Dealing With Grievances In The Gaming Industry; Greedy Practices And Price Hiking
Here's a scenario, it's a few months till the holidays arrive, you've been saving up despite a terrible economy, and price hikes for various utilities and gas. You had a thought in your mind that you could save at least some up for a brand-new gaming console and some games you've been wanting to play. The tragic realization comes later, that the company has increased the price. With expenses going up, and maybe having to pay off loans, you just couldn't risk it.
We live in dire times, I mean, it's been made clear that most of us have coped by playing video games. The gaming industry grew because of this. I mean, what kind of bonehead would pull something like this, ruining any goodwill they've built? Sony, it's Sony. We're here because of Sony, but also because of other signs of bad omens.
Games are expensive to make, but at the end of the day, someone could figure out a way to make them cheaper, so there's that dilemma, right? So the kind of respond that would elicit to make innovations in the market would be trying subverting it while allowing both sides of the market to flourish. No, let's be complicit and just make people suffer more. Why is it that the major AAA gaming companies are slowly becoming tone-deaf and supplementing their bad habits of making bad decisions? Is it actually the consumer's fault?
While we consumers do have to deal with the large brunt of corporate decisions on our favorite products; the other line, regarding game developers and ones who work in video games in general, have been dealing with the scorn of bad practices by job cutting, not responding to the fair wage argument well, and overall mistreatment like sexism, classism, and other isms.
It's bad news, because of how demoralizing it makes the gaming scene to work for. Very few popular gaming journalists are anything but near credible to take information from, and are always in need of some grain of salt to be nearby before consuming their feed. There's quite a bit to cover here, I want to expand on developing situation this month. This year just couldn't get any worse.
More Expensive Stuff And More Bad Games
Oh yeah, new Madden came out, still the same game, and the 9th gen systems overcharges for the same game by 10 USD extra. That's how I'll start with this inexcusable market trend of major game publishers slating the price for their games to be 70 USD. And also having something to do with Sony as well. Because they are condoning this more actively.
Their upcoming game, that is the Last of Us remake, is being charged for 70 USD. A complete game, once released in 2013 made from scratch for the latest generation, is now 70 USD, with not much of a content justification, like the multiplayer that came with it before. And by no surprise, game studio Naughty Dog is complicit with this.
So what's the next move after game price hike? Jack up the console price as well because of high inflation rates now, Sony has increased the retail price for various regions and countries outside US. Sony is testing the lot of us with all their terrible, anti-consumer decisions. It keeps getting worse, since the time they failed to give free upgrades for people buying Horizon Forbidden West.
Microsoft shared a meme on this, basically one upping them by stating that their system's price will stay the same, including the games. Nintendo has affirmed that Switch price will not go up, though ahh, it's been 5 years already, it never has gone down. Just 2 years in, Xbox Series sales tally over 16 million unit, in opposition to PS5's 21 million units. I don't understand the need for this, when the console is selling well, especially considering the lack of stock in stores.
I am frustrated by all this, because not only has the currency value where I live (Bangladesh) has gone up for US Dollar, shopkeepers where I live will charge even more now. Furthermore, I don't care how much it has sold or how many of my friends already own a system, I mean, they haven't discussed any games they've purchased for it in recent times. PlayStation is becoming Steve Ballmer's Xbox, back in 2009-2013. Keeping this up will only make things worse, and speaking of worse, there's a lawsuit going on too.
The Impending Lawsuit That Is Shining Light On Things
Did you know, there was another lawsuit not long ago about alleged gender discrimination? Check the link above to take a look. Now moving on to the real lawsuit at hand. The 6bn dollar lawsuit. It has finally happened as expected when Sony keeps selling games at unfair margins across other regions like Europe and Asia. Basically, overcharging. Keep setting strict terms for both publishers and developers about their games being presented in their platform. Then, there's a downright obnoxious practice of Sony paying developers to not release on Xbox or any other platform. People are already talking about how few games failed to arrive at Game Pass because of Sony's intervention.
To say they're a business, and they have to compete, is leaving the floodgates open for any corporate obstruction of the free market and how it works. You can't expect to break every egg to fit your agenda, right? Sony could have put that developer bribe money into making more games instead, interesting projects to add up to the roster.
It's one thing when Activision Blizzard is in the news for being a greedy, terrible conglomerate, it's another when a platform developer, starts finding their own ways to manipulate the market and charge people more than they should. You know where I am going with this, it cannot be dismissed anymore.
Now onto more ubiquitous problems.
The Need For Unions
The biggest hurdle we currently have now is people who work on games getting easily tired, and becoming uninspired to work. So many horror stories have been coming out about crunch hours, mental exhaustion, mistreatment, sexual abuse, unfair wages with no good benefits, and more. It gets more frustratingly difficult to adjust just to work on something they passionately know of.
We probably won't be expecting more games studio to shut down now, since more people need jobs. But the other important that the industry needs is more unions. If that happens, it'll not only create assurances but also safety nets for developers to raise their voices. Unions aren't perfect either, but this feels like the best way to deal with this giant elephant in the wide open space.
This video should explain just the difficult state of devs working on just about any of your average gaming studio that doesn't have the popularity that the other 10% do. So they resort to foster environments without the proper payment in return to deal with it or, least, having a better environment.
For someone like me, it's hard to purchase games, so I try finding other ways to playing them. It doesn't properly compensate honestly, I don't even believe what I do makes a dent, but the belief that "if one can make a difference, so can others" kind of pushes to purchase games when I can. And I am hoping, one day, I give more to support them.
This one has quite a lot to unfold. I am sorry if I focused quite a bit on Sony, they're the biggest red flag in the radar right now. Really need to get their act together, or maybe kick Jim Ryan out on the CEO position. Thanks for tuning in.
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