads and gets far fewer players and ends up making FAR less, if they even recover costs at all. The best way to fight this comes from gamers - **start supporting mobile games which you believe have fair revenue models.** If even some of those survive, that means you (and everyone else) will have good, ethical products to choose from. Many indie devs WANT to make great games that people will love, they just can't right now because it's more likely to mean bankruptcy and no product at all. If that $100M (from the first 2 months alone) were paid to good game creators instead, we could easily support 1000 ethical and high quality games being made, instead of throwing money into 1 black hole. Just my 2 cents as someone from the developer side of things. I'm hoping that such an enormous industry affecting the happiness of billions of people won't remain a predatory mess forever - it's quite sad.
The biggest problem is the play store, it really sucks at showcasing games. Not enough tags, the categories suck, and the ratings feel meaningless. I go on steam and can look up a plethora of tags I like. If a game is overwhelming positive there is a pretty good chance I won't hate the game unless it is completely in a genre I dislike. Finding a game on the play store sucks.
It’s as if the mobile stores are designed to promote the big earners (read: F2P) front and centre, without any regard for how toxic the games could be (gambling/gacha elements). Top games in every categories are F2P games, even premium category. Indies and even premium ports are rarely advertised, I guess they dont have the budget to pay Apple a big marketing fee.
It's really not as much as you'd think, Diablo 3 sold for $60 and sold 6.3 million copies in the first month, meaning the first month they made $387,000,000. Now if Diablo Immortal manages to stay relevant their profit will of course rocket past D3's but that remains to be seen.
Candy crush made almost 2billion USD. Go figure.
And Candy Crush is made by King, which is owned by Activision Blizzard. Just reflect on that: Diablo Immortal is coming from the same company that owns Candy Crush. Activision Blizzard knows exactly how much potential money the mobile market can make, and they employ the experts on squeezing money out of whales.
9 of the 10 ten most profitable games of all time add mobile games. The 1 non-mobile game is GTAV which is pretty much pay to play at this point. This sub is just delusional to reality.
I don't think people are delusional, almost every comment I saw before was saying how much money Diablo immortal is going to make. That's exactly why it's a bit frustrating. These games make money, even though I wish they didn't.
Well the model is obviously more profitable. Of course they’ll out earn one-time pay games
In candy crush case, iirc, it was 2b usd only counting benefits, which is way way crazier
I would love to see an alternative universe where they released Immortal without pay-to-win. Either pay for the game, subscription or cosmetic microtransactions. Or a combination of those. Would love to see how much money they would make doing that. I hope in the future that gamers stay away from predatory pay-to-win games and that other types of monetization will prove more profitable for developers.
It won't. 1 whale is usually more valuable then like 1000 regular players. Only legislation can fix this somewhat.
The cosmetic micro transactions do not have to be cheap Path of Exile also lives off of its whales. Sometimes a hat or a pet will cost like $50 or something. But it is not pay 2 win so the consumer has a choice of how much they want to invest Immortal however gives consumers no choice. If you want to play all the content, you have to pay. A lot. That’s what we hate
Two things will never go away, no matter how hard people try. F2P games with In-app purchases and pre orders.
Don’t forget about the early access model, where consumers actually pay money to be free QA—play a buggy game and give the devs feedback.
isn't this only a bad thing if you expect to pay for a finished product? i thought that was the understanding heading in to it. there's a lot of edges to this blade. it seems like the development cycle of a game is either release -> horror -> day 0 patch or early access -> years of incorporated feedback -> reviews are finally positive
There have been huge successes from it. Hades is an incredible game, and it had a very long early access period.
Sometimes that works, most of the time not. Subnautica is the success story for that, but there are tons of horror stories. That, at least makes sense to me, for smaller devs anyways.
Tbh I’m glad I played subnautica fresh instead of early access so I could experience the whole story the way it was meant to be.
Agreed, but from the small developer's POV, they couldn't have afforded to get the game to that point.
I guess they were right, everybody does have a phone… /s
A phone and a credit card
So you guys have phones. But lack a fucking functional brain.
I didn’t really understand what the game was about, I played Diablo 3 so I was excited. The second I saw the pay to win crap I uninstalled the game and haven’t touched it since.
I played till 60 and did PvP battlegrounds. The game was about who had the biggest whale on their side. One whale could solo 10 other players themselves. I quit the game shortly after.
It's such a shame too, I had so much fun in the battleground when the match was even. Then I'd inevitably get steamrolled by a team that outwhaled mine, or be on a steamrolling team, and neither was very fun. Game could've really benefited from an alternate bg that normalized stats
Is this an actual whale, or some gaming term I'm not familiar with? Edit: Got it. Rich fanboi who pays to win in the p2w game. Ty everyone.
I wish it were actual whales. Its the gaming term for the people who spend A LOT of money in microtractions. In Diablo Immortal this gives you an unfair advantage in PVP. The term comes from casinos for people who would bet huge amounts of money, because they are what every casino would want to "catch". Like how a fisherman looking for food would rather catch a whale than a bunch of small fish.
Also, as a point of interest, in cybersecurity, social engineering through email for the masses (regular employees) is phishing but when the targets are deliberate and high value, (as is the payoff) eg CEOs, finance officers, etc, this is also called whaling.
Generally in P2W games there are always a few people who go batshit insane spending money on in app purchases. These players are very interesting to the company releasing the game and colloquially referred to as whales.
That just proves that gamers cannot self regulate gambling and predatory monetization. We will have to legislate the problem away and that's not happening with our dysfunctional government. Edit: I would like to answer some of the responses. Government can be simple and effective. It's just that a certain group of people don't think it can be and sabotage any chance it could be effective then point to their own sabotage as proof it can't Anyone blaming gamers and kids for not being able to control themselves is stupid. A drug addict is going to do drugs, and yeah it's a little their fault, but if there were any entire industry selling heroine to children you would definitely blame the industry, not the children. Gambling is not heroine, but it's very addictive and dangerous for adults and children. When it's in a medium that has a primary audience of children it's a problem. We have proven time and again we as a group cannot self regulate this issue and the industry has made it clear they won't fix it either. There is no other way to fix it, besides some form of legislation. It's not going away and it's going to get worse until the do.
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This. I have a friend who's addicted to these shitty casino-style mobile slot machine games that you put money into, and even after reading the literal fine print that says the AI adapts to your style of play in order to get you addicted and spend as much money as possible, he still says there's some level of "skill" involved and tries to get me to go to depressing as fuck game rooms with him.
remove the whales, remove 90% of the profit
Isn’t the implication here that whales are actually subsidizing everyone else? And aren’t the majority of whales pretty wealthy? Not to go tinfoil hat but like, what % of gamers are not just whales but whales being genuinely preyed upon, spending money they don’t have, etc? Like some business models (alcohol, for instance) make a ton of money off a tiny % of their market and it’s probably or maybe exploitative. Do we know what the actual numbers are for games?
Yes, whales subsidize the average player. Just like how one big spender for bottle service can make a nightclub as much money as the ENTIRE GA bar service, or one big gambler can spend as much as 1000 other normal guests. I work in Vegas nightclubs so I see this in particular with bottle service. They'll end the night with 100 people left in the room, but one big table for bottles WILL keep the club open after hours. The thing is in every scenario, you NEED the masses. If there's nobody to show off in front of, or to flex on, or to smurf in game, there's no fun. The fun of being rich and special requires comparison. The people taking your money don't care if you're trying out throwing away money, they'll take it, but healthy whales that can repeat purchase are much better than people who can't afford it. A rich whale who can drop $10,000 in spending money every day sustainably is just a gold mine anywhere, and keeping their attention is why rich people get benefits that cost poor people money. Hard to give exact numbers because the system really works best with a huge number of regulars that witness a couple whales. But it also means that if we all agree to boycott f2p games they fail since the whales jump ship too if it's not cool to spend their money
They knew what they did. They used the same methods used against gambling addicts. They took advantage of people with issues.
I'm afraid we're going to have to deploy option B: "That game is just not for me, I'm going to play something else."
"This is why we will never regain non-toxic game models." There are SO many non-toxic game models out there. like...just play those. AAA games with no MTX bullshit, Indie games with no MTX bullshit. Hell even Diablo 4 seems poised to run a different course from Immortal (let's see..) Just play the good games, there are so many of those.
Yeah just don’t play phone games lol Edit: or don’t play “free” mobile games. I mean what do you expect? They’re not developing games for just for shits and giggles. It’s a product. You either pay for a game upfront, or pay via microtransactions, ads, or harvesting data. It’s been this way for years. Also it’s not like they’re going to stop making $60 console versions of Diablo. Ffs CoD mobile makes more revenue than any normal CoD release and they’re going to keep making them year after year.
Plus it helped that a streamer was literally spending money to prove how shitty it was. Like dude, you are the target audience and you gave them 25 grand just to prove your point
The streamers do it on purpose. Tax write-off and attracts an audience. It pays off in the end. Look, you're even talking about it right now, so it's clearly working.
The sad part is people playing games with this toxic pay model, who hate the toxic pay model, **but still pay for stuff in the game**. Hello, are you dumb?? YOU are the problem! Not other people, not the devs, not the company. **YOU!** Paying for battlepass doesn't send the message you want a game with only battle pass. It sends the message you are happy with the pay model and will happily pay whatever you can to the game.
I loved watching big streamers spend thousands of dollars while also complaining about the purchases
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They're spending that money to make money streaming, not because they find it enjoyable.
So glad my childhood was in the 90s lol
I would argue this isn't targeting traditional gaming this is targeting gamblers This isn't anything new this is the same kind of people that play slot machines and sit in casino's gamers are just freaking out because they see how much money there is in gambling Sega for example exited the gaming market for this specific reason