Nuclear Monster

  • Kyle Orland:

    While many consoles used to come bundled with physical copies of games, these days console makers are more likely to include a card with a download code for that free pack-in title. That’s no longer the case at over 5,000 GameStop retail stores worldwide, though, where those digital codes are being replaced with physical disc versions of the same game.

    The new policy went into effect last month, when GameStop “worked with Sony, Microsoft, and EA” to offer a free Madden disc with console purchases rather than offering the official bundles packed with a download code. GameStop’s bundle was also missing a free 12-month subscription to the EA Access program, which offers a selection of legacy titles as free downloads.

    GameStop COO Tony Bartel highlighted the move to physical pack-in games in a recent earnings call and stressed that this isn’t a one-time experiment. “We expect that if a game is provided as a promotional item in a hardware bundle, GameStop will see more of these physical offers than digital pack-ins on upcoming third-party releases.”

    There is an argument to be made that physical discs are better for people buying games because they can trade them in or for areas where internet connections are still poor. There’s also the argument that GameStop just wants to continue the cycle of people buying games, trading them in for almost nothing, and then GameStop marking those games up and reselling them. It isn’t the the worst thing GameStop does and it makes a lot of sense with Nintendo games for example. On the 3DS and Wii-U your online Nintendo Network ID does not allow you to redownload games if your system breaks, is stolen or is lost. You’re at the mercy of their support policies to help. Best to buy physical with Nintendo in any situation.

    Meanwhile, in my home town of Philadelphia and all over the United States people are paying $1,559.48 for a Playstation 4 that normally costs $400. That’s $1,159.48 above the asking price for the courtesy of renting the PS4 over the course of 52 weeks instead of paying for it outright. The Xbox One has the same price. If GameStop is mildly evil then Rent-A-Center is the decaying maw of satan eating away at anyone who can’t afford to buy something today and wants to give their kids a birthday or holiday gift. RAC has been pulling this bullshit for 29 years.

    Rent-A-Center PS4

  • TouchArcade’s Eli Hodapp has an anonymously sourced article from a free-to-play game developer:

    You might not use Facebook, but your connections give you away. If you play with friends, or you have a significant other who plays, we can see the same IP address, and learn who you are playing with. When we don’t know information, we try to gather it in a game. Have you played a game with different country flags? We use those to not only appeal to your nationalistic pride, but to figure out where you are (or where you identify). Your IP address says you are in America, but you buy virtual items featuring the flag of another country, we can start to figure out if you are on vacation, or immigrated. Perhaps English is not your first language. We use all of this to send you personalized Push Notifications, and show you store specials and items we think you will want.

    And if you are a whale, we take Facebook stalking to a whole new level. You spend enough money, we will friend you. Not officially, but with a fake account. Maybe it’s a hot girl who shows too much cleavage? That’s us. We learned as much before friending you, but once you let us in, we have the keys to the kingdom. We will use everything to figure out how to sell to you. I remember we had a whale in one game that loved American Football despite living in Saudi Arabia. We built several custom virtual items in both his favorite team colors and their opponents, just to sell to this one guy. You better believe he bought them. And these are just vanity items. We will flat out adjust a game to make it behave just like it did last time the person bought IAP. Was a level too hard? Well now they are all that same difficulty.

    I’ve seen plenty of bad things in free-to-play games to anecdotally support the anonymous developer in the article above. For example, players earning premium in-game currency through offers that require their social security number and other extremely personal information that nobody should be asking for. The analytics function to dehumanize people playing the game, remove any chance the game had at being legitimately enjoyable without spending more and more money, and churn through players and their cash until the game is no longer profitable for the developer to operate. At this point it will be shut down as ungracefully as possible in order to move players on to the next game and the cycle repeats.

  • Marco Arment:

    I’ve pulled Peace from the App Store. I’m sorry to all of my fans and customers who bought this on my name, expecting it to be supported for longer than two days. It’ll keep working for a long time if you already have it, but with no updates.

    If you want a refund, here’s how you do that.

    It was the best ad blocker out there on iOS 9, because Marco could be trusted to do the right thing as he’s done previously with his apps. It’s a shame to see it pulled, but you’ve got to do what you feel is right. I’ll be switching back to Crystal.

  • iOS 9 is out today for your iPhones and iPads. It is fine, I’ve been running the public betas for a long time now, you could read Federico Viticci’s 23 page review for a second opinion. My favorite feature is that you can now block advertisements and tracking sites (they know what you do and decide to advertise socks to you if you visit a shopping site that sells socks, or just sell your browsing data) using any of a huge list of content blocker apps. I will be using Marco Arment’s Peace, which seems to have the best options and defaults. Unfortunately this will only work in Safari and the mini-browser you see within apps. It won’t work inside Facebook or other apps that have advertising within them, for example.


  • Do you want to be disappointed by an almost metroidvania? Exile’s End is about as disappointing as an almost-metroidvania could get.