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The video game industry is like five other sectors with several products and manufacturers spread all around the globe. Like anywhere else, the video games sector has also undergone several changes.
Some of it has been based on improving the hardware and technology space. As consoles and modern-day PCs have gone up a notch, so has the quality of the products of modern-day games.
Aside from technology, video game practices have also undergone shifts from what they once were. While change is natural for any sector, some methods could be quite harmful in the coming days.
These five practices have already reared their ugly heads, and to make matters worse, they could increase in the future.
Five video game practices that are anti-consumer in nature and could become mainstream in the future
5) Release unfinished games
As video games have become more and more complex, the chances of the developers making unfinished ones have gone up. However, there's also a tendency for developers to release games without giving them the required polish.
An update will follow this in the future, where the developers claim that they're adding features. This isn't just a problem with indie games, but AAA titles like Battlefield 2042 are a recent example.
Battlefield 2042 is a multiplayer-only game, and yet, it was launched without a functional scoreboard and voice chat. The voice chat came nearly six months later with the 4.0 update.
EA and DICE may have branded it as a feature, but most players believe it should have been a mandatory feature without which the game shouldn't have been launched. Moving forward, such examples could become more prevalent.
4) Locking demos and trials behind subscriptions
The revamped PS Plus is reportedly going to have a timed trial for every video game. While it may seem nice initially, the basic tier of service won't have the offer.
Hence, players will have to spend more to access the trials. This could become a feature with video games in the future, which will not be a nice thing.
Demos have traditionally been a free exhibition of games to gamers. By playing trials and demos, players can finalize if something is for them or not. Making them locked in higher tiers of subscriptions is highly fishy and shouldn't be done in the first place.
3) Cloud-only releases and online-only DRM for single-player title
There's no denying that cloud gaming has a vast future. Microsoft recently revealed that more than 10 million users of its Xbox Game Pass service have used Xcloud. Sony also has a similar model to its existing service, as has Nvidia Geforce.
However, publishers have the notion of releasing games that can only be streamed. More importantly, some of these games are ideally single-player games that always require a network connection.
A recent example of this is Gran Turismo 7, which requires network connections even though the game has a dedicated single-player mode which also requires the same treatment.
Despite all the technological advancements, many parts of the world still face severe problems regarding the internet. Releasing video games with the always-online DRM seems utterly unnecessary at this point.
2) Advertisement in video games
It's hard to imagine why any game should have real-life ads. The matter becomes worse if the ads are implemented in full-priced AAA games. However, 2K has already walked this path with a couple of their titles. It's unlikely that they're going to change the process.
There has been news that Xbox and PlayStation are also considering implementing ads on their free-to-play games. The practice has been a regular one in mobile games so far, and it seems they could make their way to the PCs and consoles.
If a case can be made for free-to-play titles, it feels unfair to implement them in premium games. The last thing a gamer expects after paying $60 or more is to get advertisements that break immersion.
1) NFTs and play-to-earn models
Blockchain technology has been one of the most disruptive agents in commerce and investments. The rise has given birth to not just cryptocurrencies but something called NFTs or Non-Fungible Tokens. NFTs work somewhat similar to rarer cards in card collection games.
Every NFT has a certain number in existence, and the rarer it is, the more valuable it becomes. Several games like Axie Infinity have risen, allowing players NFTs in the form of in-game assets and earning them.
While the premise looks cool, there's scope for many things to go wrong. Native problems associated with the security of cryptocurrencies apply to NFTs in video games. Secondly, fans haven't been exactly receptive to the idea, as shown by the revolt against Ubisoft with their launch of Quartz.
Thirdly, there could always be a chance of corruption with a developer releasing more of a certain NFT without any information. Overall, there can be many things that can go wrong with NFTs in video games.
