Let's talk about what actual game development scams look like

[Yojo0o]

Since it's so easy to point to something you personally don't like and shout "Scam!", I thought it would be nice to hash out exactly what scams exist in this industry, and how the practices may or may not apply to this game.

Here are some scams that are readily identified and analyzed in other games, along with my best attempt at explaining and contextualizing them. To be clear, I'm using the word "scam" broadly here, meaning any sort of method to gain more money from consumers while under-delivering on actual product.

1. Bait and switch: A classic scam. Advertise or promise one thing, deliver on another. Commonly found in gaming with those ads for mobile games, where the actual game is nowhere near what is being advertised. Brazen advertisers will sometimes even steal footage of other games to advertise their games these days. In terms of major releases, examples of this can be seen with games like 2013's Aliens or Watch Dogs, in which footage used to advertise the game was run on an emulator and featured graphics (and mechanics) far beyond what the game actually brought to the table.

2. Predatory DLC: One could reasonably suggest that any DLC is predatory to some extent, but I think most people are happy to toss some money towards things like expansions. The worst examples of DLC are when day 1 releases chopped up, with significant portions of the game being locked away unless you pay extra for no reason other than greed. I still never got the full Mass Effect 3 experience, despite buying the damn game, because of the chapters and potential crew members that I couldn't pay extra for.

3. Exploitation of FOMO: FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) is a powerful motivator, and unscrupulous developers will often specifically engineer it in order to drive sales. Common examples of this are exclusivity deals and/or preorder deals. This was (and perhaps still is, I haven't checked recently), commonly seen in the Assassin's Creed series: Buying a game for a specific platform, or buying it before it was released, would unlock a certain set of armor or a special mission in the game. This encourages players to buy the game before they can even read reviews for it.

4. Sale of future goods: I'm pretty sure this was/is a thing with Star Citizen, but that game at least is somewhat playable, so let's not touch it. Instead, let's look at a more overtly failed project: Chronicles of Elyria. For those who haven't heard of it, that's a kickstarter MMO that raised millions of dollars and shows no signs of ever actually launching, and even after the original funding ended, the devs continued to raise more funds by selling plots of land and accompanying titles within the game world to would-be players of the game, for real money. This sort of practice is pretty common for a lot of struggling unreleased MMOs.

5. Exploitation of the Sunk Cost Fallacy: Building on point #4, this is more of a broad practice that can be applied in many ways. The idea is that, once people have bought in on a game, they're more likely to throw even more money at it to get what they want, because they've already sunk a considerable sum into the game. This is commonly seen in pay-to-win online games like Black Desert Online, Genshin Impact, or recently Diablo Immortal, with monetization schemes designed to get easy money spent early from players so that they're more likely to invest more and more as they continue to play the game.

6. Abandoning an unfinished game: This can be a direct scam, or an unfortunate result of overblown ambitions for an incapable dev team. Either way, it's a real risk these days. Plenty of Kickstarter or other crowd-funded games simply never release, and it's reasonable to expect that any remaining raised funds simply get pocketed by the company owner when they disappear. This is most commonly seen with small indie developers, especially if they're first-time developers, because they don't really have a company or reputation to protect and can just vanish from the public eye without too much trouble.

These are the main scams of the industry that I can personally come up with. I don't think any of them are applicable to Baldur's Gate 3, thankfully. Does anybody disagree? Did I miss any types of scams? Can we ease up on calling this game a scam after agreeing on what a scam would actually look like?

[desrtfox071]

Actually, about half of those aren't, in fact, scams, just poor choices by consumers.

A scam has to involve dishonesty and fraud. In other words a scam requires that the "scammers" actually display dishonesty. Say, like ENRON or Theranos or more generally something like a Ponzi scheme. Overambition or missing dates or content, aren't scams. Even exploiting human nature like the sunk cost fallacy isn't a scam, just underhanded or maybe unethical if you prefer that term.

So, by my measure, only your #1 is an actual scam and part of #6. Everything else are just unfortunate events.

I am certainly in agreement with you that the BG3 EA isn't even close to a scam, or even any of your other unfortunate listings here. In fact, aside from taking longer than many expected, the BG3 EA seems to be fine.

[Yojo0o]

Originally posted by desrtfox071:

Actually, about half of those aren't, in fact, scams, just poor choices by consumers.

A scam has to involve dishonesty and fraud. In other words a scam requires that the "scammers" actually display dishonesty. Say, like ENRON or Theranos or more generally something like a Ponzi scheme. Overambition or missing dates or content, aren't scams. Even exploiting human nature like the sunk cost fallacy isn't a scam, just underhanded or maybe unethical if you prefer that term.

So, by my measure, only your #1 is an actual scam and part of #6. Everything else are just unfortunate events.

I am certainly in agreement with you that the BG3 EA isn't even close to a scam, or even any of your other unfortunate listings here. In fact, aside from taking longer than many expected, the BG3 EA seems to be fine.

That's a fair point, though I would counter that it boils down to the intent behind the actions, which is impossible to objectively establish most of the time. I'm trying to use "scam" as a catch-all to cover dishonest, malicious, anti-consumer practices. Also, even by a stricter definition, I hope you'll still agree that #4 is a scam if the devs have no real plan or expectation to actually deliver on such future goods, as is the case with the example I gave.

[desrtfox071]

Originally posted by Yojo0o:

Originally posted by desrtfox071:

Actually, about half of those aren't, in fact, scams, just poor choices by consumers.

A scam has to involve dishonesty and fraud. In other words a scam requires that the "scammers" actually display dishonesty. Say, like ENRON or Theranos or more generally something like a Ponzi scheme. Overambition or missing dates or content, aren't scams. Even exploiting human nature like the sunk cost fallacy isn't a scam, just underhanded or maybe unethical if you prefer that term.

So, by my measure, only your #1 is an actual scam and part of #6. Everything else are just unfortunate events.

I am certainly in agreement with you that the BG3 EA isn't even close to a scam, or even any of your other unfortunate listings here. In fact, aside from taking longer than many expected, the BG3 EA seems to be fine.

That's a fair point, though I would counter that it boils down to the intent behind the actions, which is impossible to objectively establish most of the time. I'm trying to use "scam" as a catch-all to cover dishonest, malicious, anti-consumer practices. Also, even by a stricter definition, I hope you'll still agree that #4 is a scam if the devs have no real plan or expectation to actually deliver on such future goods, as is the case with the example I gave.

Ah, yes, I would accept #4 using the actual definition of a scam (it's not really a stricter version, just accurate), because you specified the "no intention" aspect, which is of course - fraud. There are many types of unethical behavior, they aren't all scams. Sorry I missed #4 on my first go through and thanks for the correction.

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

Originally posted by Yojo0o:

Since it's so easy to point to something you personally don't like and shout "Scam!", I thought it would be nice to hash out exactly what scams exist in this industry, and how the practices may or may not apply to this game.

Here's a fun question:

Given we can identify plenty of games on Steam that have very obvious anti-consumer practices and scams. What do you expect to be done about it given Steam has no interest on actively monitoring or cracking down on shady game developers because the platform is more interested in profits and not its consumers?

[Yojo0o]

Originally posted by Tech-Priest:

Originally posted by Yojo0o:

Since it's so easy to point to something you personally don't like and shout "Scam!", I thought it would be nice to hash out exactly what scams exist in this industry, and how the practices may or may not apply to this game.

Here's a fun question:

Given we can identify plenty of games on Steam that have very obvious anti-consumer practices and scams. What do you expect to be done about it given Steam has no interest on actively monitoring or cracking down on shady game developers because the platform is more interested in profits and not its consumers?

That's a good question, but I'm not sure whether or not to blame Steam. And this is hardly just a Steam problem. Kickstarter, for example, enables the hell out of a lot of fake projects.

I'd rather see major governments wisen up to the shady ♥♥♥♥ that the industry is capable of and set some regulations to make some of these things illegal. And from the other direction, consumers need to get educated as to where to throw their dollars and to stop enabling practices like these.

[The Seraph of Tomorrow]

Originally posted by Yojo0o:

Originally posted by Tech-Priest:

Here's a fun question:

Given we can identify plenty of games on Steam that have very obvious anti-consumer practices and scams. What do you expect to be done about it given Steam has no interest on actively monitoring or cracking down on shady game developers because the platform is more interested in profits and not its consumers?

That's a good question, but I'm not sure whether or not to blame Steam. And this is hardly just a Steam problem. Kickstarter, for example, enables the hell out of a lot of fake projects.

I'd rather see major governments wisen up to the shady ♥♥♥♥ that the industry is capable of and set some regulations to make some of these things illegal. And from the other direction, consumers need to get educated as to where to throw their dollars and to stop enabling practices like these.

Well that is certainly an optimistic outlook. I tend to have the outlook that the entire market over the past 10 years has been shifted to encourage these bad practices.

[VhagarTheLastOne]

Scams, really? First Crunch and now scams. Where is game industry headed.

[addictedtotanks]

Baldur's Gate's biggest problem is, simply releasing into Early Access way too early and not really giving a decent road map or a decent indication of what content outside of the completion of the story (because obviously the complete version will contain the full story).

I got EA back when it was announced, and have barely touched the game since, as I see no point. They haven't added a single race I find remotely interesting, the customisation options are just as uninteresting as in the beginning, the released races aren't too excited, and I don't think they've done a good release order for the classes so far.

Not showing a decent roadmap or what's on the menu is a bad decision, because if I factor in what I've said above, and consider that it is supposed to be released in 6 months, it makes me wonder how much content they're going to even cram in. How many more races and classes can I even expect? At this rate it feels like very few.
It could be a lot, for all I know they could drop a new race and class every month between now and release. Or perhaps not every class or race will go through EA and will simply be there on release.

Is it a scam? Definitely not. But, there's definitely (imo) been some bad choices regarding the early access that is what has lead people to discontent.

Again, factoring in what I've said, if you're someone like me, who doesn't give a ♥♥♥♥ about gnomes and finds them dull and uninteresting (theres a large chunk of us) and also never plays bards because they too are uninteresting (again, a large chunk of us) then the last major update is completely underwhelming.


It's all really about knowledge, and time. No scam, just no real ability to manage expectations

[dulany67]

Originally posted by addictedtotanks:

Baldur's Gate's biggest problem is, simply releasing into Early Access way too early and not really giving a decent road map or a decent indication of what content outside of the completion of the story (because obviously the complete version will contain the full story).

It was released too early, but a roadmap isn't the positive for Larian that you think it will be. TBH, the dangers of releasing a roadmap far outstrip any negativity someone who feels the way you do might express.

First, you've already paid your money, and you can't get it back. Second, those who have not purchased will either be happy and buy at release, or they will be unhappy and not buy. They believe that what they will put out will be attractive to a whole lot of people, and releasing a roadmap that could hurt sales momentum is not in their interest.

They have a culturally popular IP. They have a legendary IP in gaming. They will get free advertising from gaming sites at release. What they have presented so far has been very popular based on steam reviews. At this point, the only way they can screw it up is to release in a buggy mess or through massive negative response. So they eliminate the possibility of giving naysayers specifics they complain about, and work on polishing the game. Complaints about the length of time it's in EA mean nothing- after all, if you're mad the game isn't out, it's because you want to play it.

[Yojo0o]

I find a road map to be fundamentally a tool of first-time developers getting started with Kickstarter and similar. It takes the place of promises and goals to present to investors, which in their case are the individual people making pledges to the game. They're who the devs need to keep appraised and content with the speed of development.

For an established studio, it strikes me as more transparency than is warranted. We don't really need to know what they're doing on a week-to-week basis the way we might with devs who have never actually produced before. If you want to know what Larian is capable of, they have a significant pedigree of products to judge them by.

[sethmage]

Originally posted by addictedtotanks:

Baldur's Gate's biggest problem is, simply releasing into Early Access way too early and not really giving a decent road map or a decent indication of what content outside of the completion of the story (because obviously the complete version will contain the full story).

disagreeing on both accounts
1. there is no definition how long game should be in EA before releasing, so this is subjective
2. road map? hell no...look how many topics are larian are scammers, can you imagine what would happen if they god forbid missed the date?

personally what i think larian should do is to make some extra hoops to get the EA, for example: interested players should ask for access via e-mail, i've seen it few games going that way, that would cut 90% impulsive buyers. also get some forum for owners only (keep of course one for all). i visit here forum on the daily basis, and after few minutes i leave because of all the same BS why still in EA, larian scammed us...etc, but from time to time i see interesting topic with good amount of info and reasonable discussion.

[inca]

yeah

[Dis Lexic]

Personally, I've never liked roadmaps for much the same reason as I dont like being given release dates before the game is done. It creates an external deadline that might be unreasonably to meet or might be missed due to unforseen events. Its those same issues that ended up shooting Cyberpunk in the foot. It would be nice to have a list of things that will be in the game, but I wouldnt want a list of times when certain things would be released or done. Obveously, they need something internally, but we dont really need to know them.

[Ronin Gamer]

Originally posted by Dis Lexic:

Personally, I've never liked roadmaps for much the same reason as I dont like being given release dates before the game is done. It creates an external deadline that might be unreasonably to meet or might be missed due to unforseen events. Its those same issues that ended up shooting Cyberpunk in the foot. It would be nice to have a list of things that will be in the game, but I wouldnt want a list of times when certain things would be released or done. Obveously, they need something internally, but we dont really need to know them.

Honestly that is the reason a lot of games that hard fumble end up doing so, because a time table is set and they have to scramble to meet it.

[Dis Lexic]

Quite frankly, I dont think that any game should give definitive dates until the game is in the absolute final round of testing. And even then, better to give vague ideas like Larian has. Until the game is finished and packaged, they should not give definitive release dates.