It was a fully fledged game where you could assist any number of individuals through life as you deemed fit – whether you wanted full control or preferred to take a more diety-like approach and embrace artificial free will. While I never saw the benefits of playing the first game, the second thoroughly sold itself as one of the best “everyday life simulators” amongst a sea of weird and, quite frankly, scary competitors. I still remember losing hundreds, if not thousands, of hours to The Sims 2. I will not be regurgitating the many reasons social media and Reddit always bring up, but I will be focusing on a particularly awful business practice that I think has gone unnoticed for far too long. While playing any game at a base level is commendable, and supporting your favourite developers (such as the few remaining original MAXIS employees who stayed on at EA) is a fair thing to do there are valid reasons why you should stop supporting publishers and developers who continuously choose to embrace anti-consumer business practices. The worst offender being none other than Electronic Arts ( EA) and the ever-growing cost of owning and playing The Sims 4 in 2020.
These are examples of fair pricing from companies who care about their fans – fine paragons among the darkness of egregious capitalism and the need to milk players for all they are worth. Examples include $10 USD cosmetics for games continuing to release free content updates ( Monster Hunter: World, Guild Wars 2) and full-fledged $30 USD expansion packs for games already offering hundreds of hours at a base level ( The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim). I will concede how sometimes DLC is valid, and how paying for additional extras is worth it. The likes of Battle Passes, which are essentially season passes with the added requirement of actually earning what you paid for, really irk me! In fact, I have always been against any kind of downloadable content that comes in small bits and pieces, especially if the DLC costs upwards of the price of the base game. If you follow my online presence, you will know how much I despise content paywalls.
0 kommentar(er)
