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About LinkBacksDoesn't seem too good moving forwards.
Doesn't seem too good moving forwards.
Jon
Well, "income" is technically the wrong metric. A more accurate one would be "the benefit of shareholders". And pretty much ALL companies do that, not least because they are almost certainly legally obliged to. The issue is how they choose to do it. It might be that superb customer service is a method used but even if it is, they're doing so because it is in the perceivd best interest of the shareholders to do so. Companies aren't there to act for customers, other than as a means to an end. That's why we have charities, and public services. Note: not-for-profit companies are the exception that proves the rule but have a special constitution and legal status that enables them to operate as NFP, which is why I said "pretty much" all companies, not just "all".Originally Posted by Gibson
Bear in mind companies are owned by shareholders, and company bosses are just employees, working for the company that's owned by shareholders. Not that many bosses of very large companies act like that with what they vote to pay themselves, but they are.
Customer satisfaction, where it is much of a concern at all, is a by-product, a means to an end. No more. Take that customer service thing I mentioned .... provide great customer service and you tend to get lots of repeat business, personal recommendations, etc, leading to increased long term sales and revenue which, of course, is in the interests of the shareholders provided it doesn't cost more than that benefit gains them to do it. It's typically short-term expensive, but can be long-term beneficial. Sometimes.
Cynical? M'oi?
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
To avoid breaking the rules I won't post the video directly but I recommend watching The Spiffing Brits latest video from the 7th - with the Thumbnail 'I did it again'
https://www.youtube.com/c/thespiffingbrit/videos
Last edited by AGTDenton; 11-07-2022 at 02:46 PM.
What brought me back to this thread now? A recommendation from a friend that I look at Anno 1800 ... so I did.
Several versions are available, incuding standard (£50) and 4-season pass (£100, for standard plus 3 seasons of DLC). So .... by the standards of the actions in this thread, why would I even consider the 4-season pass when, if Ubi get bored running more servers, there's at least a question-mark over those DLC seasons? Rhetorical question, by the way.
To me, the actions of Ubi that this thread is about put a HUGE doubt in my mind about even considering the basic standard edition, so I probably will just give the whole thing a pass. Unintended consequences, Ubisoft. And sure, my £50 is neither here nor there to them, but I wonder how widespread that reaction is? It's certaon older games right now, but today's big-price games will be tomorrow's "older" games at some point.
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
I have hours and hours on that game and all the DLC. Well worth it.
I don't play multiplayer but you are correct. It's a travesty what they have done.
Anno 2070 for example on Steam has gone from good ratings to overwhelmingly negative. All to do with the DLC
I think the negative feedback will eventually get them to reconsider. I don't mind them shutting off the multiplayer servers but to stop DLC working, even on single player? Doesn't seem right at all.
Ubisoft are really shafting their customers. For those that have Star Trek Bridge Crew you used to be able to use voice commands, then Ubisoft decided it didn't want to renew its contract with IBM and then all voice commands are gone lol
Last edited by Jonj1611; 23-07-2022 at 03:13 PM.
Jon
The game itself? I don't doubt it.
My concern is that the actions Ubi have taken says, to me, that their attitude to customers utterly stinks. As you said, Jonj, they are "really shafting" customers, and I kinda subscribe to the old adage ... "fool me once, shame on you, but fool me twice and shame on me". I don't see the Ubi corporate leopard changing its spots and if they did it once .... ?
Do I even want to give a company with that mindset any of my money? If I bought even the latest Anno knowing that, it'd have to be through gritted teeth and that, i suspect, would sour my gaming experiencce no matter how good the game itself was.
Sometimes it's a bit 'cutting off nose to spite face" of me but I can be a bit vindictive over companies I see as nasty. It's probably peurile of me as I know full well most (nearly all) are sharks with zero regard for customers except in so far as it affects them negatively. Sometimes, there's little choice but to grit my teeth and buy anyway - like with CPUs and GPUs (expecially 'gaming' GPUs .... there's not exactly a wide range of options. So it can be either "suck it up" or just go without.
But it leaves a very bad taste in my mouth. As an example of avoiding spending money with those that annoy me, I am still sufficiently pi.... erm, irritated at the EU over Brexit that I actively go out of my way to avoid buyiing almost anything from the EU. Recent such avoidances include about £20k in kitchen units, another £3k in espresso equipment, and ruling out BMW etc for out next (probaby electric, or hybrid) car. I haven't blacklisted my favourite (San Marzano) tinned tomatoes and still but an occasional bottle of flavoured 'syrup' from a French company but it's pretty trivial compared to cars and kitchens. It's also one reason why I'm still hesitating about a Prusa 3D printer. Not sure on that one, yet.
There's a number of companies that have been on my "no way in hell" list, including one high street bank, for decades. Are they ever coming of it? Not this side of my grave, they aren't.
On the other hand, where companies go out of their way to give good customer service, I tend to not even bother looking alsewhere. One small car mechanic was a brand new startup when I started going there fr servicing/repairs etc and I still do 20 years later, and I've been buying car hifi at the same place since the '70s.
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
I used to be a fan of the Might and Magic games back in the day. Sadly the New World Computing company that sold those games went bust, and Ubi bought the rights. It seems that is all they bought though, the brand, the rights to the existing games. Although the M&M games didn't require online access to work, they did have a system of looking for patches on start up and like a lot of games you really needed those patches to work. For the cost of keeping the old NWC domain and running a VM with an file server on it they could have looked after those old games, but they didn't. They bought out a bunch of M&M branded games that were of no interest. It just feels like as a customer they *want* to annoy me.
Apparently they are getting a crew that usually does Far Cry games to knock out another Might and Magic episode. I quite enjoy Far Cry games, but they are rather predictable so I'm not expecting great things from the latest reboot.
There's a kind sad nostalgia running through a lot of this, DwU, and I guess not just in gaming. It seems to come down to a 'new' industry (computer gaming in this case) evolving and LOTS of relatively small (or startup) companies coming up with new ideas. Over time, all those small companies get bought (or go bust) and the market .... I dunno, consolidates? Codifies?
The end result is we tend towards moopolistic type behaviours, even if it's technically a duopoly (CPUs, or until/unless Intel gets seriously involved, GPUs). At best, we get oligopolies but even then, we don't really need what would be illegal collusion to impact on choice. The confluence of their own best interests is enough and we end up with minimal competitiveness. We also end up with stifled innovation (such as in gaming) not least because projexts get bigger and bigger, and exponentially more expensive so only those now overly-dominant oligopoly companies can afford to compete.
And as a result, they tend to care only about their own bottom line, which is hardly surprising as it's how busness works. Even in my own pre-retirement business life, I only took jobs if it was in my best interests and since my primary limited resource was time, if one job earned me £x and the other was £2x (or more) guess which one I took? (Note - I should say usually took, but sometimes my "best interest" included being really interested in the lower paid one and bored rigid by the higher paid one so I took the lower. Occasionally.)
I guess what it comes down to with support for older games is essentially the same thing - these companies know which end of the market butters their bread, and so give few, if any, hoots about supporting older games. The larger the company the truer that is, but only because the smaller ones know that a large chunk off their success depends on the intensity of the fan base. The larger ones don't care about the relatively small proportion of serious fans - they're after the big hit of profit on new releass, knowing full well that most gamers get bored after a given period and move on the the next new release, and the next big profit hit. The difference between big and small, IMHO, is not really in their desire to support fan-gamers but in that the smaller companies are more dependent on them to fulfil their desire to succeed and make profits than it is with the big ones. In other words, they're all motivated by profit but the mechanism by which they get there varies a bit.
To be honest, I can't really criticise that as my business motivation wasn't much different - serve my own vested interest. I wonder how many naive individuals seeing that have ever taken a punt on a new job because it simply paid much better? Again, serving their own vested interest. Those working in jobs that aren't the best paid, often including NHS staff for instance, get my admiration for not going for the quick buck, but even there, more than a small number that I know have left to go private over pay, or even emigrated for a better life. I don't blame them, but again, they're serving ther own bes interest .... as do we all.
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
Must admit I can see another video game crash if they all keep pumping out garbage and killing off old games.
This is why they stopped using Gamespy type services, the gamer had too much control.
It's part of why I have long refused to use Steam - it's not what they do, or have done, it's what they could do.
It's also at the core of my detestation of what MS did with Windows, round about the launch of W8. It wasn't (primarily) what W8 was, but where it was leading. Android is already there, as is Apple.
They're all like drug pushers for high-tech - get everyone hooked and dependent, then start squeezing.
Too much control for them, not enough for us all, even over our own devices.
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
AGTDenton (24-07-2022)
Which to me seems harsh. Sure steam makes a healthy profit in ways that sometimes seem a bit much, and Steam certainly isn't perfect, but Valve have created a platform where they support emerging games and technologies along with things like modding.
For me the likes of Ubi and EA are just plain disrespectful of their customers. I haven't had cause to feel that with Valve, so until they actually annoy me I'll keep using them. Well, if the game isn't on GoG anyway.
But the fact remains that they can, and have, acted as their own judge, jury and executioner over suspending accounts or even permanently banning them. They're a Star Chamber, and unaccountable.
So are most forums, TBH, but the difference is, I don't stand to lose any benefit to an expenditure of hundreds, possibly thousands of £/$/whatever, if a forum bans me.
It's a personal call, of course, and I don't expect many gamers to see it my way but with the possible exception of one or two games (that I have resisted, to date) I am simply not willing to offer my gaming expenditure to them as a hostage to fortune. For me, it's not harsh at all, simply a position I am not prepared to put myself in. For me, not doing it is a no-brainer. For others, of course YMMV.
I do understsnd the "until they upset me" rationale. It's how I treat most companies I buy from - the difference being the others can't deny me access to stuff already paid for and on my system(s) because of denial via validation/activation servers .... whether explicitly via a ban, or implicitly via shutting stuff down.
It's all very well that they haven't actually annoyed you .... yet. Hopefully they never do, and probably they won't. But if you do draw the short straw, after spending £x/year for years, it'll be too late (*). That is my objection. Well, one of them. There's others, but that's a biggie.
(*) The degree of disadvantage depends on how you play games. I buy relatively few these days but do like to go back, often years later, and replay those I got a lot out of the first (second, third, etc) time. Right now, Return To Castle Wolfenstein, for example. I even bought it again (for a couple of quid) on GoG, simply to have a DRM-free version for ease of use.
But that is a different way of gaming to many others, who buy a game, play it to death for a while then move on, rarely or never going back. For them, they've had their money's worth when they move on. But fo me, going back many years later, the value when buying isn't of the 'play now, gone tomorrow' type. The same logic is why after using Photoshop since about v2 or v3, I refused point blank to go down the subscription path. When and if I buy software, it's to allow the current version, which presently meets my needs, to remain the version I use umtil/unless my needs change so that a new or upgrade version becomes a value propostion. Again, I'm not willing to set myself up as a hostage to fortune by paying them for a so-called software "service". No way i hell. So I switched and bought ACDSee and Affinity instead, as a Photoshop/Lightroom pair.
A lesson learned from PeterB about dignity in adversity, so Peter, In Memorium, "Onwards and Upwards".
I do worry that if my Steam account for hacked and banned then I would lose a bunch of games, and I've even thought about just having an account per game and family sharing them so we could play two games from the same account at the same time. Right now I play so little it's not an issue. And of the games I would play again (or like to given the time) it's not going to cost me much to rebuy from a different platform if it does all go wrong.
The endless loop of sales and needlessly high prices on older games does put me off buying more than the concern about them becoming (more?) evil though.
Not sure if anyone missed it but there was an announcement a few weeks ago for Anno 2070. Looks like DLC etc and multiplayer will still work :
Hey Anno Community,
It’s time for an update on Anno 2070, we know many of you have been waiting for news.
We have worked hard this summer to update the game, upgrade and replace various legacy online services and test if it all runs smoothly in the end. Thank you to the testers from our community who helped us find some newly introduced bugs.
Today, we are happy to announce that we will release an update to Anno 2070 on September 7th that will allow you to continue to play for hopefully many more years to come.
After installing said update, you will be able to do World Events and vote in the regular council elections as you used to. You will also keep your full progression and be able to continue your existing savegames including your Arks and their content.
For the multiplayer fans, be it in coop mode or PvP, you dive right back into the Domination Mode or simply a regular multiplayer match.
In fact, your experience should even be a bit smoother now than before: We ported the game to 64bit, which enables the game to address all your PC’s memory. Additionally, the new online services should make for a nicer matchmaking experience. And you can still use the in-game friendslist to set up matches.
Anno 2070 will enter maintenance mode on September 6th, 6AM CEST/UTC+2. During this maintenance, we’re going to migrate all your progression to the new version. This maintenance could take up to 24h, meaning that from 6AM CEST/UTC+2 on September 7th onward, you can dive into the updated version of Anno 2070.
Until this date, the old servers will remain online!
Be assured, we will give you an update as soon as the maintenance is over.
Thank you for your support – and a special shout-out to the small crew that worked on the update over the last months!
Please note: Due to the changes done, we unfortunately can’t guarantee that old mods etc. are still working with this new version of Anno 2070.
Jon
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