Common valve W
A good move. Nip that shit in the bud right now.
The mobile stores are fucking unusable, a sea of ad-ridden garbage.
You can always tell when a game has been ported over from PC due to the fact the game takes up the whole screen.
Related: https://timsh.org/tracking-myself-down-through-in-app-ads/
Unity games on mobile send your location to Unity servers every couple seconds through the Unity ad network.
Things you can do:
- GDPR Request to Unity
- use a DNS that blocks trackers, like mullvad
I just deny most mobile games the network permission, though obviously this doesn’t work if you actually need any internet access (and I don’t think all devices give you control over that permission)
I just don’t play games that have ads (most of the games on my phone are from F-Droid).
I’ve had a hard time finding quality games in there. Outside of Shattered Pixel Dungeon they are few and far between. I still agree with your take though, because fuuuuck mainstream mobile games.
I made a rare dip into the play store recently and tried to just get the hill climb racing game or a similar one. I played them as web games years ago and liked them and wanted to play them again. All of them are so riddled with ad garbage they are unplayable. Even the lego one was stuffed with “buy gems or your progress is nonexistent” and other garbage tactics.
Every game I get in there is a disappointment. The Netflix games started out solid but I feel like they are going to change to more standard mobile junk eventually.
I didn’t see that permission when I looked for it
Probably custom ROM only
Yeah, I have the option on graphene
Haven’t seen a game that uses ads like this, but very good that it’s strictly prohibited now. That shit should never have taken off on mobile, but alas. At least we can prevent it on PC.
Well you can prevent it on Steam. And I don’t think Epic really have an ad network to abuse for this either.
If you see Google launch a “free game only” store for PC, get worried. Although Google being Google, it will be deleted within two years anyway.
If you see Google launch a “free game only” store for PC, get worried.
I would be astonished if there was anything good on it though. If you are going to make a microtransaction game you probably don’t want to put a lot of effort into it because people won’t play it for more than about a week. This stuff’s only profitable if you can shovel new games out of the door on a regular basis.
Oh there wouldn’t need to be anything actually good on it.
You just need Superbowl advert money and suddenly you’ve got millions of users with no money.
I suspect the only reason this hasn’t happened already is that those millions of users are already on mobile, being flashed with garish noisy adverts every two minutes of gameplay, and moving them to PC some of the time wouldn’t really increase ad revenue…
I read that games with ads were already banned from Steam a long time ago. That explains why we don’t have more junk in the Steam store. Judging by how many never completed early access asset flip games there are, it would be a complete cesspool with ad-supported games. Good decision by Valve.
That’s nice and all,
but when will they tackle loot boxes?That shit has pushed plenty of minors into gambling addictions, but they don’t crack down on it, since they get a sweet cut of it all.
Valve in general isn’t the worst company,
but they’re far from innocent as well.They won’t, because loot boxes are their main source of income.
And this is exactly why “good companies” like Valve cannot save us. Good companies will never be a substitute for good regulations.
I get the hate for lootboxes, but as a casual who hasn’t played PC games in forever…what makes the lootbox mechanic any worse than CCGs?
Couldn’t it be said that MtG and other CCGs have been guilty of the exact same thing since their inception?
Well apart from anything else rare cards actually are worth real money. But there’s no legitimate way to sell loop boxes if you decide you want to get out of it.
Rare cards are only worth real money because there is a secondary market for them.
As I understand it, the same is true for lootbox drops. The only difference is in how rare an item actually is, but that is also reflected in price, since the resale is entirely market driven.
You could say that Valve rigs the drop rate, but you could say the same thing for Magic. It’s all manufactured shortage.
You could say that Magic items are tangible…but honestly I don’t see how that’s an argument in the modern digital-first era.
I’m not trying to defend lootboxes…not directly, at least. Just trying to understand the hypocrisy in the gaming community comparing these two.
There two big differences to me are scale and value. A ccg has rare cards, but they aren’t actually that rare compared to loot boxes. Loot boxes tend to have both lower drop rates and pollute their drops with lots of garbage, even for rare drops. Secondly, physical cards have value, you can sell or trade them, you can buy singles of cards you want. You can use them for things other than the game as well.
Aside from drop rates everything you said applies to Valve too. Counter Strike skins can be traded or sold for real cash (tied to steam wallet, but still), and you can purchase singles of what you want.
I know other games loot boxes dont follow this, but its interesting for the sake of comparison.
CCGs hasn’t had a massive, massive Epic Games-paid astroturfing campaign against valve/steam like ‘lootboxes’ has. That’s the difference.
I agree with the overall sentiment, however:
Lootboxes are at least a conscious action you must take. They definitely have the same problems as gambling (because that’s what they are), but you can also choose not to engage with them. Ads however, are forced upon you, and do things that you cannot see (track you) and cannot turn off.
Mate, they practically invented them.
when will they tackle loot boxes?
Once loot boxes stop buying yachts.
Valve are the ones that popularized loot boxes. They’re never going to tackle them.
common Valve W
sorts by controversial
Let me guess: Valve was not getting their cut from the ad money?
They are not, but they could have made it so. Instead they chose the win for everyone.
Two things can be true at once:
- valve so far took tremendous care of the people using their product. They have outclassed afaik every other billion dollar company in the world in terms of listening to their customers and not exploiting them to hell (as others do).
- billionaire companies are cancer. If gabe ever gives up valve (through death or whatever), we are at the mercy of a monopolist that can extract as much as they want.
My conclusion: force companies to behave like valve does now, but forever. Let them make money without exploiting people. And in case if valve: break any monopoly.
Down with shareholder value.
There’s a very good bill for achieving this result by a senator from my state, which requires companies to elect their board members through employees.
https://www.wbur.org/news/2018/08/15/warren-co-determination-capitalism-act
She’s my senator as well, and I love what she’s doing - but THAT bill is ~7 years old and dead in the water given the current administration. :-/
There’s an alternative, to make it popular with the American people. Republicans look bad to their constituents each time they vote against policies that would relieve the American people as a whole, such as net neutrality and healthcare for all.
Make some noise about it! Make it known that Democrats fight for everyone, and that a certain sect is very vocally rejecting that fight.
But they don’t fight for everyone. If they did, maybe they wouldn’t be in this state.
That would be a great solution. Another would be to put quotas of employees, customers, owners and the community (people living around a plant for example) in there. Just an idea though.
something like this would also harm their business in general. Garbage like that has no place anywhere.
Garbage like that has no place anywhere.
If app developers can’t get money from paid apps, then it makes sense to run ads. Especially if they do offer a paid (ad-free) version.
But if it’s a paid app already, like in Steam, it should definitely be ad-free.
