This video is dedicated to the memory of that poor bee that Stephanie accidentally killed. Rest in peace, Bee, you weren't long for this cruel, drug-filled world...
To be a bee, or not to be a bee, that is the question. Whether it is nobler in their life to suffer a normal bee's life, or go out in a blaze of glory in a Steph Sterling video. 🙂
As A Dutch guy, The Drug dealers I have met have always been more helpfull, honest and friendly then any corporate game company trying to sell me stuff.
As a New Yorker this is also true but specifically only the pot dealers one of them even helped me plant my blueberry bush in a good spot because he's really knowledgeable about gardening
Another sinister thing about these games is if you leave them or dont play for a long time. They will send emails trying to get you to come back and be really manipulative about that too. Saying things like "We miss you!" and "Things have really changed and gotten cool since youve been gone. Come back and take a look!" Theyll even try to give you a present or currency if you come back like an obedient dog just trying to hook you again. These games are not your friends. They are slimey!!
I STILL get the occasional email like that from some shitty free to play browser 'farming' game I played years ago when I was burnt out on the games I had. it's called Goodgame Farm or something like that. one of those farmville-esque things.
A lot of them also just hook you in by making "keeping up" *without* spending money something that basically requires you to play every day. I remember that I quit both Hearthstone and MtG:Arena because playing daily had become a chore, but without playing daily it felt like I'd fall too far behind to have viable decks.
Best way to farm gems in genshin for example is just to leave for 2 weeks and come back because of all the premium currency the game give you trying to make you stay again, even though you probably left because they give fuck all to a normal player.
Some games, sadly very few... Can be exploited! They are often so desperate to get you to come back, They "Read" your player Profile... See what Rare Characters you seem desperate to get and increase your chances to again manipulate you to come back... Someone mentioned Genshin Impact and YES, They are guilty! Its not a frequent thing and still "Luck Based" - But I took a three Week break some months back simply as I was too busy to play and landed the Next Archon Character on a 10 Wish Pull despite not being in line for a "Pity Pull" - Worse still... IT WORKED! As soon as I had time, I was back to grinding, even buying Welkin Moon Passes and Pulling on every new banner!
I'm an illustrator and work out of my house at all sorts of ungodly hours with zero consistency based on what's currently on my plate... to the point that this is not the first time I've only realized it's Monday because of Steph's new video hitting.
@@shannonreed822 I also have a mystery nerve condition that keeps me from being able to sleep with any consistency and has made me forget what in the flying tapdancing _fuck_ a circadian rhythm is, so that contributes as well. 😅
It's almost like the video game industry is part of the tech industry and the tech industry is where former political cabinets go to suck down money like blood.
I think the comparison between the mythical "first one is free" drug dealer and F2Pay games is very apt. Save for no one has ever offered me free drugs like that despite the DARE program saying they would.
The "first one is free" was usually something like brown, where it makes sense, because most people are hooked after that singular use and will absolutely spend money on more heroin. Every other dealer has a business to run and will probably do some sort of "3 for the price of 2" or some such bundle deal that makes sense to purchase because of it's value. A lot of games companies can't even do these sorts of basic deals these days.
A friend of mine rode the white horse for years. He said withdrawal would make it so any sensation registers as pain, even air on his skin. He's better now but withdrawal is nothing to sneeze at
It just occurred to me that the tactics used by Free to Play games are awfully similar to the phishing emails i get at work. "Just click here. You know you want to."
That Star Wars Hunters main menu reminds me of the scene from the Ready Player One movie, where the execs discuss how many ads they can shove on screen before players start having seizures.
Problem with f2p games is what u spend and the value of money u get is frankly ridiculous....u can spend the price of a full price game for basically the possibility of getting something in game
For ZZZ, it's not even that. You need to spend a 100 of your hard earned cash to MAYBE get the limited banner character. And you might not even get that character. But I still love it. Ugh.
Yeah, this is how I don't spend money on gasha stuff the time I want to pay it, I open Steam and look at the games I could get for the same price and ended up being distracted by reading the descriptions
Another big reason why freemium games tend to not be especially fun is purely by design: It's to the benefit of their monetization for the game to not ever be 'too' fun. When balanced to perfection, the character building, tree unlocking, and roster pulling join in a concert that makes the player perpetually feel as if they're juuuuust about to cross the threshold of completing a task, while never quite reaching it. inviting the feeling of, "I'm having a decent time right now, but I'm just a tiny push away from having a GREAT time!" so the promise of spending a bit of money to hasten the process sounds more tempting.
Yeah, I'm not particularly a vulnerable whale, but I've still given up on free to play games. Because I know that the incentive of the developers was not to make the best experience, but to make a just frustrating enough experience after the onboarding period. And it shows. When I try to pick up Guild Wars 2 (which I bought before it was F2P) or World of Warships again, I get quickly overwhelmed with all the challenges I have to fulfil to bring the progression from non-existent to glacially slow, and just drop the game.
But the problem with that is look at the top dog of f2p games right now, MiHoYo. They give you great, rich experiences for free and don't beat you over the head to spend to get more out of it. Or look to other heavy hitters like Path of Exile. That game was designed first and foremost as a fun game and how it bred loyalty in the fanbase to understand why they have the MTX offerings. I've been with Genshin for 4 years and PoE for over 10. Making good games that gets players to stick around is just an inherently better business model.
@bificommander7472 omg same here. gw2 is just so exhausting with its daily/weekly/seasonal todo lists. And if you dare critique it in gw2 spaces you get hit over the head with how its version of battle pass is the best version. I disagree: the best battle pass is *no battle pass*
9:17 "It does amuse me, in an exasperatedly bitter way, how often the least worthy games demand the highest prices." I mean... it's on-theme, given that microtransaction-focused games by necessity have to be designed to be worse than they could have been if you just got to buy a copy of the game and be done.
My friends are all addicted to The First Descendant and I'm sitting there not only bored but feeling the pull of microtransactions every time I open the menu.
@@snowblood74 Yeah. I wanted to like the Solo Leveling game that came out not long ago but it's infested with money grubbing. Immediately there was like 3 different subscriptions and the usual gacha stuff. I had to uninstall it to spare myself
As someone who played Pokémon GO Fest this past weekend and watched as people did hundreds of Necrozma Raids, I find this week's entry highly relevant.
I feel that. Though... the money I've spent on Pokémon GO is less than an annual gym membership, and PoGO gets me out of the house walking (I routinely do 50km of walking a week these days). To say nothing of the friends I've made in the local community. PoGO still has crappy pay-to-play-more mechanics, but I can't really argue with the benefits it's given me?
Yeah, same it's the one mobile game I play almost everyday just because the walking aspect has some actual benefits. The thing is that it's very easy to claim that Pokemon Go is really "not that bad" about it's monetization, if you compare it to other games, including others from Niantic. Yes, the fact that people drop hundreds on raid passes and incubators is scary. But it doesn't have a season pass! It does have a way to consistently get ingame money without paying! And there aren't any pop up windows everytime you open the app that tell you about some special offer on coins or something "only for another 5 minutes! pay up quick!!" And that sucks, right? That it's possible to praise a game for not having that shit. Even though the actaul moentization they do has so many people hooked and bleeds them dry. Just because you really can't open a whole lot of other games withou having all hope sucked out of you. That's absolutely part of the problem.
Some information regarding Warframe that might be useful: Rebecca Ford (current creative director for the game, promoted from community manager about two-and-a-half years ago) recently went on record saying that 90% of the game's active playerbase never spends any money at all on it. Apparently the game's economy (which as others have noted does freely allow players to trade the premium currency around) is pretty much entirely fed by that remaining 10%. DE have also recently been doing weekly "Devshorts" where she (along with the company's CEO Steve Sinclair) directly respond to community questions, and some of the recurring topics over the past few weeks have been ways to make the monetisation of the game more fair. So if you want to get a cause going on that front, now's definitely the time.
well to be fair they did burn themselves with cosmetics. but the main bulk of the gameplay loop is fairly decent. but there are outliers that have created some problems such as certain items being locked to specific mission types. first descendent is rough though. and its pulling just about every system out there.
If you go back to Sterling's Warframe videos you'll see that they did just that with rebb and Steve back then - Steph was actually mentioned in a dev stream at the time, actually influencing and changing the monitisation. The point is, for anyone with spending problems, ANY micro transaction is dangerous. I put about 3 thousand hours and about £1500 into Warframe over a single year when it first released on switch in 2019 - I, like Steph, can not go back to it now. It really is that bad. Now, if they packaged everything up to and including fortuna (pre-railjack) and sold it, complete, for a reasonable price, I'd buy that, one and done.
@@harrygreenfeld4964 And what of the content released after that point? If you cut off everything after Fortuna you'd be left with a half-finished main story and multiple mechanics flat-out missing from the game. I fully understand the pressure that microtransactions place on those who are susceptible to them, but it needs to be kept in mind that Warframe is an ongoing game, and thus needs to have a way to sustain itself. Would a one-and-done purchase be ideal for the players? Absolutely! But bearing in mind the aforementioned 10% figure (and that a significant chunk of that 10% pays less than a hypothetical 1-time purchase would cost, to say nothing of any "expansion packs" that would come out), and that Warframe is already a fairly niche game, I severely doubt enough of the playerbase would be willing to pay that fee that the devs would be able to keep development running. Since Warframe is one of the few cases where most people seem to agree that the devs have struck a decent balance between monetisation and entirely free story content, I would hate to see it go out like that.
@@thegrouchization that's well put, we really are in bad time now for ongoing games and addicted people since even games that do have boxed prices and monthly fees still put cash stores seeking whales.
@@thegrouchizationThe solution is simply to not make F2P games to begin with. We need to stop pretending like developers don’t have that choice. They do. If your “creative vision” requires an ongoing monetary focused experience stuffed with by design psychologically manipulative mtx ( because say it with me: there are no good microtransactions), then you aren’t really that creative, and should not be handed the paintbrush. If you cant “afford” to make a traditional game, and just sell it, well, that’s a you problem. I’d have rather no warframe, than a F2P live service. Doesn’t matter how much they try to “get their monetization right” at its core, fundamentally, by design, the microtransactions are predatory and there to take advantage of certain demographics, no matter how small you may think that group is. The Warframe community can say all they want that the mtx are “player friendly and not that bad”, but end of the day, they’re microtransactions, like all the rest. There’s no exceptions to the rule. They’re not good, they’re not there for player convenience, and most of those funds don’t even go to development. They go to executives and other higher ups positions
Yeah, reminds me of Yugioh Master Duel. The first taste is free, but when you realize you need certain cards and/or decks, then you either slog day after day until you get all the ones you need, or you spend money to maybe unlock what you need to build the deck(s) needed to get anywhere in the game
Let's also not forget that the transactions ain't very micro, anymore. We've skins and characters that go for the price of entire budget-priced games (including older games). I honestly think we need a new term.
lol, you used it. Transactions. I say In Game Transactions. Microtransactions was always bullshit. Buying a chocolate bar for 2$ is just a transaction.
@TheKickPuncher "microtransactions" still works even if it's more of a misnomer, in much the same way minivans are called minivans despite them being quite large. "In-game purchases" seems to be the other more fitting term.
My niece spent the 50 dollars I gave her for her birthday in less than 5 minutes in Roblox. She bought a lootbox trying to get a golden poop hat. She did not get the hat. A golden poop hat was 7 dollars on Temu.
Yoooo, that ‘Trainspotting’ baby was such brilliant cinematography and perfectly mirrored the experience the character was going through right then. It’s a perfect piece of cinema
I don't know how related this is, but Jeff Minter, founder and currently one half of Llamasoft, tells a tale of such a madness. Y'see, our Yak intended to make games on mobile, complete and fun, and sell them on for a fiver apiece. But oh dear, the marketplace wouldn't support paying actual money for apps, nosiree. Thus, "free" apps/games had already taken over, and the horrors had already begun, back in the 2010s. And here we are, a decade and change later, and this Madness persists. No less a game than Frontier Developments' Elite: Dangerous employs Microtransactions, trotting out that they're "just cosmetic", though at least that game seems more or less to be supported by the storefront, rather than vice versa. And of course, Arx, E:D's Currency, can be ground out for free, if somewhat slowly. No, I thank Jeff Minter that there are still complete experiences to be discovered, and honest developers out there. And remember, Even legal drugs can be dangerous in excess, and you still have to be 18 or over to even drink, or gamble! Be smart, and give it up by Never Taking it up. And if you manage it, tell the rest of us how ya did it!
If drug dealers actually gave the first drug for free, then drug addicts would just get a free sample from a lot of different drug dealers since lots of them deal similar drugs. You can't do that with video games since each game is unique.
Steph, Don't forget that Apex Legend's creators Respawn Entertainment once called players who don't or barely purchase their cosmetics and other mircotransactions "Freeloaders" and "Asshats' after they pointed out that some of the skins/content couldn't be grinded for reasonably in a human's life time.
A return to form, thank you. I missed this video style a lot. I’d love you to cover The Sims 4, which was a paid title but went free-to-play in 2022 in order to sell more DLC, the game is up beyond 80+ pieces of paid DLC and more is coming every quarter. It’s almost obscene at this point.
The biggest problem are the prices. Nowadays even full priced AAA games often have microtransactions, but let's compare a F2P game with a AAA game without microtransactions. Spider-Man has almost 30 skins that you can get for free for example. Compare that to F2P games where every skin would at least $10. That would be a game that costs almost $300 or you'd have to potentially grind really long to get them if that's even an option.
10? more like 30$, or 60$! Skin prices are completely absurd nowadays, last time I bought one was a cape on warframe because it actually was a micro transaction.
@@lucasLSD They are macro transactions now up to $100 in most games. Star Citizen even sells a bundle for $48,000! That's more expensive than most people's new cars!
At this point, I'm starting to think "If the game isn't a one time purchase with no extra transactions, it's probably evil." Which kinda sucks cause I usually find myself wanting to play MMOs or the sort. Multiplayer games that literally can't live off of box purchases alone. :(
Yep, even FFXIV, the top played MMO in the west has a cash shop, after charging you game, expansion and monthly fee. Why wouldn't everyone else have one too?
I feel that, I loved MW2 and got things. I play The Finals and get things in it. I've trained my savvy and looked inward alot and respect my purchases, even bad ones.
I must've spent hundreds of dollars on the Star Wars: Old Republic Cartel Market over the years. On top of the monthly subscription. Why did I pay the monthly subscription, when the base game was free? Because I wanted access all the extra convenient stuff. Why did I spend hundreds of dollars on the Cartel Market, when I already had a subscription (and "Cartel Coins" were part of the subscription)? Because I wanted the nice looking cosmetics and adorable pets. Stopped playing some years ago, when I instituted the "Never play games with ANY in-game purchases. Ever" rule. I've enjoyed my gaming experiences far more ever since I started having higher standards for the games I play.
I've made two such purchases ever in one game. I was depressed and had the cash. About a year later the game changed and I lost 150$ with of items with no compensation. The game still exists some 5-6 years later. I still feel burnt.
@@xXHashassinXx Seriously, the "Never play games with in-game purchases" rule has absolutely improved my mental health - I don't even care about the money I spent, I'm not rich, but I had enough to spare. I just hated myself for being scammed and exploited like that. Not only do I feel a lot better about myself, now that I don't have to battle my own mind to play a game - I actually found that games without in-game purchases are generally of a higher quality, both because they're made with more passion, and because they don't have to psychologically pummel you with every sleazy marketing ploy to get you to keep playing and keep paying.
@@Sonichero151 Sure, cutting off any and all games with predatory microtransactions does leave you with a smaller selection of games to play - but I'd argue the games I do play are a significantly more enjoyable time on the whole. For one thing, a lot of the time spent in Old Republic came down to just grind anyway. No big loss. Also, there is a surprising amount of decent indie games out there, just waiting to be found - and if you're looking waste time anyway, why not just waste it looking through every indie game on Steam? Maybe you'll get lucky. Granted, I was never really into any of the multiplayer aspects of MMOs, so it was fairly easy for me to give up on the whole genre, and aim exclusively for singleplayer experiences, but I still think you're better off playing a singleplayer game for 10 hours, while chatting with your friends or Discord or whatever, than anything you get from actually being in the same MMO at the same time doing things together anyway.
I feel like it's always understated how in game currency is such a NASTY tool to get you to spend more money. This skin costs 500 bits! You can buy 700 bits for only $10 AND you get 49 bits for free! For a total of 749 bits! The levels of separation between what you're buying and the actual cash you're spending just piles up higher and higher like a mound of turds. The skin costs less than what I'm paying the game that's a good deal! (You paid them $10 doesn't matter if the skin didn't cost you all of that they still got your $10) Oh I'm getting extra bits for buying the $10 package instead of the $5 package which only gives 350 bits! (You can't even use the $5 package to buy the skin you HAVE to spend $10 for it) Well now I have 249 bits left, I can use that to buy something else maybe! (Cheapest thing even on sale is 250 so you're always just short) And it all ends with that feeling of leaving money on the table. Because you have an in game "balance" left. Surely you can't leave that 249 bits sitting there. That's money to spend! Makes the next hit even easier!
Not Mr. Melancholy selling me drugs first thing in my Monday Morning Sterling Video. (Also predatory game economies have become so insanely common in the past decade - I can't enjoy most popular multiplayer games with my friends became I'm being bombarded with ads from the moment the menu opens, it feels like those horrible screens at gas stations that shriek promotinal material at you as you're held hostage at the pump.)
Ever since Microsoft bought King, my own flesh and blood sibling has refused to play Candy Crush because they want access to her personal information. Her response: "Hell, no!" The ftp games have become as predatory as Facebook now.
None other could have put it in a better way. Glad you are still around to voice it out even though everyone tries their hardest to ignore what games are becoming.
The moment I see a game marketed as "free-to-play", my brain immediately kicks in a Pavlovian response to isolate any and all visuals I find of said game on the internet. Warframe was the only freemium game I invested in back in its early inception days, and somehow managed to put it aside without ever spending any money on it. My time is so limited now where my employment/health obligations make it extremely difficult to put up with anything that asks me to "work" for a reward with a nebulous guarantee of whether I'll achieve it or not. I have this issue with paid games even; I got up to a point in Monster Hunter Rise where I put the game down halfway through, because I stopped having fun once the game asked me to redo hunts more than twice in order to get the drops required to progress, and that's a game that doesn't have a means of paying your way out of the grind. The moment I see a game where, from experience, I know the grind is intentionally there to make me spend even more money, my brain taps into its boomerst recesses to reject said game wholesale. Even the way the monetization in Street Fighter 6 is set up, with new quality of life updates being added now locked behind in-game grind or premium money, has made me unable to enjoy that game beyond playing for fun with friends. My leisure time is so limited, I'd rather be playing something that better respects it and can hit high thresholds of fun without the need for grinding. Now if you'll excuse me, back to River City Girls 2, FUGA: Melodies of Steel and Sea of Stars I go.
Well, I never expected to be this early.. Interesting opening warning... Strangely reminiscent of DARE. And an apt comparison to the market of freemium
I was once deeply ashamed of the sheer volume of money I spent on Warframe. Cute cosmetics, avoiding the grind by spending Plat, I fell for it all HARD. I was even spending hundreds a month while unemployed. Felt awful even after I stopped playing. But I understand now I was preyed upon. I was manipulated and didn't recognize the signs of addiction until I was in deep trouble. But hey, I'll give myself some credit for pulling the plug when I did. Free to Play games with microtransactions can be hellishly addictive. It's frankly evil. (P.S. turns out addiction runs in my family too. That s**t can be genetic!)
Any reason you chose to spend $$$ instead of grinding and using the in game market? Just curious if it's a time thing or why, i've made hundreds of thousands of plat in game and spent most of it on random people i grouped with. Never saw the need to buy platinum when you can just make it in game.
@@weasle5022 What part of "susceptible to addiction and manipulation" did you not understand? You didn't feel the need to spend any money? That just means you are not the target demographic of their exploitation.
That bit at the start was somehow more cringe than any anti-drug PSA I've ever seen before. And that's saying quite a lot because not only have I seen basically all of the American anti-drug PSAs, I've also seen a few _Canadian_ anti-drug PSAs too. Also those more recent bizarre anti-vape commercials.
Fighting games are one of my fav genres but the 3 current big ones Tekken 8, Mortal kombat 1 and streetfighter 6 have taken a lot from f2p including battle passes, monetisation and basically trying to create a habit
@@henryfleischer404i would significantly prefer they returned to their original method of releasing a version update once a year, at a reduced price for returning players who are just upgrading to the new version.
Wait Tekken even has microtransactions shit now?? Goddamn it. Also, I’ve noticed a lot of Gamers vocally expressing a desire to see Smash Bros go F2P, like what the hell is wrong with people
When I look at that dealer I only see a Stand, and now I can't stop imagining one of the JoJo teams just laid out high as fuck going "Woah, this is totally a Stand attack, dude..."
I am SO frustrated and disappointed that YT will not let me disable all Gatcha/Freemium game adverts from its platform. I am vulnerable to those kind of games and I want to be able to protect myself. Instead I have to repeatedly slam the 'block advert' button asap on my phone (which doesn't stop new ones turning up each week) and I feel bullied into using either an adblocker (thereby not supporting the creators) or getting Premium YT. Oh look another push towards a premium spending product that targets me and my vulnerabilities.
You know yourself best, so I am not trying to tell you what to do, but it sounds like premium is just what you want. No more ads, creators get more out of your view if you are premium, win win. Premium isn't predatory. It's just youtube with no ads, you pay a price and get the service without ads. It's a fair deal and I don't regret it. It's not targeting anything except people who don't want to watch ads. There is no youtube lootbox, no additional purchases. If you don't like ads and want to support creators, get premium. I don't know why I waited so long except I hate spending money on something I can get for free, but since I did get premium I don't regret it at all.
I have to say, I've never really understood how Warframe gets by, I've literally never run into anything in it that I would WANT to spend money on. I'd kind of like to give them like £20 for the fun I've had with the game, but there's never been a single thing I cannot get from gameplay that's been appealing enough that I'd consider it worth me actually spending the money.
Don’t really have anything to add here. I play too much MTGA but I’m part of the lucky ‘free’ crowd there. Oh - and go follow the jimquisition twitch account now before you forget so you get notifications when it’s on - it’s a fun little crowd.
I think there was a time where MTX in F2P games were actually an honest attempt to provide a game to a lot of people while still being economically viable. Things have changed a lot, though. When I think back at the era of browser games (the mobile games of our times - simple, check in a couple times per day, choose how much you pay for them and choose whether you do them casually or go super-bonkers with them) there were actual games where you could get a "supporter account" that did virtually nothing special. You just got it because you wanted the game to stay afloat.
Im a Grandmaster backer of Warframe... I haven't played in years because I had kids, and gaming and being a dad is difficult at best... But, yeah, I was seeing some problematic shifts in Warframe 4 years ago, and I wasn't liking it. It was bad enough when Cosmetics were the only thing that was locked behind the pay wall of real money; but now when Iv looked, it feels like everything is a fair go to pay for...and the cosmetics have gotten even more rediculous! Even inventing new cosmetic slots just to exploit what was once joked in the community to be the real endgame...Fashionframe. I'll never give up my account... my fond memories with friends playing it, and my hard earned collection, and the lore and story of the game will always mean something to me...But I dont see myself going back. And I'd like to give Soulframe a go...but I feel like that's just more of the same...
I heard a fascinating conversation on the gaming subreddit the other day about how there should be a distinction between "AAA" games and what they're now calling "corporate" games. I think in that context it's like calling a band you don't like corporate rock or butt rock but it could be worth talking about for taking the wind out of a "AAA" publisher's sails by calling them what they really are.
If you lock the battle pass behind a paywall, and paying to grind is a really bad value proposition, you will lose retention of them and subsequently your big spenders. But then against, it means more people freed from this macrotransaction addiction, which I would say is a win.
nah. You pay to gain more levels in the battlepass. Monster hunter now has a battlepass now. You can either grind it, or pay for each new tier. It's also infinite, so you can continue to pay to get that one last tier needed to get the resources to upgrade your gear. no need to grind, just swipe the card.
@@nehemiahpouncey3607 why is it always my comments that attract this kind of response?? I'm Nonbinary too, you're not gonna find a sympathetic ear with me
It just kinda feels easier to justify grabbing your wallet for F2P games, which is worse when these games have to "upper limit" to how much a single person can spend. I'm more stingy with games that did cost money.
I basically just stopped playing the majority of games because of that... The positive is, that I have more time to enjoy my other hobbies But I catch myself on a daily basis, that I want to go back to one of those games and have to stop myself because I know that I will spend more money on it...
I stopped playing f2p games entirely over 10 years ago. Even on my phone I go digging (cause you have to on mobile storefronts) to only get the premium games. Knowing that oneself is prone to video game addiction is the first step, as cliche as they sounds...
Sometimes during the little sketches at the beginning of the video you can almost hear Johnathan off Road Rules incredulously protesting against it. "People don't want this! People don't want me as a drug dealer puppet man... You don't understand that I would be arrested... I would be shunned... People would say, that's a bad guy. And they'd be right. It's not a good idea."
"We didn't say he WAS you Jonathan, only that he looks like you." "Yea -he's doing it again Steph! Faking incredulousness but making everything about himself!"
Used to have 14 daily F2P games that we played and spent money on because of this shit and our neurodivergence making us a prime a target. Thankfully we’ve been mostly able to stick to a “no F2P games” rule in recent years.
When is the After School Special Extravaganza dropping on this channel? Someone has to inform the children about microtransactions and corporate greed. Also about the drugs too, I guess.
I had to wean myself of of these types of games about ten years ago (a Star Trek card based one). Luckily once I realised the model was to get me hooked and paying money for basic rewards (I spent about €200 at that time), I was able to go cold turkey without any wish to go back. These days, I don't go near any freemium games, knowing what they are.
This video is dedicated to the memory of that poor bee that Stephanie accidentally killed. Rest in peace, Bee, you weren't long for this cruel, drug-filled world...
To be a bee, or not to be a bee, that is the question. Whether it is nobler in their life to suffer a normal bee's life, or go out in a blaze of glory in a Steph Sterling video. 🙂
Despite all known laws of aviation
@@TyrMcDohl I've always found that line very useful when people say something can never happen.
Hmph. Pesky bee...
Actually, only the oldest bees leave the hive so that old lady had probably had been around a while
As A Dutch guy, The Drug dealers I have met have always been more helpfull, honest and friendly then any corporate game company trying to sell me stuff.
Because unlike in America, the Dutch arn't puritanical stuckups who pearlclutch at every quibble.
As an American in the Deep South Bible Belt, absolutely same.
Doesn't mean anything, drugs are legal in the Netherlands.
@@UltimatePerfection Not all of them surely?
As a New Yorker this is also true but specifically only the pot dealers one of them even helped me plant my blueberry bush in a good spot because he's really knowledgeable about gardening
Another sinister thing about these games is if you leave them or dont play for a long time. They will send emails trying to get you to come back and be really manipulative about that too. Saying things like "We miss you!" and "Things have really changed and gotten cool since youve been gone. Come back and take a look!" Theyll even try to give you a present or currency if you come back like an obedient dog just trying to hook you again. These games are not your friends. They are slimey!!
I STILL get the occasional email like that from some shitty free to play browser 'farming' game I played years ago when I was burnt out on the games I had. it's called Goodgame Farm or something like that. one of those farmville-esque things.
A lot of them also just hook you in by making "keeping up" *without* spending money something that basically requires you to play every day. I remember that I quit both Hearthstone and MtG:Arena because playing daily had become a chore, but without playing daily it felt like I'd fall too far behind to have viable decks.
Best way to farm gems in genshin for example is just to leave for 2 weeks and come back because of all the premium currency the game give you trying to make you stay again, even though you probably left because they give fuck all to a normal player.
Ha ha i play offline discbase games so im safe
Some games, sadly very few... Can be exploited! They are often so desperate to get you to come back, They "Read" your player Profile... See what Rare Characters you seem desperate to get and increase your chances to again manipulate you to come back... Someone mentioned Genshin Impact and YES, They are guilty!
Its not a frequent thing and still "Luck Based" - But I took a three Week break some months back simply as I was too busy to play and landed the Next Archon Character on a 10 Wish Pull despite not being in line for a "Pity Pull" - Worse still... IT WORKED! As soon as I had time, I was back to grinding, even buying Welkin Moon Passes and Pulling on every new banner!
Well, if the wrestling doesn't pan out, you've always got a career in 90s anti-drug PSAs.
I'm an illustrator and work out of my house at all sorts of ungodly hours with zero consistency based on what's currently on my plate... to the point that this is not the first time I've only realized it's Monday because of Steph's new video hitting.
It really does help give a sense of routine, doesnt? Being a homebound disabled person, that matters a lpt. Thanks steph
Hydrate and take care. Hope your Monday is good.
I'm in exactly the same boat. Illustrator with no set schedule. Time isnt real.
Steph's videos are literally my sign "Oh it's monday!" because my sleep disorder is chaos. So this post made me nod all "Same hat!"
@@shannonreed822 I also have a mystery nerve condition that keeps me from being able to sleep with any consistency and has made me forget what in the flying tapdancing _fuck_ a circadian rhythm is, so that contributes as well. 😅
This shit has spread so far beyond games these days..
Great point
It's almost like the video game industry is part of the tech industry and the tech industry is where former political cabinets go to suck down money like blood.
It's basically the entire tech world at this point. Just one grift after another.
Gotta love capitalism
The goal is essentially to hack people
I think the comparison between the mythical "first one is free" drug dealer and F2Pay games is very apt. Save for no one has ever offered me free drugs like that despite the DARE program saying they would.
I was also told there'd be far more run-ins with killer bees and quicksand.
The "first one is free" was usually something like brown, where it makes sense, because most people are hooked after that singular use and will absolutely spend money on more heroin.
Every other dealer has a business to run and will probably do some sort of "3 for the price of 2" or some such bundle deal that makes sense to purchase because of it's value.
A lot of games companies can't even do these sorts of basic deals these days.
A friend of mine rode the white horse for years. He said withdrawal would make it so any sensation registers as pain, even air on his skin. He's better now but withdrawal is nothing to sneeze at
Thanks, Steph Drugsy McRoachman is going to haunt my nightmares.
Reminds me of that guy from Clone High who was selling raisins. Anyone else ever seen that?
Drugsy is going to be in a new analog horror series within a month
@@LadyDoomsingerwas that the guy voiced by Jack Black?
@@kerseyHarding Had to look it up, but yes. That was him.
The F2P supports the microtransactions, not the other way round - yes, 100%, perfectly put. Exactly it.
It just occurred to me that the tactics used by Free to Play games are awfully similar to the phishing emails i get at work.
"Just click here. You know you want to."
That Star Wars Hunters main menu reminds me of the scene from the Ready Player One movie, where the execs discuss how many ads they can shove on screen before players start having seizures.
Problem with f2p games is what u spend and the value of money u get is frankly ridiculous....u can spend the price of a full price game for basically the possibility of getting something in game
For ZZZ, it's not even that. You need to spend a 100 of your hard earned cash to MAYBE get the limited banner character. And you might not even get that character.
But I still love it. Ugh.
@@hickknight you're talking about gacha
@@Justuas
Gacha games are f2p games, theyre a subdivision of it
And then keep spending.
Yeah, this is how I don't spend money on gasha stuff the time I want to pay it, I open Steam and look at the games I could get for the same price and ended up being distracted by reading the descriptions
Another big reason why freemium games tend to not be especially fun is purely by design: It's to the benefit of their monetization for the game to not ever be 'too' fun. When balanced to perfection, the character building, tree unlocking, and roster pulling join in a concert that makes the player perpetually feel as if they're juuuuust about to cross the threshold of completing a task, while never quite reaching it.
inviting the feeling of, "I'm having a decent time right now, but I'm just a tiny push away from having a GREAT time!" so the promise of spending a bit of money to hasten the process sounds more tempting.
Yeah, I'm not particularly a vulnerable whale, but I've still given up on free to play games. Because I know that the incentive of the developers was not to make the best experience, but to make a just frustrating enough experience after the onboarding period. And it shows. When I try to pick up Guild Wars 2 (which I bought before it was F2P) or World of Warships again, I get quickly overwhelmed with all the challenges I have to fulfil to bring the progression from non-existent to glacially slow, and just drop the game.
@@bificommander7472 if you bought GW2 you are ahead of all the freemium players though, maybe your account was wrongly downgraded?
No wonder I never play games like this. Ugh.
But the problem with that is look at the top dog of f2p games right now, MiHoYo. They give you great, rich experiences for free and don't beat you over the head to spend to get more out of it. Or look to other heavy hitters like Path of Exile. That game was designed first and foremost as a fun game and how it bred loyalty in the fanbase to understand why they have the MTX offerings. I've been with Genshin for 4 years and PoE for over 10. Making good games that gets players to stick around is just an inherently better business model.
@bificommander7472 omg same here. gw2 is just so exhausting with its daily/weekly/seasonal todo lists. And if you dare critique it in gw2 spaces you get hit over the head with how its version of battle pass is the best version.
I disagree: the best battle pass is *no battle pass*
A new challenger has entered the (only existing in my head) Jimquisition fighting game.
Is it the bee?
@@Mischievous_Moth I think you meant to say "was."
R.I.P. Bee
Day one DLC will be the Cornflakes Homunculus, I'll be so pissed...and then pay for it😊
“Stop-playing for self-preservation.”
Chilling how much that resonated with me. 100%. Thanks for this video and its insights.
9:17 "It does amuse me, in an exasperatedly bitter way, how often the least worthy games demand the highest prices."
I mean... it's on-theme, given that microtransaction-focused games by necessity have to be designed to be worse than they could have been if you just got to buy a copy of the game and be done.
Man. Every time I try and forget the Trainspotting baby scene, someone has to bring it the fuck up. God damnit, Sterling.
the pixel-art animations in the end credits are an absolute joy
Seeing the Cornflake Homunculus in pixel form is such a delight!
My friends are all addicted to The First Descendant and I'm sitting there not only bored but feeling the pull of microtransactions every time I open the menu.
Before a f2p mobile game lets you do anything,you get bombarded with pop ups showing you "limited time offers". it's trulydisgusting
@@snowblood74 Yeah. I wanted to like the Solo Leveling game that came out not long ago but it's infested with money grubbing. Immediately there was like 3 different subscriptions and the usual gacha stuff. I had to uninstall it to spare myself
I remember getting free cheese from Somerfield.
That supermarket no longer exists but my need for cheddar persists.
That's how they get you
Annoying orange seems to have gone off in a weird direction
Unanimously we agree it’s significantly better than anything toby ever did.
lol it's annoying orange on meth
He keeps rubbin satans magical lamp
Capitalism comes for us all 😔
@@VillainousMuse yep & conservitives created it
As someone who played Pokémon GO Fest this past weekend and watched as people did hundreds of Necrozma Raids, I find this week's entry highly relevant.
I feel that. Though... the money I've spent on Pokémon GO is less than an annual gym membership, and PoGO gets me out of the house walking (I routinely do 50km of walking a week these days). To say nothing of the friends I've made in the local community. PoGO still has crappy pay-to-play-more mechanics, but I can't really argue with the benefits it's given me?
Yeah, same it's the one mobile game I play almost everyday just because the walking aspect has some actual benefits.
The thing is that it's very easy to claim that Pokemon Go is really "not that bad" about it's monetization, if you compare it to other games, including others from Niantic.
Yes, the fact that people drop hundreds on raid passes and incubators is scary. But it doesn't have a season pass! It does have a way to consistently get ingame money without paying! And there aren't any pop up windows everytime you open the app that tell you about some special offer on coins or something "only for another 5 minutes! pay up quick!!"
And that sucks, right? That it's possible to praise a game for not having that shit. Even though the actaul moentization they do has so many people hooked and bleeds them dry. Just because you really can't open a whole lot of other games withou having all hope sucked out of you.
That's absolutely part of the problem.
Some information regarding Warframe that might be useful: Rebecca Ford (current creative director for the game, promoted from community manager about two-and-a-half years ago) recently went on record saying that 90% of the game's active playerbase never spends any money at all on it. Apparently the game's economy (which as others have noted does freely allow players to trade the premium currency around) is pretty much entirely fed by that remaining 10%.
DE have also recently been doing weekly "Devshorts" where she (along with the company's CEO Steve Sinclair) directly respond to community questions, and some of the recurring topics over the past few weeks have been ways to make the monetisation of the game more fair. So if you want to get a cause going on that front, now's definitely the time.
well to be fair they did burn themselves with cosmetics. but the main bulk of the gameplay loop is fairly decent. but there are outliers that have created some problems such as certain items being locked to specific mission types.
first descendent is rough though. and its pulling just about every system out there.
If you go back to Sterling's Warframe videos you'll see that they did just that with rebb and Steve back then - Steph was actually mentioned in a dev stream at the time, actually influencing and changing the monitisation. The point is, for anyone with spending problems, ANY micro transaction is dangerous. I put about 3 thousand hours and about £1500 into Warframe over a single year when it first released on switch in 2019 - I, like Steph, can not go back to it now. It really is that bad.
Now, if they packaged everything up to and including fortuna (pre-railjack) and sold it, complete, for a reasonable price, I'd buy that, one and done.
@@harrygreenfeld4964 And what of the content released after that point? If you cut off everything after Fortuna you'd be left with a half-finished main story and multiple mechanics flat-out missing from the game.
I fully understand the pressure that microtransactions place on those who are susceptible to them, but it needs to be kept in mind that Warframe is an ongoing game, and thus needs to have a way to sustain itself.
Would a one-and-done purchase be ideal for the players? Absolutely! But bearing in mind the aforementioned 10% figure (and that a significant chunk of that 10% pays less than a hypothetical 1-time purchase would cost, to say nothing of any "expansion packs" that would come out), and that Warframe is already a fairly niche game, I severely doubt enough of the playerbase would be willing to pay that fee that the devs would be able to keep development running. Since Warframe is one of the few cases where most people seem to agree that the devs have struck a decent balance between monetisation and entirely free story content, I would hate to see it go out like that.
@@thegrouchization that's well put, we really are in bad time now for ongoing games and addicted people since even games that do have boxed prices and monthly fees still put cash stores seeking whales.
@@thegrouchizationThe solution is simply to not make F2P games to begin with. We need to stop pretending like developers don’t have that choice. They do. If your “creative vision” requires an ongoing monetary focused experience stuffed with by design psychologically manipulative mtx ( because say it with me: there are no good microtransactions), then you aren’t really that creative, and should not be handed the paintbrush. If you cant “afford” to make a traditional game, and just sell it, well, that’s a you problem. I’d have rather no warframe, than a F2P live service. Doesn’t matter how much they try to “get their monetization right” at its core, fundamentally, by design, the microtransactions are predatory and there to take advantage of certain demographics, no matter how small you may think that group is. The Warframe community can say all they want that the mtx are “player friendly and not that bad”, but end of the day, they’re microtransactions, like all the rest. There’s no exceptions to the rule. They’re not good, they’re not there for player convenience, and most of those funds don’t even go to development. They go to executives and other higher ups positions
Yeah, reminds me of Yugioh Master Duel. The first taste is free, but when you realize you need certain cards and/or decks, then you either slog day after day until you get all the ones you need, or you spend money to maybe unlock what you need to build the deck(s) needed to get anywhere in the game
*The First Investment*
Let's also not forget that the transactions ain't very micro, anymore. We've skins and characters that go for the price of entire budget-priced games (including older games). I honestly think we need a new term.
lol, you used it. Transactions. I say In Game Transactions. Microtransactions was always bullshit. Buying a chocolate bar for 2$ is just a transaction.
@TheKickPuncher "microtransactions" still works even if it's more of a misnomer, in much the same way minivans are called minivans despite them being quite large. "In-game purchases" seems to be the other more fitting term.
They never were "micro". Not even close. That term always was a ploy.
Yep, 40$ for a skin isn't exactly "micro"...
Yes & ceos willed it into power
The opening skit was truly a harrowing and profound look at the process of addiction…with puppets ☺️
My niece spent the 50 dollars I gave her for her birthday in less than 5 minutes in Roblox. She bought a lootbox trying to get a golden poop hat. She did not get the hat. A golden poop hat was 7 dollars on Temu.
It's wild but I guess now you know better than to give her cash, at least get her a gift card (that's tied to a store or restaurant) instead.
Yoooo, that ‘Trainspotting’ baby was such brilliant cinematography and perfectly mirrored the experience the character was going through right then. It’s a perfect piece of cinema
The Bruce Lee puns are the best. Every time I see one I giggle a bit
I don't know how related this is, but Jeff Minter, founder and currently one half of Llamasoft, tells a tale of such a madness. Y'see, our Yak intended to make games on mobile, complete and fun, and sell them on for a fiver apiece. But oh dear, the marketplace wouldn't support paying actual money for apps, nosiree. Thus, "free" apps/games had already taken over, and the horrors had already begun, back in the 2010s. And here we are, a decade and change later, and this Madness persists.
No less a game than Frontier Developments' Elite: Dangerous employs Microtransactions, trotting out that they're "just cosmetic", though at least that game seems more or less to be supported by the storefront, rather than vice versa. And of course, Arx, E:D's Currency, can be ground out for free, if somewhat slowly.
No, I thank Jeff Minter that there are still complete experiences to be discovered, and honest developers out there. And remember, Even legal drugs can be dangerous in excess, and you still have to be 18 or over to even drink, or gamble! Be smart, and give it up by Never Taking it up. And if you manage it, tell the rest of us how ya did it!
If drug dealers actually gave the first drug for free, then drug addicts would just get a free sample from a lot of different drug dealers since lots of them deal similar drugs. You can't do that with video games since each game is unique.
Well, about that... 😒
Steph, Don't forget that Apex Legend's creators Respawn Entertainment once called players who don't or barely purchase their cosmetics and other mircotransactions "Freeloaders" and "Asshats' after they pointed out that some of the skins/content couldn't be grinded for reasonably in a human's life time.
A return to form, thank you. I missed this video style a lot. I’d love you to cover The Sims 4, which was a paid title but went free-to-play in 2022 in order to sell more DLC, the game is up beyond 80+ pieces of paid DLC and more is coming every quarter. It’s almost obscene at this point.
“A return to form” and it’s the same style of content as always
The biggest problem are the prices. Nowadays even full priced AAA games often have microtransactions, but let's compare a F2P game with a AAA game without microtransactions. Spider-Man has almost 30 skins that you can get for free for example. Compare that to F2P games where every skin would at least $10. That would be a game that costs almost $300 or you'd have to potentially grind really long to get them if that's even an option.
10? more like 30$, or 60$! Skin prices are completely absurd nowadays, last time I bought one was a cape on warframe because it actually was a micro transaction.
@@lucasLSD They are macro transactions now up to $100 in most games. Star Citizen even sells a bundle for $48,000! That's more expensive than most people's new cars!
drugsie mcroachman might be my favourite new addition to the jimquisition cinematic universe
At this point, I'm starting to think "If the game isn't a one time purchase with no extra transactions, it's probably evil."
Which kinda sucks cause I usually find myself wanting to play MMOs or the sort. Multiplayer games that literally can't live off of box purchases alone. :(
I am really glad to never have enjoyed online games for this very reason.
Yep, even FFXIV, the top played MMO in the west has a cash shop, after charging you game, expansion and monthly fee. Why wouldn't everyone else have one too?
I feel that, I loved MW2 and got things. I play The Finals and get things in it. I've trained my savvy and looked inward alot and respect my purchases, even bad ones.
I must've spent hundreds of dollars on the Star Wars: Old Republic Cartel Market over the years. On top of the monthly subscription.
Why did I pay the monthly subscription, when the base game was free? Because I wanted access all the extra convenient stuff. Why did I spend hundreds of dollars on the Cartel Market, when I already had a subscription (and "Cartel Coins" were part of the subscription)? Because I wanted the nice looking cosmetics and adorable pets.
Stopped playing some years ago, when I instituted the "Never play games with ANY in-game purchases. Ever" rule. I've enjoyed my gaming experiences far more ever since I started having higher standards for the games I play.
I've made two such purchases ever in one game. I was depressed and had the cash. About a year later the game changed and I lost 150$ with of items with no compensation. The game still exists some 5-6 years later. I still feel burnt.
I gotta ask, where did you find the games to supplement what you loss when you stopped playing the old republic?
@@xXHashassinXx Seriously, the "Never play games with in-game purchases" rule has absolutely improved my mental health - I don't even care about the money I spent, I'm not rich, but I had enough to spare. I just hated myself for being scammed and exploited like that. Not only do I feel a lot better about myself, now that I don't have to battle my own mind to play a game - I actually found that games without in-game purchases are generally of a higher quality, both because they're made with more passion, and because they don't have to psychologically pummel you with every sleazy marketing ploy to get you to keep playing and keep paying.
Played it, spent way too much on it and to this day the homicidal Ewok companion was the only micro-transaction I have never regretted in a game.
@@Sonichero151 Sure, cutting off any and all games with predatory microtransactions does leave you with a smaller selection of games to play - but I'd argue the games I do play are a significantly more enjoyable time on the whole. For one thing, a lot of the time spent in Old Republic came down to just grind anyway. No big loss.
Also, there is a surprising amount of decent indie games out there, just waiting to be found - and if you're looking waste time anyway, why not just waste it looking through every indie game on Steam? Maybe you'll get lucky.
Granted, I was never really into any of the multiplayer aspects of MMOs, so it was fairly easy for me to give up on the whole genre, and aim exclusively for singleplayer experiences, but I still think you're better off playing a singleplayer game for 10 hours, while chatting with your friends or Discord or whatever, than anything you get from actually being in the same MMO at the same time doing things together anyway.
Drugsy McRoachman looks like one of the Threshold Kids from Control
NO INTERRUPTIONS!!
@@Pixel_Manny_69 You've got good BRAINS
I feel like it's always understated how in game currency is such a NASTY tool to get you to spend more money.
This skin costs 500 bits!
You can buy 700 bits for only $10 AND you get 49 bits for free! For a total of 749 bits!
The levels of separation between what you're buying and the actual cash you're spending just piles up higher and higher like a mound of turds.
The skin costs less than what I'm paying the game that's a good deal! (You paid them $10 doesn't matter if the skin didn't cost you all of that they still got your $10)
Oh I'm getting extra bits for buying the $10 package instead of the $5 package which only gives 350 bits! (You can't even use the $5 package to buy the skin you HAVE to spend $10 for it)
Well now I have 249 bits left, I can use that to buy something else maybe! (Cheapest thing even on sale is 250 so you're always just short)
And it all ends with that feeling of leaving money on the table. Because you have an in game "balance" left. Surely you can't leave that 249 bits sitting there. That's money to spend! Makes the next hit even easier!
Man, that image of Stan Lee for "previously" hit different :(
Not Mr. Melancholy selling me drugs first thing in my Monday Morning Sterling Video.
(Also predatory game economies have become so insanely common in the past decade - I can't enjoy most popular multiplayer games with my friends became I'm being bombarded with ads from the moment the menu opens, it feels like those horrible screens at gas stations that shriek promotinal material at you as you're held hostage at the pump.)
Ever since Microsoft bought King, my own flesh and blood sibling has refused to play Candy Crush because they want access to her personal information. Her response: "Hell, no!" The ftp games have become as predatory as Facebook now.
The tone on the intro skit is perfect😂😂😂
Stephanie Sterling was able to complete their court mandated public service thanks to this video
Mainly here for the ever expanding cast of Lees.
Which one do you like most, specific-Lee?
None other could have put it in a better way. Glad you are still around to voice it out even though everyone tries their hardest to ignore what games are becoming.
The moment I see a game marketed as "free-to-play", my brain immediately kicks in a Pavlovian response to isolate any and all visuals I find of said game on the internet. Warframe was the only freemium game I invested in back in its early inception days, and somehow managed to put it aside without ever spending any money on it. My time is so limited now where my employment/health obligations make it extremely difficult to put up with anything that asks me to "work" for a reward with a nebulous guarantee of whether I'll achieve it or not. I have this issue with paid games even; I got up to a point in Monster Hunter Rise where I put the game down halfway through, because I stopped having fun once the game asked me to redo hunts more than twice in order to get the drops required to progress, and that's a game that doesn't have a means of paying your way out of the grind. The moment I see a game where, from experience, I know the grind is intentionally there to make me spend even more money, my brain taps into its boomerst recesses to reject said game wholesale. Even the way the monetization in Street Fighter 6 is set up, with new quality of life updates being added now locked behind in-game grind or premium money, has made me unable to enjoy that game beyond playing for fun with friends. My leisure time is so limited, I'd rather be playing something that better respects it and can hit high thresholds of fun without the need for grinding. Now if you'll excuse me, back to River City Girls 2, FUGA: Melodies of Steel and Sea of Stars I go.
Well, I never expected to be this early..
Interesting opening warning...
Strangely reminiscent of DARE.
And an apt comparison to the market of freemium
Ditto!
I'm usually a coupne hours to days behind
I was once deeply ashamed of the sheer volume of money I spent on Warframe. Cute cosmetics, avoiding the grind by spending Plat, I fell for it all HARD. I was even spending hundreds a month while unemployed. Felt awful even after I stopped playing.
But I understand now I was preyed upon. I was manipulated and didn't recognize the signs of addiction until I was in deep trouble. But hey, I'll give myself some credit for pulling the plug when I did.
Free to Play games with microtransactions can be hellishly addictive. It's frankly evil.
(P.S. turns out addiction runs in my family too. That s**t can be genetic!)
Any reason you chose to spend $$$ instead of grinding and using the in game market? Just curious if it's a time thing or why, i've made hundreds of thousands of plat in game and spent most of it on random people i grouped with. Never saw the need to buy platinum when you can just make it in game.
@@weasle5022 What part of "susceptible to addiction and manipulation" did you not understand?
You didn't feel the need to spend any money? That just means you are not the target demographic of their exploitation.
Folding Ideas level of puppetry here, love it!
I miss Foldy
I never bought the idea that free-to-play makes microtransactions ok.
That bit at the start was somehow more cringe than any anti-drug PSA I've ever seen before.
And that's saying quite a lot because not only have I seen basically all of the American anti-drug PSAs, I've also seen a few _Canadian_ anti-drug PSAs too. Also those more recent bizarre anti-vape commercials.
This warning about the predatory and addictive nature of gambling was brought to me alongside an ad for 888 casino. How very apt.
Oh heck Stephanie giving us an Analog Horror intro 😱
"the free game supports the economy, not the other wa around" - very insightful
Fighting games are one of my fav genres but the 3 current big ones Tekken 8, Mortal kombat 1 and streetfighter 6 have taken a lot from f2p including battle passes, monetisation and basically trying to create a habit
That's such a strange choice for a fighting game, I find even unlocking characters in fighting games to be strange.
@@henryfleischer404i would significantly prefer they returned to their original method of releasing a version update once a year, at a reduced price for returning players who are just upgrading to the new version.
Wait Tekken even has microtransactions shit now?? Goddamn it.
Also, I’ve noticed a lot of Gamers vocally expressing a desire to see Smash Bros go F2P, like what the hell is wrong with people
Whoever made that drug dealer puppet was entirely too talented and I will be seeing it in my nightmares.
Skelly Stephanie is what happens when you kill bees.
Said it once, said it a thousand times.
You will ALWAYS, not often, ALWAYS, end up paying dearly for your own lack of standards.
Finally, drugs.
Wait, no ...
ZMan, that bit with Ms. Piggy was absolutely brilliant. I had to say.
When I look at that dealer I only see a Stand, and now I can't stop imagining one of the JoJo teams just laid out high as fuck going "Woah, this is totally a Stand attack, dude..."
Saint Pepsi's fallen on hard times
That panda dance is disturbingly hypnotic
6:03 Shout out to whoever came up with Chief Lee, that's a damn fine joke
I am SO frustrated and disappointed that YT will not let me disable all Gatcha/Freemium game adverts from its platform. I am vulnerable to those kind of games and I want to be able to protect myself. Instead I have to repeatedly slam the 'block advert' button asap on my phone (which doesn't stop new ones turning up each week) and I feel bullied into using either an adblocker (thereby not supporting the creators) or getting Premium YT. Oh look another push towards a premium spending product that targets me and my vulnerabilities.
You know yourself best, so I am not trying to tell you what to do, but it sounds like premium is just what you want. No more ads, creators get more out of your view if you are premium, win win.
Premium isn't predatory. It's just youtube with no ads, you pay a price and get the service without ads. It's a fair deal and I don't regret it.
It's not targeting anything except people who don't want to watch ads. There is no youtube lootbox, no additional purchases. If you don't like ads and want to support creators, get premium. I don't know why I waited so long except I hate spending money on something I can get for free, but since I did get premium I don't regret it at all.
Wild way to open the video lol!
I have to say, I've never really understood how Warframe gets by, I've literally never run into anything in it that I would WANT to spend money on. I'd kind of like to give them like £20 for the fun I've had with the game, but there's never been a single thing I cannot get from gameplay that's been appealing enough that I'd consider it worth me actually spending the money.
Steph's creativity never ceased to amaze me.
Don’t really have anything to add here. I play too much MTGA but I’m part of the lucky ‘free’ crowd there.
Oh - and go follow the jimquisition twitch account now before you forget so you get notifications when it’s on - it’s a fun little crowd.
Drug dealer puppet is giving me some Wild Woody vibes
I think there was a time where MTX in F2P games were actually an honest attempt to provide a game to a lot of people while still being economically viable. Things have changed a lot, though.
When I think back at the era of browser games (the mobile games of our times - simple, check in a couple times per day, choose how much you pay for them and choose whether you do them casually or go super-bonkers with them) there were actual games where you could get a "supporter account" that did virtually nothing special. You just got it because you wanted the game to stay afloat.
Multiversus battlepass is $3 worth of stickers and emotes for $40
the bruce lee puns get me every damn time
Im a Grandmaster backer of Warframe...
I haven't played in years because I had kids, and gaming and being a dad is difficult at best...
But, yeah, I was seeing some problematic shifts in Warframe 4 years ago, and I wasn't liking it. It was bad enough when Cosmetics were the only thing that was locked behind the pay wall of real money; but now when Iv looked, it feels like everything is a fair go to pay for...and the cosmetics have gotten even more rediculous! Even inventing new cosmetic slots just to exploit what was once joked in the community to be the real endgame...Fashionframe.
I'll never give up my account... my fond memories with friends playing it, and my hard earned collection, and the lore and story of the game will always mean something to me...But I dont see myself going back. And I'd like to give Soulframe a go...but I feel like that's just more of the same...
I heard a fascinating conversation on the gaming subreddit the other day about how there should be a distinction between "AAA" games and what they're now calling "corporate" games. I think in that context it's like calling a band you don't like corporate rock or butt rock but it could be worth talking about for taking the wind out of a "AAA" publisher's sails by calling them what they really are.
Ultimate Lee was fucking genius.
F in chat for that poor bee friend.
Thank demeter for Jim Sterling. may she forgive you for the bee.
If you lock the battle pass behind a paywall, and paying to grind is a really bad value proposition, you will lose retention of them and subsequently your big spenders. But then against, it means more people freed from this macrotransaction addiction, which I would say is a win.
nah. You pay to gain more levels in the battlepass.
Monster hunter now has a battlepass now. You can either grind it, or pay for each new tier. It's also infinite, so you can continue to pay to get that one last tier needed to get the resources to upgrade your gear.
no need to grind, just swipe the card.
That drug puppet was terrifying and wonderful. Thank you Stephanie
I'm still trying to figure out where
o.g. jim went?
@@nehemiahpouncey3607 why is it always my comments that attract this kind of response?? I'm Nonbinary too, you're not gonna find a sympathetic ear with me
The theme of Halloween 2024 will be 'Sinister Tupperware Party'
The shrooms are kicking in
and I never em took them
Oh hey, another legit journalism piece. Good to see. I like these.
Pacman on drugs is making me sad... that I don't have drugs
Came back after years not watching this channel. Things are going swimmingly I see.
It just kinda feels easier to justify grabbing your wallet for F2P games, which is worse when these games have to "upper limit" to how much a single person can spend.
I'm more stingy with games that did cost money.
I basically just stopped playing the majority of games because of that...
The positive is, that I have more time to enjoy my other hobbies
But I catch myself on a daily basis, that I want to go back to one of those games and have to stop myself because I know that I will spend more money on it...
I stopped playing f2p games entirely over 10 years ago. Even on my phone I go digging (cause you have to on mobile storefronts) to only get the premium games. Knowing that oneself is prone to video game addiction is the first step, as cliche as they sounds...
Sometimes during the little sketches at the beginning of the video you can almost hear Johnathan off Road Rules incredulously protesting against it.
"People don't want this! People don't want me as a drug dealer puppet man... You don't understand that I would be arrested... I would be shunned... People would say, that's a bad guy. And they'd be right. It's not a good idea."
"We didn't say he WAS you Jonathan, only that he looks like you."
"Yea -he's doing it again Steph! Faking incredulousness but making everything about himself!"
Used to have 14 daily F2P games that we played and spent money on because of this shit and our neurodivergence making us a prime a target. Thankfully we’ve been mostly able to stick to a “no F2P games” rule in recent years.
R.I.P. Multiversus 🐰
I WILL have some boxes of drugs. Thanks, Drugsy!!!
I love the improve-Lee bits. I am slow, so by the time I register the Lee image. I have a bit of a chuckle.
Am I the only one here old enough to get some weirdly specific and immediate Cartoon All Stars PTSD from Drugsy?
Cartoon All-Stars To The Rescue ftw. *takes a bong rip*
When is the After School Special Extravaganza dropping on this channel? Someone has to inform the children about microtransactions and corporate greed. Also about the drugs too, I guess.
God, I understand the phantom regret of not being able to risk getting into Warframe...
I had to wean myself of of these types of games about ten years ago (a Star Trek card based one). Luckily once I realised the model was to get me hooked and paying money for basic rewards (I spent about €200 at that time), I was able to go cold turkey without any wish to go back. These days, I don't go near any freemium games, knowing what they are.