Link: https://www.gamesradar.com/games/sports/ea-invents-new-microtransaction-nightmare-as-it-breaks-paywall-promise-on-skate-rent-a-playable-area-for-24-hours-or-buy-a-premium-pass-bucko/

Skate players were explicitly told map areas would not be "locked behind a paywall"

An important detail is that this rental option is paid for in grind currency, not paid currency. Yes, "for now".

Yeah, that's just to normalise rentable levels. Once it has been begrudgingly accepted, there'll be one that requires premium currency. Never buy EA.

Yet people have zero self control and keep giving them money.

Exactly. EA do it because enough people allow them to do it.

My brain just shuts off when I read stuff like this.

Man, I dunno. Fuck AAA gaming, I'll go play something else.

I think of this practice as a tax on herds.

You want to belong in a trendy group, you board the hype train and pay the tax to belong in the herd.

Paying for a game you don't own, only to have to rent the gameplay inside the thing you don't even own to begin with. Presumably all content also being locked on company servers meaning it will get EOL'd and inaccessible at some point in the future.

Immaculate.

Same logic as “Lottery is a tax on those who didn’t pay attention in math class.” And I agree.

I would say this tracks for Saudi Arab-EA, but they did this kind of shit before the Saudis owned them.

Honestly from a business perspective, EA is one if the smartest publishers out there. They made a game and stripped away most of the functionality and then sold it for full price. They then slowly added the content back in content packs and people gladly paid. That was The Sims. And it’s had like three sequels, all monetized the exact same way. And people keep paying them.

What's Andrew Rousso doing in the image? Seems completely unrelated to the content of the article.

I really don't understand people like that, though. There are plenty of great games that don't have predatory monetisation. Yet millions and millions opt to get fleeced. This shit won't stop as long as people keep falling for it.

Indies are where its at. Or classic games, especially with mods

Obviously ridiculous.

That said I dunno, it’s very easy for me to just play the game and never give them a dime.

All I want from the game is to dick around from time to time and it gives me that for free.

Every time I play I just find things to launch my ass off over and over. I just accept the free shit and play occasionally.

Obviously not going to defend EA for this decision but I dunno, it’s still maybe blown a little out of proportion. I guess it depends on how invested in the game you are as a player, and as someone who has Skate 1-3 still and had good fun with them when they came out, the current game gives me what I want in a way that I don’t have to pay for so I’m fine with it.

I absolutely hate the whale hunting that developers go through these days.

It's more profitable for them to find a few whales spending $10,000 on their game every year than making a good product.

Games are a modern media and I think suffer from a lot of modern engagement mechanics.

We need to stop viewing them as a constant stream of "new content" and more as an established library.

Is the game not ass anymore at least? I'd rather play the OG THPS without any qol additions added by the good remake than this game after I had tried it.

let them I'll keep adding more hours to megabonk.

The suckers who buy this trash and pay for it deserve it. There's so much good gaming to be had, at this point it's a choice.

Absolutely the problem. They've stopped trying to make fun and started trying to exploit psychological weaknesses and hijack our internal reward systems to rinse us of both time and money.

Fun is no longer the driving factor, and it makes me feel not quite angry or nauseous, but somewhere around those emotions.

You'll still be able to buy them with ingame currency, but itll be days worth of farming or BEST VALUE 4.99.

They'll still be able to hide behind an ethical "no mtx required" label.

Fucking lol.. This is the Metaverse with extra steps.

I tried it and it’s shitty compared to skate3. SkaterXL is a better option and has better controls but a lot less content.

Man, remember back in the day when you just went and bought a game and then played it?

What kind of sucker buys from EA?

Skate is free to play

I was moreso talking about the future of gaming monetisation.

Why days worth of farming? To help give the player a sense of "pride and accomplishment" of course.

I don't think that's really fair, especially considering this game was popular among kids & teens who don't have the lived experiences we have

I still have Skate 3 installed on my Xbox for those times when I just want to chill for an hour. It makes me a little sad when I see what its become nowadays...

They've stopped trying to make fun and started trying to exploit psychological weaknesses and hijack our internal reward systems to rinse us of both time and money

Exactly, and the fact that Jeffrey Epstein was pro microtransactions really tells you the kind of scum we're dealing with here

But SkaterXL has mods. Soooooo many mods.

Split Fiction and It Takes Two were pretty great.

Add Mass Effect, Dead Space and Star Wars Jedi series..

But yeah I wish all of these were DRM free, without any online connection and on GOG.

I only bought Split Fiction because it didn't come with the EA launcher. It seems to be a recent decision of theirs to not include it on some games on Steam, but they're not doing it retroactively. It Takes Two I played on Game Pass for a dollar, because I'm not willing to put up with EA's additional DRM.

I understand the sentiment here but let's note that you do not go buy Skate. because it's free to play.

EA gives their studios the ability to decide their own revenue models.

This change likely came because they weren't as profitable as predicted so they had targets to make up for.

After all these things, why are people still buying anything from EA?
Just boycott them.

first time hearing about EA in years, and they're doing this shit. kinda nostalgic really

I came here to say "the good news is this game sucks anyway." Coming from someone with literally hundreds of hours in the first three games.

Now I just play Session.

Does anyone remember how Skate 2 was the best one and they won't release it again? I suspect it is because of the music.

I don't buy anything from EA, but I'm curious: Is it difficult to acquire their games via the high seas?

I have it takes two, played the whole thing on steam without EA launcher. Was on my steam deck, so maybe linux dodged that somehow?

Uh...Jared Kushner owns EA now, so I don't know why this would be relevant to anyone.

Along with his Saudi oil tycoon buddies.

In American-style neo-liberalism, everything must have a price tag. If it doesn't generate a profit, it can't exist.

I believe it's still running in the background and makes it an extra pain in the ass to play without internet. I ran into that one with Jedi: Fallen Order when trying to play on the train (I only paid $4 for it and still felt ripped off). The store page still lists that it's there. It's why whenever I get around to the Dragon Age games, I can play the first one on GOG and the fourth one on Steam (no EA launcher), but unless something changes, the best option appears to be pirating 2 and 3.

Their permanently online (until their inevitable shutdown) DRM slop games? I bet it is quite difficult.

Music is the bane of all the 2000's games that dared to use any form of musical experimentation. Copyright strikes galore.

So when fps games do dlc maps it's fine. but when a skateboarding game paywalls a map its crossing the line? What am I not getting here?

Using in game credits to rent content? Not exactly new, I remember that being the entire business model of EA's Battlefield Heroes (circa 2009). That was only 3 years after Bethesda was first selling horse armor.