How Greed Ruined Gaming 

Use code GATEKEEP50 to get 50% OFF your first Factor box plus 20% off your next box at bit.ly/3IJRP6t also pls lmk what indie games you think i might like

Read the title as "greed ruined gambling" and thought we might get a harrowing tale of gabi losing it all at the Las Vegas slots

just FYI, john ratatouille is not the CEO of unity anymore. He "stepped down" after the Unity runtime fee debacle last year

the sims team youtube channel has a community page where they talk about updates to the game, new items, new packs, etc. but most of the comments under those posts go along the lines of “wow thats great! fix the game.” it honestly makes me so mad just how greedy these big gaming companies are.

No joke a Blizzard manager just suggested that the industry should make a tipping system for developers. Like tell me you don't want to pay your workers without telling me you don't want to pay your workers.

Ubisoft more like Ubistupid

It really goes to show how shitty the gaming industry has gotten when Baldur’s Gate 3 won so many rewards and, yet, set a ton of “unrealistic standards” according to other grimey companies when all Larian did was release a complete game and put tons of energy, time, and love into the game. I absolutely love the game and the amount of awards it won were so deserved. They simply just reminded other companies how games used to be and that scared the other scum of the industry.

On celebrating indie games, gabi didnt mention them but Hades and Dredge are some of the coolest experiences ive ever had gaming

big companies do not care about us. and its such a weird thought of ''why would you sell this, yet nobody buys it, just so your stakeholders are happy and then complain when it does not sell''

Can we also gripe about the horrible horrible lack of couch co-op these days? My husband and I live in the same house but need to buy most games TWICE to play together and are expected to have TWO consoles with TWO yearly subscriptions!! It’s so stupid!!! So we just never get to play anything together anymore

This is why I love Stardew. Concerned Ape keeps releasing incredible new content for the game, totally free of charge. And the game is less than half of the price of a AAA game.

I think the fact that Helldivers 2, a game that got so popular there were server issues for the first month or so, was only forty dollars, and got released in a basically finished state, is one of the reasons I still play it today.

I'm in my 40s and I remember this is exactly how NES games were in the 80s, and independent game magazines debuted as a way to worn consumers about the unplayable garbage being pumped into stores. A sort of "game journalism" if you will, because the concept was new and parents didn't know any better. This is why my family mostly rented game cartridges and only bought the game if it was good.

Fun roller coaster tycoon fact: It was written in a language so basic that it could run on anything no matter what, ergo the strategy of putting it everywhere as a demo meant that people could see it ran on their system perfectly fine, even if their system was ancient. THAT is beyond what Triple A studios do now.

I have no shame in admitting that every Ubisoft game I've ever played was acquired sailing the seven seas

a significant reason why games need so many gigabytes nowadays is due to the textures they use, since especially higher quality textures need a lot of space and often when you download a game it installs every texture quality from lowest to the highest taking the maximum amount of space. it does make it easier and faster to change the texture quality from the settings but with the added cost of requiring a lot more space.

My most played game is Factorio. One time purchase, can play offline, small install size, official mod support for lots of replayability, and devs that actually listen to feedback and interact with the community. They even hired a mod maker to turn the mod into a full fledged expansion.

Stardew Valley (Concerned Ape) also just released a significant update to the game. For free. 8 years after launch. It is excellent. That’s why it’s made $300,000,000.

2:31 not the kind of roleplaying im usually involved with but hell yeah

9:10 "Thanks to sponsor for factoring this video" had me rewind fast as hell cause i thought I had a stroke 😂

The PS2 was the golden era of gaming. They managed to stuff as much content as they could fit into a compact disc you owned, with a finished full offline game, additional game modes, online multiplayer and unlockables without installing anything. For less than $60. I had a 8mb memory card with more than 10 games saved on it.

not to mention the artistic variety in indie games. just so many visually stunning games made by indie creators, while it feels like big title games all look near-identical nowadays...

I think you nailed it. We just need the gaming community to: 1) STOP PREORDERING! Don't pay money for the promise of a product. Wait for release and balanced reviews. 2) Stop equating open world with good game. Huge open spaces filled with nothing but scenery or irrelevant and tedious tasks is not actual gameplay. 3) Stop defending crappy practices. This is best done with your wallet but also going online to defend microtransactions or crappy dlc that should have been included in the original release, that needs to stop happening. We need to be willing to push back on crappy practices and say we don't give a damn about your shareholders (publicly traded companies suck) and refuse to fund companies that don't care. Over in Total War Warhammer, we pushed back on their new crappy dlc policy so successfully that we actually won. The next dlc is looking great and they added additional content to the previous shamefully overpriced dlc. It's possible to make things change, we just need to be willing to fight for it and maybe sacrifice not getting to play the latest call of assassin's mon hyper remake 3.

I'm a Kingdom Hearts fan and I think I speak for us all when I say: we are demons who thrive on introducing people to the first game and watching them experience hell. it actually makes my skin physically healthier when they get confused and lost in the Tarzan world! I am also a Sonic fan- the same applies.

18:36 the sub button did the light up thingy i already know it's a feature but i get so excited when ever it happens

The way animal crossing was basically unfinished and relied on updates to keep it going but then the updates stopped after 2 years

the rollercoaster tycoon dev making it in assembly language is actually terrifying, i never knew that.

Absolutely love when you do videos like this, Gabi. Pointing out the issues that sit within the gaming industry like the lack of effort being put into those third party games, but also shining a light on some specific indie games but also indie games in general. Amazing stuff!

My girlfriend was spending the last few weeks with me help me after getting my hips replaced, so we have had a lot of time to play games together lately, we went through all the normal ones pretty quickly and I can be bad about finding new media to try, where she is way more open to that kind is thing, we decided to try a study based game called “A Way Out” about two guys in prison, and it was a blast, not a super long game, but such a good time and something I never would have played on my own. It’s definitely helped me to step out of my comfort zone and try a bunch of these games I’ve never heard of. Another great one of The Long Dark. It’s my favorite survival game I’ve ever played by a mile and I’m usually not really a fan of that genre, but I highly highly recommend it

"in true Ubisoft fashion it kinda sucked" one of the most accurate sentences said in history

The timing of this is perfect. Ubisoft just removed the online game "The Crew" from players libraries after taking the servers offline

I'n glad you show-cased "Unpacking". Such a good game, with a beautiful and unique way of telling a story. It's an amazing piece of art and one I wished more people got to enjoy.

2:30 "so we couldn't even enjoy our Chad Chad Eddy Burback warrior roleplay" IM CRYING?????

this whole problem got so apparent when baldur's gate 3 released and other devs of major game companies started to complain and asking gamers to "not get used to this" because "this is not the norm" and "larian was in a uniquely fortunate position" (which is not true at all btw like their servers got flooded, there was a whole war in the ukraine and they were close to bankruptcy at least once) but really it just boiled down to those devs being scared cuz suddenly people got what they were paying for elsewhere.

I'm telling you, Cult of the Lamb has a chokehold on my soul right now. I'm 80 hours in and still not bored. And the devs are so active on reddit, and even gave us a big patch with new content for FREE. Unpacking was also on sale for $4 and I've now played it twice and still cried. Indie games are my current bread and butter.

The =3 scene change sound at 17:51..... This is why I love this channel

I recently repurchased Rollercoaster Tycoon because it was on sale on steam and it is literally every bit as fun now as it was back in the 2000s when I had no internet and the whole house shared 1 computer so me and brother would fight over which Rollercoaster to build. Not to mention it wasn't anywhere near as frustrating to get working (run it on windows 98/ME compatibility and force the resolution to 640x480 and the weird error is fixed) as ANY new game I've purchased recently.

It is hard to overstate how insane the roller coaster tycoon guy was for writing it in assembly code. For the unaware, you cannot get closer to literally writing 1's and 0's than writing in assembly. Nobody does that today because it takes significantly longer to write with little real benefit considering the strength of modern computers

It should be illegal to release a product in an unfinished state. You can just make us pay $100 to give us shit and make it better through years of updates.

The phrase 'the same games, with less and less content, being released over and over again,' on a video I've watched from eleventy different creators with the same criticisms already is wild

I believe a large reason as to why AAA titles today are becoming worse and worse is because the cost to production is becoming greater and greater. More devs are getting into making video games with many studios with 100-200 or even more people making the game. Beyond this, in the past games used to take no time at all to make, 1-2 years maybe or so for a fully made game. Now, we're waiting 5-10 years for a new game to come out. So, naturally, with an increasing inflation rate and increasing cost to develop - things like microtransactions are going to happen when gamers aren't willing to ever pay more than $60 (previously $50 in ye olden days) for a full game. It's hidden marketing rather than just being up front with your customers by saying, "Hey, this game cost this much money to produce, and $60 is too little now so the game costs $100 but we guarantee 100+ hours of gameplay with this." It's a bit of an investment for gamers, I suppose, but if you go to a movie theater for a 2 hour movie it costs $15 now...that's ~$7 an hour of content. Compared to 100+ hour games, $60 for a game is over 12 times a more efficient use of your money for entertainment. Even if it was $120 for that game, it'd still be 6 times more efficient than going to a movie theater. I don't think game developers are greedy (the publishers are, sure) - they're just dishonest with the cost to make stuff and business savvy people are coming in with alternative methods to make the game profitable. Larians game director Sven has it right, though, slow down production - don't get rid of devs which have institutional knowledge of your product - and have large reserves of cash to be able to afford problems with meeting release. A lot of game devs & publishers alike will see a trend and jump on the same bandwagon to try and make the money someone else made... This happens with triple A & indie devs... happened with World of Warcraft, happened with Minecraft, happened with battle royales, etc. Trend chasing isn't just in the youtube space, it's in game development too.

On a totally unrelated note The sims 4 did an update adding a shopping cart to the main screen. As you ply this cart icon can flash at you if there are dlc items you haven’t bought yet even though the Home Screen has a literal list of the games as well as pop up ads for games you haven’t bought! If you’ve sadly already sold your literal soul for better quality games too bad because most of the dlc is buggy and so is the base game! Good luck simmers! 💚

I’ve met the creator of Roller Coaster Tycoon, he was teaching students how to 3d model, he was so chill and showed us a 3d model of his fancy house

For some reason my algorithm included your Twilight saga review, and being a degen OSRS gamer I gotta say - I love how you edit a bunch of OSRS music into everything!! Amazing content, keep it up :D

20:20 I guess you missed the point. Those are mini games, and death isn't always a worry. They're shoot em ups more about getting a high score. They don't want it to be difficult and make it so you can't get to the next world unless you learn the gameplay style that barely shows up in the game

1:02 "remember when releasing a game meant that it was done" Well, we're off to a good start😂

The programming language for rollercoaster Tycoon was not only archaic but just one level above writing a game in 1s and 0s

16:31 MOVING ON ☝🏾😭

13:54 You’re absolutely right about having physical copies of media. People have gotten comfortable with the idea of renting access instead of buying, but it puts you at the mercy of censorship and changes in licensing agreements that may result in unwanted changes to your media or even not having access anymore.

As an indie developer, thank you so much for putting the spotlight on indie games. I'm not saying that all indie games are amazing, but there are soooo many talented devs out there doing incredible stuff and many of these games goes unnoticed by the larger public. Check games like Dotage, Wartales, Core Keeper, Wayward, WitchHand, Songs of Conquest, Cyber Knights, Path of Achra, Dwarf Fortress. I could go on and on and on. I hope people get inspired by your video to dig in to the magical world of indie games. There are so may to discover. Thank you again for the video.

I think the very name "Skull & Bones" was to warn us that there's no meat on this game and that it's barren with little to do.

I still feel like cyberpunk never got it's try at it I love the game it's become one of my favorite as I have never seen a game with such good story and side quests, story wise it's amazing, the visuals now are amazing. I wish more people would give it a chance but I also fully understand the thought.

Its mind boggling to me how far pokemon has fallen in terms of quality, and how staunchly people will defend every greedy actions the CEO’s take, no matter how much they are ruining the series.

Indie Gamedev here. Seeing a lot of my collagues who work in AAA lose their job and a lot of mid-sized studios closing down. The AAA model is simply not working anymore and AA also seems affected. A studio from our city had to close down because even though they released an amazing game, 40€ was too high of a price point when Baldurs gate released the week before and people had already spend a lot of money on that game. also... AGE OF MYTHOLOGY YESSS!!! (they are making a remasterd version... really skeptical because we haven't seen any gameplay footage :'D )

Just discovered your channel a few days ago... I have now binged a lot of your videos. I love your sense of humor. More please. ❤

I just gotta be that person and state that technically, megalovania did not come out first with undertale. It was a calling card that Tobyfox used on a lot of his projects more notably in Homestuck before Undertale was ever made. I believe the first ever use was in a Earthbound Halloween hack that he was working on in 2009.

The fact that this video drops right when I have to write an essay on video games and micro transactions feels like a sign. THANK YOU GABI ❤

imagine if any other industry did that, where they said they're done but actually not really.

Your N64 collection is like the exact same games I had as a kid, granted I did not have 2 copies of 1080 snowboarding but I did enjoy the game all the same

9:08 Thanks to sponsor for factor this video

Fun fact about Ubi. They shutdown The Crew and I bet many people here already heard about that but they also took all the assets away so you can’t even make a private server like the fans of Lego Universe did with LU Darkflame.

It's a shame seeing how much gaming has declined in recent years to greed. Pokemon vs Zelda is probably the best example show casing what rushing out games for money does to a series

13:59 the 6th opening of Inuyasha is such a banger too and really unique among anime opening songs

Ive been binge watching you all day, why did yhe youtube alg take so long to bring me here!!

I'm a game developer and I have a lot of conversations with other devs talking about the exact issues you're describing from the inside out. A LOT of the buggy and unfinished games comes from shifting to a live service model instead of just a flat purchase price for the whole game, and it's extremely damaging to prioritization of features. You *can* do a live service model in an ethical way (see: Helldivers 2), but the fact that no big companies do it that way because it's less profitable is such a rampant issue. I've seen devs looking for jobs in the "traditional gaming space" just to get away from it Game studios becoming servants to investors also sucks

“Remember when games meant that they were done when released?” Yup, back in the PS2 days. Freaking miss that era.

This is why Im a VR only gamer now, most of the best games are indie. I only have to get like 2 or 3 games a year because I dont get anything triple A at all anymore.

Unpacking was such a soothing play thru. I wish it were longer

Stardew Valley is my favorite example of how to treat games and their players right. Not only did the developer make and release the game on his own. But the continued development on it with game changing free updates. But he also gets communication right. He teased the updates yes, but he has been sure to provide updates when it's important, such as progress on the console ports of the game. I loved it when he tweeted about pausing development on Haunted Chocolatier so that they could get the update on Stardew Valley polished. I respect him for doing that and it makes me look forward to Haunted Chocolatier that much more

*leo pointing at screen* NakeyJakey

I really loved Chants of Sennaar! It’s a puzzle game based on decoding languages. Super fun and would be fun to stream/film fs! 20:50

Indie games also have a lot more capacity for emotional story telling because an artistic vision can be focused by a couple people or a single person! With the barrier to entry being lower with engines like RPGMaker and Twine, you get absolute banger games from writers and comic artists like Night in the Woods, Slay the Princess, and In Stars and Time. Artists are able to focus on making the art and writing amazing without having to complete a computer science degree

Night in the Woods changed my relationship with gaming, for the better. I used to just pick up big titles after my husband got through with them then put them down after not more than a couple dozen hours so I didn't think gaming was really for me. Night in the Woods made me realize there are games out there for me and I've been seeking out indie games everywhere ever since.

Dang that pikachu sleeping sleeping

The really amazing thing about cyberpunk is how much cdpr has about faced and admitted their mistakes and completely reconstructed the game. They managed to rebuild trust and are the example that things can change

Love that this came up in my recommendeds after watching a video on Escape from Tarkov's new $250 DLC that's not downloadable content...

On top of the issues mentioned in the video you also have the fact that more and more AAA games are live service games that depend on servers operated by developer/publisher and in most cases there are no plans for an offline patch or making the server software available for players. The Crew, a racing game made by Ubisoft which was played by 12 million people, is a recent example of this. This prompted Ross Scott, creator of machinimas such as Freeman's Mind and Civil Protection, to start a campaign against this practice called Stop Killing Games with instructions on how to report it to consumer protection agencies and how to support government petitions aiming at preventing this from happening in the future.

I would like to nitpick just a tiny bit - assembly language used in RCT isn't archaic, it's low level. It's very modern, in the sense that assembly compilers are still updated to work on modern CPUs, which is how you'd write some parts of operating systems or drivers, when you need minute control over every CPU instruction cycle. If anything, it's *arcane*, because knowing assembly well is level 9000 wizardry.

Enter the Gungeon has to be my favorite indie game, so many bosses and random generated rooms keep it fresh and it forces you to explore different kits of different characters in order to get all the endings. I got it for free on epic a while ago and even after beating the 4 main characters still come back occasionally.

I had actually backed Sea of Stars on kickstarter! Glad to see it getting even more exposure. Honestly this is also why I typically go to the indie booths whenever I go PAX East too (although the big publishers don't really go anymore aside from a few). Usually way more cool and unique games to see and you're likely talking to the actual dev team there.

This video reminded me of my brother's rants. He was a Overwatch 1 superfan and has repeatedly told us how much Overwatch 2 was a disappointment due to leadership in the start. He still plays overwatch 2 but had over 200 hours in overwatch 1.

9:09 “thanks to sponsor for factoring this video” 😆 love it

love the nakeyjakey reference with the exercise ball 😅

Sea of Stars mention!!!! I noticed you playing the music from it in your videos months ago. That game is so much fun

Outer Wilds is one more recent-ish game that really hits home. Very affordable, can finish it and the dlc within a work week, it's got a ton of repayability and the story makes me cry every time

As someone that sells lots of video games, I love when people ask me for the "Call of Duty" and I get to have a 20 minute back and forth with them to determine which "Modern Warfare" (of the 8 options) they actually need.

Hi gabi, thank you so much for mentioning Moonlighter as it has been one of my fave roguelikes that I randomly found on the Nintendo E-shop. Also, even though it is a Ubisoft title, I would highly reccomend anyone give Child of Light a try. It has a beautiful artstyle and really solid rpg mechanics for a 10 year old game.

I stopped buying triple A games for the most part. The only ones I do buy are either old and on a really good sale (with good reviews) or I just wait a few days after release to see if the game is actually worth the full price tag or not. This is saving me so much money and many many brain cells.

There's a quote from an excellent mini-documentary on the North American Video Game Crash of 1983 that I think fits here. "...Shelf space was stretched thin. and per-game revenue, raced to the bottom. Atari weren't concerned. They were in the lead. Millions of dollars spent on exclusive licences, tie-ins and massive marketing budgets. The more they spent, the more they earned. The games themselves, didn't matter." 40 years later, seems like we still suffer the same problem.

Ever since Baldur’s Gate, other companies have been shocked. I didn’t think it was so bad until I looked at companies with games I wouldn’t dare touch. I feel bad for those who were affected. Y’all deserve better treatment.

Blizzard’s loot boxes weren’t nearly as predatory as EA’s are still to this day makes me so depressed we got robbed because of EA

I bought Sea of Stars today. I had it on my wishlist but seeing Gabi plug it made me finally get it.

I worked at a gaming company for almost 3y. The whole core business of most games nowadays is monetize by live operations, be it purchases, events or other type of transaction based interactions. Having those systems functioning in the game is top priority in game companies so the rest of problems are under looked leading to final version bugs not being corrected on time. Atop of that there is the fact that games take a long time to make, it is almost impossible to get a good game done with less than 1.5/2 years making it and this is something the technology industry doesn’t accept well anymore. The sum of bad prioritization, greed, terrible deadlines, massive layoffs and investors pressure are currently destroying the industry, the games and the people who make them

Crazy how you can get the best game ever created made by like 4 people for $10 on steam, And then people still decide to buy the nonfunctional $70 AAA game that has like 4 $30 DLCs you gotta buy to get the full game

This is why I mainly play Jrpgs. There's not a single one I've played that was incomplete. They're even long as hell and more than worth the money

I absolutely love the shade thrown at Spectrum. It's the only ISP available here and I suffer

Ubisoft having a game subscription service always baffles me, how are you going to justify $20 a month when you basically only have 3 games and a bunch of copies of them?

I'm so glad HellDivers 2 is showing what happens when a company is actually passionate. Also Stardew Valley and Hollow Knight are both masterpieces.

You failed to mention that Ubisoft is owned by a single family and all the decisions made by the company are made entirely to enrich that one family

The small snippet of Etho's MC video singlehandedly make me want to live. Thank you.