We Support an R18+ game Classification

Gamers today are a fickle bunch; we complain about nearly everything companies do to make money and sometimes we forget that a company exists for one reason, to make money. This leads to a sense of entitlement with some gamers that they disserve certain things from the gaming companies that are willing to invest their money into the industry.

Of course with gamers, as is their right to do, they voice their opinion like I am doing now. That doesn’t mean their opinion is right (or even logical), because they tend to have a view that they, as a gamer, are entitled to things for free.

I am excluding patches here, do not get me wrong, I am not defending a company that releases a faulty product and doesn’t fix it. You have a right to complain about that and you have good reason to be annoyed if you can’t play that game online or offline until it is fixed. It is a faulty product and should be treated as such.

That isn’t what I am talking about though; I am talking about those gamers out there who believe things like DLC, Extra Maps, additional modes, extra console functionality and that sort of thing should be free because they are owed something by these companies. Those people are complete idiots and need a dose of reality.

Do you think that Xbox Live should be free because PSN is? Or that it is free on PC? Then go play on PSN and the PC, if you want to play on Xbox Live then you have no choice but to pay Microsoft and like it. Looking by the amount of people that are doing that, it seems that you would be in the minority.

If you believe that Sony should put cross game chat in the PS3 and make it not part of the Playstation Plus service, you obviously don’t know how to make money. When you bought your PS3 did someone promise you that cross game chat would be free and wrote that down in your user manual and you then signed a contract?

When you bought Left 4 Dead, did they tell you that a sequel would be announced and released a year later? No, does that affect your own enjoyment of Left 4 Dead? I don’t think so, if you were one of the people complaining you need a dose of reality. So Valve used to support their games, and still do with some of them, better than anyone. Yet 5 million people buy Madden every year, if anyone owes anyone anything it is the gamers owing Valve to thank them for the support they have given you for FREE.

On a whole I think that it is PC gamers and ex PC gamers that are the worst of the lost when it comes to this. They have been spoiled by companies like Valve updating there games for free years after they have been released. Yes it is great that Valve does that for its customers and builds loyalty to the company, but that is no reason for gamers to expect every or any company to do that.

We complain about Activision being greedy and evil, me included, but they are making a lot of money, keeping their share holders happy and are helping keep the gaming industry strong. I think we should be thankful for all the free things that we are getting from companies now.

Remember back to the days of Playstation, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64 and even the PS2 era before we had hard drives and robust online delivery services. We never got anything for free, no online services, no demos unless we bought a magazine, no patches for a broken game. These are things we are given for free now, yet we still find a way to complain about them. People still complain about the price to add on content yet it is cheaper than the expansion packs that were released on the PC back in the day.

If you want to complain about patches, online fees and paid DLC that’s fine, go make a console and give it away for free, see what it is like to do hard work and have people think they are entitled to it and giving you nothing in return. That is what these gamers want companies to do, give them more and more yet they don’t pay anything extra. It just doesn’t make logical sense.

If you want to complain about the Modern Warfare map pack pricing yet you still buy it. You are telling Activision that it is ok; you are the cause of your own problem. Until gamers realise that they can vote with their wallets, the minority complaining on a random internet forum won’t change anything.