It was early access for like 3 years. Which allowed them to release a fully finished game, or the closest we had from that state since no one remembers when actually.
You just have to be VERY careful with buying them day 1. I mostly just wait for a "complete edition" or "goty edition" or smth and THEN wait til that is cheap.
Yes, been loving BG3 but my best experiences with games in recent years have all been indie, from Outer Wilds that made me completely rethink what a game experience is meant to be, to Vampire Survivors that tickled all the right parts of my brain into making me spend hours watching pixels flash on screen in the most mind-numbingly addictive way. Indie devs really seem to be carrying forward the soul of gaming that larger gaming companies have lost, the exceptions being so rare that Baldur's Gate 3 is getting lauded for basically meeting what would have been normal expectations for a AA title in the early 2000's
I used to be fine with all the shit practices you mentioned since I just wanted to play the games, but then I played Baldurs Gate 3 and remembered how gaming used to be.
I don't think I'll continue to buy DLC-ridden, half-finished and sometimes even outright broken games. Looking at you Diablo 4...
In that sense the publishers were rightfully afraid of the game. I guess it reminded a lot of us what we lost over the years.
Only single player game i enjoyed in the last 10 years was the Witcher 3, i couldn't even finish GTA V lol.
I have always been a multiplayer gamer myself, but the state of most games right now (since few years ago) is absolutely disgusting, they're just made for you to spend points on mtx thanks to skill based matchmaking and other crap, it's really undercover pay2win unless you are bottom/top 1%.
I'm just glad i enjoyed every game i could as a child and enjoyed the competitive scene of many FPS when it wasn't undercover pay2win.
Now it's time for 16yo guys on adderall to win and earn millions on twitch
I live, breathe, and sleep video games but this is a problem we made for ourselves. You don't have to buy the latest and greatest games from million dollar companies. Heck, you don't have to buy any games at all. Stop buying crap and they'll stop making as much of it. Go play something else or, and I say this as someone who's currently designing homebrew for a TTRPG in another tab, go touch some grass.
Damn straight, the amount of times I've heard "It's probably gonna be shit, oh well. Still gonna pre order cause of this [dogshit] skin for the gun that won't be meta for longer than a week cause it's so busted."
I saw this coming back in 2013 and have been trying to convince people that it's going to be a problem and get worse as time goes on.
My unpopular opinion is that DLC is not, in and of itself, bad. If you don't want it, don't buy it! If you do want it - great, no problem! In a world without DLC, you either have to buy the whole game, or not. If you tried it and didn't like it, you have wasted the whole price of the game. Whereas in a DLC system, you've spent the price of the base game, but that's effectively just a fraction of the total game price. You risked less.
What is a problem - and what I think most people who think they're mad about DLC are actually mad about - is charging a price that isn't commensurate with the amount of content you get. If a full game is "worth" $60, and it's split up into a $20 base game and 4 $10 DLCs - great, everyone is (or, should be!) happy. But if the publisher charges $60 for $20-worth of base game and then charges for DLC on top, you should be pissed - but you should still be pissed about that mispricing even if the DLC didn't exist. Yes, DLC is the reason why that pricing strategy is adopted - but that doesn't mean that DLC itself is inherently bad. There are possible implementations that are not flawed.
I think it makes no sense for a publisher to split up a game and get less money upfront, unless they want you to pay more for all the pieces than one complete game would have cost you. Therefore DLCs are almost always bad for consumers. The only exception are full scale expansions, because they are basically full games themselves. If they want to let people get a taste before buying then they should offer a free demo, or full refund within a certain time window.
Cosmetics are good examples as well, as a way to express thanks if you feel you've gotten your money's worth. It's just that it's not even about that anymore. For the rest I agree 100%
Most AAA base games cost ~60 dollars for the base game and the DLCs add on top of that.
I'm not gonna be mad about the price, a game is cheap in terms of hours entertained compared to a good movie which costs about 10 dollars for about 2 hours of entertainment.
The issue is not the price. The DLCs is also not inherently bad, like you said. For instance, Borderlands 2 is known for having an excellent base game and an exceptional bunch of DLCs, one which became so loved and popular that it became its own spin off game (Tiny Tina's Wonderlands).
The issue is that companies use DLCs as an excuse to charge money for small amounts of content. They make smaller games, still charge full price, then make DLCs that are relatively small and charge a lot for them.
Using the above example, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands have DLCs that cost 10 dollars and feature a single dungeon (that takes ~20 minutes to complete) with a boss that was an enemy in the base game which got enlarged slightly and given more damage and HP. The community understandably was pissed - but they kept buying every single DLC they pumped out, which reinforced the behavior.
same. I have over a thousand games on my steam account and a humble bundle subscription.
I can wait years to pick up the all DLC included gold game of the year edition for 5 bucks on sale.
only time i ever get games on release anymore is if a friend gifts it to me, or if it comes as part of a bundle with new hardware (Like how I got Starfield with my new GPU)
I remember the launch of mass effect 3 in 2012, when EA and Bioware removed all the prothean companion content (very relevant to the story) from the base game and sold it as 10€ day 1 DLC.
They even boasted about "releasing a game for 80€" back then IIRC.
This is one big reason why I support indie titles and piracy more than ever. The whole "we can't be financially bothered to put out a functional title on launch, but our shop with 60 DLC skins each coating $400 each works perfectly" mentality has driven me far away from ever paying for triple AAA titles again and is also why I will never play a remaster of any game outside of the Spyro Reignited Trilogy.
If you cannot be arsed to put out a functional title on launch, maybe you should be retired and sent to the ranch.
To each their preferences, if people want to play "AAA" games or w/e that's their choices. If you're sick of the way they sell though I suggest trying something else, there are plenty of very good games out there that don't shamelessly take their customers for piggy banks.
I think most of us are sick of others buying shit AAA games and then complaining about the expense of DLC and the bugs and what not. So I would modify what you said to be if you want to, go ahead, but stop complaining about the shit you should have expected.
This kinda ignores how early access is a great tool for indie developers catering to a small audience. They don't need to bend down for some publisher that then sets them rules, but freely decide what they do. And if whatever they do turns out to attract not enough customers, they can simply stop, get a job at a company. And don't need to worry about what the publisher wants.
I'm pretty sure this isn't about early access games. It looks like it's about AAA games like Cyberpunk that release in a completely broken state and take multiple rounds of post release patches to make them even close to what was promised.
This is why I am hesitant to get excited for any new games. I've been waiting for Payday 3 for a long time and I was excited but I'm concerned that the base game will be lacking and DLC will be almost necessary. I mean they're already selling three DLX packs and the games not even out. Yeah DLX kept Overkill alive while everyone was sueing everyone else over the IP rights of Payday 2, but now that it's settled and we're getting a third game, I don't expect anything else.
Factorio will get a old-school expansion in the future. The base game is very complete already, so they really have to think of something else that really expands on the current gameplay , but they've been working on it since the release of the main game so it will be good.
Pre order our game that is broken because the director was fired halfway through development, but we insisted on the original release date. Also the coders will get to see their family unharmed again once they've released the first patch.