this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2025
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[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 75 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

"I agree with a lot of the people who get mad about the DLC approach. I don't really like the Icarus approach. We needed it to survive," he said. "I actually think a lot of gamers don't realize that 99% of devs out there are sitting there going, 'I don't like this.'”

Game devs so often get public flack for decisions outside their control i really wanted to highlight this part

[–] jqubed@lemmy.world 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Flack? Giving someone some slack is giving them a break. Giving someone flack is giving them a hard time. If something’s outside someone’s control, giving them slack about it is a kind thing but giving them flack would be unfair.

[–] frongt@lemmy.zip 18 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Flak. If you think the spelling is weird, it's someone's name.

[–] jqubed@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago
[–] k0e3@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago
[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 5 points 3 days ago

Oh sure, brainfog on my part

[–] samus12345@sh.itjust.works 64 points 2 days ago

No, but the rest of the industry is so incredibly scummy that they look good by comparison.

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 54 points 3 days ago (7 children)

Yes I don't know why they don't get more hate over this.

[–] poke@sh.itjust.works 114 points 3 days ago (1 children)

From my perspective its because they're still somehow not even among the worst. Their only way of advertising their gambling is by giving the player a crate. This crate can be opened for $2.50, or sold on the marketplace to someone else who wants to open it. This money can be spent on buying real games.

In cod, you get full screen advertisements on the regular for $10+ skin bundles. In almost every game as a service you get progress in a battle pass that ALWAYS directly contrasts your usually untradeable rewards with what you could be getting if you paid this month's subscription fee.

Valve does have a scummy system, but they make it less annoying and if you choose to not participate you usually benefit with real funds to use on steam. Its hard to hate that over the aggressive advertising of its competitors.

All IMO, though. I'm no psychologist.

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 17 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I agree.

But it's important to note that just because it flies under the radar of most people, doesn't mean it isn't an absolutely deplorable system that exploits the difficult to control tendencies of vulnerable people.

It's evil, and while it's "only a little bit of evil" compared to most similar system, there is no amount of evil that is ok.

[–] lemjukes@sopuli.xyz 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Being ‘least shitty’ isn’t really a worthwhile acolade.

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)
[–] lemjukes@sopuli.xyz 1 points 2 days ago

Oh, sorry, I guess I’ll shut the fuck up now.

[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 34 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (1 children)

I don't want to defend them too much but honestly out of all the loot boxes out there theirs is the least bad. You can even just sell the boxes you get for free by playing and buy shit (on Steam) with the money.

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 1 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago) (2 children)

Selling is the problem, it makes it actual gambling.

[–] iloveDigit@piefed.social 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

No, being able to find items for free and sell them is not the problem or what makes it gambling

[–] tekato@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago

What do you think they’re buying it for?

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

“First one’s free”

As in you get infinitely more by buying than you are given for free (hence why people buy them) is always the sign of a well intentioned business.

[–] iloveDigit@piefed.social 2 points 2 days ago

I never put money into the game for many years until I could afford to support the creators because I was happy with the items I could find for free

[–] TachyonTele@piefed.social 1 points 2 days ago (6 children)

Selling is not gambling. It's kind of the opposite of gambling.

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[–] the_q@lemmy.zip 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Cause Gaben. He's your cool buddy uncle guy that's into video games, hunting and sous dive and not another billionaire. He's a cool good billionaire! His yacht is a cool yacht!

[–] iloveDigit@piefed.social 7 points 3 days ago

This is half true at least. It's not just insane nonsense.

[–] markz@suppo.fi 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

For most people it's harder to hate Valve with the positive things they do. Obviously they shouldn't get a pass for this, but forming a conflicted opinion seems to be against human nature.

[–] TachyonTele@piefed.social 2 points 2 days ago

There's bigger things to worry about than Valve

[–] ILikeBoobies@lemmy.ca 5 points 3 days ago

Brand and billionaire loyalty.

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[–] Roulette@lemmy.today 24 points 2 days ago (2 children)

FIX YOUR GAME DEAN!..... sorry old habits

[–] Jessica@discuss.tchncs.de 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Yes seriously. Pot calling the kettle black. I'm one of the people who got burned by DayZ standalone. Fucker lied to our faces and said we needed to buy early because the price was just going to go up as more content was added and it reached feature parity with the Arma mod within like a year

[–] BlameTheAntifa@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Icarus is solid and Kitten Space Agency appears to be coming along nicely.

[–] DahGangalang@infosec.pub 21 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Oh, I thought this was going to be about the trading cards they implemented in steam. Those are so lame and cheap I wasn't bothered by this.

For any non-readers-of-articles, this is about a loot box mechanic added to counterstrike (which is fair criticism imho)

[–] Red_October@piefed.world 15 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Counterstrike has had loot boxes for many years, they weren't recently added. What was recently added was a mechanic that allows 5 lower value items (certain gun skins) to be exchanged for a random higher value item (glove or knife skins). It's acting to level the market. If anything, this change serves to inhibit loot box gambling by cutting the possibility of hitting a real money jackpot.

[–] MentalEdge@sopuli.xyz 13 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

If anything, this change serves to inhibit loot box gambling by cutting the possibility of hitting a real money jackpot.

Oh, I didn't think of that. With the smaller difference betwen the most expensive and least expensive items, gambling gets less random in terms of return.

That's an improvement, though I still think the whole systems should be taken out.

That there is a "counter strike skins investment 'industry'" is utterly insane.

[–] TachyonTele@piefed.social 4 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I've bought games just from sitting there for an hour and selling those cards. All these years and i still have no idea why people buy them.

[–] Linnce@lemmy.world 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

If you complete a set you get xp and level up your profile. I sell the expensive cards I get from my games and buy the cheap ones to get a full set. I'm on level 52 and I never put any money on steam for any reason other than buying games. My profile looks cool because of this and I like it.

[–] TachyonTele@piefed.social 2 points 2 days ago

I'm not going to knock your good time. I'm glad someone enjoys them.

[–] iAmTheTot@sh.itjust.works 20 points 3 days ago (2 children)

Gabe's deification has always been disturbing to me. There are no good billionaires.

[–] Kronusdark@lemmy.world 19 points 3 days ago

I definitely don’t deify him but it does help that he’s not taking his billions to try to weaken democracy… at least that we are aware of.

[–] ShaggySnacks@lemmy.myserv.one 2 points 2 days ago

The only good billionarie is a former billionarie who had their wealth taken away and restributed for benefit society.

[–] 100@fedia.io 17 points 3 days ago (1 children)

ah yes dean "jump the ship" hall who fucked off dayz development when it released very half baked which almost killed the games future

screw lootboxes too

[–] iloveDigit@piefed.social 2 points 3 days ago

Someone get ja rule on the phone

[–] Fizz@lemmy.nz 15 points 2 days ago

They get criticised all the time for this wtf is this guy on about?

[–] ICastFist@programming.dev 13 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Valve, however, has managed to neatly skirt regulatory efforts by charging players not for directly purchasing loot crates, which can be earned during gameplay, but for the keys required to open them.

Wow, that's fucking scummy

Hall said that even he is frustrated by the "Paradox model" of paid expansion and DLC packs his studio RocketWerkz chose for its survival game Icarus after moving away from a free-to-play scheme.

For Paradox games, it's mostly nickel and diming since they know they're working in a niche market. For Icarus, it's a problem of wanting the game to stay relevant, paying for servers and not knowing when to say "ok, we're done".

[–] Zamboni_Driver@lemmy.ca 15 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Valve loot boxes have always worked that way. They didn't change them to skirt regulations. I don't really find it very scummy at all. Nothing in the loot boxes can give you an advantage in the game. Most of the games that include this feature are free to play. This is how they make money from their game. The vast majority of people don't pay very much at all. You can play the games and have tons of fun and never interact with the loot box system. It's an optional thing for people who like the game so much that they want to pay. It's basically donate to valve and have a chance to unlock a cosmetic item in game.

[–] CTDummy@aussie.zone 9 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

This completely ignores the fact that teenagers play the game, it’s essentially gambling, streamers spending decent time opening cases, FOMO, the status that comes with rare skins, skin markets and so on. I sorta of get what you’re saying insofar as not being PTW and cosmetics being the least obnoxious of this type of practice but it’s still super scummy. To the exclusion of CS2 and maybe a handful of other being free is the point, so they can get you into the slot machine that is these sort of mechanics and squeeze money from people (mostly kids). Don’t get me started on Valve generating billions from this and CS2 is still a mess.

[–] FreeBooteR69@lemmy.ca 1 points 2 days ago

Ok so morning outrage clicks for naught?

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[–] RipLemmDotEE@lemmy.today 4 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago)

Hall said that even he is frustrated by the "Paradox model" of paid expansion and DLC packs his studio RocketWerkz chose for its survival game Icarus after moving away from a free-to-play scheme.

That pretty rich given how many DLCs Icarus has. He's not wrong, but also shut the fuck up Dean, you've managed to ruin every game you built through incessant content updates no one wanted.

[–] JTskulk@lemmy.world 4 points 2 days ago

Just don't gamble if you don't like gambling (or if you like it too much). I never got into any skin microtransactions ever (except for a voice pack for Starcraft 2 which is something for myself and not something that other players see). I don't play CS2 a lot, but when I do I have a good time and I just ignore all the skin stuff. It's out of sight and out of mind. Other players show me their skins and ask if they're cool. I don't know man, I don't do arts and crafts with my tools.

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