When people can pay ten times the cost of a whole-ass game, for one tiny thing in a game they already bought, and any one game pushes a thousand such absurd schemes - scam is the closest word I know.
The money being taken is hilariously disconnected from any form of value or cost, even when it’s not something literally free, like letting you modify your own character on your own computer. It was a bit much when The Sims and a couple expansions could run you a couple hundred dollars. When buying everything in one generic game totals the cost of a fucking house, that’s a crime with more steps.
Let’s go with a simple approach: is anyone giving money for something where they don’t fully understand what they are getting in return. That is, they don’t know they are getting a decoration or unlocking a character or whatever?
People are getting tricked into spending money on bullshit. As a multi-billion-dollar industry, often for things with literally zero cost.
If you want to split hairs about why scam isn’t quite the right word for that rampant abuse, then propose an alternative or stop bickering. I’m not interested in prescriptivist semantics on this recently-invented intolerable greed.
If you have any serious defense of this abuse besides fixating on word choice then I’ve yet to hear it.
I’m not fixated on the word choice. You just changed it to trick but haven’t in any way proven that game companies are “tricking” or “defrauding” anyone. You’re just making an empty claim. Explain how spending money on a character skin is a trick. Or buying DLC isn’t getting you what you paid for. As far as I can tell you haven’t even established that anything they are doing is even “dishonest” which I think is a much much lower bar. You literally have not a god damned thing to back up your pov.
Your examples included expansions that they charged money for. And a game where if one person bought everything in the game, it would be some hundreds of thousands of dollars. Those aren’t tricks. Nobody is making anyone buy a house worth of bits. Nobody is making anyone pay for an expansion they don’t want to pay for (well, other than children forcing their parents). These are all optional transactions that adults enter into of their own volition. You can say you think it’s scummy they charge so much, but it’s not a trick.
Synonyms are words that mean nearly the same thing. I’m not gonna jump through whatever hoops exist in your brain, to avoid describing how this is bad. A scam is a thing where you trick people for money. Fraud is a thing where you trick people for money. That’s what those words mean.
Nothing could possibly excuse all the content in a mundane video game costing ten thousand times more than any other mundane video game. If people are paying anyway - they were tricked. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Nobody’s ever forced to get scammed. That’s what the trick is. Victims freely choose to throw away their money, for some bullshit. The alternative is a mugging.
If the value of paying for all the shit in the game is obviously nonsense, then the value of paying for any shit in the game is obviously nonsense. It’s all worthless. It’s all inflated so arbitrarily - because of what makes games, games - that listing a whale’s ransom in geegaws proves that every last geegaw is equally worthless. Tricking a single person into paying for a single fake hat is an intolerable abuse.
Variations on a scam.
It’s not exactly a scam, though, is it. Are the game companies committing fraud?
When people can pay ten times the cost of a whole-ass game, for one tiny thing in a game they already bought, and any one game pushes a thousand such absurd schemes - scam is the closest word I know.
The money being taken is hilariously disconnected from any form of value or cost, even when it’s not something literally free, like letting you modify your own character on your own computer. It was a bit much when The Sims and a couple expansions could run you a couple hundred dollars. When buying everything in one generic game totals the cost of a fucking house, that’s a crime with more steps.
Let’s go with a simple approach: is anyone giving money for something where they don’t fully understand what they are getting in return. That is, they don’t know they are getting a decoration or unlocking a character or whatever?
Rejected.
So you agree it’s not fraud?
Wrong.
People are getting tricked into spending money on bullshit. As a multi-billion-dollar industry, often for things with literally zero cost.
If you want to split hairs about why scam isn’t quite the right word for that rampant abuse, then propose an alternative or stop bickering. I’m not interested in prescriptivist semantics on this recently-invented intolerable greed.
If you have any serious defense of this abuse besides fixating on word choice then I’ve yet to hear it.
I’m not fixated on the word choice. You just changed it to trick but haven’t in any way proven that game companies are “tricking” or “defrauding” anyone. You’re just making an empty claim. Explain how spending money on a character skin is a trick. Or buying DLC isn’t getting you what you paid for. As far as I can tell you haven’t even established that anything they are doing is even “dishonest” which I think is a much much lower bar. You literally have not a god damned thing to back up your pov.
Your examples included expansions that they charged money for. And a game where if one person bought everything in the game, it would be some hundreds of thousands of dollars. Those aren’t tricks. Nobody is making anyone buy a house worth of bits. Nobody is making anyone pay for an expansion they don’t want to pay for (well, other than children forcing their parents). These are all optional transactions that adults enter into of their own volition. You can say you think it’s scummy they charge so much, but it’s not a trick.
You changed it, from scam to fraud.
Synonyms are words that mean nearly the same thing. I’m not gonna jump through whatever hoops exist in your brain, to avoid describing how this is bad. A scam is a thing where you trick people for money. Fraud is a thing where you trick people for money. That’s what those words mean.
Nothing could possibly excuse all the content in a mundane video game costing ten thousand times more than any other mundane video game. If people are paying anyway - they were tricked. Quod erat demonstrandum.
Nobody’s ever forced to get scammed. That’s what the trick is. Victims freely choose to throw away their money, for some bullshit. The alternative is a mugging.
If the value of paying for all the shit in the game is obviously nonsense, then the value of paying for any shit in the game is obviously nonsense. It’s all worthless. It’s all inflated so arbitrarily - because of what makes games, games - that listing a whale’s ransom in geegaws proves that every last geegaw is equally worthless. Tricking a single person into paying for a single fake hat is an intolerable abuse.