Gacha Games/Store Practices

[Moonface]

Fortunately there are more than enough companies out there that won't pull such stunts with their games. Nintendo and Sony for example don't go overboard with DLC on their games, and the indie scene rarely even does DLC. It's going to be the scummy companies like EA and Activision that push it, but it'll likely be a standard for their games rather than an industry wide standard. At least I hope so.

[Maniakkid25]

You say that, but have you seen the glut of trash that plagues the PS4 store? Life of Black Tiger? Skylight Freerange 2: Gachduine? (A game so terrible, it couldn't make it through STEAM GREENLIGHT!) The entire friggin' library of "developer" Gilson B. Pontes?! DL might say the Xbox is s***, but at least its store has some friggin' standards. Nah; Sony would give your left nut for some of that sick cash.

[Moonface]

I've never even heard of any of those games before. Did they even sell many copies or anything? XD

[Maniakkid25]

No, these are the indie trash that Sony has been DUMPING on its store for over three years. There are still videos advertising both Black Tiger and Skylight on their Youtube page; no one has explained why! Gilson B Pontes puts out a terrible Dark Souls ripoff every year, and some how has not been ripped of his privileges to use their store! If Steam is Hell, the PS4 store is its waiting room, I swear to god!

[Dragon Lord]

DL might say the Xbox is s***, but at least its store has some friggin' standards. Nah; Sony would give your left nut for some of that sick cash.

If Sony allowing a bad game on PSN is that bad, Steam must be the devil. But the fact that you're complaining about a storefront being open to all sorts of games is odd. I have no interest in those games and would never buy them, but I wouldn't cry about them being on the store. That's one of the best positives of Steam, games of all types are allowed on it. I'd prefer not to have a company go "No, this game isn't good enough for our store." instead of letting *ME* decide what is good or bad to me. 

Anyways, Genshin Impact is successful because it has a beautiful art style, provides hours and hours of exploration in a pretty big open world (and that's just with two regions added -- it's going to get *much* bigger in the next year or two), fun gameplay that promotes the full use of your team and building different team compositions to overcome different trials, and a cast of wonderful characters to play as. 

Add in the fact that Genshin Impact completely pushes the boundaries of what gacha games normally are, and it's no surprise it paid off for them. It was a big risk and could have easily backfired. Instead they invested the money/resources into this game to provide an experience that most non-gacha games provide (big world to explore, actual combat, etc.) and sent it out for free. Then they went a step further and not only provided this experience for free, but they ported it to PS4 and PC as well, so that a wider audience could enjoy it, rather than keeping it trapped on just mobile devices where you'd need a higher end phone to run it. 

Is Genshin a perfect game? Of course not, no game is, but I've spent more time just aimlessly wandering around enjoying the world of Genshin than I have any game in years. Between the visuals of the game and the soundtrack, it's easy to just peacefully relax to the game for hours.

[Maniakkid25]

DL might say the Xbox is s***, but at least its store has some friggin' standards. Nah; Sony would give your left nut for some of that sick cash.

If Sony allowing a bad game on PSN is that bad, Steam must be the devil. But the fact that you're complaining about a storefront being open to all sorts of games is odd. I have no interest in those games and would never buy them, but I wouldn't cry about them being on the store. That's one of the best positives of Steam, games of all types are allowed on it. I'd prefer not to have a company go "No, this game isn't good enough for our store." instead of letting *ME* decide what is good or bad to me.

You obviously missed my statement about Steam being Hell. Also, tell that argument to the indie devs trying to make a living on those storefronts, watching their releases get buried under trash fires like Firefighters: The Simulation. No, having standards is good; it means the chucklef***s who make crap like Hunt Down the Freeman thinking they have the next Undertale stay the hell off the storefront, not crowding out things that actually deserve to be on there. If you were a major retailer, and you got a visibly defective shipment of toys, would you sell them as is, or send them the hell back and get a refund?

[Karo]

Bad games and oversaturation of the market did lead to the video game crash before nintendo brought them back. So I mean there is justification for vetting your game store. I mean sure you could decide what games you want to buy but at the end of the day are you gonna waste your money on trash or go crawling through for a good game? Most likely not so it becomes bloated and the only thing you ever look for is a specific game or whatever trending or new.

Now there are some people that will go digging but most people probably don't. So hey having quality control could potentially get more people to find a good game.

I really should try Genshin Impact. *googles*

[Maniakkid25]

Also, I should mention: I do not give a single solitary f*** about Genshin Impact. To me, it's whatever; I only brought it up because what other cross-platform game is also on mobile, and had a meteoric rise in popularity, and made nearly a billion dollars over 5 months? So, yeah, I just see it as a sign of more mobile trends working their way into console games, and could not give a rat's ass whether or not it's a great game. I have no comment on its quality; I just see it as an obelisk heralding the beginning of the end.

[Moonface]

The trouble is that a bad product can't really be removed just for being bad if it still functions. That's unfortunately subjective whether something is bad (even if universally deemed bad, there can still be people who think it's good), whereas if it outright doesn't work that can't be up for debate. Broken games that don't work shouldn't be on store fronts, but if someone puts out a lot of working games that are just bad there's no way to moderate that without problems.

[Dragon Lord]

The trouble is that a bad product can't really be removed just for being bad if it still functions. That's unfortunately subjective whether something is bad (even if universally deemed bad, there can still be people who think it's good), whereas if it outright doesn't work that can't be up for debate. Broken games that don't work shouldn't be on store fronts, but if someone puts out a lot of working games that are just bad there's no way to moderate that without problems.

I was just going to post this same thing, but you beat me to it. Unfortunately being entitled and thinking "this game isn't good enough for MY STORE!" doesn't justify removing those games just because you want to throw a fit. Again, I'd rather not have a company gatekeep what I can and cannot have access to, and allow me to make the decision of whether or not a game is good enough for me to buy it on my own. 

If you don't like a game, move on. If a game you don't like existing on the store is something that bothers you to the point you just can't accept it, that sounds like a personal issue.

[Maniakkid25]

Which is why Steam is Hell in this analogy: games published without executable files. Games that are infamously impossible to complete (Journey to the Light, Hunt Down the Freeman) -- no, not just difficult, but LITERALLY IMPOSSIBLE! Games that are literally reuploads of Unity store asset packs (just google UnitZ sometime...). Games that are literally levels of the same game split up multiple times to pad the library (Zonitron). Games that are just made by people who buy assets from a store and cobble them together with as little actual coding as possible (Digital Homicide), and now Steam's biggest problem is the fact that, literally, MORE THAN 50 GAMES GET RELEASED ON THE STOREFRONT PER DAY! How the hell does ANYONE benefit in an environment like that?! There's a fine line between a good and bad game, but line between a bad game and one that is clearly not FINISHED is VERY THICK! I'm not on about the bad ones; I'm on about the stuff that can barely be called "a game"!

[Moonface]

I imagine Steam would have trouble even trying to manage all that new content to a point of checking it all to see what is and isn't an unplayable mess. I expect the only way to keep a check on it all is based on user feedback?

[Karo]

There used to be a system for that called steam greenlight but they discontinued it.

[Maniakkid25]

HA! Valve? Checking its Storefront? THAT'S A BRILLIANT JOKE! Unless something is so beyond the pale that it starts making headlines (And I mean HEADLINES!), Steam will happily sell it, no questions asked. You really, really, really REALLY have to make a fuss if you want Valve to actually look at the storefront it "manages". Or, you know, Send them a DMCA. That'll get their attention.

[ShiraNoMai]

Yeah I think that goes for most companies selling goods: unless that shit eats into profits by way of "hey your brand is being unrepairably tarnished" and "you could be in legal trouble", they couldn't give a solitary fuck what customers think.