EA needed a scapegoat it seems
As someone on Mastodon wisely pointed out: There aren’t enough Linux gamers to invest resources in supporting them properly, but there are enough using it to cheat to actively block them?
well shiet 😂 seems i got unexpected +80gb storage space again, let’s see which indie studio will get a new customer. bye EA
Seems like my “fuck EA I’m not giving them money ever again” policy is beginning to pay off :)
I’m so torn about stories like this and GTA online. Because on one hand, people play these games, and people won’t switch to Linux if they can’t play them.
But on the other hand, I just cannot give a single fuck about live service trash like this. I struggle to understand how people play games products like these, and I absolutely don’t understand why anyone would waste their time cheating in them. And yet they’re absurdly popular.
Despite gaming being such a big hobby for me, I feel so disconnected from what the average gamer values.
I occasionally think back to Rocket League, which I loved in its earlier days. I put close to 100 hours into it, which is a lot for one game for me. Then they added lootboxes, leaned harder into the competitive space, and just completely sucked the soul out of it. And yet it’s still hugely popular.
I just don’t get it.
Funny you mention that, I just installed it on my Steam Deck a few days ago to give it another try. Casual is not casual anymore, everyone’s a competitive try hard now. I remember when it was fun :(
Rocket League has always been marketed as a competitive game. Obviously, if you haven’t played in a long time, the now low level players in casual look like tryhards, but that happens in every competitive activity as time goes on. The requirement to be a “bad player” goes up as the “good players” get better.
Used to play Apex Legends a lot, so could give some reasons why.
A core part of Apex’s monetization is “keep the core gameplay F2P accessible and make super expensive skins for those who can pay”. The game would put items worth around 300$ multiple times in a single season. After that as long as the gameplay’s solid; F2P players wouldn’t find a reason to not play; and whales could flex their 300$ death box to all these players interacting with them. Hell, give F2P players tasks that take too long to unlock new skins; and maybe they’ll toss a few bucks in too. You’ve got yourself a neat money loop, and players are happy.
As for cheating; most people i see cheating does it as a way of doing the unexpected in a video game. Cheating is not enjoyable to most if you do it all the time; but the cheat providers offer cheats with shorter time spans to hook the people that want to do just that. I recall an interview done with a cheat developer for a different yet similarly popular game, and they’ve said most of their sales come through these.
If you can’t accept business plans that make a little less profit to include sufficient human moderation to avoid heavyhanded kernel level anti cheat - you shouldn’t be in the fucking publishing business, you greedy weasels.
Wait… You want us to pay humans? - Every triple A gaming company since 2010.
