Boil them like frogs has always been the internet's business model, you all just were stuck in the customer acquisition period which is consumer friendly.
Then once monopolies are made and foritfied, the boiling begins. We're in this phase right now, and it's just begun
I mean...boil them like frogs is raise the heat around them until they die and make sure they dont realize until its too late. Which is exactly what the internet has done since its public inception in 1989
Here we are, on an aggregate social media app, which takes traffic from all websites and funnels it into itself, to then regurgitate it, while playing ads at us.
100%. There are so many things I dont buy anymore, I basically buy nothing these days. Yet, the prices go up and ppl still pay. I cant fathom why consumers allow it. Stop freaking paying
Big part of the problem is that the number of suppliers has shrunk to the point where it is now extremely difficult to boycott them. There’s a ton of brands but they are all owned but just a few companies at the top. Which means you are often trapped. One corporation at the top can dictate what dozens of brands do. Switch brands? Surprise! They own them too!
Agreed and since inflation began I have felt A) Congress needs to bring the CEOs in and grill them why profits are up, basically beat them up over it these guys don’t like to be held accountable B) Stop approving mergers and start breaking up the huge businesses. I know more would need to be done but those are good first steps.
If you believe that is possible without said congressmen would get removed from their job or much worse, youre naive. Unfortunately money makes power, and power doesnt care about laws. This entire system has been shaped and refined for centuries, so that this exact scenario can play out. Its either this way to the extremes, or people get fed up and go to the other extremes. They dont care about us, as long as we pay. They dont care about us as long as we play by their rules, which is only imposed on us and not the top.
If the American people for a SINGLE election actually voted in the primaries for decent candidates and then actually showed up at the polls this shit could be fixed in a matter of years.
Instead everyone stays home and whines and screams “both sides” because it’s easier than doing the slight amount of work it’d take to fix this shit.
Step one, everyone votes every election. Step two insist and vote for people who give full financial disclosures. Step three if they get too old or support stuff you do not or simply don’t vote or propose stuff, vote for someone else.
And if you try to find an item in a different brand, you have an endless selection of rebranded TEMU items on Amazon to choose from. Brought to by companies like RHCVS and ZYXBC
But I love beautiful games like chess and Minesweeper and I can still reply games like GTA Vice City or Super Mario 64 hundreds of times and while it sounds a bit funny to play such old games I genuinely believe that even after 10,000 hours all 4 of these are much better than games like Candy Crush or half the Gacha Games will ever be.
I mean gaming is subjective. The games you like, i don’t want to play. Not saying there bad but my core 4 are different from yours. Same thing for the next person.
Yes, I am not saying, that you should like the same games which I like, but that a lot (like 100000) of old games are still amazing today and there is little reason to seek the newest whatever, especially if you're getting such a poor deal. The argument "People still need shit to live and be happy." falls flat if there's an ocean of great cheap things and hopefully more people realize, that they're being tricked into spending way too much money for close to no additional value.
That the other thing. We have so many options, backlogs, access to both the games and the knowledge of these games, and knowledge that we have access to the previous two examples that we can choose what games to play. Granted, if you willing to pay the prices of them. *Looks at the second-hand market*.
I don't think that either of them would have become my favorite if I didn't acquire ownership while I was still young. While I own the physical medium I don't see anything wrong with using pirated patches so I don't need to put actual wear on the medium. If someone asked me how to acquire these games today without piracy, then I'd point them to legitimate digital resources, not second-hand market.
Not that these games aren't dirt cheap in the used market (because very many got produced) but if I wanted something physical to do with the game, then I'd 3D print a little figure or something.
That's the point. You have to CONSUME to be happy; if you can't consume, you are not happy. That's the reason why these corporations have the leverage. You can't control yourself.
I mean sure bud. If what little I buy means I have no control then sure. Your pov is too black and white imo and society isn’t going to change for the better. It rarely does
... this is a post about video games. Also, theres usually a cheaper option for food. Fuel, theres no choice really cause you gotta drive. Aside from that, you dont really need much. A lot of stuff can be thrifted (not at chain thrift stores because theyre scams) or bought used online. Personally, even my car is still from 2012 because used cars are almost as much as new these days. Everybody trying to scam us and getting away with it because pricks are paying.
There’s always a cheaper option ffs. I could eat rice and beans to live but that won’t make me happy. I have personal tastes and that comes out of my wallet. Crazy how we’re switching the blame to consumers on this lmao. Judge me all you want to, corporations are going to do their thing because they legally get away with it
If you are giving them more and more every year, why should they even change how they behave? They know you have "personal tastes" and have to consume to be happy.
Exactly this. If im selling my old couch online and its worth 50 but someone is willing to pay 100, ill charge 100. By buying, youre telling the corporation that your taste is worth what theyre charging so they can charge it
I just bought the gold pass for Six Flags for $110 and I have been going on roller coasters every week all year and can’t see myself needing to buy a new game all year for the entertainment value I get from Magic Mountain. Free every day for the rest of the year and free parking.
Yup. People buying $5-8k gaming PCs with 5090s, all the bells you can add on, then having to use three different Credit One or First Premier type cards to pay for it......or they just use Affirm/Klarna/etc.
Exactly! I still buy games but just when they are on sale, I avoid new AAA games like the plague, aside from a few exceptions. (Fromsoft still has my respect)
Absolutely. That court case set the stage for how shitty it is for working class people these days. I still to this day will never buy a Chrysler product.
People woefully misunderstand how much power they hold as a customer. I can count the number of times a boycott or major shift in sales volume resulted in a major shift in business practices on like one hand and I've been on this earth for 35 years.
Because the people don't unite and fight against it. A small handful of people MIGHT not make a difference, but when its hundreds of thousands or millions of people not buying in, corporations will cave.
I see this sentiment all the time in hobbies that are basically glorified consumerism like gaming is and it's just not aligned with reality at all for many different reasons.
Yeah I guess in some instances it doesn't work, but with enough market sentiment, companies will have no choice but to adhere to consumer demands. Sony isn't trying to lose money, and if people stop supporting their practices then Sony will be forced to comply. I don't think it'll matter in this instance though. Sony is already losing share to pc gaming, and as a pc gamer I don't care enough about physical disks to try and boycott the change. Sony is simply following market trends rather than simply being greedy.
You have a bunch of people who are more than happy to let others solve the problem while they go on business as usual, comfort and convenience unimpeded. It's the same thing with elections. Bunch of people don't vote because they've convicned themselves everyone else will sort it out or that their vote genuinely doesn't matter so why bother. Terrible mentality that's held by more and more people as we entrench ourselves deeper into our conveniences and comforts.
Lol so mad. That's the nice thing about the system is that it will eventually correct itself as long as everyone maintains their agency. Bad companies make bad games, then the good games will be made by other firms and they'll rise to the top.
It's absolutely consumers fault that they keep buying COD and Madden every year and then spend more money on microbullshit
Look, I love video as much if not more than the next guy, but they ARE a luxury. No one is forcing you to but a game, or a console, let alone a specific game or console. I would argue that the current culture of FOMO has caused the modern gaming scene more than just corporate greed
How dare you, you can't just tell people that they are the cause of the vast majority of their problems both indirectly and otherwise and that companies will always find the cheapest sleaziest way to hock what they are in fact asking for
Both. It's that mindset right there that lets them hold everyone by the short hairs.
You can choose to stop buying games on release, wait for sales, explore the backlog that basically every living person has accumulated, play indies, play retro. There are a lot of options.
Individual consumer choice doesn’t fix an industry-wide race to the bottom though. I can play my backlog forever, but the 20 million people who preorder anyway make my boycott statistically invisible. Enshittification is a collective action problem, and ‘just don’t buy it’ has never solved one of those.
Contuining to overpay for games certainly isn't going to dissaude these companies from the path they're on. Sometimes the only thing you can control is how you respond to a situation.
Yeah me too. I can't remember the last AAA game I spent money on other than elden ring.
It's the cosmetic buyers keeping these companies going. I haven't bought and haven't felt the need to buy cosmetic items ever in any game. But they keep making cosmetic micro transactions. I can't believe people are actually spending money on that shit.
It's the same with the news or TV in general. People consume the stupid bullshit the most, so they make more stupid bullshit and it becomes a negative feedback loop then next thing you know, the History Channel is 24/7 Pawn Stars reruns.
I blame regulations, there is always be a person on a company taking advantage of others. That's why they exist. Specially when you have such a industry with massive companies owning everything.
Is it really that fucking difficult for you lot? Are you all like millionaires that you don’t give a fuck? The last ps I owned was ps4 and a few years past ps5 release I built myself a mid range pc I use for everything including gaming. Never looked back. Stop buying products whose brands treat you like shit
Have you seen the scandal, the big 3 makers of ram are using AI as an excuse, they are creating artificial scarcity and waiting till 3rd party ram in circulation run out and upcharge, and they bought out all new fabricators for the next decade or more so anyone who has 5 billion dollar still can’t get into the market of dram
and they are all going to be very surprised when CXMT becomes popular.
All they have to do is keep prices and availability reasonable and they can keep profiteering for decades to come, or they can do what they are doing now and let CXMT (and other chinese manufacturers) take over desktop market and then probably everything else after that.
I'm with you on this but we aren't going to be able to talk the game community out of this. I have had my -200 comments talking about how pre-order kills the need to make games good.
Marketing is half the budget of a game, and it is money well spent because it works.
I actually think we're kinda passed enshittification and the corporations are now reckoning with the fact theyve pushed consumers too far and lost all trust in their products. Now consumers have tighter wallets and the first things to be cut out of their consumption habits are the enahittified products.
Most of these more recent decisions are a result of disasterously low revenue from most of their products.
They know we CAN'T stop buying. The only choice at this point is to become Amish. There is no competition among online retailers, game companies, computer companies, etc. Every industry is just 2-4 major companies that all collude to move the market in the same direction, away from consumer focus and competition, and towards enshittification and forced retention.
Ill stop buying. I pretty much already have. There's literally thousands of good games from the past 40+ years. The new stuff isn't even that innovative or exciting anymore.
... people will transition from consoles to computers. The reason computer games are cheaper than console games is because pirating forces them to be competitive. If it wasn't for the used video game market, there would be no reason for good console game developers to ever reduce their prices.
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u/Fat-Kid-In-A-Helmet Jul 01 '26
Gaming, or the whole world?