(electronic chiming) - [Falcon] Game publishers
often work very hard to find ways to innovate in greed. I love me some video games, but I don't love me some
video game companies. Hi folks, it's Falcon,
and today, on Gameranx, 10 of the greediest game
company moves ever part two. Now I'm just gonna put out
a little quick disclaimer: This doesn't necessarily mean developers. A lot of the time developers are harangued into doing crap they don't wanna do because it's ultimately
the publisher's say. That's not to say there
are no greedy developers. They exist, of course. But I want people to know that I'm just not
automatically saying that. A lot of the time, the creative
teams behind these games really just want to make games. Without any further ado on that though, starting off at number
10, "Escape from Tarkov" charging (chuckling) $250 for the long-requested PvE mode. We're gonna start this
one off hot today, folks, 'cause this one just sounds
horrible, and it's worse. So at the end of April, the
"Escape from Tarkov" developers, Battlestate Games, announced
they were going to finally add a proper co-op mode to the game. Yay! It's not free, though. If you want to access the new mode, then you have to buy
the absurdly overpriced "The Unheard Edition," which is, seriously, I am
not making this up, $250. I would like to call this
"The Unheard of Edition." But, eh. What's included in it? There's gotta be stuff other
than just this mode, right? Sure. You get a variety of pay-to-win
crap, like expanded pockets, additional equipment, and
resource space for your stash, and also "Dree access
to all subsequent DLCs." Free access (laughing) for $250. The last one stands out 'cause
"Tarkov" previously sold the $150 "Edge of Darkness Edition," which also promised free
access to all future DLC. That edition of the game
mysteriously vanished from "Tarkov's" storefront. And guess what "Edge of
Darkness" owners aren't getting? That's right, it's the PvE mode. So, just to be clear, I gave that warning that
says it's not always devs. There's often a company above them. That's not the case here. The "Tarkov" devs aren't just selling some
extremely overpriced version of their game, they're also taking back
the promise of free DLC for people who bought the slightly less overpriced
edition of their game in the past. Somehow, it gets worse. There was, of course, a ton of fan outrage over the whole thing, so Battlestate tried to make things right in about the worst way possible. In an attempt to calm
"EoD" edition owners, Battlestate offered some
rewards to those players, which included a bunch of
pay-to-win parts of the bundle, as well as access to
offline PvE for "EoD" owners for six months. Wow! How generous. And along with that, they
dropped this other bombshell: "High priority matching for
'EoD' owners for six months." Wait, what? That wasn't one of the selling points of "The Unheard of Edition." Are they also selling
priority matchmaking? Like, are all the free
second-class citizens now gonna have to wait in
line while people who pay get to the front of the line? It's all a mess and it's utterly cratered
Battlestate Game's reputation among its player base. Sucks because "Tarkov" is a cool game. Eh, what you gonna do? And number nine, "Metal Gear Survive" made you pay for
additional character slots. Konami's reputations
pretty much in the toilet by the time "Survive" came out. The Kojima-less "Metal Gear Solid" spinoff has its defenders, but there's no defending the
almost free-to-play level of nickel and diming this
game tries to pull on you. We did talk about this in our previous "Greediest
Video Game Moves Ever" game, but neglected to mention
this whole debacle: Making you pay for extra character slots? Like, there's
microtransactions everywhere, and most of them are unnecessary. They're at least for things that players have grown accustomed to paying for. It's not good, obviously, but the most outlandish microtransaction is that they actually want you to pay for more character slots. In a mostly single-player game,
they somehow expect people to happily go along with paying
a $10 fee to unlock slots two, three, and four for characters. Even most free-to-play games give you at least one or
two more character slots before asking for extra cash. But not "Survive," which
is not a free-to-play game, it's a game that you had to buy. And one thing I do wanna emphasize is that a lot of headlines and articles got the
nature of this stuff wrong. It wasn't save slots
that Konami was selling, it was extra characters. You know, like, when you're
selecting to start a new game in something like "Super Metroid," this would be like you'd have to pay to fill out those other slots. I don't really know who's willing to play through this game a second time and need that extra slot, but the fact that they're trying
to charge real money for it is ridiculous. Especially on top of a game, like I said, that already cost 40 bucks! And number eight, Ubisoft
locking a Jabba mission behind a $100-plus special edition. Pre-order bonus is just
getting out of control, and people are really
starting to get sick of it. "Star Wars Outlaws" is
hardly the first game to have an overly complicated
overpriced pre-order catalog, but this one may be one
of the most expensive we've seen yet, and it's
such a high-profile game. There's your standard $70 version, which, yeah, I guess we're
used to at this point. Gotta love that inflation. But then there's the $110 "Gold Edition" that comes with the season pass, an exclusive mission
called Jabba's Gambit, leading people to believe that if you wanted to
see the Hutt himself, you're forced to pay up. It's not quite accurate. You work for Jabba in
the game, no matter what. This pre-order bonus is an extra mission. But still, that's $110 at launch. If you wanna pay even more,
there's the "Ultimate Edition," which comes with a bunch
of extra skins and crap and costs an eye-watering $130. I don't know if they're
just trying to be deceptive or if they just changed the bundles after the initial backlash,
but the "Ultimate Edition" says it does come with three
days of Early Access. While the infographic says
for the "Gold Edition," there's Early Access listed everywhere. But if you look at the
product description, it says Early Access
with the "Gold Edition." So, at very least, they
have created a labyrinth of nonsense here and it all sucks. This pre-order crap is just worthless, but it's "Star Wars," so they know what people
are just gonna pay up! And number seven, EA charging $360 for a one One-Winged Angel Deathbox. "Apex Legends" has had
microtransaction problems for a while now, but they're
not getting any better. In fact, they are getting worse. Just recently there's a crossover event with "Final Fantasy VII" where they pulled their usual antics but
bumped up the price. Normally, they do this thing
where you have to unlock so many cosmetics, usually around 24, and you get access to
this Mythic rarity item that they've got dangling
in front of your face. This thing can be obtained randomly, but it might as well
not be in the rotation 'cause the chances of getting
it are very close to zero. And even then, that's not always the case. Sometimes, these Mythic
items are just gone for good. Normally, if you want to
unlock these event heirlooms, it costs around 160 bucks, give or take how many
crafting materials you have. As somebody who hasn't seriously
played "Apex" in a while, those numbers are pretty ridiculous. It's all digital crap that's
effectively worthless, yet they're still somehow getting away with charging more than
100 bucks for this junk. With the "Final Fantasy VII"
crossover, again, it's worse. Now, if you wanna unlock the rarest item, which is the One-Winged Angel Deathbox, you gotta get 36 total cosmetics, which is gonna cost around $360. It's a box with a wing on it. Yeah, for people who
play "Apex" regularly, the cost is more like $290, but that's $290 for a
box with a wing on it, One-Winged Angel Deathbox. And it somehow even gets worse from here, 'cause fans of data mined the game and found a $700 potential
heirloom in the game files. So they've just tested the waters with these absurd "Final
Fantasy VII" item pricings. There's no upper limits in
microtransaction prices anymore. They're just like, "Ah, we
assume somebody out there "is dumb enough to pay for 'em." And somebody Is, obviously. Of course, somebody is,
that's how things work. At number six, Razer sold $100 face masks that don't really do anything. It's corporate greed at its most idiotic. Back in 2021, at the
height of the pandemic, Razer revealed these
frankly ridiculous-looking Zephyr face masks, which they
claim used N95-grade filters. They charge 100 bucks for them. They were planning a more
expensive $150 version called the Zephyr Pro, but
they didn't do anything. They were not N95 makes. They never submitted them for testing. They're incapable of doing the one thing you'd buy them to do. Razer continued to sell
them as actual face masks. Only stopped advertising as N95 when they were called out on it. All the time, they tried
to claim these masks were not medical devices,
respirators, et cetera, but the advertising was already out there. We know they were lying, and just recently, the
FTC fined them over it. Razer made about $1 million these things, but the FTC forced them to pay around 1.1 million for misrepresentation. In comparison to a lot of
these bigger companies, a million bucks is kind
of a drop in the bucket, but the whole product was so
blatantly worthless and greedy, it does earn a spot on this list. And number five, the "Diablo
III" Real Money Auction House. "Diablo III" launched with
an in-game Auction House. There were two different versions of it: One in which you could use
in-game currency to buy things, another which sought items trade hands using real-world cash. The Real Money Auction House, or RMAH, was one of Blizzard's biggest
and most noticeable backfires. And while they've made
plenty more mistakes in the past few years, the first greed move
was perhaps their worst. The thing about the Auction House is that many people look back
at it fondly for some reason because people, some of
them actually managed to make a lot of money relatively easily. A lot of players were willing to pay, frankly, ludicrous prices
to get the gear they wanted. I'm talking hundreds of dollars
for a single piece of gear. Of course, blizzard got
their cut of every sale, and at least, for a little while, it made them a lot of money
at the expense of the game. But because any loot
could be bought and sold, they made items rarer,
which turned the game into a barren wasteland
full of dull gray loot. That didn't mean players
weren't getting loot, just that buying the best
equipment on the Auction House was the main way to do it, and well, that broke balance
on the game pretty quick because it made the rarest and
best items too easy to get. Basically, the Auction House
made "Diablo III" a worst game that catered to the worst
impulses of its player base all because Blizzard wanted their cut from the "Diablo II" black market. At least, they eventually reversed course and removed the Auction House
from the game completely. It's a rare outcome for
this kind of a move. Usually, the greed only gets worse, but it was a hell of a backlash. At number four, Nexon lies to
players about item rarities. If you wanna hear stories of greed, look no further than
Nexon and "MapleStory." If you don't know, "MapleStory's"
literally the first game to include loot box mechanics, and they were called
Gachapon Tickets back then. These guys are the innovators, the undisputed masters
of game industry greed. For over a decade, players
have suspected the game about lying about the drop
rates of certain items, but it was never 100% proven,
at least until early 2024, when Nexon was fined an
unprecedented $8.9 million by the Korea Fair Trade Commission
for this exact practice. The game advertised chances that were never possible
for certain gacha boxes while making certain cubes, which allowed players to
upgrade their equipment, nearly impossible to get. Back in 2011, they released a statement straight up denying they
were changing probabilities, so, yeah, Nexon was 100%, without a shadow of a doubt, lying. They were lying about drop
rates on their loot boxes and they were lying to players' faces when players accused them of this stuff. It's some of the most
shameless greed I've ever seen. Just straight up stealing
from their customers. And in the end, it was probably worth it. They got fined, yes, $11 million in total, but they made far more in profit. Those fines are just the
cost of doing business when intentionally
deceiving your customers is part of what you do. And number three is Star
"Citizen's" $48,000 JPEG. Unless, through some miracle, "Star Citizen" actually manages
to come out at some point, it's hard not to look at the hard numbers and conclude this game's
one of the biggest scams of all time in the gaming industry. $644 million raised from
crowdfunding pre-orders, and ships. The game was meant to come out
in 2014, that's 10 years ago, and it is still nowhere
even close to done. They claim that the spinoff, "Squadron 42," is basically
done, and then they post updates about how they're making
random changes to it. Features keep getting smaller. The scope of the game keeps looking more and more unrealistic. With the big-money donors
starting to get cold feet, it's possible the game may
finally get pushed out the door in the next year or two
and called finished, regardless of how completed actually is. You could play the game
now in pre-alpha form, but the vast majority of these ships continue to just be a twinkle
in the developer's eyes and more realistically, a
JPEG on a computer screen. The most expensive of these
JPEGs is the Legatus ship pack, which, and I'm serious here, is $48,000! It gets you every ship in the game, sure. The majority of them do not exist, though, and there's about a 99%
chance that they never will. They try to keep these
absurdly overpriced bundles away from the hoi polloi by
making the offers only available for people who've already
spent $1,000 in store, so it's whales only, folks. But it's $48,000! That sounds like a sick joke, but there's people who
actually requested this. It's too late for them. They've drunk the Kool-Aid,
they're asking for seconds. But seriously, don't waste
your money on this thing. That is a down payment on a house! If you have $48,000, get a house! You're better off just putting
it into a paper shredder than investing it in anything
involving "Star Citizen." At number two is Nintendo's
price-fixing campaign. Nintendo is a company that's well known for its
fiscal responsibility. They pay their employees well. They're relentlessly
frugal with their spending. Their CEOs aren't even absurdly overpaid. On paper, it sounds
like the ideal company. That doesn't mean they are
not without their dark side. There have been multiple occasions where been accused of
engaging in price fixing, famously in 1991 and
again in 2002 in Europe. So they probably didn't learn their lesson the first time around. Maybe not so much even
the second time around. We don't know. What do I mean by "price fixing?" It means Nintendo used
their dominant position in the games industry to
dictate terms to retailers. Back in 1991, multiple retailers said that Nintendo outright forced them to sell the NES at retail price, and if they attempted to
lower that price at all, they would just cut the
store off completely. One retailer was threatened for just trying to cut the
price by six cents, six pennies, three times two, like,
nearly no money whatsoever. Even back then, Nintendo was absolutely
using their dominant position in the industry to push around retailers, and they were sued for it. Back in 1991, Nintendo was forced to pay $25 million back to consumers who were affected by the price fixing in the form of a $5 rebate that people could use
to buy $20 to $50 games. Which is not really a
particularly punitive action. The 2002 European ruling
was a lot more hefty. This time, Nintendo got fined $147 million for artificially inflating console prices in certain European regions. Even though prices differ drastically between certain companies,
Nintendo and its partners would punish anyone who
engaged in parallel trade to get cheaper prices. Both times, Nintendo fully
well knew what they were doing. They knew they were,
at very least, bending, possibly breaking financial law to better serve their bottom
line, and they acted anyway. Nintendo was, and still is,
an extremely wealthy company. They don't need to be engaging in sketchy underhanded tactics, but apparently just
couldn't help themselves. And finally, at number one, Peter Molyneux and 22Cans sold in-game land for $900,000. Anybody remember this nonsense? Back in 2021, during
the height of NFT fever, Mr. Molyneux, gaming's
most infamous hype man, announced this new game called "Legacy." It was, and I guess, still is, going to be one of those
dystopian nightmare games that allows people with
more money than sense to buy up virtual land so they
could be virtual landlords. There wasn't even a game yet, but you better believe Molyneux and 22Cans were still
gonna sell that bridge. The NFT gold rush was still
in full swing at that time, and somebody, incredibly,
managed to sell $52 million worth of virtual land. One of those plots cost $900,000 and apparently, somebody
actually bought it. This was all years ago. What's become of "Legacy?" Have all those lucky
landowners gotten rich yet? Well, it was apparently
launched back in October '23 to basically zero fanfare, and it doesn't seem anyone
has actually playing it. It does actually exist, but
it's an unplayable crappy game. I don't know how anyone would
spend nearly a million bucks on anything involving this because, from all accounts,
it's as dead as a doornail with a rapidly dwindling player base made up mostly of desperate bag holders. I'd feel bad for the fools
who gave this guy money. But after the abysmal "Godus," and, you know, basically
everything this man has ever said being, at best, massive exaggerations and at most, outrageous lies,
anybody who lost money on this probably should have known better. I do have a bonus for you,
and it is, of course, Unity wanting to charge a runtime fee. We've covered this one to death, but gotta at least mention it here. This whole fiasco was
a stupid, shortsighted, greedy-as-hell move. You probably remember
it, it was fairly recent. Last year, Unity, the game
development software company, came out of nowhere with
this proposed runtime fee, which would charge game-makers 20 cents per install of their games
after an arbitrary threshold. That's not 20 cents every
time somebody buys it, it's 20 cents every time
someone installs it. And it was meant to apply retroactively. It was a stunningly stupid decision that was motivated entirely by greed and ended up losing the company millions and worse, its reputation. And that's all for today. Leave us a comment. Let
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right here on Gameranx.
