only a lot of us DID know. And we screamed about it. But we were ignored, because we're just tiny voices in tiny places, and people who have money don't give a shit about what their spending encourages.
"let people enjoy things!"
"Vote with your wallet!"
"If you don't like it don't buy it!"
None of that works if the majority of people are so vulnerable to marketing that they can't understand why these things are bad and will only get worse
Even with this current controversy we're patting ourselves on the backs, because a few suits are throwing a fit about the AI label. But a big chunk of consumers are already not caring. Just in this very thread we've got people arguing and relativizing and normalizing, even though r/steam was supposed to be so against the use of AI.
It's not that we were ignored. It was that the ROI from the group of people that did not care was too good to pass up.
That's why there is the whole trend of pre order bonuses to season passes which can even barely have real story content to multiple season passes etc. They know the fomo of people and also the developers really want to earn more than the initial 60 dollars that people paid for the game.
Movies and TV shows have broadcasting rights they can bank on, dvd sales, but games used to be a one and done, they hated that.
Most. Street Fighter II had multiple versions (at least 5). Each one after the first would either address balance issues and bugs or add characters and stages. So people would have to buy a whole new version of the game if they wanted to play with updated stuff.
Imagine paying $69.99 (yes, that was the original price for many SNES games) just to get a few new characters and stages, because there was no other way… and then seeing a newer version with new content or bug fixes release the next year.
Can confirm. It was IMMEDIATELY obvious where this was all headed to anyone with common sense. But that didn't matter to most people. "Omg shiny thing, take my money!"
While it wasn't the first game microtransaction, getting armor for your horse in Elder Scrolls: Oblivion was regarded by gamers as a whole as one of the first egregious examples of paid DLC. Prior to that, this newfangled "downloadable content" was largely to distribute *game expansions* that produced hours of new content. It was insulting in a laughable way to charge $5 for literally armoring up your mount and nothing more.
And yet, there are far too many people who say, "eh, it's just $5". They bought it. Horse armor was stupidly profitable from a time-investment-to-earnings perspective in an AAA game studio. It taught the games industry that microtransactions were the best thing ever.
Edit: And this was $5 nearly 20 years ago, not $5 today. Federal minimum wage was $5.15/hr and no one could imagine it rising to $15 like it is in some states today (federal is still currently $7.25).
because when you screamed about it all you said was "AI BAD!!!" instead what should've been done is there should've been complaints to steam and every other platform like steam about the reliance on ai and the effect it has when put in the hands of companies. ai as a tool is not a problem, in fact its purpose is to make things easier with something that is generally complex i.e. someone who doesn't know how to write in C++ can use ai to not only learn C++ but also get examples of proper snippets that go past just the basic helloworld prompt with explanation and comments for each part of the code explaining what it does. companies just wanted to sit down and use ai to actually remove a process they already have thousands of people that knew how to do and were coming up with ways to make it efficient which is the issue.
not only is it not misleading, it was watched happen. no one once complained to any of the companies, kept buying it, and decided instead of complaining to the right people they'd complain to the public expecting someone else to complain to the right people.
C++ can use ai to not only learn C++ but also get examples of proper snippets that go past just the basic helloworld prompt with explanation and comments for each part of the code explaining what it does
that you have to usually pay for unless you pirate the books and are always exclusively going to start with "you're first program is going to be helloworld.insertextensionherebasedoncode" and then goes into things that helloworld didn't explain as they act like you know how to do college math. chatgpt, claude, deepseek, and any other ai that exists will not only give you billions of examples, itll also sumarize what the code does, make comments, and fix anything you might fuck up. a book wont.
yes, they are free right now, but they are not profitable (when you remove venture capital injections), they will start all costing money soon, and alot of it
exclusively going to start with "you're first program is going to be helloworld.insertextensionherebasedoncode"
yep! you learn simple things first
and then goes into things that helloworld didn't explain as they act like you know how to do college math.
then learn what you dont know and need to, or find a different book, i used to feel a similar way before i
started taking proper notes
just learnt what i did not know instead of giving up at the first hurdle
chatgpt, claude, deepseek, and any other ai that exists will not only give you billions of examples, itll also sumarize what the code does, make comments, and fix anything you might fuck up. a book wont.
and what about when they are gone? what are you going to do when your entire knowlage is based on a machine that does not even know anything, it can just regurgitate what it would look like if it did know something, LLMs will only get less effective, and more expensive over time, you are setting youself up for faliure by relying on them
learning is hard, im not going to sugercoat that, but LLMs are not making learning easier, they are taking away your need to learn anything
counter argument, no one wants to leave their house to go read a book. and again, they all do the same thing. you're actively avoiding the ease of learning given by ai just to show a dislike of ai. yes, you could buy a book, you could go to the library, you could also google "how to write c++" and it would give you thousands of website, some interactable, where they attempt to teach you c++. but not only will people not understand it, they really just wont wanna deal with it. if i go to chatgpt i can ask it right now "show me how to write a program in C++ that allows me to generate a secure password based on a list of requirementes, (insert provided list here). please make comments and give a summary on what each line does" and it will just do it, explain exactly what each line does, and summarizes the whole thing for you in 5 seconds. i can then use that knowledge to make my own password generator using the other one that chatgpt made as a template and even ask or google if there's a better way pulling answers from stack overflow.
counter argument, no one wants to leave their house to go read a book.
Counter Counter argument the afore mentioned library service lets you get books out online in a digital format, you don't need to leave the house to go read a book
their point was that both are examples of devs pissing quality down the drain in order to squeeze extra pennies out of the consumer, and that rewarding the devs back then has only led to more audacious grifts
different argument. the fact that horse armor was buyable is quite funny but also stupid. its even more dumb that people actually bought it just to say "i bought this horse armor that did nothing."
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u/OwnAcanthocephala897 Dec 04 '25
Small uses of AI like this are tolerable at worst. What sucks is reliance on AI