As someone who’s currently working on an indie game I’m very thankful for those AAA companies giving us a chance

Just one step closet to "pay $1 to reload your gun"

Deluxe editions were for statues and game art books. Merchandise. They were collector items.

Man I fuckin miss the days of getting Master Chief helmets and full statues with collectors editions. Fuck dude, even having the panda in SoD is a huge fucking flex.

Modern videogaming is slowly circling back to "pay 1 dollar after every game over" like in arcade machines

Innovation in the gaming industry is regressing at this point. I remember when each new console upgrade brought mind blowing changes and now something just gets worse every year for gaming.

I miss when games shipped with a whole game on a disc and i never had to connect it to the internet

just pirate it, the Yakuza wont get you

"Boiling frog syndrome" is a metaphor used to describe the failure to act against a problematic situation which will increase in severity until reaching catastrophic proportions. The term is taken from an anecdotal parable about boiling a frog, in which a frog placed in boiling water will immediately try to save itself, but one placed in cool water that is gradually brought to a boil will not notice the heat until it is boiled to death

My new default reaction to a new release that interests me is "Oh wow nice, I'll probably get this game on a 50% sale in 2 years when it's actually finished and at the price that it should've been to begin with."

I started buying almost all my games on sale years ago. Only way you can get around this and get all the features that should be in there at the start. You play the game way after release but you maybe get the full game for a reasonable price. Very few games worth their MSRP. There are exceptions, such as BG3, stuff by FROM software etc..

Just wondering, did everyone forget ASUNA's WRATH where we paid full price for 50% of a game and had to buy the other half in 2 separate DLC's.

Are developers TRYING to push people towards piracy at this point?

Game publishers treat their players like ATMs. The only way to stop this from happening is if gamers only support studios that treat their customers with the respect that we deserve. keep in mind folks gaming companies need us, we do not need them.

The sad part is the game is genuinely amazing.

Hi. F2P player here. As a Gacha game enjoyer for more than a decade, i do not care what packs and micro-transactions companies throw at me. I like the challenge of facing hard PVE content and, if any PVP content is available, i casually go at it and no worry if I win or lose. I play these games to pass the time, not to lose my head or wallet. As you put it, King, "it is what it is". ;) Edit1: after few more minutes of you insulting gacha players/F2P players, I'd like to say at least I am not spending thousands of dollars on a game. You are a millionaire, and you do not care about money (we know). Many other people work quite hard for their money and can't afford to waste it Edit2: you can throw all the money at a gacha game whenever you want. If you suck at a game, you will still suck at it afterwards. No amount of money will allow you to be successful at a gacha game if you are an idiot.

People who excuse this as paywalling a feature they wouldn’t use anyway are really missing the point. Its only going to be a downward trend of monetizing basic game features if we don’t put the foot down somewhere.

damn bro they think we have infinite wealth or something

Ever since Metal Gear Survive with it's $10 extra character slot, stuff like this does not surprise me any more. I look at games like this and say, "that will be nice a year from now on a sale but as for now I am good." that is if I even remember to go back and get the game after the fact.

19:00 They did the same thing with Lord of the Rings Online. I played the game, bought the expansions and then one day the game goes Free to Play and half the zones and areas I'd been playing in were inaccessible, despite having purchased those expansions. I got so sick of trying to figure out where I was allowed to go and what I was supposed to be doing I just dropped it.

Honestly changes like this are just perfect opportunities for Indie games to pop off. While AAA companies are spending all their resources on developing methods to milk the consumers, Indie games can come up with a good product and take all the player base away.

I usually agree with Asmon, but cmon man, calling F2P gacha gamers pathetic and sad is just disrespectful coming from a millionaire. What's wrong with playing a game like Genshin and just saving resources while enjoying the actual game? It's not like the actual game is bad, and u NEED new characters. Sure, whales are spending hundreds or thousands of dollars, but that doesnt mean that everybody plays the game for their gacha addiction, some just genuinely enjoy the game.

wait for -75% or cheaper sale, get the biggest package or bundle

2:00 What Asmon doesn't understand is that no one is trying to beat anyone, I finish everything on HSR in 10 min (1-2h on MoC/SU day), I close the game and move on, I didn't see anyone, I didn't try to beat anyone.

The fucked up part is that if a game tanks it’s the bottom line that goes first. That means management which is usually responsible for the fucked up decisions goes unpunished for failure.

People need to stop having 'loyalty' towards brands and corporations and intellectual property. Fanboys defend this crap and then it becomes normalized. Even happens with TV shows and films.

I miss those days when deluxe editions always meant we were getting cool physical stuff. Didnt buy too many, but it was nice going into gamestop for it sometimes. Like when record of agarest war gave us a pillowcase with a waifu on it, boob mousepad, art book and tissues. Good times

Imagine you beat Ghost & Goblins in the arcade, and it told you to put another quarter in to play for the real ending.

i remember when you got a new game and the pc games used to come in a big box. the instruction manual was like a bible that id sit there and read and look at the artwork and stuff while the game installed. and what you bought was a complete game experience with no bullshit

As a indie dev working on my own project I am personally thankful for gamers & AAA Companies giving us a chance

Infinite Wealth, is a game that is worth paying more to get the full game and supporting. The game has received positive reviews for its engaging storyline, immersive gameplay, and stunning graphics. The game’s new game plus mode, which is available in the Deluxe and Ultimate editions, is a unique feature that allows players to replay the game with their previously acquired skills and items. Although the new game plus mode is behind a paywall, it is a small price to pay for the added replayability and enjoyment it provides. By purchasing the Deluxe or Ultimate edition, players can also enjoy additional content such as new characters, side missions, and costumes. Supporting the game by purchasing the full version will help the developers continue to create high-quality games and provide players with more engaging experiences in the future. So, if you’re a fan of the Yakuza series or just looking for a great game to play, Ryu Ga Gotoku’s Infinite Wealth is definitely worth checking out!

Piracy for this game is going to skyrocket 😂

It's the same as "first they came for my neighbor, and I did nothing..then they came for me, and there was no one left to defend me." It's a similar affect throughout numerous aspects of our societies.

You can't change the difficulty in your first playthrough, it's only available in NG+. The difficulty options are paywalled AND time gated. You'd have to find yourself a 100% save just to play hard mode the first time around along with spending the extra money.

I think we are forgetting the real reason for buying digital deluxe or whatever editions. I usually buy those because they come bundled with dlc or whatever and making it cheaper than buying the game and the dlc seperately.

I've already had enough personally, i don't play games with microtransactions or battlepasses anymore. I can deal with paid DLC but that is about it, i don't even want to play anything with skin shops anymore

Except Asmon and Tectone are kinda the problem. Because they play the games for content therefore making them popular and making it so these people with Mental Illnesses will want to play them and then spend money to keep up with the streamers spending money. You can't condemn the people that play free games and spend money while at the same time doing it yourself while also streaming it and making videos contributing more to the problem than just the normal players who don't.

This "cuck" thing the guy argued about is blown out of proportions, Honkai Star Rail is a pretty easy game for f2p, there are lots of rewards in HSR and Genshin players are currently b****ing about it too because they barely get anything at all. I mean the game is literally single-player with online features, HSR has no pvp either, no ladder. You pretty much only need to whale if you really want a character and your luck is utter poop. I'd say Genshin is a "cuck" game since they never get a decent amount of free rewards whilst HSR gets rewards thrown at them constantly. You can barely save up enough as a f2p to get every character you want and even then every second pull is a 50:50, even if you are a minnow and pay for the monthly extra gems and for the battle-pass, that only makes that aspect of Genshin tolerable. Genshin however is brainless difficulty, you can play everything in it as f2p, but you won't get every character you want nor can you ever have enough to roll for weapons, even as a minnow, getting both character and weapon from the banner is pretty hard if possible at all, especially without grinding hard. There are far worse games out there than Genshin, just think about Blade and Soul, might not be gatcha but being a f2p player there sucks hard (if you know, you know). Those who complain about HSR being hard for f2p simply need to practice to figure out how the game actually works. End-game content can be done with 4 star f2p characters and it's not easy if you don't know what to do, how to build your teams but here's the thing, it is the END-F***ING-GAME! IT HAS TO TO PRESENT A CHALLENGE, especially if you still don't have enough characters leveled to build the optimal teams but in the same regard, you need to grind the pre-raid best-in-slot in wow if you want to raid at all and you won't get invited to a good raid till you learn to play. HSR is fine, if you are a gamer who doesn't mind a bit of challenge towards the end-game, play f2p, otherwise it's too easy. Also, the argument about why you should play a "better" single-player game instead of HSR is dumb because you can play more than one game. Also you play what you want. The bottom line is this: the games that are using scummy monetization methods will suffer on the long term and every big company experiments with where that line is, for a big company, a failed game is not a big deal, I mean look at EA, they are still in business, no matter the bs they pull pretty much every time. Basically stop being doomers, just play what you want, buy what you want and chill. Cheers!

Plato already figured it out when he wrote the "Allegory of the Cave"

Who knew that "infinite wealth" meant our wallet's contents

"People will always want more" The show Deal or No Deal is a great example of this.

This is why years ago I started waiting for games to go on sale. You could by the best addition with all content a year later for half price. Once you get in the habit of this you have numerous games for half price coming out for you. Sure your behind but you also get the benefit of knowing good games vs terrible games that further save you money.

"hey bro this sucks, but if they pay me to stream it, it's cool"

Next year in Gaming: True Pay to Play Just $4.99 USD to unlock 8 more hours of Play Time (Please note the 8 hour timer doesn't stop while the game isn't running)

Companies talking about wanting to make full games cost $100 when they're kinda already doing that. Thing is though these deluxe edition never outsells Standard editions of games not even remotely close. Probably why they want to force such a massive increase on Standard but I don't see that going well for alot of Companies. It would do more harm than good. It's even more insulting when you realize games like this are being censored by people who don't even play these games

Pause button costs $15. Start menu costs $30. Patches are $80. Hot fixes are $300

As a person that played genshin for free for the first two years after it came out i can confirm i am indeed a masochist that likes getting stepped on.

As an ftp player of some gatcha, I don't understand what Asmon is saying. I just play a little, have a good time and that's it... why would I compare myself to other people? It is only a game

Miss the days we could buy a game in a box at a store, take it home and play it. I still have a lot of them. I have a shelf full of Sims CDs.

Konami asked us to pay $10 for an additional save slot. Team Ninja asked us to pay $1 to change a character's hair color. Not to buy a new hair color. To change it. I'm surprised something like this hasn't happened sooner.

They are slowly removing basic parts of core gameplay bit by bit and locking them behind paywalls so the morons can just go "well, that's okay, I don't really use that particular feature that much"... Death by a thousand paper cuts. They can't comprehend that by enabling that sort of approach then one day it's a feature that THEY like that will be locked behind a pay-wall, while some people will still go "well, that's okay [...]". Seriously, this blind consumerism is the main reason why I have lost hope... "well, I like this series/show/team/company so I don't care what they do, i'll keep buying their crap"... Same attitude with politics. Now some politicians could murder others and their followers would somehow find excuses to keep on following them. All so that they never have to fucking think for themselves. All so they never have to change their opinions.

Asmon: You're a CUCK if you're not whaling $1000s on Gacha. Also Asmon: If you're spending $15 more on Deluxe, it's not good for gaming. Asmon has finally lost it. 😂

People forget this happened in Kingdom Hearts 3 when a difficulty mode was locked behind DLC.

They made a fuss about Hogwarts Legacy. „You have to boycott it“ „this game is evil“ but no one is really pushing back against this „evil“ game

Hard disagree on Asmon's take for f2p gacha players. Tryhard f2p Lost Ark players and f2p gacha players are not the same since you only spend less than half an hour a day farming on them and they're not the ones spending money on anime waifu pixels.

What's the difference between playing a gatcha game F2P and playing a game like PoE without RMT'ing? There are forums and discords where RMT in PoE is extreme and rampant. Just about everyone who participates in creating the best mirror tier items every season is heavily into RMT. These guys will drop a couple hundred dollars on day 2 and be more (in-game) wealthy than someone who puts in 60hrs a week for the entire league. Does that make everyone who plays PoE without RMT a cuck?

Even if we can afford the games, we still need to put our collective feet down and say no to the crap deals and bad faith from the US gaming companies. F them until they learn.

Must be a regional thing as we around here in Wisconsin do not get charged for Bar-b-que sauce or any other kind of sauce or honey with our order at McDonalds, usually they throw 7 to 15 in the bag and you have enough to use on some other thing in the future. Buy a 20 piece nuggets and with only needing 2 honey packets for the 20 nuggets one has a lot left over.

TLDR: This guy says that NG+ was always a part of the core game and has never been charged for. Well, skins, access, cheat codes, and mounts were all "part of the core game and not charged for" until they starting charging for the stuff. As a witness to the horse armor apocalypse of 2006, this definitely could be a new turning point. I was 26 years old then and I still bear the scars. We knew horse armor was bad, but the fan bois wouldn't listen. The point was really driven home when I got gears of war 3 and they were selling gun skins. I thought, "WTF? Why do they think they can get away with selling gun skins? ... Shit. Horse Armor." Some of you may not know this, but back before horse armor, gun skins, player skins, any skins were things that you earned for doing something in the game. The coolest shit wasn't on the in game store. There was no in game store. The coolest or most ridiculous shit was behind an achievement. Survive 72 real time hours in Dead Rising 1 survival mode and get heart boxer underwear, iirc. You couldn't save in that game mode. The console had to be on and the game loaded until you got 72 hours in game. I would have done it had I not forgot to set my alarm to wake me up and feed Frank. I was just a few hours away.

"I don't care about it, it doesn't matter to me" literally how Asmon validates everything lmfao

One thing you have helped me learn over the years is to stop playing games that are no longer fun anymore, and that where I spend my money is important if I don't like the way the companies are running the games.

This is actually wild. I loved playing yakuza like a dragon and even that had some nasty microtranasactions. Pretty much every arcade machine in the game was blocked by a paywall and even to this day i haven't accessed them because i don't feel like paying for it. $15 bucks for new game plus is unacceptable

Whats pathetic about the casher model, is that they dont put in that effort. That F2P account is WORTH more because of the ACTUAL effort put into it. He ACTUALLY has achievements, and unlocked HIDDEN features because he ACTUALLY played the game. The casher dumping funds to be "stronkman" has ONLY achieved, "hollow victor status" because he WASTED money that couldve been WELL spent elsewhere. TLDR; Got no skillz, dump cash 🤣

The answer is simple as long as you don't mind waiting, you don't have to play it when it comes out, it'll still be new to you when you acquire it on sale later.

Sega wanted infinite wealth and lost judgement.

Says the guy who spent thousands on Diablo immortal etc.

I'm 31 and I've been a player even since. My mum had to put a chair under me to play at the arcade. Said that gaming in my opinion is getting "cheaper" and by that I mean that those great games that cost a lot for production we have them for "just" 70 bucks. I think for some titles like in this case Yakuza, Zelda ToTk, Elden Ring and few more this price is kinda cheap. I'm not happy with the pay wall behind the NG+ and I'm not saying that we should pay more but I have to admit that in the new Yakuza series there is a love and an effort that is really touchable and I think the 15$ dollars extra are to justify the amongous amount of work we can't see. I will buy it pretending the game base prize is 90 total because I really think it is worth it. After a period of emptiness about gaming this title gave me back the happynes to enjoy a game. It's huge and the new things you are going to discover will go on for days. And trust me you will laugh a lot and also cry. I'd prefer to pay 90 euros for a game like rather than 70 for COD or Fifa and other games that lost theirs Soul.

"This is horrible, you need to take a stand." "I don't see why why you couldn't take a sponsorship" Very principled

The reason why they slowly do this is to force customers to get "accustomed" to paying more and more for things that used to be free. It's like taxes on things, sales tax used to be 3% decades ago - now it's 20% or more (VAT) in some countries - the reason they do this is because it works sadly. At least with video games you can choose to not buy the game, unlike taxes. c:

Reminds me of a demo game that's free and you gotta pay to unlock the full version but instead of being free you pay $60 for the demo

I know paying for new game plus is outrageous but a bit of a saving grace here is that the game is chock full of content while a game with a similar price like a modern shooter has campaigns that are just 3 hours long. Not an excuse but a fact that each company has to be treated by its own standards.

I do think that the videogame market became too large to effectively push back against this. Digital distribution also made these practices extremely easy to implement. At the end of the day, microtransactions, battlepasses and these overpriced tiers are not a deal breaker for a large segment of the market. EA got away with selling a "new" FIFA every year for decades. The market will just segment itself into multiple categories and unhappy gamers will lean on more indie productions, like they already do.

The easiest way to avoid this? Not buying the games that apply it

Not all Gacha games are the same though. You can play HSR as f2p and not really lose anything or be left behind except maybe not owning all the characters which you don't have to do nor will it affect you because these games don't have pvp that benefits whales greatly. Lost arch however is another matter. Playing it as a f2p is a waste of time.

These kinds of things don't worry me in the big picture, it just sucks on a game-to-game basis when something you're looking forward to gets wronged. I'm glad Asmon goes into people eventually waking up, because that's how I see it: this is the market adjusting back and forth. We see live service games eating a lot of sh*t lately, while half-scuffed indie games like Palworld with a $30 base price gets an unusual push from the target market. People do learn, but they learn very slowly. Eventually something changes.

Soul Hackers 2 which is another game from Sega, had an extra difficulty as free DLC instead of it being just a patch. Even then I thought they were just getting cold feet but were probably playing with the idea around the office.

I cant help but notice New Game + is the bane of modern Devs. It used to be a thing in almost every game, decades ago. Wtf?

There’s been a weird mentality I’ve experienced from being that person who talks about these issues with others. The majority was saying let me enjoy what I want to enjoy and never took any consideration behind where that money goes because they don’t care. People clearly don’t understand what impact their money has because they get distracted from the product they wanted. If we actually cared what our money does I genuinely believe we’d have less issues in many situations. I think we need to have less hey this situation is bad and more conversations about the impact of our money.

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is a shining beacon of light in this era of gaming. Literally 200 hours of content. The game should be $300 with the amount of high quality content stuffed into it and it's only $70.

"Why do you need a sprint button? The game is 100% completable by walking everywhere. Therefore the standard edition of the game will not include the sprint feature. Please buy the deluxe edition for our 'Improved Movement Advancement' system. AKA the sprint button."

It is ESO and Destinty 2 putting dungeons behind paywalls. Buy game then an expansion, and have to pay $20 for a dungeon inside of the expansion you just bought. Then you have to by the season pass to get all the benefits of the expansion. Des2: free to play or ESO for between 5.99-19.99 depending on sale then 40, 20, 14.

4:04 "I think that free to play players in gacha games are cucks." Maybe in most of the games, but why do you need to whale in Genshin Impact again? I'm completely f2p and I'm having a blast. Please, enlighten me.

This reminds me that "Made in Germany" used to mean that a product was of poor quality and people had to be warned until Germany came out with such good quality that it is now a welcome notice if you want something of high quality. The gaming industry has managed to create the opposite with AAA. Especially the big publishers

The premise of this video is fundamentally wrong: "NG+ is a core mechanic" which it absolutely isn't. As a long time fan of the franchise, never have I once used NG+ on previous games and I have platinumed several. When you beat a Yakuza/RGG game you unlock Premium Adventure, which is basically the sandbox mode where the whole world is open to you and you keep all items and levels. No Yakuza ever had diverging story paths or alternate endings/scenes... NG+ was always useless, unless you wanted to cheat your way through Hard or Legend mode. They're not locking NG+ behind a paywall... They're selling a feature that wasn't in the game and didn't even need to be. The rest of the pack has content that no one would complain about, like extra dungeon, skins, etc. This got blown out of proportion just because of the perception that NG+ matters, which is incorrect.

This is quite literally what Asmons older video was about, that games are getting more expensive. But instead of having to buy the full game at 100$, they'll segment it, so its easier to sell.

And this is why I LOVE pirating. If shit goes this BAD they just beging their game to get pirated.

Sega: Not including the whole game in the base version of the game, gotta pay extra Co-creator of Fable: Makes a new indie game that should be worth like $20-30 but puts it up for free with no micro instead.

You know why i got a digital deluxe edition, art books, skins, lore, and supporting the studio who put out a good product

Funny asmon says to not support greedy business practices, meanwhile he continues to play blizzard games and give them free publicity.....

I feel like the examples of the F2P people Asmon gave were extreme examples, Most F2P just log on do their dailies for 5 minutes while watching a youtube video and log off because Gacha games Stat games the gear is more important then the character so when you get the gear you clear the content do the story and that's it.

People are allowing companies to do this greedy shit, and people are even defending them. Cosmetics, gachas, pay-to-win features, season passes, DLC, loot boxes, experience boosts, microtransactions, deluxe edition, content locked behind individual expansion passes, it's all ridiculous

I think that League of Legends is popular because its not a GACHA, it doesnt have DLC's, it doesnt have paywalls for nothing, and it runs on potatoes + free skins from time to time by playing the game...

Asmongold really went fast from "dont buy it, you vote with your wallet" to "taking sponsorships for it as a streamer is ok" These pathetic double standards.

I think it should also be mentioned that there are people like me who didnt follow the news closely, I only found out about 8 during the winter sale on steam and bought and finished 7 just before 8 was released, so I just went and bought the ultimate edition of 8 because I liked it and wanted to support the studio, thinking it was just nice-to-have stuff like consumables and accessories...little did I know that they deliberately hid the fact that the NG+ and etc are locked behind the dlc and nowhere was this mentioned on the steam page so I didnt find out about this until sometime after I purchased the game

I am not one bit surprised that developers who recycle the same slop over and over have questionable DLC practices.

I was trying to explain the concept to my brothers, that if one company does something shitty and gets away with it, other companies will. Soon it’ll be a race to be the shittiest company making as much profit off customers and how many features they can get away with taking out of games. But my brothers just kept saying “I just won’t buy those games” and don’t realize it’ll happen to the games THEY DO wanna buy.

To be honest, I used to play some gacha game free to play, and I was playing it just because it was fun. I wasn’t really comparing myself to other players, but simply enjoying the process of leveling up my party through the restriction of the game.

They did the same thing with asura's wrath to get the true ending you had to pay

Another example of basic features being paid now was Capcom and Dead Rising 4, with the overtime mode being $30-$40 DLC now

I mean, i knew sega will hit a new low when they decided to stop selling games in Russia, one of the biggest regions of people grown on sega games. But boy do they have a lot of problem with money if they have to resort to this.