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After 27,000+ Steam reviews, Overwatch 2 is graded as 'Overwhelmingly Negative' (www.gamesradar.com)
submitted 3 years ago by [M] to c/games@sh.itjust.works
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[+] -9 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (4 children)

I'm just old enough to remember when you bought a game and that was the whole game, not the game plus years and years of free content. I paid like $30 for OW1 at the first anniversary (or was it second? whichever), then didn't drop a dime into it. Got a bunch of new characters and maps and balance tweaks for free after launch. For other games that would be DLC, or back in the '90s paid boxed expansions.

Yes, OW2 has been a big let-down. If I had to pay up-front for it? I wouldn't. I haven't put a dime into OW2 and I won't because of the company's problems.

But in terms of its relationship with OW1? I'm mostly a satisfied customer. I can still play Overwatch, I still have all the drops I got in OW1, and I got many years of complimentary loot in OW1.

Now, would I have preferred to get stuff at the rate I did in OW1? Of course. But I'm also realistic that this isn't a sustainable business model, especially if they want to go f2p. Also paying for random loot boxes is increasingly illegal in many places, so no matter what they had to switch to a cash shop at least partially (but afaik random drops would've still been legal, but still - sustainable business model, remember?)

My biggest complaint is that they didn't keep OW1 (2-2-2 with weaker tanks) as a mode in the arcade of Ow2.

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  • [–] 11 points 3 years ago* (last edited 3 years ago) (1 child)

    How exactly does this justify modern games just being disappeared by their publishers?

    I loved Battleborn, but it wasn't long until it shut down, and when it did, everything went. Even the story campaign! It's gone! Forever!

    That is NOT ok.

    If you bought a game on CD back in the day, would you be ok with the copy just disintegrating the day some arbirary timed license expires?

    Or if a piece of music you got as a digital file, had a fixed number of times it could be played, and then never again. Once all the copies in existence are used up, poof, gone forever, never to be heard by anyone ever again?

    No, we can't require companies to support systems forever, but if they decide to stop running the private parts of the infrastructure, they shouldn't get to just press delete. It should be open-sourced. Even if the game itself remains proprietary, meaning you have to buy it, the infrastructure to actual play it doesn't have to.

    And when games themselves stop being sold, they should, and could, legally become shareware. Instead we have dragons sitting on their piles like Nintendo, actively preventing access to content which cannot in any legal way be played, at all.

    And it's happening faster and faster! OW1 is now gone forever, and games like Destiny straight up remove older content, meaning new players who want the full experience can eat shit and die.

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  • [–] 1 point 3 years ago (2 children)

    It didn't even need to be open-source, it used to be normal for closed-source games to offer free server binaries for anybody who wants to run their own server. Yes, I 100% agree with you there, I just don't feel the need to single out Blizzard for this when it's the whole industry... More than that it's every industry onto this online-only bullshit. Everything from Microsoft office to a freaking John Deere tractor is now cloud-based software.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 years ago

    Why single out Blizzard?

    Because that's who we're talking about now. The idea that I'm okay with everything I'm not currently complaining about is an emergent toxic antipattern of trying to talk to people on the internet. I'm not bringing up Microsoft, or John Deere, or anyone else who's also toxic and exploitative because this isn't the place.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 years ago

    I'm old enough to remember when you bought a game and then you had the game, and you played it when you wanted to because you own it. I miss owning things. This whole thing where you actually bought a single, revocable, non-transferrable license to use the thing rather than buying the thing is kinda horseshit.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 years ago (2 children)

    I'm still playing decades old games with years and years of free content because they have community server support, a modding community working on new stuff for the game they love. Like I would be with wc3 if they didn't kill it.

    they give people like you some bullshit maps or a playable guy in-between thousands of dollars worth of microtransactions and you let them walk all over you, take your game away after a couple years. You're the reason that old business model of just releasing shit isn't profitable. Even if you're not the sad sack buying shit you're the grease keeping the machine going. Fuck what you've done to our hobby man.

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