Of course! I wouldn’t be surprised if someday it turns out that the Spiderman DLC made more money than “mankind divided”.
For the Avengers you mean? From what I’m hearing next DLC for Avengers isn’t that good:
So I’m not sure how good a Spiderman DLC would be, compared to the Hawkeye DLC.
I don’t think it did:
I wouldn’t be surprised if Avengers is heading for the same destiny as Anthem did.
Yea! I heard that the game was generally poorly received by the public. But apparently “Marvel’s Avengers” performed well financially. The game satisfied the management and received long-term support.
An excellent indicator of the state of the modern gaming industry. 
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There are no guarantees in life.
Yet you’re denying you’ve been guaranteeing ppl without knowing anything, when it’s all over this thread.
Make up your minds before twisting your own words over and over again.
Well there is one guarantee in life. Death.
Outside of this, there are no guarantees.
What you are complaining about your choice in purchase of a piece of entertainment, such as a choice to download a movie to watch or to attend a play at a theatre. You might not like the piece of entertainment for whatever reason, and you might not feel it was worth the money. OK.
We aren’t talking about not having a choice for what you are purchasing and something that is required for your survival.
When you are waiting in a bread line at the only bakery to feed your family in the 1950’s Soviet Union, and the bread is moldy and you don’t have enough to feed your family, well then you can complain. Or you are illegal detained in jail for months and they don’t feed you. Well, you can complain about customer service in these examples.
But this is some piece of entertainment, you can elect to purchase by choice.
What are you arguing about?
A video game company has a poor balance sheet over many years, and your arguing that it wasn’t so bad for them ?
You want to elect to purchase a piece of entertainment just like electing to download a movie or going to a theatre to watch a movie.
You might feel that the movie was not worth the money.
OK, but the director and producer of the film wasn’t out to exploit or scam anyone. They produced a piece of art, a form of amusement, that some might not be entertained by.
This piece of entertainment is not required for your survival to feed yourself or your family.
If it is overpriced crap, then don’t buy it. You have that choice.
If you feel a product on offer is poor value, you can choose not to buy it and communicate to the company selling the product (via voicing your opinion on a message board like this that you know is monitored by the company in question), it doesn’t have to be one or the other. It’s another way to get your voice heard and attempt to alter the company’s behaviour in future.
If people aren’t happy with the pricing of the Sins DLC then choosing not to buy it will send a message to IOI, but it also doesn’t hurt for people to post on places like HMF that they’re unhappy with the pricing - it can amplify the message and potentially alter the way future content is priced.
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Absolutely in agreement. You are a consumer, and you have a choice to purchase, or not to purchase and you also have every right to complain about it all that you want.
But it doesn’t mean that this company is out to exploit their fanbase, when their livelihood depends on delivering a quality product to their fanbase.
It is absolutely possible that you don’t feel that it is worth the money. It is a piece of entertainment that you elect to not purchase. OK.
Yes, me too, which I think increases the value. If these 7 installments change the maps significantly and just do it as escalations and not stories (like Patient Zero) then I think that’s good quality content for the price. If they are like the Deluxe Escalations, then maybe less so, though that pack was $30 as well anyway.
As others have said, in the end you decide what it’s worth and can wait for video reviews or those of us who will buy it on day one to share our thoughts. IOI aren’t forcing you to do anything.
But if you’re just a simple customer who’s gone through hell to keep his/her business alive during these harsh Covid times, you’ve also lost loved ones and you decide to spend your hard earned money on a piece of entertainment then you’re not allowed to complain about customer service? It’s only legit in extreme cases like if you were in the 50s Soviet Union? Or if you’re an illegal it’s ok? Please tell me I completely misunderstood your logic because it’s fascinating.
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Okay stop it right there. Please don’t use the situation of crippling poverty to your favor for some argument in a forum when it is not directly related. In the end people here are very well able to express their concerns even if video games are not needed for your survival.
Argue on a factual base, not by downplaying their personal problems.
Do some here go over the top with it? Yes. Do you need to surpass that? No.
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The fact that I have a choice on whether or not to buy it doesn’t change the fact that it’s a shitty business practice. To quote IOI’s own website: “A Season of Sin can last anywhere between 4-6 weeks and include Escalations, Featured Contracts and Elusive Targets.” These are all things we’ve previously gotten for free. Now I don’t inherently have a problem with paid DLC, but the fact that they’re charging $30 for some escalations and reskins is a bit ridiculous.
Hitman 2 Gold was, if I recall correctly, $40. That gave us:
- Two brand new, fully developed maps
- New escalations and unlocks to go with the new maps
- Two new sniper maps
- Four special assignments
- New cosmetic stuff (suits, reskins, etc)
And now, for nearly the same price, all they’re giving us is some escalations and some reskins. You don’t think that perhaps, now that they’ve developed some brand loyalty, and they’ve tested the waters with the Deluxe Pack, they’ve realized they can get away with cheap low effort content becuase people will buy it anyway? I gave them the benefit of the doubt when they cheaped out on certain things in Hitman 2 since they got screwed over by Square Enix and Hitman 1 didn’t sell too well. But Hitman 3 has sold excellently well and they’ve developed and published it entirely on their own. There’s no excuse this time.
You’re right that I have a choice whether or not to buy the DLC, as does everybody. But that doesn’t mean I can’t voice my disapproval, nor is it a justification for a company making a low-effort cash grab. If when the full DLC does drop it turns out to be amazing and I was totally wrong, then great. But as it stands, you’re naively defending a crappy business practice, which is turn is going to encourage them to do it again. Corporations aren’t your friend, nor do they care about making people happy. All they care about is making money. Everything else is just a means to an end to help them get that money. Never forget that.
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EXACTLY. Even if Golden edition wasn’t the best, it gave us two great locations, very useful unlocks, 4 bonus missions (althought being basically ET’s), snipers maps and some others. But this gives us literally just some escalations and reskins. It showed genuine effort on side of IO that despite they got screwed over, they still pulled it through. But IO got lazy and gave us for extra (first Deluxe now this) just some escalations and reskins. It’s a great shame, and leaves bad taste in my mouth.
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In essence it is just a video game for entertainment-- and people can buy it or not buy it for entertainment. It is a choice.
I gave contrasting examples where people have to buy things not for entertainment, not by choice, to put it in perspective, since some perspective I think is needed.
I just don’t like over-the-top criticism for a company that is very attuned to respond to feedback from their customer base. So my comments were to counterbalance the statements made.
If offence was taken Mr. Urben I apologize. It was not to make light of poverty and personal difficulties that people have.
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I am in agreement that COVID-19 has put mental strain on many, and that many have turned to video games for mental support while in quarantine, and that video games play a very important role as a diversion to support the mental health of many.
And it is OK to criticize if it is warranted.
Having said this, the extent of the paid DLC has not even been fully revealed yet, so no one can say whether it is worth the money or not. I don’t feel it is warranted yet to be ultra-negative about the paid DLC and the company until after the full content is revealed.
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You’re still getting them for free though.
“Seasons of sins” are simply renamed Monthly Roadmaps with the only difference being a name change and a longer duration for each roadmap.
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What I meant is that it seems the DLC doesn’t offer anything beyond the sort of thing we would have been getting anyway. From what has been revealed, I can’t see it being worth anywhere near $30.
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Today, they actually don’t need to give a good product anymore - that is the scheme. Back in the day, when companies needed to generated a fanbase and audience, you have to provide a good product. Once you have an established fanbase who buy anything because it’s that IP, you can churn out anything. And question companies weigh up are “how many of those people do we have?” And that’s how we get the price point from their estimates.
If a product generated exactly twice the amount of money as before, it is the result of:
- Twice as many people bought the product.
TO
- The price of the same content has been doubled for the same group of buyers.
Which leads to the method:
Yet they are asking for money upfront despite the lack of information. Because they are asking that question “how many of those people do we have?”.
A well run company is one who cares about their audience, the product and have confidence in both to provide a solid reason for your money. A roadmap did just that. “We want you to pay us X up front and we will get you Y in return”. At the moment we have 14% of a roadmap with as you said the rest WIP.
Imagine going on Dragon’s Den and asking for money and you say you’ve got 14% of your plan. You’d be laughed out the room. And that’s where the fan connections and sentimental value kicks in for some. That drives the purchase because of history. And it’s being taking advantage of.
To use quotes from Franz and Pitman:
Here’s the margin scheme at play. IO chose to not disclose a plan.
Here’s the target audience for said scheme. (Not Pitman but the quote he described.)
And that leads to taking advantage of long time fanbases.
I’m sure they did. Even more so, when they’ve been in hot water before for having one of the worst information disclosures during the 2016 Hitman. They know you have to be clear. H2 was clearer, H3 was clear as day. Recently, companies are willing to take the gamble on their established audiences support, love and trust for easy margins and money if it’s profitable.
GTA is a PvP mess - the game is a battlefield that makes 80% of the game near impossible. Who buys the best tools, has a better chance.
Ghost Recon ditched a lot of its core mechanics which grew its fanbase and instead shoehorned in RPG lite mechanics for a slow grind and a store front for the chance at “re-occurring spenders”.
CoD recently added Samantha Maxis - an long time Zombie character going back to World At War. Only that she a paid bundle at 33% of a AAA game and not available to earn. 13 years of playerbase connections, story and development used as a tool to drive the inflated sale.
And here we are on Hitman going down the very same route.
What’s “over-the-top”? These are the current facts:
IO chose to disclose 14% of their new product for 100% of the price (or 14% but will be about 120%)
IO chose to paywall drop 1 of 7 which were previously free for 5 times the amount of its original price.
IO chose to not regional price the product.
IO chose to price this DLC at the equivalent efforts of Patient Zero or 2 brand new maps.
You said it perfectly 2 days ago -
https://www.hitmanforum.com/t/hitman-3-seven-deadly-sins-new-dlc/8371/222?u=gtajj
That was always the plan.
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I don’t think that there is a grand conspiracy, but I do respect that you care about this stuff.
Many (if not almost all) working at IOI are avid gamers themselves and in the gaming industry because they love what they do. Each project is time intensive and costing millions of dollars and your dealing with endless lines of complicated code, and long hours in front of a computer screen.
Like most video game companies, IOI are absolutely delighted that the efforts that they put in is met with enthusiasm and support from their community. And they want to please their community back, and so their heart is in the right place.
It is also a business and IOI need to make money, and they will do whatever it takes to maximize sales and market share. This is how successful businesses are run.
Some of the profits goes into someone’s pocket and much of it goes to ensure that their next projects such as Project 007 has the financial resources and team of top specialists to ensure an excellent game which you likely would enjoy.
IOI’s business success completely depends on the trust and development of their community of fans.
IOI is not a large company, so any gains are losses are felt by them, and they don’t have a safety net of a Square Enix or Warner Brothers anymore.
They will do what they can to survive, and it works against their business edict to take actions like purposely scamming their fanbase, who directly pays for their salaries.
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I think a lot of it boils down to the race for consumer attention. A lot of games release content monthly, and as Hitman widens its audience, IO competes with more and more games and content.
If they’d work on and release one awesome new map in half a year, the core audience will cheer but the larger chunk of players already forgot about the game and moved on to the new flavor of the month.
Currently, people are still playing (and more importantly, streaming and showcasing) Hitman. So a lot of people will probably buy a maybe not so great DLC today, while a few may buy the great map in 6 months. It’s not really IOs fault that people are stupid and have short attention spans. They could choose to ignore that, but from a business point of view it would be stupid.
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Thank you, I wouldn’t be typing a storm if I didn’t care. I wouldn’t say it’s a conspiracy but rather the current trend that companies are taking on because it’s so lucrative and yet so easy. You increase the price of $1 burger to $2 and suddenly you just need half of the people to pay for it to make the same YoY. Super easy, but a calculated risk.
And yes I agree, I’m sure there’s developers out there who hate what’s going on with their products and how they are being milked for margins. And yet they barely receive bonuses. I don’t think anyone here is saying everyone is trying to rob us lol.
Most video game companies, the AAA publishers at least are taking that support from the community for granted. Audiences have grown vastly over the years and with this current trendy scheme, the more people, the higher chance to get a spender.
IOI are successful and being successful doesn’t mean you need to nickel and dime your fanbase who have stuck with you thick and thin. You can make a great product, you get money, not chop off content and repackage it for upwards of 30x. I’m more than happy to give £30 for the same stuff as H2 did. IMO that’s value, is it inflated still yes but a lot more fairer when you weigh up the efforts taken to create that piece of content and the replayability.
They are currently calling the efforts they did to make these escalations and whatever the 6 other packs are to 2 brand new, fully developed maps, 5 escalations and unlocks to go with the new maps, 2 new sniper maps,4 special assignments and more. They NEED to match this to even be called value by their own standards.
If they needed money, they should be honest to their fanbase that they are having troubles and say they making extra paid packs for additional support. I would have bought them no problem despite the content. But I highly doubt they are struggling for money currently and are testing the schemes just cause. The “maximising” isn’t due to having a better product that earned more but by inflating the value.
We don’t know where the money goes to, it’s theirs to do so anyways. As for 007, they could have been given an injection from MGM. It doesn’t even guarantee people jobs - Activision fired a ton of people recently despite the billions in net and Bobby Kottick getting a fat bonus.
Which is why you’d think they would tread more carefully if this is true. Why take a huge risk if their capital was on line for the quick buck? It’s all a testing phase to see what else they can pull. I don’t exactly blame them because they must see all these companies feeding off the bases at unimaginable levels. Everything IOI did on 2016 was that too. It’s because they messed up the information, turned a full game into Telltale Games and was a total mess that they had to U-Turn it. Too many alien features against the consumer for margins, like Xbox E3 2013, same thing with Ghost Recon.
They aren’t dying lol. They clearly have enough for a second studio. This route is an opportunity to scam their playerbase, that’s the problem. If they were struggling, what would screwing over your core fans do to actually help in the long run?
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