Questions about cash cards

[hitrho5]

How much will the most expensive card cost? How many GTA dollars will it give me? When will cash cards be available?

 

I want that $400k apartment in Rockford Hills!.......And a garage, a car, a bike, a plane, and a chopper.

Edited October 9, 2013 by hitrho5

[SkylineGTRFreak]

Theres a great invention called Google.

[hitrho5]

Theres a great invention called Google.

 

I just wanted to ensure that the information was accurate. Ok, so the $1.25 million cash card costs $20 then. What about the release date? Nobody seems to know when they'll be back online.

[SkylineGTRFreak]

Yea, that's right.

But release date...? I think only R* knows.

[Kifflom]

No. Stop. What you're doing, don't do that. Microtransactions and pay-to-win have already ruined mobile gaming, so don't encourage this bullsh*t.

 

You already paid more than sixty dollars for your game, which, let's be honest, is too much. It was too much back in the late 90s, when consumers started to rebel against overpriced media content, and it's doubly too much now that we consumers don't even have ownership rights over the media we buy anymore (resale? what's that?). Routinely getting gamers to plop down fifteen, twenty bucks to unlock DLC which should have been (and sometimes is) included on-disc in the first place is bad enough, but using real money to buy fake money is literally insulting. Literally. Insulting.

 

At the rate you people are rolling over for ridiculous customer-bilking bullsh*t, console games will require players to pay 50 cents a life, enforced through always-on internet DRM, by this time next year. Just you wait. It's going to happen.

Edited October 9, 2013 by Kifflom

[kamikazeedriver]

Ummm ok,

anyway, so $20 for 1.25mil?

[Kulgrim]

No. Stop. What you're doing, don't do that. Microtransactions and pay-to-win have already ruined mobile gaming, so don't encourage this bullsh*t.

 

You already paid more than sixty dollars for your game, which, let's be honest, is too much. It was too much back in the late 90s, when consumers started to rebel against overpriced media content, and it's doubly too much now that we consumers don't even have ownership rights over the media we buy anymore (resale? what's that?). Routinely getting gamers to plop down fifteen, twenty bucks to unlock DLC which should have been (and sometimes is) included on-disc in the first place is bad enough, but using real money to buy fake money is literally insulting. Literally. Insulting.

 

At the rate you people are rolling over for ridiculous customer-bilking bullsh*t, console games will require players to pay 50 cents a life, enforced through always-on internet DRM, by this time next year. Just you wait. It's going to happen.

 

Games were more expensive in the late 80's early 90's, and this is before you even figure in inflation, add in inflation and games have not only dropped in price they are one of the few entertainment goods that have had as serious a reduction in price as they have had. Seriously, gaming is one of the, if not the cheapest form of entertainment around.

 

Oh, and your last paragraph, really, 50 cents a life, by next year? Exaggeration does not help your cause, people see those kind of statements and completely dismiss the rest of what you said, no matter how persuasive your argument might be. I agree to some degree about micro transactions, but unless you can get 70-80% of the population to agree to putting away their wallets, you will never change a thing, and lunatic rants like yours certainly will not accomplish that.

[FrozenInferno]

No. Stop. What you're doing, don't do that. Microtransactions and pay-to-win have already ruined mobile gaming, so don't encourage this bullsh*t.

 

You already paid more than sixty dollars for your game, which, let's be honest, is too much. It was too much back in the late 90s, when consumers started to rebel against overpriced media content, and it's doubly too much now that we consumers don't even have ownership rights over the media we buy anymore (resale? what's that?). Routinely getting gamers to plop down fifteen, twenty bucks to unlock DLC which should have been (and sometimes is) included on-disc in the first place is bad enough, but using real money to buy fake money is literally insulting. Literally. Insulting.

 

At the rate you people are rolling over for ridiculous customer-bilking bullsh*t, console games will require players to pay 50 cents a life, enforced through always-on internet DRM, by this time next year. Just you wait. It's going to happen.

 

Games are also exponentially more expensive to make nowadays with budgets larger than most movies. Games like GTA will make money at $60 a pop but many don't. It seems to me Goldeneye 007 on the N64 was more than $60 and it only took ten developers to make it (eight of which never worked on games before). You just want more for nothing.

 

And things like DLC and micro transactions are a fact of the industry now, they are a lucrative revenue stream and developers are absolutely going to tap into it. Devs like EA and Zynga get a lot of flak for their heavy use of micro transactions but only because they were among the first to implement them, customers hated it but other devs realized there was a fortune to be made and now everybody does it.

 

I agree with you on one point, on-disc DLC that you have yo pay to unlock is pretty sad. And we're also in a time where devs will announce a year's worth of DLC months before a game even comes out. But again, it's a fact of life now and it is not going away no matter how much people rant about it.

[Hooves07]

 

Theres a great invention called Google.

 

I just wanted to ensure that the information was accurate. Ok, so the $1.25 million cash card costs $20 then. What about the release date? Nobody seems to know when they'll be back online.

 

I guess if you got the real cheddar to spend on the fake cheddar have at it. I don't think I could respect myself spending real money on fake money. All I can see in my mind are the people at R* laughing their asses off lighting up cigars with stacks of bills saying "people actually paid for this sh*t"!

[Kifflom]

God, you guys must really love wasting your money, musn't you? BUT SEE, IT'S TOTALLY OK TO PAY FOR CONTENT IN A GAME WE ALREADY BOUGHT, BECAUSE INFLATION OR SOMETHING.

 

This thread is a perfect example of the kind of mindboggling consumer complacency that's making things worse by day. Either that, or you're paid astroturfer shlubs trying to drum up internet buzz by giving the community a false sense of unity on the issue of Rockstar being weasles.

 

it's a fact of life now and it is not going away no matter how much people rant about it.

 

Really? Is it? With that sort of attitude, sure. But industries respond to markets, and markets are defined by consumers. Us. Now trust me, I'm not "ranting" here - if you thought THAT was a rant, you ain't seen nothin' yet - but ranting and bitching and calling scabs out on their horsesh*t is EXACTLY what people should be doing. What I should be doing, what you should be doing, what the OP should be doing. Even if there are too many idiotic fanboys with access to dad's creditcard to prevent game devs from seeing a profit in this kind of nonsense (and you may be right there!), it's still both our social right and our moral duty to engage in culture jamming and slow the process. Even if a post only ultimately reaches ONE person, that's still one person who's better informed, one person better able to make smart consumer choices.

 

You just want more for nothing.

 

Oh no...? Look, brother-brother, games getting more expensive to make ain't my fault. That's on the devs. MAYBE if they stopped trying to make over-budgeted Hollywood style crap fests, then they wouldn't have to waste so much money on making the game (how much did Minecraft cost to make again...?). Not that it f*cking matter anyway - even without microtransactions, GTAV has already made nearly a billion dollars in profit. A billion dollars. Forgive me for not shedding a tear for Rockstar's poor old financial department, which is obviously going to be run into the poorhouse with a mere billion dollars in profits from first-month sales figures alone.

 

 

Oh woe is me what will become of our corporate friends without cash cards?

 

Oh, and your last paragraph, really, 50 cents a life, by next year?

 

OK, ya caught me! It'll probably be two years, since they've only just now started testing out freemium games with pay-to-play microtransactions on consoles. It'll probably be anohter year before these are common, and then one more before that's all the sh*t you can find.

 

Science time, kiddo! Maybe you're twelve, I don't know. Maybe you don't remember a time when the focus of the gaming industry was on arcade games, with their pay-to-play billing schemes. Arcades got killed off by home consoles, precisely because consoles delivered a business model that consumers wanted - convenience, game ownership, and as many free plays as you want. But game devs got shafted, too, (BOO f*ckING HOO) because after that first point-of-sale, they weren;t able to milk any more cash out of consumers. All that's changing with the growth of networked gaming, though - mostly because companies now have the tools, resources, and obscenely uninformed social climate to unfairly (and, arguably, illegally) impose control into our living rooms. It's not difficult to make a game now which turns back the clock to arcade-style payment management. We're ALREADY seeing it in things like Candy Crush (pay cash or advertise for us, YOU CHOOSE) so, yeah. This is EXACTLY what's going to happen. Games will be released with daily time and life limits, and the only way to increase them is to purchase "premium" tokens.

 

Let me channel Trevor here and sum it up for you: Industries and consumers are always engaged in a cold war; a struggle between consumer interests, and corporate interests. Industry tries to find just the right balance between f*cking over consumers and enticing them - within capitalist society, the question for the businessman is, at what point does the f*cking drive off enough consumers to see a loss in potential profits? The more you people roll over and do things like write three paragraph apologetic tracts defending the absolutely horrible concept of charging players real world money for ingame currency for a game they already "own", the more industry will violate your rights, and the worse a deal you will be given.

 

So thank f*ck for alternatives, huh?

Edited October 9, 2013 by Kifflom

[FrozenInferno]

FYI - GTA5 generated a billion dollars in revenue, big difference between revenue and profit. Rockstar, as the developer, only saw a fraction of that and the rest goes to the publisher (Take-Two), marketing, retailers, etc.

 

Developers are often given the short end of the stick. Publishers usually own the development studio and give them a budget to work with, but take most of the profits and force things like micro transactions into games even if the developer doesn't necessarily want to. DICE once said they would never charge for map packs in Battlefield but EA forced their hand and DICE had to comply. If you think Rockstar is just rolling in a mountain of cash you'd be mistaken. Maybe Take-Two is rolling in cash while Rockstar is stuck trying to fix these Online problems and deal with angry gamers.

[FrozenInferno]

Here's a good read about the business of developing AAA games, with some numbers from big publishers to back it up:

 

http://www.polygon.com/2012/10/1/3439738/the-state-of-games-state-of-aaa