Games Buttflapper • Now • 90%

Why does the PC gaming industry still use such deceptive pricing?

Battlefield 2042 is $60 right now. One of my friends on Steam plays Battlefield 2042 and I thought hey, that would be pretty cool to play with him. I'm sure it wouldn't be that much because that game came out a long time ago and was extremely poorly received and like, I'm sure it would be really easy to buy that game or get it now since it's been so long and again, very low reviews. The game is $60!! But when it goes on sale, it's like 8$, so 80% off. Truly unbelievable. Why do they do this? Like, they're basically trying to kill the game or something because no one in their right mind would pay $60 for this game, so 90% of the time when it's *not* on sale, no one buys it or wants to try it out... Also, lots of old games that are "on sale" constantly for like $5 and the base price is 40-60$, so it makes it seem like SUCH a good deal, when in reality, the value has just depreciated... They never seem to lower the base cost of anything, making it deceptive. Is it really 80% off of a $60 game if no one in their right f*cking mind would pay that much for it ever?

Games Buttflapper • Now • 96%

Corporate greed is killing RuneScape. What do people play instead?

RuneScape was my favorite game of all time when I was a kid. I'd play it for at least 8 hours a day every day, and never get bored. Now, RuneScape is RuneScape 3, terribly infested gambling microtransaction mess that looks like a really bad early access game, or Oldschool RuneScape, which is really fun, but is infested with bots. It's honestly so bad. I tried to play it and it feels so... good, but also low effort. The worst part, however, is the corporate greed. Jagex, the company that developes Runescape, has been sold numerous times. This time, it's owned by some Venture Capital or investment firm, the kind that kills games off to gain their IP and then sell them for huge amounts of money (CVC Capital Partners and Haveli Investments). The first thing they've done is raise the subscription of Runescape to nearly $15, which is truly nuts. This game used to be like $8 a month previously, some are still paying that much.... It's sad to see corporate greed kill such a great game. Idk what to even play now....

Games Buttflapper • Now • 95%

Starfield's first DLC is one of the worst Bethesda DLCs of all time

[Starfield steam page](https://store.steampowered.com/app/2721670/Starfield__Shattered_Space/&ved=2ahUKEwimiNqsyfCIAxXV38kDHbq_FuQQjjh6BAgSEAE&usg=AOvVaw1sQimjjbz-yyg6jjcWEflS) for the DLC currently shows eight user review score of 41%, making this one of the worst Bethesda DLC's released of all time. This is so horribly, shockingly bad for Bethesda, because it shows as a gaming company, they are no longer capable of delivering a really good gaming experience as they had in the past. Some of the reviews sum up quite nicely what is wrong with this DLC.... > Less content than any skyrim DLC. Less than The Fallout 4 story DLCs. Doesn't change of the complaints people had with the base game, writing is still at a 4th grade level. > Quick: If you are looking to buy my answer is no, you aren't missing much content. I was really hoping to enjoy this DLC. Took about 4 hours for the main story and maybe 2 more hours to 100% the achievements. These two reviews I think really summed up what Starfield has become, $70 for an AAAA title that has extremely little buy-in from the community, horrifically low amount of replayability and can be breezed through easily. It's mind-boggling to see this

Games Buttflapper • Now • 92%

What happened to the turn based RPG and RTS genres?

I remember fondly the days of playing [Heroes of Might and Magic II](https://www.gog.com/en/game/heroes_of_might_and_magic_2_gold_edition), never played HOMM3 or anything after, but as I looked at the latest and most "recent" heroes games... they're all rated/reviewed SO harshly. Apparently, they never gained steam like the earlier titles. RTS seems to have the same issue, tapering off. Starcraft is basically dried up and dead, and we never got another Warcraft unfortunately. Even WC3 Reforged was a total flop/disaster, people were hoping one day to get Warcraft 4. Would've been nice, honestly.... But it never happened. as of today, I can't find a single RTS or RPG I actually enjoy that isn't some old 'classic'. What happened to these genres?

Games Buttflapper • Now • 93%

Why do Counterstrike and the other top 10 games on Steam NEVER change?

https://steamcharts.com/ On Steamcharts, Counterstrike has been the #1 game on Steam every single day I have EVER looked at this site, for at least 3 years now. This top 10 has basically been the same for years... I don't get it. Do people just not play anything else? Dota, Rust, PUBG, GTA V, Call of Duty, Apex.... Admittedly, Satisfactory is new to the top 10. Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege FINALLY fell out of the top 10, adn so did Destiny 2. It just feels like it never changes, which is crazy.. what happened?

Technology Buttflapper • Now • 97%

Social media is becoming infested with climate change denial and misinformation

Asheville NC and Western NC has been destroyed by hurricane Helene and flooding. People are saying the same boring tired things there and sharing the same misinformation. > This is just ordinary weather which happens all the time. > The only thing we can do is pray. > Climate change isn't real This is dangerous to say things like this because it makes people believe that there's no climate change, and that is ordinary and expected when that's not even remotely true. It's leading people to ignorantly become complacent, not contact their government, and when disasters like hurricanes happen, they don't evacuate because they don't believe it'll be serious. I started commenting on everything telling people that climate change is causing these issues and got the most unhinged glue-sniffer responses ever like > 'this has always been like this' or 'liberal snowflake tears' and the worst ones are always religious. > 'we can't do anything to save our planet, you need to pray. Send your prayers' God didn't create this issue? We are ruining our planet! Example 1. We now have to surround hospital in Tampa Florida with a literal fucking wall just for ordinary storms https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTFSX8mRS/ > @Kevin R. Sullivan:Hurricanes have nothing to do with climate change Deranged comments like this are very dangerous and spread false misinformation

Games Buttflapper • Now • 95%

I think Sims is a dead franchise now

After being incredibly disappointed by the release of Sims 4, I was someone holding out hope for Sims 5 that they would have realized, “Hey, people really didn't want us to do anything multiplayer in Sims 4. Maybe that means we should go back and make an actual good Sims game?” But instead, we get this awful news that Sims will be just like Fortnite, heavily monetized with its own store, basically following the model of Fallout games with creation club, in a sense. Completely the opposite of what players asked for, and crushing all of our hopes and dreams of playing a new Sims game that's just like Sims 3.... To me, this really kills the entire franchise for me. I don't think there's any hope for it, I think this is a death blow, basically an execution of the franchise and turning it into the most low value (to the consumer, mind you) dribble that they could have possibly came up with. There is nothing they could have announced that is worse than a multiplayer version of Sims with microtransactions, that's basically just Sims mobile that you can play on your PC! Sims 4 is already completely unplayable for me, because there's no content, it's just stupid packs and kids and stuff and little micro bundles. There's nothing fun about the game, and you see people streaming it, it's just building. That's all they are ever doing. Just building crap. It's even worse that there's no competitor because it's so incredibly challenging to make a game like The Sims. Horrifically challenging, life by me was completely gutted and canceled, and that was one of the major games that people were looking forward to. There is still paralives, But they are so early access and have no release date at all. It could be 10 years from now that they finish their game or longer. TL;DR: Sims 4 ruined by surprise multiplayer mechanics that were removed. Sims 5 canceled in place of multiplayer with microtransaction store like Fallout creation club. Barely any competitors, life by me canceled. Franchise is dead in the water

Technology Buttflapper • Now • 93%

Amazon's Monopoly of the tech industry is ruining the US economy

I wanted to get printer photo paper for my printer, a Canon. I went to Walmart, They had nothing. Went to Target, they had one pack of photo paper and it was crazy expensive, so I went to micro center. That one was just as expensive. So finally I went back to Amazon, which I was trying to avoid, and saw the price 25 to 40% lower than anywhere I had been. Literally everything that I was looking for, I could find within seconds. Not even Best buy has even close to the amount of inventory or variety, even when you're shopping online.... Therefore, I think Amazon has a literal monopoly in the tech industry right now, you're literally forced to buy from them, because unless you have the money and financial fortitude to protest with your wallet, you're going to be buying from them. There's no other choice. They have so aggressively and dominantly taken over the supply chain market that no other tech company can currently compete with them in any aspect at all. You will be paying 40 to 50% more on everything by cutting out Amazon, and no one has the money for that anymore unless you're upper middle class or above

Technology Buttflapper • Now • 88%

Health management platforms have to be the biggest waste of money I've ever seen

Clinical information systems and healthcare patient portals are proving to be a significant waste of money. Millions of dollars are invested into developing and maintaining these platforms, often by third-party vendors, to provide patients with online access to their medical records. While the idea behind these portals is great in theory, the execution falls flat when healthcare providers continue to send massive amounts of paper copies through the mail, despite the digital system. This redundancy is both financially wasteful and environmentally harmful, especially when patients like me would prefer a paperless option. Even more frustrating is that at my current health insurance company, I can't even opt out of receiving paper copies. Despite several attempts to request this, I'm told there's no way to stop the influx of mail. Now, I'm left with no choice but to purchase a $70 paper shredder just to deal with the overwhelming amount of unnecessary paperwork I receive. It feels like an outdated system where healthcare organizations are not fully committed to leveraging the digital tools they've invested in. To make matters worse, the US Postal Service bears the burden of delivering all these unnecessary documents. This means taxpayers and other users of the postal system are indirectly subsidizing this inefficiency. It’s absurd that after all the time and money spent on developing patient portals, they’re not serving their purpose if the same information is just going to be mailed out anyway. It’s a huge missed opportunity for cost savings and sustainability. For anyone curious about which platforms I'm talking about, my chart, Healow. These are the two that I have used. I'm sure there are many others, but Blue Cross is also part of the problem, they have their own custom proprietary software that you can log in and see your bill and all that stuff but they will still send you the crap in the mail. And cannot get them to stop

Technology Buttflapper • Now • 90%

Feels like so many tech bubbles are about to burst

Hard to believe it's been 24 years since Y2K (2000) And it feels like we've come such a long way, but this decade started off very poorly with one of the worst pandemics the modern world has ever seen, and technology in general is looking very bleak in several ways I'm a PC gamer, and it looks like things are stagnating massively in our space. So many gaming companies are incapable of putting out a successful AAA title because people are either too poor, don't want to play a live service AAA disaster like every single one that has been released lately, Call of Duty, battlefield, anything electronic arts or Ubisoft puts out is almost entirely a failure or undersales. So many gaming studios have been shuttered and are being shuttered, Microsoft is basically one member of an oligopoly with Sony and a couple other companies. Hardware is stagnating. Nvidia is putting on the brakes for developing their next line of GPUs, we're not going to see huge gains in performance anymore because AMD isn't caught up yet and they have no reason to innovate. So they are just going to sell their next line of cards for $1,500 a pop for the top ones, with 10% increase in performance rather than 50 or 60% like we really need. We still don't have the capability to play games in full native 4K 144 Hertz. That's at least a decade away Virtual reality is on the verge of collapse because meta is basically the only real player in that space, they have a monopoly with them and valve index, pico from China is on the verge of developing something incredible as well, and Apple just revealed a mixed reality headset but the price is so extraordinary that barely anyone has it so use isn't very widespread. We're again a decade away from seeing anything really substantial in terms of performance Artificial intelligence is really, really fucking things up in general and the discussions about AI look almost as bad as the news about the latest election in the USA. It's so clowny and ridiculous and over-the-top hearing any news about AI. The latest news is that open AI is going to go from a non-profit to a for-profit company after they promised they were operating for the good of humanity and broke countless laws stealing copyrighted information, supposedly for the public good, but now they're just going to snap their fingers and morph into a for-profit company. So they can just basically steal anything they want that's copyrighted, but claim it's for the public good, and then randomly swap to a for-profit model. Doesn't make any sense and just looks like they're going to be a vessel for widespread economic poverty... It just seems like there's a lot of bubbles that are about to burst all at the same time, like I don't see how things are going to possibly get better for a while now?

Games Buttflapper • Now • 96%

Gacha games are out of control. Gambling shouldn't be so widespread

As someone who grew up playing games like *World of Warcraft* and other AAA titles, I’ve seen how the gaming industry has evolved over the years—and not always for the better. One of the most disturbing trends is the rise of gacha games, which are, at their core, thinly veiled gambling systems targeting younger players. And I think it’s time we have a serious conversation about why this form of gaming needs to be heavily restricted, if not outright regulated. Gacha systems prey on players by offering a sense of excitement and reward, but at the cost of their mental health and well-being. These games are often marketed as "free to play," making them seem harmless, but in reality, they trap players in cycles of spending and gambling. You don’t just buy a game and enjoy its content—you gamble for the chance to get characters, equipment, and other in-game items. It’s all based on luck, with very low odds of getting what you want, which leads players to keep spending in hopes of hitting that jackpot. This setup is psychologically damaging, especially for younger players who are still developing their sense of self-control. Gacha games condition them to associate spending money with emotional highs, which is the exact same mechanism that fuels gambling addiction. You might think it's just harmless fun, but it’s incredibly easy to fall into a pattern where you're constantly chasing that next dopamine hit, just like a gambler sitting at a slot machine. Over time, this not only leads to financial strain but also deeply ingrained mental health issues, such as anxiety, depression, and a lack of self-control when it comes to spending money. Countries like Belgium and the Netherlands have already banned loot boxes and gacha systems, recognizing the dangers they pose, especially to younger players. The fact that these systems are still largely unregulated in many other regions, including the U.S., shows just how out of control things have gotten. The gaming industry has shifted from offering well-rounded experiences to creating systems designed to exploit players’ psychological vulnerabilities. We need to follow Europe’s lead in placing heavy restrictions on gacha and loot boxes. It’s one thing to pay for a game and know what you're getting; it's another to be lured into a never-ending cycle of gambling for content that should be available as part of the game. Gaming should be about fun, skill, and exploration, not exploiting people’s mental health for profit. It's time for developers and legislators to take responsibility and start protecting the players, especially the younger ones, from these predatory practices.

Games Buttflapper • Now • 82%

This is definitely one of the strangest cash grabs I've ever seen

Honkai Star Rail, a free-to-play gacha game (basically, gambling game of chance) in which players spend anywhere from $5 to $10,000 to get characters, gear, equipment... is now releasing a disc version of their game on PlayStation 5. First issue with this is that many people don't have a disk drive in their PlayStation, and the new PS5 pro won't either. The game is also downloaded to the PlayStation store digitally anyway, so I'm not even sure what the heck the disk supposed to be for. Second, it doesn't appear to be a steelbook, just a regular old plastic PS5 game case from what I have read from other sources. This is incredibly wasteful and frustrating because these always end up in a landfill anyway. Third and finally, it appears that the things that you get in game are silly little cosmetics. Spending money on this doesn't actually get you any characters. It's not like Apex Legends where you buy the starter bundle and you get several characters to start off with, no. You get nothing, absolutely nothing to help you in game. But if you take that $40 and go in game and spend it on rolling for overpowered characters, you could definitely get one of the best characters in the game right now. Just seems very strange to me that a free to play pay to win game is going to come out with a physical copy that doesn't provide any actual benefit to players in their gameplay.

Games Buttflapper • Now • 82%

Is overwatch 2 really that bad?

I've played maybe 10 hours total of Overwatch 2 and it is incredibly boring (to me). But it seems to get lots of updates often, heavy monetization which sucks. The steam reviews are scalding. It really makes me wonder.... is it that bad? Like really? It's hard to gauge if the game is thriving or on deaath's door...

Mildly Infuriating Buttflapper • Now • 96%

People on Tik Tok peddling these scams

I don't see how this is legal, but people on Tik Tok peddling miracle "medicine" are becoming more common every day. No FDA approval, no research. Just their marketing hype and false promises. This one, lady is showing some sort of probiotic and claiming it can help people suffering from severe acid reflux and gastrointestinal reflux disease or GERD, replacing medicine that has been tested for decades.

Games Buttflapper • Now • 76%

Why Do People Still Play Destiny 2?

With the release of "The Final Shape," the main storyline has concluded, and it seems like the developers are now just churning out random content and seasonal passes without a clear direction for the game's future. I'm genuinely curious about what motivates players to stick around. Are there aspects of the game that still offer value or enjoyment, or are players simply holding on in hopes of something more substantial? What keeps them engaged with Destiny 2 despite its apparent lack of a clear path forward?

Games Buttflapper • Now • 70%

Are we ever going to see a remake of any Bethesda game?

Fallout 3, New Vegas, Elder scrolls Oblivion are my three favorite games of all time If I had to put my finger on them. But it's not enjoyable anymore to simply download them and try to play through them again. There's just something about trying to replay them and it just doesn't work. Maybe I spent too much time playing games with high graphical fidelity lately, or I spent too much time in them back in the day. But if there was a remake, 2028, they released a brand new version of any of these games, it would be immediate purchase for me. I would spend another thousand hours in them with modern graphics and updates. Like a modern game engine... The thing I wonder though is why? Why don't they remake any of their games? Not even Skyrim! They just keep re-releasing it.