psi29a wrote: ↑28 Mar 2019, 14:53
And yet people still buy their buggy games...
Because of their other reputation of the games being fun regardless. However, given Fallout 4 and Fallout 76, that reputation has floundered as they've been using up all the good will they've built up. Personally, with as much as I like the TES games, their post-Skyrim behavior has left me very soured on them as a developer and publisher (even Skyrim's forced online DRM sat very negative with me), and I'm no longer really interested in Starfield and TES6 like I want to be. The developers don't seem to understand what made their games fun, and their publishing arm acts like spoiled bullies, and that's not something I can support in good conscience.
If it was really that bad, then people would stop paying Bethesda and buying their buggy games.
By the sounds of it, no one really is buying Fallout 76 with how eager shops are to heavily discount it or give it away for free (despite Bethesda's insistence that it's not going free-to-play). You can't use Fallout 76 as a measuring stick when it's what caused (and continues to cause) the largest turn in peoples' perception of Bethesda. Though it doesn't help that the name Bethesda is mired in confusion about who you're talking about... Bethesda the publisher, Bethesda the developer, and Bethesda the developer-that's-not-Todd's-team. But maybe that's part of the plan, keep people confused about who exactly to be mad at so they don't hold the right group accountable and make it easier forgive a group for something they weren't responsible for.
What I'm suggesting is that the situation is blown out of proportion by people with megaphones. It gets a lot of attention and yet people keep buying and playing.
False correlation. Just because people keep buying and playing doesn't mean there isn't a serious problem, it just means people can't help themselves. People keep buying and playing games with gambling/lootboxes and invasive micro-transactions too, doesn't mean that's not a problem.
So they obviously have something that works for them and sadly the only motivation is sales/money. Until that changes then they wont either.
Which is why the specter of government regulation is looming. Companies act greedy at the expense of consumers, companies refuse to properly self-regulate their problematic behavior because it's making them money, and the government has to step in. You can't rely on consumer behavior as an indication for the company's right or wrongfulness.