The new worst gaming trend: killing our favorite games to replace them with sequels
The new worst gaming trend: killing our favorite games to replace them with sequels
You cannot be allowed to be content with what you already have and like. You need to buy more, buy now, buy new!!!
Consume! Buy our game as a service so we can rake you over more hot coals as we bastardized your nostalgia for profits.
Sc2 and ow2 are free games
ow2 is a free alpha release, and sc2 is over 10 years old and hasn't received any major content in at least 4 years...
plus sc2 co-op commanders had a bundle deal right before development got dropped for the game, but now, years later, blizzard expects you to pay a full 15$ per commander to unlock!
and obviously there's no way to unlock them through gameplay...
so one of the two is straight up worse than the one it replaced, and the other is stupidly expensive given how ancient it is.
great examples, really.
Honestly, I have trouble seeing these "sequels" as new games. I mean Overwatch 2 was mostly a heavy balance patch, graphical patch, and pivot to F2P.
These are just large updates where they incremented a number in the name. With that in mind, this isn't a "trend", it's been going on for as long as these service-style games have existed. Fortnite's pivot from Save the World into Battle Royale, for example. Or going further back: Remember Star Wars Galaxies?
Yes, these mega-updates are often regressions... again, that's not news. The only thing "new" is realizing "oh, we should increment the number to get some hype going".
Well, for CS there are other versions still on Steam still with active communities. The issue with CS2/CSGO is skins. That's the reason they had to kill CSGO. They couldn't have skins carry over, be tradable, have the new features skins can make use of, and be able to be earned in the old version and new.
They didn't really "kill" CSGO, though. You can still play it. Just no matchmaking.
Asking people to give up their skins in CSGO and go to a new game was never going to happen. Instead they made a patch and generated hype for the game as a new name, while supporting Source 1 servers. To think that if they didn't do a name change, people wouldn't be whining so much.
Or going further back: Remember Star Wars Galaxies?
The game that was shut down less than a week before Star Wars The Old Republic released? You're not wrong about the other stuff, but this one definitely wasn't just a big patch.
I mean, EA started doing this as soon as they thought they could get away with it in the franchises that are the most obvious fit: sports games. Madden, NBA 2kX, PGA whatever...
At first, gamers would just feel left behind because there was a new title out to match the new season's roster of teams and players. No one batted an eye because that echoes how live sports keep up annual appeal. But over time, the publisher started taking the servers offline for the older sports games, so if you wanted to compete then the only option was to play a newer title.
I'm not saying that's inherently evil, and not to make a slippery slope argument, but it's not really hard to see how the lure of steady recurring revenue would drive the industry to do the same for as many franchises as possible. And here we are today where IIRC you can't play titles like Diablo IV offline even as a single player.
IMO as gamers, we need to collectively draw a line in the sand. But we're such a diverse group with different tastes and expectations, so I don't really see that happening.
Speaking from experience with open source, there's literally no way in hell the average consumer is going to make even minimal effort in order to improve anything at all, even if you manage to make them understand the problem. Ask any idiot still on Twitter.
Lmao
Yeah, I was being way too polite about it.
But over time, the publisher started taking the servers offline for the older sports games, so if you wanted to compete then the only option was to play a newer title.
I’m not saying that’s inherently evil
As someone who remembers when games used to ship with the server code so you could host your own multiplayer, I am saying it's inherently evil!
Well damn, I remember that too and it's a good point. You changed my mind, shutting down the only servers is shitty and evil and game companies should go back to allowing community servers.
You wouldn't subscribe to a service like Netflix if they required you to pay an additional fee to unlock each piece of content, nor would you pay money for a Netflix app that's useless without a subscription, but that's essentially what you're doing when you "buy" a live service game. Don't do that! Either pay once for a game that's fully playable offline, or pay monthly for a subscription to a live service game where the software to access it is free.
The publishers are being greedy assholes, but they couldn't do it if people didn't pay for the privilege of being scammed.
Not a bad tipp for individuals. Won’t solve the problem though. The few individuals who actually go through with this dont make a dent while children and their parents will gobble up this stuff because marketing. We need policy for shit like this.
You're not wrong, but if you want to use policy to regulate business models that exploit dumb consumer choices, there are way bigger fish to fry than videogames.
I have mixed opinions on whether regulation is needed. Maybe just more transparency in marketing would be enough, and I'd be happy to see that, but an outright ban on the business model seems heavy handed to me, given that it's a problem individuals can simply choose not to participate in if they're informed of the risks.
I wonder how many people would buy a game where the piece tag says something like this:
$60 + $10/month. Not playable without a subscription.*
And then in the fine print:
*The publisher may discontinue all subscriptions at any time after 1/1/2025. If that happens, it will no longer be possible to play the game.
GaaS really helped me slim down my game purchases to just one or two a year with no online play.
Thank Gabe they'll never kill half life 2 with a sequel!
How is this a trend? It happened with two games and you can still play one of them (CSGO).
EDIT: it happened with 4-ish games, actually, and the Blizzard games are the only ones we cannot play anymore.
Arguably I think it's happened to a few more than that, Warcraft 3 comes to mind in the Battle.net launcher.
How do you mean you can still play CSGO? There are no official servers and even installing and launching it is not straight forward at all? I'd akin that to saying you can still play Vanilla WoW and point to private servers, which is not what anyone means.
How are the gamespy servers?
try dozens of games
CS:GO is over a decade old and certainly isn't "killed", does the author just not want new games to be released ever? I feel like everything posted nowadays is ragebait.
I mean CSGO turned into CS2 in my steam library.
So CSGO effectively doesn't exist anymore. I say 'killed' is accurate
Laughs in 1.6...
Yeah, so dumb from them, CS2 was not ready at all.
You can still open csgo by selecting it from the beta tab on CS2. Can still join community servers on there through to the end of the year iirc
Doubt valve will have ironed out this forced open beta by then though
It was a free update/upgrade for CS:GO. That's like saying v2.0 killed v1.9.
Also, major upgrades for free ten years after release is frankly unheard of. This isn't a "trend"
does the author just not want new games to be released ever?
It is impossible to give this an appropriate answer in any forum that demands "civility" over honesty.
The censored version is: no. And you fucking know better.
They just killed it and replaced it with cs2, so bad example. Cs:go is gone and can't be played anymore since you can't launch it.
There really should have been a massive outcry about deleting a game people paid for.
You can play cs:go (apparently) by rolling back CS2 to previous betas... such a stupid 'solution'.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T3jomwTCh6Y&ab_channel=TroubleChute
I mean ... Pikachu face? :)
So people switch to service based solutions for movies, games, music, ... where they own literally nothing because the actual owner is the corporation which sort of 'rent it' to them. And then they're surprised that provided stuff gets demolished by 'landlord' because it doesn't bring enough money to the landlord
Yeah it's totally our choice, it's just that simple. /s
I remember when I bought half life 2. A hard copy in a store. Then, suddenly, to play it I was required to use some thing called steam. According to you, by playing that game, which I bought normally, I brought this on myself. According to reality I was just trying to play a game. For years I hated and resisted steam and all that did was make playing games harder. I finally gave in and life is honestly much easier because of it. I'm still bitter about being strong armed and the potential for steam to fuck us all over, but I never really had a choice if I wanted to play certain PC games, namely half life 2.
Hey, I have an idea let’s cancel the old game and market in the new game which is exactly the same as the old game and they have no choice because we deleted old fame.
Bring back Overwatch :(
Overwatch classic in 5 years.
I mean all they have to do is add a 2/2/2 mode using the weaker open-queue tanks into the Arcade to say "look we've got OW1 as an arcade mode!"
In what way? 6v6? Generous loot? Immobile Orisa and Bastion? Uglier graphics?
That's basically the trick of this - these aren't really sequels, they're just large updates being marketed as sequels. In the case of OW2, the biggest loss is how prohibitively expensive the new monetization scheme is.
If the game was reverted, it would feel like a breath of fresh air, they fucked it on all fronts.
Overwatch got significantly worse for me but I love all the changes to CSGO, so it's a mixed bag for me so far.
As someone who mostly plays offline single player games, I don’t really care what they “kill” by creating new enshittified versions of things. I already cultivated a save version of the game I like, it’s installed on a pc that rarely or never goes online that you can’t access and deactivate, and since you spent my 40 bucks already as per our agreement, I’ll enjoy it whenever I want forever without your input or any future consent required from your company. Cope.
i mean, it's not a sequel in the cs2 case, it the sane game, the mechanics, just newer engine, it's not perfect but it's just valve being slow lol
For games with high skill ceilings and delicate mechanics, a new engine is a new game. A new engine can rarely capture the overall feel of the old engine.
What features are missing?