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    Nvidia won, we all lost

    (blog.sebin-nyshkim.net)
    977 points todsacerdoti | 14 comments | 04 Jul 25 21:58 UTC | HN request time: 1.086s | source | bottom
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    neuroelectron ◴[04 Jul 25 23:21 UTC] No.44468792[source]▶
    Seems a bit calculated and agreed across the industry. What can really make sense of Microsoft's acquisitions and ruining of billion dollar IPs? It's a manufactured collapse of the gaming industry. They want to centralize control of the market and make it a service based (rent seeking) sector.

    I'm not saying they all got together and decided this together but their wonks are probably all saying the same thing. The market is shrinking and whether it's by design or incompetence, this creates a new opportunity to acquire it wholesale for pennies on the dollar and build a wall around it and charge for entry. It's a natural result of games requiring NVidia developers for driver tuning, bitcoin/ai and buying out capacity to prevent competitors.

    The wildcard I can't fit into this puzzle is Valve. They have a huge opportunity here but they also might be convinced that they have already saturated the market and will read the writing on the wall.

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    1. bob1029 ◴[05 Jul 25 00:28 UTC] No.44469138[source]▶
    I think the reason you see things like Blizzard killing off Overwatch 1 is because the Lindy effect applies in gaming as well. Some things are so sticky and preferred that you have to commit atrocities to remove them from use.

    From a supply/demand perspective, if all of your customers are still getting high on the 5 (or 20) year old supply, launching a new title in the same space isn't going to work. There are not an infinite # of gamers and the global dopamine budget is limited.

    Launching a game like TF2 or Starcraft 2 in 2025 would be viewed as a business catastrophe by the metrics most AAA studios are currently operating under. Monthly ARPU for gamers years after purchasing the Orange Box was approximately $0.00. Giving gamers access to that strong of a drug would ruin the demand for other products.

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    2. a_wild_dandan ◴[05 Jul 25 01:22 UTC] No.44469385[source]▶
    I purchased "approximately $0.00" in TF2 loot boxes. How much exactly? Left as an exercise to the reader.
    replies(3): >>44469521 #>>44469736 #>>44470647 #
    3. refulgentis ◴[05 Jul 25 01:54 UTC] No.44469521[source]▶
    This is too clever for me, I think - 0?
    replies(1): >>44470759 #
    4. bigyabai ◴[05 Jul 25 02:41 UTC] No.44469736[source]▶
    People forget that TF2 was originally 20 dollars before hitting the F2P market.
    replies(1): >>44469922 #
    5. aledalgrande ◴[05 Jul 25 03:22 UTC] No.44469887[source]▶
    Petition related to companies like Blizzard killing games: https://eci.ec.europa.eu/045/public/#/screen/home
    6. ThrowawayTestr ◴[05 Jul 25 03:32 UTC] No.44469922{3}[source]▶
    I paid full price for the orange box
    7. KeplerBoy ◴[05 Jul 25 06:59 UTC] No.44470647[source]▶
    When were microtransactions added to TF2? Probably years after the initial launch, and they worked so well the game became f2p.
    8. simonh ◴[05 Jul 25 07:25 UTC] No.44470759{3}[source]▶
    Approximately. +/- 0
    9. sidewndr46 ◴[05 Jul 25 13:57 UTC] No.44472848[source]▶
    From a business perspective, launching a game like Starcraft 2 at any time is a business catastrophe. There are obscure microtransactions in other Blizzard titles that have generated more revenue than Starcraft 2.
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    10. bob1029 ◴[05 Jul 25 16:05 UTC] No.44473659[source]▶
    If SC2 was such a failure at any time, why bother with 3 expansions?

    I think the biggest factors involve willingness to operate with substantially smaller margins and org charts.

    It genuinely seemed like "Is this fun?" was actually a bigger priority than profit prior to the Activision merger.

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    11. fireflash38 ◴[05 Jul 25 18:37 UTC] No.44474622{3}[source]▶
    I like games companies that create games for fun and story, rather than just pure profit.
    12. rollcat ◴[05 Jul 25 19:21 UTC] No.44474893[source]▶
    > Launching a game like [...] Starcraft 2

    They can't even keep the lights on for SC2.

    We [the community] have been designing our own balance patches for the past five years; and our own ladder maps since +/- day 1 - all Blizzard was to do since 2020 was to press the "deploy" button, and they f-ed it up several times anyway.

    The news of the year so far is that someone has been exploiting a remote hole to upload some seriously disturbing stuff to the arcade (custom maps/mods) section. So of course rather than fixing the hole, Blizzard has cut off uploads.

    So we can't test the balance changes.

    Three weeks left until EWC, a __$700.000__ tournament, by the way.

    Theoretically SC2 could become like Brood War, with balance changes happening purely through map design. Except we can't upload maps either.

    13. rollcat ◴[05 Jul 25 19:32 UTC] No.44474960[source]▶
    There's plenty of business opportunity in any genre; you can make a shit-ton of money by simply making the game good and building community goodwill.

    The strategy is simple: 1. there's always plenty of people who are ready to spend way more money in a game than you and I would consider sane - just let them spend it but 2. make it easy to gift in-game items to other players. You don't even need to keep adding that much content - the "whales" are always happy to keep giving away to new players all the time.

    Assuming you've built up that goodwill, this is all you need to keep the cash flowing. But that's non-exploitative, so you'll be missing that extra 1%. /shrug

    14. sidewndr46 ◴[06 Jul 25 01:03 UTC] No.44476869{3}[source]▶
    Activision Blizzard was not a well run company. After running the company into the ground Kotick sold it off to Microsoft.