Marvel’s Avengers is a premium priced game with microtransactions and battle passes per character that are 10 bucks each, alongside special skins for clients of Verizon and other companies, while the game itself runs terribly in the beta. Square Enix seems to ignore all of this and tries to convince us the monetization system they’ve implemented is “fair”. 

Ubisoft’s been ignoring reports of sexual harassment and abuse for YEARS. The culprits were not even fired, but given the chance to resign honorably. Meanwhile they claim their games are not political, while also using BLM imagery in their latest game’s trailer while the movement has been exceptionally present in mainstream media the past few months.

Activision-Blizzard has fired over 200 people after a record breaking year in which their new CFO got a starting bonus of 15 million dollars, their CEO makes more than 40 million dollars a year and its staff gets paid so horribly that they can’t even afford lunch in their own cafeteria.

EA’s been recycling the same sports games with the same bugs, glitches and content each year while charging the same price for it. They’re refusing to acknowledge the ultimate team modes in these games as gambling, while the number of stories this year about how many people have gotten addicted to buying FIFA card packs have only been growing.

EA, Activision and 2K are going to charge for upgrades for next-gen if you buy a current-gen copy while Microsoft has created a system on Xbox Series X specifically so that publishers wouldn’t have to charge extra (CDPR is not charging for a next-gen version of CP2077 for example), even though most of the changes will only include performance upgrades. Basically it’s if like you’re playing on PC and they’re charging you for a higher performance setting.

This is only a summary of what has been happening in the past 8 months. Triple A games are no longer games designed to be games, but money-making machines dressed up as games. Games are designed around monetization, creativity is no longer the standard in this landscape. And honestly, I’m so fucking tired of it.