Game Companies are NOT Your Friends 

“Hey guys, mega game development company here giving my 2 cents on current political issues. I, as a faceless and soulless entity, will pretend to care about your grievances”

Nintendo's biggest prideful act is "Nintendo games don't depreciate in value".

Video games went from cheat codes to microtransactions.

Great video. Corporations are not our friends and only care about our money. Its totally fine to be a fan of a product or an IP, but being a fanboy of a corporation is absolutely crazy.

Moral: You can love but don't worship. These companies are not your Gods and blindly kissing their feet solves nothing. Take it from Patrick Star himself: "Hero worship is unhealthy."

Indie developers are nice, the anti piracy screen for just shapes and beats is just one of the developers talking to you and telling you how you can support them without buying the games they make

Minor correction. Bungie was acquired BEFORE Halo was finished. The investment from MS was what actually enabled the game to become what it did. The OST for the first game actually came with a mini documentary that went over this development and the crap the game looked like before Bungie was acquired.

This is true and heartbreaking. I’m a big Pokémon fan and the only way for them to to not be like that is to not support their games. But it’s makes it unfair. We shouldn’t have to choose to not spend money on their games to give us games worth buying.

I know any of these sins can be applied to any of these companies but pride just fits Nintendo perfectly.

Nintendo: has fans Nintendo fans: Are so passionate that they spend a decade of their lives making a tribute game without expecting anything in return. Nintendo: Is that fucking competition I smelled?

As an indie developer, Steam is realistically the single good platform you can publish to... They don't just host your game but offer many other features and free promotion, and I believe that the 30/70 cut is reasonable for what they offer.

The way this video is structured is amazing. Playing the game of "Guess the Sin" is so fun whenever a new section pops up. And when you said "You already know the final, deadly sin of them all" you were so right! Guessing the answer correctly made me feel so satisfied. Also, the structure of this video makes the complex world of video game companies make sense when you look at it from this perspective. You can clearly see the sins they possess.

How does a company have the sin of gluttony EDIT: as soon as you showed the mere image of Microsoft it hit me

The artists are who made what you love, the businessmen are who ruin it

That's why I dont feel bad for modding my 3DS/Wii U anymore. When you don't make your games available for the next console...then it's your lost. I would have bought Switch versions of 3DS games if they made then available in some form. Pokemon Diamond and Pearl had a system where they had a second screen on the switch....theres an idea.

The sad part about Konami is that they still are unknown and have fallen from popular studios.

As heart breaking as Konami's turn was, this wasn't entirely out of character. This is the same company that owns the Yugioh franchise. We can only hope that their recent endeavor with the Silent Hill franchise again is a sign that things might get better for fans of those games.

I agree wholeheartedly, but I think it's important to separate Dev teams from the company overall. Not completely, they are still part of the company, but the Dev teams are where any genuine care for the players might come from. Do I trust Nintendo? Not really. Do I trust Eiji Aunoma? Yeah, probably.

The problem is that in this world, its not only gaming companies doing it, this car manifactures, gadget companies, phone companies, condom companies, they all do it its a much much bigger problem

No, Nintendo did NOT save the gaming industry from the 1983 crash. For a start the crash only affected north America, it didn't touch the home micro based European games industry. Secondly it didn't save the NA industry, it restarted it.

There was a meme circulating around the internet back in the days during the Pokemon Uranium incident. A child prodigy from Africa or something successfully created a device using woods and tools to be capable to run Super Mario Bros. As a sign of congratulations. Nintendo's staff fly over there and told the kid that they either destroy this new competition or the kid will be sued for 1 million USD. Or something like that. I may hate it if Blizzard and EA became the norm. But I fear the day when Nintendo's practices became the norm.

The overall sentiment I've heard over the years of people who hate getting treated like shit by these companies but buy their stuff anyway is essentially they would rather continue to buy and play the games because it's easier that way. I've almost given up trying to bother anymore.

Brand loyalty sucks and it's definitely true that a lot of people don't recognize it. However, Valve does have the best launcher/marketplace by far. And they are usually consumer-friendly. They are also a relatively small company and although they haven't released that many games recently, what they have done is pretty crazy, such as all their contributions to VR and the Steam Deck (which basically started a new market by itself).

Remember everyone, there's nothing wrong with Piracy against Corporations.

In short - realise that game companies and pop culture in general are not gods. You can enjoy their products but don't worship them, they don't deserve it and they can't fill the hole in your heart.

after everything nintendo's done i just can't bring myself to buy games from the company anymore. It weighs too heavily on my mind when I'm playing any of their games

Another reason to hate game companies is that sometimes they’ll use game developers, passion for making games as an excuse to make them work crunch hours, and pay them less. They’ll also use developers as a shield to block criticism for decisions that they made and forced onto the developers. Remember that game developers are just trying to do their job. If we want real change in the game industry then we need to start blaming game companies that are making these bad decisions. (Besides Indie games but that’s a different story)

I think company social media profiles certainly aren't helping this. Lots of people have already developed parasocial relationships with celebrities and internet personalities and are doing it with companies, too. Giving them these personas that make people antiquate them with Indie developers so they can do no wrong, no matter their business practises or behaviour.

Its quite sad how the majority of people are blind to the fact that Nintendo is a super shitty company. Just because they've made great games they're willing to turn their blind eye to it. I would have added Riot here as well. Because Arcane was such a huge hit and positively talked about show people literally forgot they had the same lawsuits up their ass that Activision Blizzard currently has. Yet people make videos like "Riot did what Blizzard couldn't". Like stfu. They both soiled their sheets and Riot just happened to change them faster and now people are blinded by the brand spanking new clean white sheets.

I know when you were doing your research and fifting the sins into each companies were like "oh my god, this is gonna be so good"

This video is surprisingly well made. Can't believe it took me so long to find it. Watched all the way through without skipping, and can jut say this is amazing.

Spot on, please do continue with a part 2 this was very good. We need to get more traction on this issue, it is a real issue, it has only been gotten worse over the past 2 to 3 years.

The problem with all the companies today is that the people who made those companies are no longer there

I'm absolutely appalled that people are still buying EA's products even though there are ALWAYS massive backlash in every single new game they released in the past decade. People just didn't learn.

I would love to see a whole video on the smash issues or that whole scene, I feel like you would kill it with that. Love the content!

Ubisoft would actually fit nicely to "envy" role - imitating others and trying to have the same type of games as others, failing constantly with their copycats

This is a really well made video, watched the whole thing and quite liked the approach you took with the Seven Sins. Super creative idea!

This is why we love indie games

He coupled up all of my painful and itching thoughts up and made it smooth and coherent. Thank you.

was watching this casually when I saw my face at 6:49 lol. I was a 3d artist at blizz for 10 years and the few talks I have online are about art so it feels very random to see a clip of a video of me being used to illustrate a person I don't even know (even if it says "not kevin Meier" for half a second) or on a topic I personally never experienced.

I just love how in the image of a Rockstar employee that you show when talking about the company, you can clearly see a half empty six pack of bud light just sitting on the guys desk. Not that I blame the guy, if I had to work for a company like Rockstar I would also prolly have to be hammered a disproportionate amount of time too.

Wish more people would know this and not idolize companies as gods

My first though definitely not last video from you. Very well done, as well as thoroughly entertaining/informative through and through. Good going.

A wonderfully amazing video thank you for all the time and effort you put into making it. I'll be sharing it will all my friends to build a conversation on what needs to change in the video game industry to have it become a health member of our community.

valve is the only company which cares about linux gamers though, they developed the proton compatibility layer which allows linux users to play almost any windows game.

As soon as you mentioned Valve I KNEW you were gonna give them sloth LMAO

The 7 deadly sims idea is such a good and engaging way to portray the information well done!

"The real-life time skip that is Covid" Great line and true 😂

I love how all of them fits perfectly in greed

I do find this very informative. As a Nintendo fan, myself. The description fits them perfectly. With a MASSIVE fan follow cultivated throughout the decade, such a love-hated relationship is rather mind boggling to say the least. Even worse when you're an artist and a fan. The whole copyright infringement thing is enough to scare you silly. And is kinda sad when you think about it.

Brand loyalty is the dumbest concept. Don't be loyal to a giant corporation that sees you as an open wallet, go for whatever get's you the best product for the lowest cost

It's sad that people need to be told companies aren't their friends

Amazingly depressing video, but incredibly written nonetheless. This is an amazing essay overall and I'm amazed at the care you put into it, and how tragically true it all is...

I have to take issue with your PoV on Valve here. Do you have any idea the cost of hosting and maintaining an estimated 9.2 Petabyte library of games and the running costs of serving that up, dupilcated across 20 different locations worldwide, with each one paying the ludicrus costs of getting direct access to the core backbones of the worldwide web in each area? CDNs are hilariously expensive to operate, that's why services like Amazon's AWS3 are so wildly successful, Valve and Amazon are making industry leading internet service features available to indie developers. Until EGS, Valve took the lowest total cut of any company for game distribution (this is why D2D and Gamespy died, developers found Steam and lost interest in publishing elsewhere), and not only doesn't charge an update fee (unlike Epic) but also provides update packaging tools and version control for both users and developers (Yes, you can downgrade your games on-demand with just a single string in Steam's console, assuming the developer allows it).

Can I just say, I love your videos. But I do happen to notice a copious amount of Beastars music throughout. Nice taste, the ost slaps. Thanks for another amazing video!

Great video! It played automatically while I was playing minecraft but the video is so good I actually put it on picture-in-picture and just subscribed!

I find it humorous as the Sonic fan I am seeing him using the "Genesis Does What Nintendon't" clip when he talks about Nintendo, lmao. But it is true, Sega and Nintendo really are polar-opposites of each other. One is aggressive to their fans but produces amazing games, and the other is compassionate about their fanbase but.... their games are... *Questionable.* (WOW! Sonic fan saying Sonic games aren't that good nowadays, what a revelation!... Get over it. :/)

The only criticism I have about this video is the absence of a sin assigned to Bethesda. Other than that oversight, well done.

I was typing a serious comment but then heard the “At least we’ll have more FNAF games. Wait what happened to Scott Cawthon-?” and now I’m laughing so hard. As a huge FNAF fan that made my week. I already loved and liked the video but that SENT ME Seriously though loved the video, I’m so glad it was in my recommended today

Grate video that honestly brings up great points in the end a compony is going to be compony and do all the sines you listed here until A: people stop coming or B: it hurts their bottom line. Any compony that refuses to change one those things happen is doomed to die. There’s a quote I think help but into prospective of what goes on inside. “When a nation or Company begins to rot. It always start at the top” we as the players have the choice of who we give are money too.

your channel deserves way more recognition, what an incredible video!

I used to work 50-60 hours a week, every week, when I worked at Papa John's. I don't know if its better or worse than being a dev for Rockstar, but working those long hours for months on end made me...incredibly depressed.

It's not about games, it's about large corporations

I loved this video! It’s a really good analysis of the company-ness of game development.

This deserves so much more views and recognition. Great video and great research on all of the mentioned topics, I really enjoyed it a lot!

As a linux user however, I will defend steam and say that it has done more for the linux gaming community and usability than any single other organisation. Steams Proton compatibility layer based off of wine was made not only open source but made it possible for me to access my epic games library as well

The entire gaming industry is evil that is why i dont purchase games anymore but pirate them all except for some that requires internet even to play the storymode like COD and some multiplayer games. I got an opportunity to do an internship as a level designer at Ubisoft but the stipend they were paying was way too low, too low to the extent that you can't even imagine. They were only paying around $500 a month in a first tier city, can you imagine I worked so hard to get this job only to be treated like this? I am done I ain't going to purchase or pay for a single game to these evil corporates.

Really good video brought things into alot of perspective definitely open alot of light and woke alot of people moving on nostalgia

So.... I'll admit to being one of Nintendo's fans I love their games and characters and IPs. And I love that it's one of the few companies where I can pre-order a game with confidence that I will get a playable, and generally really good, game (though Pokemon Scarlet + Violet is VERY worrying that this might be changing) That said, every point you raised regarding Nintendo and their Pride is... so painfully true. Heck, I'd even argue that the reason the majority of their games are good on release is because of their pride. But gosh, imagine how much better they could be if they just... allowed creators to create. I'll forever be heartbroken at the loss of SilvaGunner - that channel helped get me through university. And the only reason I could think of for Nintendo to do this is pure spite I guess my takeaway is, as others have mentioned love - not worship and always be aware of a company's flaws - nothing and noone should be on a pedestal

I'm surprised you didn't talk about Bungie (you did for a brief moment to mention Halo and 343I, and while I agree with your point there, for the most part, you ended up just transitioning to Halo at that point). Especially after they've split away from Activision, they're still treating Destiny 2 horribly. We though it was Activision treating Destiny bad, it was Bungie who was, and still is. You should read up on it, if you don't know already.

Young game designers, programmers employees of working to make any game you need to make sure you before you accept a 40 hr a week average salary that has very specific carve outs that pay you the average hours of Overtime at the end of each month. This way regardless of the week all OT counts to the average. This way the company can't pull any tricks on you. Like working you hard for 3 weeks only to cut your hours on the 4th week negating the 3 weeks of 80hr to 100 hrs per week and wiping out the OT balance. Regardless of this any time per week over 40= OT pay time&half. Be smart and value yourself. I was far too naive when it came to this with my employers.

We need to see an updated version of this

Reminder that the game developers ARE your friends, but the companies that own them are NOT (Except miyamoto)

I can already tell Activision blizzard is going to represent the sin of lust.

This is a really valid outlook on companies, but of course it is important to understand people make games, and remembering the people responsible and not the company is important.

Ive been working on my own game for a long time and I hope that I never end up like these companies

The only thing that really rubs me the wrong way so far is assuming that hosting and letting people download software isn't worth adequate compensation. None of us host software or even abandonware/retro games and the people that due rely on their day jobs, community support, ads, donations etc. Especially all the games I play that were made 20 years ago. I'm not going on ebay to hunt down system shock 2 when it's available and will still be available in 30-50 years. Growing up I actually bought a ton of games because I knew that I was poor and I would never be able to play these games. (some could be played on low settings) I just keep building a library and now at 25 I can play fear 2 on my 1080, Gmod on my 1660ti, and atomic heart on my new 4080. I don't know any other company that would have given a s*** enough to let me keep all this software over the years. Netflix used to be that guy until they cut shows left and right, same for HBO, Hulu, at some point the license runs out but steam as a service has never let me down. Not a single time. Unlike people steam has always been a consistent and reliable service. AND I CAN USE IT OFFLINE ✊🏾

You improved alot in your video making skills, ever since i first watched your floppa and bingus video, I cant wait what else you have to make. While being on topic for the video, i feel like any kind of possibility for developers to change is direct competition, which, epic games seems to want to do it, while burning out their developers.

I'm just happy Rare is getting work nowadays with SoT having full support and consistent updates. It's a phenomenal game

Great watch, I love the way you structured this video!

Honestly I don't have words to say because you said anything I would have for me and better than I could structure in a comment. I'd only add that hell if you wanted to get into everything in a multipart or marathon video (which, why would you want that that sounds like the embodiment of pain and with corpos like Nintendo begging to be taken down) I would end up watching the full thing. Bra-fucking-vo, you had me both holding entire convos with my headmates mid video about how right you actually are and had a few of us even laughing for over 10 mins at some of the punchlines of the video even if it wasn't the point of the video.

Bruh i dont even play games and dunno how I got here but , this was an amazing video!! Would love to see the same theme applied to other industries. Great work man!!

Im really happy that Capcom isnt as messed up as the others. Monster hunter is my favourite game series since i ever got my hands on mh3u at like 13 years old or something.

I agree completely with your video, but its impossible to stop these companies, because people do not realize how they are currently being bent over, and some of the people that do are either powerless or they don't care to do something about it. My generation grew up being raised completely around videogames, so to us games are the most important form of entertainment, and I honestly do not see a way where we could exist without them, and these major companies know this and its why they take advantage of it, videogame addiction is a thing that gets laughed at and is not taken seriously, but I've seen personally the depths that some people are willing to go through just to be able to keep playing their games, I once had a family member attempt to kill their parents just because their Xbox got taken away from them, and again this only escalated up to this point, because this person went through the same withdrawal symptoms as somebody who took drugs would, if they were ever forcibly stopped and not allowed to lower their dosage so they could quit willingly, its the entire reason why China has so many bans regarding gaming and most people ridicule them for being stupid, but people were actually dying in Netcafes and stuff due to videogame addiction, and it was those "stupid laws" that started reducing that death rate, but now things have become worse, because the reduction of playtime for those chinese people, only meant that the people who still played games in that country, will now try to maximize every second they are allowed to play, and this will obviously include mixing in money to be able to skip content and make their in game characters stronger, and its why the gacha scene keeps becoming worse and as those games become distributed internationally, more people fall into the trap because they are not willing to stop, and even if their games ever become end of service they just jump in to the next big thing like an infinite loop. The future of "gaming" if it can even still be called that looks bleak, and as gaming has evolved to become an e-Sport its even worse, because now people are actually trying to make a living out of something that used to be just a fun simple hobby, and families and friendships are just being destroyed, all in the name of convenience and "fun" as people no longer have to spend time together with those close to them, since there are millions of people that pretty much play whatever is out there, so many folks are not willing to waste time developing strong bonds and friendships, as when they game jump to the next best thing the relationships they had are basically thrown into the garbage, and playing casually is looked down upon, as everyone has dreams of being an e-Sport player or an influencer so they only play the META and are really toxic to the community.

Wow i've seen the 7 Deadly sins used to explain many things like sponge bob and what not, but this was a masterpiece well said and titles well placed. I enjoyed every minute of this and it's the long form of the saying i have always said since big money hungry companies came into the scene. Money or the pursuit of money in any field will Kill the art eventually. Great video my friend!

this is a very well put together video, im sure it’ll be recommended for everyone eventually…

7:50 This guy is actually Pres. Mike Morhaime, the predecessor of J. Allen Brack. Though my Blizzard Lore may be a bit rusty (I finally dropped their games completely after the whole Hong Kong thing), as far as I can remember, he was well regarded as one of the few remaining good guys of Blizzard’s old guard before he left the company following the Activision acquisition.

I must say as working for a company it blows my mind that people think companies actually care about you. They don't and never have. Maybe a very few but at a point in time when they make enough money they become just as bad. They will pounce on any opportunity to scam us and when they do they always profit

I don't know about the steam section. They have a lot of modding, networking and forum infrastructure that is actually really well executed. Does it warrant a 30% cut. Aw hell naw. But it's unfair to not mention how monumental that work is and how much it helps developers

12:08: That's quite disingenuous to say that Valve takes their cut on Steam for "hosting it". The Steam backend and developer tools receive constant innovation, and have made developers and publishers lives so much easier, it's not even funny. Don't take it from me, take it from an indie dev that has been "in the game" for more than 20 years by now and remembers the time before platforms like Steam existed (ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-stxVBJem3Rs.html) Transcript of the relevant part for people who don't want to click a video link: I hear indies complain all the time about the cut that Apple and Steam take. But all of the stuff that Steam does for you and makes easy I've had to do myself, support myself [...]. I've hired full-time employees to do the stuff that Steam does. I know how much it costs, and more importantly, they do, too. So if you wanna be mad at Steam... fine. But bear in mind that that percentage is not gonna shift.

I just think its wild how the company who made possibly the most virgin games out there has a "frat house work environment".

your videos are great! Im gonna binge watch this to sleep haha

10:41 You can feel the disbelief and anguish in their voices, it’s almost comical. When I heard Valve, I instantly thought of sloth. Because, what are they doing game development wise? I mean, their hardware’s nice. But, what other games can they release(that aren’t spin-offs).

this video concept is the coolest thing !! your videos are amazing dude

Great video! Can you touch the subject of these companies now turning their back on physical media?

I believe Sloth Belongs to Valve

Steam definitely takes a hefty chunk of the revenue, but it is also the most fleshed out and feature packed launcher. I think the reason that steam is so popular, and that backlash is generated when a company makes a separate launcher is the lack of features performance and value that steam gives player. The steam link, remote play, controller emulation and config support make steam games a much better value for consumers even though it is miles worse revenue wise for devs. The steam CD key market also allows consumers to get an even better deal at the expense of the developer's profits. Other launchers have key redemption but many of them are rarely as populated and competitively priced as steams key market. Other launcher versions of games will sometimes be cheaper because of the higher demand for steam keys instead of other launchers keys. I'd love to see epic flesh out their launcher and add more features but until then I don't think they will be able to reach the same appeal and wide audience of games they aren't giving for free or making exclusive. I'm not sure the validity of this claim but steam also seems to have better download speeds, likely due to their larger network of servers. Many launchers such as Origin or Ubisoft's are infamous, at least in my circles, for poor performance, intrusive and expensive background tasks and lackluster social interfaces. I'd like to see more competent competition but the only mainstream launcher that hosts games they didn't develop or publish seems to be epic at the moment. Itch.io and GOG Galaxy especially have more potential but are currently more niche and indie focused than Epic and Steam.

genuinely one of the best video concept I've ever seen. great execution, original approach. only downside is not very good rewatch value. otherwise. very good video!

I am 43 yeas old I had my uncles old Univision gaming system and his old Atari. As a kid I had gen 1 Nintendo, as a teen I had the Nintendo SNES, the 64, Ps1- today and games have really changed a lot. The pay for skins or weapons used to have to be earned be in-game achievements but we lost that years ago. Now I game a little here and there but I do IRace every day.

As a Nintendo fan, can confirm.