This is what people really mean when they say Capitalism incentivizes innovation, lol

Capitalism isn’t to blame for this. The Individuals who buy it are.

I bought DIV, I got value out of it. I won’t be buying micro transactions, and unless D4 sees one hell of an overhaul to it’s end game and encounter design - I won’t be going back ever. Comparing it to other games I have purchased in the last couple of years, I would say DIV is the game I have gotten the LEAST value out of, which is surprising considering historically Blizzard games tended to be the top tier in terms of dollar per hour of enjoyable play time I got out of said games.

Onto Capitalism. Capitalism needs two things to function:

1. A Basic Standard of Living Provided by some entity - historically the Church served this purpose. But currently there is nothing that actually serves this purpose - Welfare is a poverty trap, minimum wages require multiple full time jobs in many places, and where housing is affordable - jobs are lacking in many cases.

2. Supply + Demand Market Considerations - if you make a product people don’t buy: You will fail. If you over charge, a cometitor can move in and steal your lunch money. The reason we have IP laws (Patent, and Copyright) is duplicating hard work done, is far easier than doing your own work - so, we protect the human labour component (which is why I do think AI generated art should NOT be copyrightable, but the AI models and the work that goes into selecting assets to train the model with, fine tuning the weighting, and creating filters to attain desirable outcomes - that is reasonable to copyright).

The failure of NeoLiberalism, and the Industrial age in general is we took the responsibility the Church and the Tithe that was paid to it away from the church, replaced it with work houses with piss poor conditions, and allowed a blaming of unforutnate individuals who couldn’t find work - and blamed them for being lazy, instead of treating them with respect and dignity as every human should be treated.

By the way: This is why, I support the idea of a Universal Basic Income. Scrap Welfare, Scrap old age, Scrap food stamps. Universal basic income - and give people the power to find meaningful work. Give people the foundation to take a risk in starting up a small business to improve their lot in life where work is slim pickings, or all the employers are asshole middle managers that are instructed to pay piss poor wages. Capitalism actually would be liable to work FAR BETTER. And besides - you would likely see crime rates in plenty of places basically drop off a cliff as people would not need to turn to crime to ensure they can make rent, keep a roof over their head, or just pay for food.

Capitalism is not the problem. NeoLiberal Ideology is. A Failure to put in working policies to help actual people is a problem - and the “left wing” and “socialist” parties of the last several decades have all failed to bring meaningful positive change to the working class. But that should surprise no one given the track record of left wing authoritarian regimes.

Uh… I don’t think recoloring something in a game I already paid for should cost anything.

Addicted people with poor self-control are abused in these kind of microtransactions. This should be illegal.

I skipped D4 and I made the right choice, absolutely.

D2R was incredible, though.

For me it was when they banned Blitzchung from a Hearthstone tournament and took away his prize money for supporting Hong Kong freedom. I haven’t regretted it since they don’t make good games anymore like they did when I was growing up.

Isn’t that game in early access?

When they make low effort cosmetics they are both restricting features that could be in the game and incentivizing themselves to prohibit a modding community that adds a ton to games for free.

Once upon a time, I would’ve agreed with you… until I heard that Epic Games got in trouble for trying to create a culture in Fortnite that shames and bullies kids for using the default skins. The advertising around cosmetics is as psychologically exploitative as battle passes and the like, and though they lack the same addictive qualities as lootboxes, they prey upon the same people - namely, kids and those with mental health issues that make fiscal responsibility difficult, like ADHD.

Plus, Blizzard has a history of making in-store items higher quality than what you’d find in the game, so it does affect gameplay in the sense that you get lower quality stuff in the game as a result. Plus, look at what they did with the original Overwatch skins being paywalled when they forced people to switch to Overwatch 2. Blizzard deserves no benefit of the doubt here.

cosmetic microtransactions in-game purchases need to advertise to you in-game and I dont want ads in my game

Always makes me laugh on here when I see SatansMaggotyCumFart or whaterever the name is lmao

Then you get “a reddit user”

There was a subreddit dedicated to that exact phenomenon. I forget what it was called.

Have your own reddit account with an inoffensive name, copy the comment, paste it as a reply to another instance of the same question, quote your own reddit account in the article. Foolproof!