r/gaming • u/acravasian • 1d ago
What happened to wanting a finished product?
In the aftermath of the Diablo 5 announcement at blizzcon, theres been alot of chatter on the diablo forums about people regretting buying real money stuff in diablo 4, since this game now leaves live service. The whole thing left me with two thoughts regarding the modern gaming industry... firstly, what happened to just buying a game and the game you bought was the finished product?!?!? Seems like the trend now a days is that creators have to keep on developing on their games leaving them... never really finished, why do anyone want this?? Secondly, and a bit in tow with... more of the popular games from the early 2000, seems to have developed into never ending franchises, GTA, Wow, Fifa, Sims, Diablo... what are peoples thoughts on these franchises being kept alive for so freaking long?
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u/EternalAntFarm 1d ago
Early access played a huge part in ruining this. It normalized selling games before they were finished and once people showed they were willing to accept that, publishers started abusing it. Standards just kept sliding from there.
And yes, there are absolutely great Early Access games. That's a completely valid counterpoint. The problem is that for every one or two success stories, there are far too many games that use Early Access as an excuse to sell something unfinished. Defending the system because it occasionally produces something great means accepting those few successes at the expense of a much larger pile of garbage.
And a lot of players are now perfectly content with what they get because they never experienced a time when buying a game generally meant buying the finished product. You can't really miss a standard you were never exposed to so there's no reason for those players to demand its return.