• Janx@piefed.socialEnglish
    4 months

    It’s not “surge”, it’s not “dynamic”, it’s not “personalized” pricing… It’s price gouging. Look forward to paying more for games during peak times and months. It’s never enough for these greedy giant corporations.

    • Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4 months

      I might be part of the problem. I bought a PS5 years ago, thinking GTA6 was close to being released.

      Turns out no.

      But what I’ve discovered is that with how the gaming industry has gone, I don’t see any need to buy games anymore.

      I’m sick of games being an online focused experience, which requires subscription costs.

      I’m sick of every game needing a multiple deluxe collectors editions that are the only way to play the full game, but cost $200 each and come with cheap plastic junk “collectables” to justify the cost.

      “But you won’t get the super rare coin and lapel pin if you don’t get the collectors edition!”

      “Thats fine. Just sell me the full game at $60.”

      “The full game requires the collectors edition. But it comes with this lapen pin and rare coin!”

      “How many copies of the collectors edition are there?”

      “About 2 million.”

      “So, not exactly rare, is it?”

      • Eldritch@piefed.worldEnglish
        4 months

        Steam and PC gaming if anything. That and changing life priorities in my 30s and 40s. GoG and epic too. Between them I have almost 1000 games I didn’t pay for. Combined with hundreds on steam from humble etc. I probably spend more time trying to decide what to play than playing it.

        • thingsiplay@lemmy.mlEnglish
          4 months

          Valve is also the only company out of these big gaming companies who do lot of Open Source (working on it and funding other projects) and care about Linux. It maybe coincidental, but these care and goals align with my personal interests. No other company in the gaming industry does that to this extend, plus its an open platform. And being a private company brings also lot of freedom to not listen to shareholders.

          The only thing is, that Steam itself is not Open Source… and the uncertainty what will happen if one day Gabe will no longer control…

          • EldritchFemininity@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
            4 months

            But refusing to buy from one company specifically is. Just because you buy similar products somewhere else doesn’t mean that you aren’t boycotting the other company.

            I refuse to buy from Blizzard, Activision, EA, and Ubisoft. I refuse to buy Sony games so long as they require a PSN account for PC games. Just because I buy indie games doesn’t mean that I’m not boycotting those AAA companies for their actions.

            • Bronzebeard@lemmy.zipEnglish
              4 months

              Yes.

              But that wasn’t the reasoning that was given.

              I don’t buy from A because I prefer B… Is not a boycott.

      • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4 months

        Not the person you asked, but for me:

        • The music CD rootkit
        • removing OtherOS from the PlayStation 3
        • trying to push various proprietary formats like MemoryStick and MiniDisc
        • DRM in ATRAC3
        • etc.

        Take your pick!

        • OldQWERTYbastard@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4 months

          Ugh God. I remember that “Magic Gate” bullshit when the PSP launched. They started a trend with the Walkman and they’re trying to get lightning to strike twice. Never could do it though. Good.

          Those greedy assholes need to engineer and innovate in other areas.

        • Strider@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4 months

          Trying to only establish proprietary media in the past, mostly ignoring open standards.

          Oops I didn’t fully read, you got it ♥️

        • chunes@lemmy.worldEnglish
          4 months

          I’m still pissed about the rootkit scandal. That was 21 years ago now, and I haven’t spent a penny on Sony products since.

    • OldQWERTYbastard@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4 months

      It’s almost as though Valve provides a valuable service and respects their customers. Rare traits in the corporate world. Answering to a board of directors is a hell of a lot easier than answering to shareholders.

      Enshitification hasn’t struck there…yet.

    • kittykillinit@lemy.lolEnglish
      4 months

      Integrity.

      Valve does the least amount of scammy/scumbag bullshit, and they’re rewarded accordingly.

      Companies like EA only want customers that have no self-respect, so that’s what they get.

    • B312@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4 months

      Doesn’t valve also do this for different regions?

      • potustheplant@feddit.nlEnglish
        4 months

        They do but that’s regional pricing, meaning that basically if the median income of a country is lower, game prices are lower as well. According to the article, that you apparently did not read, Sony is showing different prices (up to 18% lower in some cases) to different users. I take that to mean that the geographical position of the users could be the same.

  • P03 Locke@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
    4 months

    That’s nice…

    Meanwhile, I am testing piracy: one game - same price on my private torrent tracker.

  • Colonel Panic@programming.devEnglish
    4 months

    the PS4 can be jailbroken with a €4 disc from aliexpress nowadays, and it has a great catalog of games. slap a 1tb external hdd on it, download games from archive.org, presto

    • forestbeasts@pawb.socialEnglish
      4 months

      Wait, you can get jailbreak discs from aliexpress? That might be worth looking into…

      (although, how do we know if it’s got malware on it?)

      • Colonel Panic@programming.devEnglish
        4 months

        you can also burn it yourself if you have a bluray burner, the software the aliexpress discs use is freely available (search for “goldhen”)

        • forestbeasts@pawb.socialEnglish
          4 months

          Oooh awesome. I figured normal burned discs wouldn’t work.

          We don’t have a bluray burner (only a CD/DVD drive) but have been kinda wanting to get one.

          • forestbeasts@pawb.socialEnglish
            4 months

            Shoot, apparently it’s not open source. That’s not confidence-inspiring… but then again PS3 CFWs weren’t either (*sighs*)

            Does that apply to PS4s running 11.something? I can’t remember what OS version our PS4 is on, but it’s new enough that a jailbreak only came out pretty recently. Needed a specific game disc to work.

              • forestbeasts@pawb.socialEnglish
                4 months

                Oooh lovely!! We’re uh, pre-12.5 I think.

                A DVD won’t work, right, it’s gotta be a bluray? Because if we can do this with a DVD-R and not need another reader, that’d be great.

                • Colonel Panic@programming.devEnglish
                  4 months

                  it has to be BD, it’s exploiting a vulnerability in bluray video decoding. honestly just get it from aliexpress, a BD burner is €100+, not really worth it to buy one for single use

      • Colonel Panic@programming.devEnglish
        4 months

        probably not a bad idea :) ps3/xbox360 are also totally worth it and easy to crack, if you have one lying around or are on a budget. my xbox360 is rocking ~120 games on 1tb (including xbox classic games), more than i could ever play in a lifetime

    • ragebutt@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      4 months

      In some cases the ps5 can as well but only older firmwares have the full chain of exploits. That said you can run game backups and if you get an old enough firmware you can even install Linux and run steam games

      • Colonel Panic@programming.devEnglish
        4 months

        true, the only issue i see is that newly released games might have higher firmware requirements. the ps4 is de-facto end-of-life, no need to put much thought into modding that

  • Phoenixz@lemmy.caEnglish
    4 months

    Fuck dynamic pricing, anyone even considering it should be jailed.

    So tired, so tired of these ultra rich finding new and creative ways of squeezing the plebs and we just, again, let them

  • Tigeroovy@lemmy.caEnglish
    4 months

    Yeah I’m testing out dynamic buying. If it’s too expensive I don’t buy it.

    • kittykillinit@lemy.lolEnglish
      4 months

      I just don’t buy things I can be getting for free anymore. All of the people selling it want to treat me like a piggybank instead of a person, so I don’t treat them as humans either.

      This also goes for indie devs. They still do scumbag shit like ending prices in .99 while expecting the community to show goodwill.

      Fuck that.

  • Zeusz13@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4 months

    Well, the only game I was looking forward to from them was Ghost of Yotei, budt since they killed the PC port for whatever reason, i don’t even want to buy anything

  • NutinButNet@hilariouschaos.comEnglish
    4 months

    This should have been an obvious outcome when digital games weren’t priced any less than their physical release.

    It’s not about saving the environment with less plastic. It’s not about saving money for the customer. It’s not about making it more convenient for the customer or the developer.

    It was always about more greed. More money in their pockets and more ways to fuck you over as a customer.

  • thingsiplay@lemmy.mlEnglish
    4 months

    Being transparent about stable prices without shady experiments is the first step of trust. Years ago Steam got rid of dynamic prices during sales, where prices during sales for games would change. While not exactly the same thing as Sony does, its still good we got stable and reliable prices.

  • almost1337@lemmy.zipEnglish
    4 months

    It seems as though many people aren’t reading the article, Sony was testing lower prices for the test groups, not higher. That sounds like the opposite of price gouging to me.

    • Linktank@lemmy.todayEnglish
      4 months

      It’s just a test. Doesn’t mean they won’t use it the other way.

      Probably just seeing how much people notice and why.

      • almost1337@lemmy.zipEnglish
        4 months

        Or maybe they’re testing how many more sales they make when discounting more.

    • clucose@lemmy.mlEnglish
      4 months

      If you get the lower price only with the app etc. it’s a price increase for anyone without the app. When most of the users have the app and are locked in the prices get changed based on an algorithm and everybody pays more than before.

    • RightHandOfIkaros@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4 months

      “What is the closest number to $infinity that people will still buy?”

      This is what they are testing. If you care, dont buy anything over $60. $60 is the absolute maximum price anyone should be paying for a physical copy of just a game. Digital should be even less, and Collectors Editions with extra physical items can be priced higher based on the value of the extra physical items.

    • SkunkWorkz@lemmy.worldEnglish
      4 months

      So it means gamers with fomo will never get to see a sale for the games they want to play right. Since Sony knows those gamers will pay the full sticker price.