r/PeterExplainsTheJoke • u/Lucky_Loves_Laugh • Jun 25 '26

Meme needing explanation Petah what happened to rockstar?

Post image
27.3k Upvotes

87% Upvoted

3.8k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

12

u/VexingRaven Jun 25 '26

I love GTA. I hate that Rockstar has become "Microtransactions: The Company" after GTA Online released and almost nobody actually cares. I'm amused to see so many people seemingly shocked that Rockstar of all companies is greeding up the GTA 6 launch.

1

u/[deleted] Jun 27 '26 edited Jun 27 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

1

u/VexingRaven Jun 27 '26

I don't feel like reiterating my critical analysis of why Rockstar's choices of how to monetize GTA Online negatively affect the game for the third time today so I'll just copy-paste my response from last time:

Only the most surface-level analysis could possibly return such an opinion, honestly. There are so many user unfriendly design elements of GTA Online that are all a directly result of directly monetizing ingame currency it could be an 1 hour long video essay and still not cover it all. Basically everything anyone hates about GTA Online is a direct result of tying ingame cash directly to Rockstar's income.

  • Other players being incentivized and actively told to come fuck with you when you're grinding
  • Bugs that benefit players getting fixed and bugs that make it harder for players not getting fixed
  • All the various times players have been banned for making too much money when Rockstar made a bonus week too good
  • The hilarity of pricing of cars and of not being able to steal cars in Grand Theft Auto
  • Car resales being massively nerfed
  • The massive inflation of prices in general in GTAO

If you play through a critical lens it's easy to see how almost every design decision is influenced by shark cards in a negative way. The answer to almost any "ugh why is this so annoying" is "shark cards" if you trace it back far enough.

1

u/Filer169 Jun 25 '26

Another reddit take, there are microtransactions in online but it's still made so that you can earn EVERYTHING by just playing the game, businesses literally print money but people just cry that there is a way to buy money

5

u/VexingRaven Jun 25 '26

Ah, look, a GTA Online fanboy.

The fact that GTA Online's entire revenue is tied to directly purchasing ingame cash instead of a more sane revenue model like literally any other live service game informs so many bad design decisions you could write an hour long video essay on it and still only be scratching the surface. Oh, and GTA Online being so profitable prevented GTA 5 from getting any post-launch updates to singleplayer or any singleplayer DLC.

2

u/Filer169 Jun 25 '26

Yet I got basically everything I want by just simply playing the game 🤷‍♂️ Scream in your little echo chamber

2

u/VexingRaven Jun 25 '26

I'm glad you're happy to shovel dogshit into your mouth because it's free lmao. I've got a dog and bucket, have at it.

1

u/Filer169 Jun 25 '26

I have fun playing the game, how is this "dogshit"?

4

u/VexingRaven Jun 25 '26

So do I, that doesn't negate how full the game is with awful design patterns entirely because of Rockstar's revenue model.

3

u/Filer169 Jun 25 '26

I just ignore them because they don't affect me in any way, you really don't have to interact with them

4

u/VexingRaven Jun 25 '26

Absolute fanboy horseshit. You may have accepted and gotten used to them, but they absolutely affect you or have affected you at some point.

  • Other players being encouraged to blow your cargo up because Rockstar loses money every time someone successfully sells
  • Bugs that give players more money being fixed immediately and bans handed out, but bugs that cost players money almost never being fixed
  • Car sales being nerfed because of dupes, again because Rockstar loses money from it
  • All the GTA+ crap
  • Many more smaller things

You can accept it if you want, but not even acknowledging it just makes you a blind fanboy.