Wack Fighting Game Monetization Strikes Again

Unrelated but remember paid frame data in the last game? I do.
streamed Oct. 2, 2024
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#FGC #Sajam #Tekken

[@psychrosis8646]

LMAO the harada tweet got deleted the BAMCOPS got him

[@benjamingeorge8241]

Understandable lol Harada was just saying some nonsense. Talking like we should be on our knees thanking him for providing story mode for free.

[@WeMissDimebag]

Serious question because Harada actually made a great point; would you rather the stage be free and the story cost money? Because Harada is 100% right that they gave us the larger and more expensive project for free. The stage not being in the season pass is still scummy bullshit, but if they were gonna sell one, the stage matters way less.

[@okamileek006]

​@@WeMissDimebag The stage affects everyone playing the actual game at all times, it affects the rng stage pick pool The story mode makes no competitive difference, it's just a separate experience entirely, I don't know how this would be hard to understand

[@leithaziz2716]

@@WeMissDimebag This question feels like gaslighting. There is no reason why both *shouldn't* be availlable. No compromises, the publisher's intentions be damned.

[@dyrr836]

@@WeMissDimebag Include the stage in the DLC pass with the characters, keep the story free. Based name by the way.

[@GreenBro11]

I’ve seen arguments that apparently this stage doesn’t have any gimmicks so it doesn’t matter if you don’t have it, "who cares that they charged money?" , but to me that’s exactly why the stage does matter. A normal stage with no wall breaks or gimmicks impacts your fight just as much.

[@Kekkai_]

You can play the stage if other people have it just like in t7. We also have online practice mode.

[@DaviddeBergerac]

​@@Kekkai_ that's a bandaid at best covering the festering wound that is this game's monetization practices

[@Kekkai_]

@@DaviddeBergerac it's a 5$ stage. Hopefully they just include stages in the next season pass. Not that deep.

[@sirpantaloonsify]

Gluck gluck gluck ​@@Kekkai_

[@arpadszabo661]

People making any kind of excuses to billionares while they are getting ripped off is just disgusting to me.

[@bbyjohn11]

I hate the “you shoulda read the fine print” people too. Bro I spent like $100 bucks and an ultimate edition god forbid I think I get all the content that comes out this first year the game is out.

[@ckorp666]

the armchair corpo lawyer nerds are the WORRRRST

[@30ajgo]

You hate em cause they’re right or what?

[@bbyjohn11]

@@30ajgo what a lame take to the side of greedy business practices over a supportive community

[@girlville]

they genuinely just enjoy scolding people i'm pretty sure lmao. it's incredibly lame

[@Invictus_Mithra]

@@bbyjohn11 Yeah, I don't fault you for assuming that because in Tekken 7 it DID include stages in their ultimate edition/season pass. Sure, in hindsight it's there but most people don't buy a game assuming the company is going to screw them over

[@KenBladehart]

>slowly stare at Granblue Versus Rising >pat on the shoulder

[@mormegil84]

What's happening with Granblue?

[@tzera_rhuon]

​@@mormegil84They charge extra for certain stages as well.

[@motorcat99]

it's so crazy that fortnite's monetization system gets copied onto full price games, as if epic games was somehow just sitting on billions of dollars this whole time by not simply making people pay $70 for battle royale

[@BoostedChoomba]

The amount of times i've played Granblue and gotten my ass kicked by someone and went "I don't know what this character does, i should lab them :3" only to realize that they're locked behind a paywell and i have to either hunt those characters down and get my ass beat or i have to boot up my browser or my phone and go to the internet to find out what they do is so frustrating.

[@envioussecrets8247]

Fighting Bea and Lucilius without knowledge does sound like a horrid time 😂

[@Nooctae]

The fact they were arguing it's a CHARACTER PASS and not a Season pass is such BS

[@JunKazamaFan]

That is deceptive marketing.

[@publickip]

Regarding Replay Takeover Yeah, SF6 you can replay takeover against a character you don't own In Tekken 8 you can't replay takeover if theres an unowned DLC character present UNI2 & Skullgirls just don't care if you don't own the DLC character

[@chocobolord_]

There is replay takeover in SF6?

[@nekogami87]

​@@chocobolord_ Added recently

[@tigerdesmith]

I just wanna mention here that, buying the season pass and/or the other editions (ultimate/deluxe) is MORE expensive than buying the DLCs individually. The only "extra" things you get are golden suits and avatar customization. That's it.

[@Gnolle082]

This is the Blue Protocol tax and we're all paying for it.

[@azizkash286]

"Unrelated but remember paid frame data in the last game? I do." Never forget this, this was the worst case of microtransaction practices in modern gaming history. Crazy how some people still expect anything consumer friendly from bandai

[@manemiles]

This all started with people defending having to buy frame data in 7. This is the next step to see how much more we allow

[@stone3016]

meanwhile Rivals 2 has just announced their FREE battle pass, all characters and future characters FREE like goddamn lemme give the studio some money 💀💀

[@fleepity]

It's a double edged sword tho. If they aren't getting money from in game stuff eventually they will run out. Them being a niche platform fighting game dev and all

[@Grande_Vtr]

As much as I hate what Tekken is doing, going to the other extreme and giving everything away for free is asking for the death of your game

[@johnsnowden3769]

They're going to monetize with cosmetic microtransactions, something Tekken should have done, only.

[@arpadszabo661]

That means they are either shutting down way sooner than Tekken or they are stupidly overpricing something else in exchange.

[@trippersigs2248]

​@@fleepity If they're giving content out free then Im Pretty sure they've taken that into account. They probably expect sales to more than cover the necessary cost.

[@gfhjfgh23dfghdfghdr45h]

When Nintendo monetizes your own IP better than you, that’s embarrassing

[@kmartrewards1429]

Genmaji temple is gonna feel like a VIP club for the people who bought it

[@Zachary_Sweis]

If dlc characters were selectable in training and replay takeover it Would probably convince a lot of people to buy those characters.

[@LofiWandererMusic]

I just don't understand why they don't JUST RELEASE CHARACTER COSTUMES INSTEAD. People are craving that shit. Not the stupid avatars, not the horrendously low effort reskins of cosmetics already in the game, full character skins. They would make WAY more money and piss off WAY less people

[@Nkodtb]

Or just use mods and not pay a dime. The namcops ain't gonna ban me 😂

[@da_001]

or just pirate and mod your copy. like i am playing tekken 8 on my 2nd monitor. as i type these words, got lili in a nurse coat with a black microbikini trying to get to god of destruc rank in ghost battle! bamco has shown me that they see me as an atm. sorry but they got the PIN wrong, they aint getting a DIME from me. fuvk em! i could buy it legally but what? get locked out of characters and nickle and dimes in the customization? i am not a sheep.

[@Nkodtb]

@@da_001 lol that's the spirit

[@ameersher]

Just playing devils advocate but they are releasing characters skins, they've been for a while now

[@GSen45]

The monitization for Tekken has been making me not want to play it...

[@DaviddeBergerac]

My smile fades every time it shoves battle pass stuff in my face

[@da_001]

just pira8 if your on pc, if not them im sorry friendo, or buy used. dont give em a cent!

[@GSen45]

@@da_001 im on playstation, it is what it is

[@count_rizzula]

Making people pay for Heihachi in a Tekken game should be considered worse than first degree murder

[@peepopogchamp]

every numbered game from now until the end of time

[@ArialdyHimself]

ON GOD MAN 😭😭😭

[@cinnabarsin4288]

I'm still as salty that I paid for him unknowingly in a character pass as I was getting him in SC2 instead of Link or Spawn...

[@leithaziz2716]

I'm personally mad that they made a whole game about ending a +20 year old conflict before going "nah, let's keep this going. Guess we like Heihachi too much to commit to our decisions." At least Bedman in GG was made a broken robot/protective brother when he came back, which was a cool shakeup. Even Zato had a complete personality shift to highlight consequences

[@dyrr836]

Unfortunately that's just the way things are now, people got so accustomed to having the fan favorites be deliberately held back for DLC that now companies are doing it with main staple characters. KOF didn't have Kim until season 2, Guilty Gear didn't have Slayer until season THREE and I guarantee you we'll eventually see a Street Fighter game where Ken is a DLC character. It could have been stopped but you know FGC is allergic to holding companies to any kind of standard.

[@nonemitigation]

my favorite old game story is that, once upon a time, team fortress 2 was planning on having all of its big updates that turned it into the big live service title of the early 2010's also appear on consoles... and then they gave up, because it turns out microsoft dictated it so that they couldn't do that without making those updates into paid DLC microsoft lost the relevancy to a game that made valve roughly ten quadrillion dollars because they couldn't handle the idea of not making a few new maps and weapons cost five bucks

[@benjamingeorge8241]

I remember from a Dunkey video that Microsoft pulled off some similar nonsense with Left 4 Dead.

[@ApexGale]

Wasn't this for L4D and not TF2?

[@soldier257]

You’d think microsoft would’ve listened to a company that’s got one of the best reputations in gaming, but oh well. Console tf2 got diddly. Not even a patch to stop ppl from going under or above the map and do some real griefing.

[@Leap623]

​@@ApexGaleit happened with both games. L4D was forced to charge for some content that was free on PC. TF2 on console is basically stuck on 1.0 because their whole update system just ended up being entirely incompatible with the console ecosystem.

[@frankwest183]

Specifically, they had a system at the time that was something like 4 free minor patches and maybe 1 free content patch? After that, you'd have to pay. Microsoft had to check the updates and then host them, so they probably thought that it was fair, but if you played launch TF2, you'd know it needed a lot more than 4 patches to get to a functional state (among other things, you literally couldn't play online on console at launch, and on both console and PC there was like a 1/10 chance that all projectiles would pass through walls until map change.) At the time, microsoft and sony just didn't see games updating frequently as a normal thing. Maybe 1-2 post launch patches to fix bugs, and then the assumption was any further updates would be larger dlcs or expansions. Valve, on the other hand, did things via constant iteration, and at some point they slapped a 1.0 on TF2 and then launched it, then just kept iterating. They tried to group up a few of the patches to shove them to console all at once, but they still used up their free patches, and then they couldn't justify paying money for weekly patch updates on something they didn't even have plans for further monetizing yet. By the time the game went F2P and started putting in hats and new weapons, the console versions were a ghost town, so it probably didn't seem worth it to revisit.

[@benzoFE88]

Here in FGC civilization, it is never worth to pay the $4.99 for a cosmetic reskin, it’s always better to save the money

[@Half_Bl00d_H3R0]

It’s always better to play a better game

[@WutTheDeuceGaming]

I'm not paying for any of these reskins. Def ain't worth it.

[@ckorp666]

@@benzoFE88 i paid $5 for the blanka chan skin, i had to ;w;

[@soldier257]

This shit is getting so blatant its disgusting. They know what they’re doing. WE know what they’re doing. Time for this manipulative bs to stop!

[@da_001]

preach, harada doesnt """"care""""" they just want profits at any cost.

[@soldier257]

@@da_001 yeah, so we gotta show him this shit doesnt work by not buying it. Ppl like him wont stop doing this shit until we stop buying it

[@DUFFNOTDUFF]

I remember when people were (rightfully) outraged about SFxT having on disk DLC that they had to pay for, and even before then I think people who played SF4 on console were pretty fed up with buying physical copies for expansions. I feel like the extreme yearning for new content has superceded that anger on the consumer side now, and something like day one DLC or season passes are expected and even celebrated. It's really unfortunate because I think it gives publishers the wrong idea about what players actually value in fighting games As far as price marketing goes, fighting games are insanely predatory and the actual product you get often has little to no value in the grand scheme of things (like you were saying with gun skins in FPS titles - no one gives af if you use a cool skin or not in a fighting game). I think the absolute worst (best?) example of this is how GG Strive has handled additional colours. It's insane that they expect people to pay for them in the first place (Like come on, there are hundreds of mods per character on PC that have better palettes than the base game), BUT THEN you also have to buy the additional colours AGAIN for every new DLC season pass. Wtf is that horseshit??? Nobody should want the Optic green mlg colour scheme that badly.

[@DaviddeBergerac]

There's an upsettingly large group of gamers who seem to only be interested in the dopamine hit of something "new", rather than actually enjoying and playing what they already have. Players who hardly learn anything about the game they play and simply rush to spend money so they can have the new thing that's shiny.

[@da_001]

@@DaviddeBergerac 10000% fax

[@leithaziz2716]

@@DaviddeBergerac I've actually been on that phase recently

[@Invictus_Mithra]

It's insane that FGC players still try to defend this kind of monetization. I see it anytime I try to push back against Bamco and all it's doing is letting them get away with even more shit

[@tankiegirl]

People will blindly shill for late stage capitalism unfortunately.

[@666slateran666]

@@Invictus_Mithra 5 dollars for a stage isn't even crazy. Teklen fans are entitled and whiney

[@da_001]

FGC players have no, theyre nobodies outside of the community.

[@azizkash286]

funny how all the DLC characters in tekken 8 are pretty much characters who were always free in previous games with the addition of a previous game character that WAS ALSO DLC

[@The300Player]

It blows my mind that fighting games still charge for maps dude, no other game genre does that except this one. Even CoD and Battlefield stopped doing this years ago but fighting games are still doing it on top of having to pay for characters, skins and a dogshit battlepass.

[@matthewc4121]

Rivals of Aether 2 announcing that all characters added to the game will be free and they're gonna go with different monetization was such fantastic news, especially because they've shown great costumes for the characters already in the game. High hopes for actually being able to get friends into it because the barrier to play that cool new character that just got added will always be the base price of the game, and not an additional 10 bucks to even try out the character that you *might* like

[@DesiringANewDawn]

I was literally saying this. Competition wise, having to buy a stage is cancer when the stage changes the gameplay. We dont know rn if we can even queue against people who own the stage in ranked rn, and if we do, the people who want to practice on it cant bc of the lack of people buying it.. If you dont have the dlc, how are you going to practice for tournaments. The skins in the game are annoying. The battlepassez being weak besides getting your coins back by finishing the pass. I just hate how they are doing their monetization

[@dyrr836]

"If you dont have the dlc, how are you going to practice for tournaments" You can't, that's the point. They want to nickel and dime you for every penny you have. It's unbelievably shitty.

[@DesiringANewDawn]

@@dyrr836 i would've understood paying for the story part 2 for 5 dollars compared to the stage.

[@Kekkai_]

Idk if it REALLY matters, you can do practice mode online now and if 1 person has the stage you can both use it just like in T7 and unlike with characters

[@FFxStrife]

Harada: How would you even monetise a F2P fighting game??? (Proceeds to do it with his $70 game)

[@chrislee5268]

Harada is such a snake in the grass.

[@MrThaes]

It's wild how I can look at the not-too-great monetization in SF6 and think "Well, it's still not the worst". Like, I can still at least use replay takeover against characters I don't own or buy new stages with the otherwise mostly worthless Drive Tickets instead of actual money.

[@roncrudup2110]

SF 6 also gives you rental tickets for free. I buy DLC so I am maxed at 10 hours but I don’t need them.

[@MrThaes]

@@roncrudup2110 Oh yeah, that's good too! I've used a Ticket for every DLC character so I can see their Arcade modes, and I still have 8 in store.

[@arpadszabo661]

SF6 is different kind of bad. What they charge for cosmetics and the lack of proper cosmetics is hilariously bad. Like, one set of costumes for main characters are overall $108… come on. While Tekken has free costumization and even the paid ones are okay-ish, since at least most character can get them. But they are going full throttle on inconveniencing people who don’t buy dlc characters with the replay feature and now the stage.

[@MrThaes]

@@arpadszabo661 At the risk of sounding like an apologist:I don't think the overall price of costumes is that bad, since I doubt most folks would buy costumes for characters other than their main and maybe their secondary. That said, the in-game currency nonsense is of course bad. You shouldn't have to buy 12 € worth of currency to buy 6 € costume.

[@arpadszabo661]

@@MrThaes Idk, maybe i would be more forgiving towards SF6 if they would spend their time at least making costumes for the roster characters instead of only releasing 1 set in more than a year, while constantly making avatar stuff instead.

[@arpadszabo661]

Current big fighting games are straight up abusing their boost in popularity and people eat it up. We, who are here criticizing it, are not the majority. If we would be, these practices would’ve stopped already. It’s still mindblowing to me the SF6 got away with selling ONE set of costumes for $108. That’s ridiculous. And people were still like “ehm actually 🤓 you don’t need all of those”. It’s ridiculous. Most free games have better mtx monetization than these $70 games.

[@Altra_duck]

I don't remember anyone defending the $100 costume set, everyone I've heard mention it even outside the fgc seems to think it's ridiculous. The fact you don't need those seems more like a reminder that you can choose not to buy it than a defense of Capcom's practices

[@chrislee5268]

Zoomers have been conditioned from birth to defend big corporations.

[@rakunuki3565]

>buys 70 dollar game at launch >adds battle pass 2 months after the game comes out >8 dollars for a legacy character thats been in every other title >doesnt come with the stage

[@p0d673]

Tekken has fumbled so hard it made me play street fighter

[@chimpmasterflex]

6:40 Tuco Salamanca?! Of course he'd charge a premium for the finest product.

[@WutTheDeuceGaming]

Fighting games making you pay for characters that were part of the original roster is bad enough. Even worse because this game is a legacy fighting game, not very much changes about characters outside of very slight things. The least they can do is give the stages for free if they're going to keep making you pay for the same characters over and over again.

[@WhyYouWahYoo]

Say what you will about Nintendo but I think Smash’s monetization is PERFECT for fighting games. No battle passes, no in game currency. Just 6 bucks for the fighter and stage or 30 for all 5 characters and their stages in a pack with most extra costumes at 75 cents. I get that battle passes are good for retention but when the game is full price and you sell the freakin’ stages separately, maybe don’t also have that and in game currency

[@no_nameyouknow]

The characters are a lot simpler though and there are like 50 dlc characters.

[@WhyYouWahYoo]

@@no_nameyouknowthere are 12. One pack of 5, one pack of 6, and one that was free

[@hypedrifter1715]

Too bad the netcode sucks in SSBU.

[@WhyYouWahYoo]

@@hypedrifter1715true

[@Crackhog]

​@@no_nameyouknow the characters are at least as, if not more complex than street fighter characters. don't know if you confuse it with brawlhalla or something

[@WraxTV]

I think if they are going to monetize like this - you know, badly - then they need to do two things: 1) Link all the DLC to an account that is accessible on all platforms (no "this player ID is linked to PS5 and you're currently on an XSX" BS) 2) Make it where you can have account A vs account B on the same console, and make the process to set that up smooth as butter and quick as lightning At least then, offline tournaments, meet-ups, etc won't have to have the responsibility of having the necessary DLC fall on them. As long as Player A and Player B has their own account with the DLC they want, they can essentially bring it with them without having to bring their own setup.

[@axis8396]

I very much despise the multiple currency bs, it's incredibly scummy and any game I see that does that I just completely ignore. Even games I really like I just refuse to get DLC for due to how absurd they are. I could just give you 5 dollars for something but no you want 5 dollars for 435 tokens and then things cost some arbitrary amount so you gotta do conversions and shit to not overpay. AND that math gets thrown out as soon as any additional content comes out because now the ratio is messed up. Incredibly frustrating

[@zbozu]

I really appreciate Granblue's first step towards this. Free basic version to get friends hooked, a very easy to complete battle pass with dope skins, other skins that cost in game currency.

[@garadje2623]

Waiting on fighting games to start charging players to color their characters and mandating your character has to be painted to play online like it's WH40K.

[@Sandberry]

Street Fighter 6 practically already does the first half. You have to pay for palettes of costume 1 barring the two you get for free.

[@dyrr836]

One day training mode will be paid DLC and idiot gamers will defend it as "most players don't even bother with it so it's okay."

[@Half_Bl00d_H3R0]

DOA does this

[@da_001]

Yea DOA6 did this, it was ran by Yohei Shimbori!, which he ran the game so into the ground Koei Tecmo stopped supporting it. DOA IS NOW DEAD. Guess who is in the dev team for Tekken 8? Very same guy, you can even fight his avatar in Ghost battle as Shimbori_y. Really messed up eh?

[@leodiusd4858]

Dlc is by far the worst thing about modern fighting games. For example out of the current 29 characters in strive, 14 are dlc (with more to come). It's crazy that the dlc characters are more expensive than the base game...

[@da_001]

facts facts.

[@DaviddeBergerac]

Reminder that I couldn't view GG Strive's side story content in game because I didn't buy the season pass, and there's no other way to get it otherwise. Watched it on youtube because that's some stupid crap.

[@mormegil84]

I haven't played Strive in forever. Man, that's a really lame practice, especially since a lot of people enjoy GG's story.

[@davidepicchiotti9989]

The worst part about modern fighting games is still the inability to lab/try characters in training

[@srsgoblin]

I don't understand how a character wouldn't come with their stage, just inherently. Regardless of how a company wants to monetize their game, it's just super weird to split the character and their stage.

[@thelastgogeta]

Tekken 7 actually split the characters and stages from what I can tell but only for Tekken characters. Guests like Negan, Noctis and Geese came with their stage and music at a slight premium (still cheaper than an average character plus stage). I guess they thought could repeat it since it got few complaints in comparison to paid frame data.

[@tracepalmatier9696]

Free characters and stages (at least in Tekken where they matter) in fighting games are definitely going to be the next big wall the genre's gotta get past. Every other competitive game genre has worked this way for over a decade, let alone the fact that most are completely free to play.

[@mormegil84]

Just make fighting games free-to-play and we're good. Another pain is I play fighting games on PS5, and if games aren't ftp on there, I have to pay Sony to play online. PC players are winning.

[@Trigamer64]

I feel like I see fighting game only players defending this as “not the bad” compared to other games but like I really don’t see it worse than fighting games. At least the most classic manipulative models are in games that are free to play not 70 dollars for half the content locked on launch.

[@gamecube756]

Went to a local last night and in the set we rolled the temple stage both matches. Neither of us had bought the stage LMAO

[@terrysalt]

I'm refusing to buy characters in Street Fighter 6 because they do the whole "character costs 300 coins but oops, the coins come in bundles of 250" bullshit.

[@EricSamaNYC]

I hope the stage sales are poor to reflect that this is not the kind of monetization we want. The cosmetics are poor, but if they had actual good battle passes and costumes then sure but stages are integral to Tekken gameplay. Clearly there’s a huge separation between the devs and the corp itself.

[@dyrr836]

Unfortunately it's mandatory to buy the stage because Tekken stages affect the gameplay. The ship has long since sailed where we can expect fighting games to have any reasonable monetization, I'm afraid.

[@EricSamaNYC]

@@dyrr836 it’s not mandatory. If you don’t buy it, it won’t be in the RNG pool of random. It’s also the same dimensions of the arena stage. I’m good.

[@coffeeholic_3d]

@@EricSamaNYC it will though, I already played against people online that have the stage even though i didn't buy it. Everyone assumed both players needed to have it for some reason but that's not the case.

[@EricSamaNYC]

@@coffeeholic_3d shit, then that's definitely the only way I'll access this stage cause I ain't payin 🤣

[@mormegil84]

All the big streamers will buy it, so that will influence everyone else to buy it.

[@imjust_a]

I flip-flop on how I feel about not being able to practice against a DLC character. On one hand, I understand incentivizing players to buy the character, but on the other hand it's not like I can take that character into any meaningful modes (Ranked, Casual, etc.) So what if I practice 300 hours of Bison combos without purchasing him? At the end of the day, if I want to play him on my account, I'm going to have to spend the money to buy him. Capcom makes the same amount of money either way.

[@cinnabarsin4288]

The having to buy characters to learn how to play against them is still such a farce. Even playing the character yourself in training mode to see if it's something you would want to play should be the standard. I've fallen off T8 and SF6 and the way they're being monetized definitely hasn't been helping that any.

[@dyrr836]

At least in SF6 you don't have to own the character to do replay takeover against them. But Killer Instinct solved this problem 12 years ago, you could training mode against DLC you didn't own you just couldn't play them yourself.

[@bluedotdinosaur]

To be fair, Harada's deleted tweet does make some sense. A fully produced story expansion is the kind of content publishers charge for as DLC in most games. Funding the story expansion with expected sales from a stage can legitimately be seen as Harada wanting all owners of the game to be able to see the whole story without feeling they have to buy a season pass or more DLC. The blame here has to fall on publishers for putting developers into positions like this in the first place. The problem with the video game industry is that it refuses to accept it's in the entertainment business. Traditionally, movie studios and television networks do not expect every single film or show to turn a profit by itself. They know most won't, but the content is necessary to keep viewers interested and engaged with the medium. The hope is that a few breakout successes will in the end, help pay for everything else. Game publishers want every single game to turn a profit individually - and this becomes an issue as games get more expensive to produce, because too many players demand infinite increases in audio-visual fidelity. It's becoming impossible for every game to turn a profit by itself. Rather than accept the biggest hits need to find the full ecosystem publishers are turning to exploitative microtransactions and revenue schemes to try squeezing pennies out of each game.

[@Call555JackChop]

Modern a gaming is a blow up this is why I just play old fighting games like 3S and KI

[@janematthews9087]

Ah yes 3s AKA the Yun,Chun game featuring the rest of the cast. Sure you can have fun with the rest, but if those two show up, the fun just plain old stops. The games was showcased at Evo and just like the last Evo appearance, everyone only remembers one match in it and it's not the grand finals. And you best believe that if KI ever survived its death, they woulda turned scummy right quick. It's being handled by Microsoft after all.

[@joedatius]

this is just silly. there are definitely issues but we are arguably in the new golden age of fighting games right now. having qualms with certain problems isn't a good reason to ignore the massive improvements we've seen in the past couple of years for the sake of hiding behind nostalgia goggles

[@lazycouchman]

When I see how so many fighting games are becoming more live servicey, I just don't wanna play them anymore They're trying to nickel and dime people for every little thing like a f2p game. The exact stuff games like street fighter/tekken/granblue are doing (timed battle pass, season pass, character pass/stage pass, individual stages/costumes/avatar items/accessories) just push me away super hard cause I specifically bought a full game to not have to deal with this exact thing! I'll wait until the ultimate edition like 10 years in the future. Even though I still kinda wanna play them lol

[@XXFGC]

the game is 70 dollars too bro

[@Ukyoprime]

Feeling pretty good about maining Under Night right now. If you bought the game in the first month, you got a 2year season pass for free. The last version update (UNIST>UNICLR) was free to everyone, if you owned the prior version then the only money you had to cough up for gameplay was $10 for the new character. You got the balance pass for free and they kept the matchmaking together.

[@Finicky9]

Its double damage because of the store front bait and switch

[@Douphipp455]

Classic bamco fumbling IPs

[@DaviddeBergerac]

@@Douphipp455 t8 sells more than 2 million copies and bamco still cries that it's hungry

[@cylondorado4582]

They better be careful, if they go too far it’ll be Dead or Alive 6.

[@ShadowNinjaMaster93]

Yeah, even in ArcSys land it's hard to convince my friends to pick up Guilty Gear because the Blazing Edition that has all the season passes is $90 but the base game is $40. They take one look at that and go "Oh."

[@DaviddeBergerac]

It's not enough to sell the game at 70 dollars. It's not enough to sell extra characters for a grand total of like 90 dollars after 3 seasons. It's not even enough to just sell extra costumes at 4 dollars a pop. When does it end? When is a product allowed to just be what it is? Why does every game have to be a constant money pit?

[@joedatius]

with all the monetization issues SF6 definitely has, the one thing i appreciate especially over T8 is that they tell you what characters are going to be in the character pass instead of making you wait months after your purchase just to know what you're fucking buying. Especially since most of the pass for season one of T8 has been pretty mediocre aside from Heihachi. I'm so sick of being secretive about who is coming to the game while also charging people

[@Bober909]

Block gem was a mistake

[@daniell.3395]

To compare: Smash Ultimate DLC was 6 bucks for a character, their stage and several music tracks, sometimes up to 20. Also single player content in the story mode. Me and my partner love T7 and at this point were fine with sticking with that.

[@kyallon1213]

It was actually $5 per character because each dlc pack had 6 characters. That being said there wasn’t any story mode in ultimate to my knowledge

[@daniell.3395]

@@kyallon1213 World of light, DLC packs included stickers. They were 6 dollars individually. 5 ea as part of a pack. Pack 1 was 5 characters Pack 2 was 6 (cause Sora at the end) To add insult to injury: each character is from a large, well known IP. There's literally 0 excuse for monetisation of this level of greed

[@ZachHenke]

I think they should sell access to normals on a subscription basis. What’s that Chun players? You want 5HP? That will be $6.99 a month.

[@SamuraiLJacks0n]

Unfortunately as a destiny player I’m all too familiar with aggressive monetization modern games suck…..

[@comradetyrone2298]

Bamco was emboldened when the Tekken community DEFENDED the paid frame data in Tekken 7.

[@jmyers112]

The funniest part is that even if you buy it you can't play it if you don't match an opponent who owns it

[@cadturt9295]

I HATE that fighting games use DLC the same way R6S does. I dont want to buy the base version, then need to spend MORE than the base version to get all characters. this is the only gripe with the genre, we can only hope a battle pass system is in 2xko and makes the entire industry switch to the same.

[@nickwhitegames]

Monetization plagues everything. Period.

[@sydneytzu]

the street fighter 6 point is by far my biggest gripe with the game. Like I want to spend money on the costumes, I think pretty much all of them look sick. But 100 bucks in steam micro-tranactions that aren't steam store items and therefore have way less sales then the rest of the game's dlc is scummy and wayyy too big of an ask most people. And sure, they're not necessary and therefore technically "fine", but overall I feel like in the long term it will end up making them less money due to people rightfully not wanting to interact with the system entirely

[@michelemichienzi934]

Sajam is with the hard G crew let's go

[@swanky2202]

They do the same shit for strategy games. Trickling in new factions with an expensive price tag, then sell you additional units via a different pack.

[@DaPhenomAce]

Every other fighting game has a free new stages. COD even has free maps and they have $20 bundles for a weapon skin... Bamco crazy for this

[@Aldrenean]

Honestly idgaf about the stage, especially because it's mechanically identical to one of the Arena variants. The biggest problem with T8 monetization has been and still is the fact that DLC characters cannot be used in practice without purchasing them. You should be able to practice as the DLC characters to try them out, but not only can you not do that -- you also can't practice *against* them, and you can't even take over your *own replays* against them. It's incredibly abusive and is basically pay-to-win, as those who are willing/able to pay for DLC characters have a definitive advantage in labbing against those characters. Selling frame data was worse, but only marginally.

[@superbnns]

I will never own a Street Fighter 6 skin because I refuse to spend money on a bundle of arbitrary tokens that expire after 6 months

[@joedatius]

fighter tokens only expire if you live in japan and its because its government law for them to do so. I've keep the same tokens for a bit over a year now without them going away

[@similaritiesendhere]

I bought two ultimate editions (one for me and my brother). Namco couldn't even wait one season before asking me for more money.

[@kyoruh]

This whole fighting game monetization thing is so outdated and pretentious IMO We are in the era of paying for clothes for our favorite pixel people, yet SF6 isn't providing us with new skins. Tekken selling stages that have actual impact on gameplay even if you bought the fancy deluxe premium ultimate season pass pro. Honestly? Even not being able to unlock DLC characters with free in-game currency sounds really really crazy to me, even the infinite grind for characters in SFV had me excited to play more to unlock characters, and then after all the grind i'd spend money for their costumes anyway. Here's hoping Riot will finally make the FG companies understand they can sell the equivalent of 100 DLC characters by making skins and trapping people into grinding for free characters(and then pay for skins anyway).

[@Lonely_Snow]

Battle passes are basically subscriptions

[@thepenguin55]

It's a weird thing because I get that creating a stage in Tekken is far more involved process than in any other fighting game BUT it's game impacting content. At minimum, it should be in the season pass if not free.

[@17Master]

Fighting games slowly trying to get on mobile games' level with monetization.

[@chellejohnson9789]

Worth noting, the only way to get the character pass as of now is through the ultimate edition

[@zal455]

What did we learn today? Don't ask harada for s***

[@crustman5982]

Genmaji has the same dimensions as the arena stage. It’s basically a reskin lol

[@-Requi3m-]

Map should be included in the season pass. They can get their extra monetization from Costumes and Fight Pass. Just make the fight pass a better value to have more people buy it.

[@Tartersauce101]

The future of fighting games is F2P live service model.

[@niwona_]

While people can be okay when MTX is only on cosmetics, for fighting games where the tournament scene is generally offline, the problem with not having a fairly substantial option set of colors in the avenue the game is going to be marketed the most for the majority of its lifespan is that it makes the game look really bland and offers no individuality. If you think of the red +R Pot or the green 3S Ken everyone knows who they are. Currently the anime games and potentially SNK with COTW are the ones doing it the best.

[@nits95]

i think paying for stages in fighting games gotta be the dumbest shit

[@sillysmy]

I'm just gonna plug every time I see Genmaji Temple in ranked. I refuse to go along with this shit as an ultimate edition owner. It feels like Tekken 8 is laughing at how stupid I am for wanting to support the game. I was really okay with how SF5 handled additional content. It took a lot of play time, but it was possible to get a lot of the stuff with in-game currency. The CPT stages that they sold went toward that season's CPT prize money. The mutl-skin packs were also pretty reasonably priced. Genmaji Temple not included even in the ultimate edition just feels wrong. Tekken 8's monetization overall just feels so scummy.

[@NinaNinaM24]

Harada's tweet sucked ass too, he's talking like this was some kind of misunderstanding, but it doesn't matter, stages should ALWAYS be part of season passes and when they're linked to a character, buying that character should get you the stage. Not only that, his response didn't even imply that they were going to revert this, it was just a "sorry, suck it up, MAYBE it won't happen again". "company want money" isn't even a valid excuse for this shit either, how many people do you know that are willing to pay JUST for a stage? Compare that to the outrage this caused, the minor amount of income does not warrant destroying their own reputation, it's extremely short-sighted decision making. They saw T7 do surprisingly well and decided to trade in all of the goodwill they earned to nickel and dime all of the new players they brought in with their crappy battlepass (looking at you too capcom) and now this stage shit.-

[@LeviathanCove]

I guess... it basically is a skin of the Arena stage, though it would show up more often if owned. Also... it seems even less worth it since it's just an Arena skin.

[@bugcatcherharold5315]

As a Smash player it always seem crazy to me that Tekken players pick stage randomly. It really seems like they should strike stages if there are different sizes and shapes, because surely different characters would be advantaged or disadvantaged by different stages?

[@thelastgogeta]

I'm sure that it must be the case especially in games with ring outs like Soulcalibur, Virtua Fighter and DOA. It seems that their communities have adopted similar rules to each other for one reason or another. Not certain if it is because no stages are that seriously flawed, because they don't want the hassle of building rules when they don't have native stage striking options or having the goal to show a variety of stages. Brawl immediately had a custom stage as part of its random pool besides many casual stages which would be problematic (other games are just as crazy).

[@Obregon-]

Nah, that would lead to a situation where we're either playing the smallest stages or the largest one possible, at the neglect of all the others

[@thelastgogeta]

@@Obregon- That's a sign that you haven't seen a Smash Bros rule set if you think we only pick one stage type of stage (I will say that Smash 64 and Ultimate have their own problems which lead to the game with the least viable and most viable stages using very few). Between Dave's Stupid Rule in 2003 (which prevents counterpicking to repeats) and a list of "Starter" and "Counterpick" stages which would probably align with wall breaks, floor breaks or more plain stages (size can also be considered). You'd end up with something more fair and deliberately varied. At present, luck of the draw could give a Floor/Wall Break God the perfect stage every time and the players just have to hold that. I have no doubt that smaller stages must have happened for an entire set which swayed results notably.

[@eduardoserpa1682]

I'm usually a "you get the content you paid for" person, but the unclear communication around the Pass is weird, and stages being relevant to gameplay is downright confusing.

[@BandaiSCUM]

Harada deleted the post. The standard edition in Australia where i live is still $114.95, Delux is still $159.95 and Ultimate is still $179.95 on PS store. Bandai price gouged in my country so hard that its literally not worth even buying the stage. The game is just too expensive considering what i had to pay out the gate.

[@kerbonaut2059]

Im glad that Strive simply cant have cosmetics and all the DLC characters are piratetable. Yes, im not gonna pay a cent to lab against you mfs.

[@mescool15]

the monetization in general in tekken 8 is pretty bad when in 7 so much stuff was included in the season passes. bamco is getting really damn greedy with tekken now cus they know untapped money is there. makes me afraid of them screwing up an eventual soul calibur 7 and making me pay for shitloads of create a soul stuff.

[@WhisperWings_]

Sajam brought it up but, is there a reason Tekken doesnt have like "stage skins" that are sold separately that just alter the appearance of existing stages? That feels like a very natural way to monetize their game.

[@ElTacoNazo92]

These days, I hardly ever complete the dlc for all the fighting games I buy. The value proposition for it is terrible. It's just bad. Even when you buy the games on sale, you want the dlc? You front the cash 60 or 70 bucks, which would be a full priced game. And it's getting worse with how inflation has made everything more expensive.

[@neotron6490]

I felt like Seaside stage been added for free at first probably would answered to that Tekken Monk Stage being 5 buck as bitterness. Its like Xbox Oblivion's DLCs all over again, but at least not on the same level as DOA6... yet

[@BWAxQUEZ]

I’d pay the 5$ I paid 42$ for the 119!$ dollar edition 😂