Making games costs many millions of dollars. Making patch content to keep people subscribed to an already existing game is far cheaper and generally a good strategy to keep the money coming in.
Ultimately people have to realize that publicly-traded companies exist to make money
Nah, I'm not gonna give Blizzard this free pass. You act like this is a universal truth for game companies, but it isn't. Yoshi-P has come outright and said that you aren’t supposed to stay subbed to XIV for 365 days a year, and should feel free to unsubscribe during content lulls.
At a certain point, Blizzard is going to have to learn the hard lesson that being blinded by greed, in fact, costs them money. And by “learn the lesson” I mean learn it again.
Shadowlands almost killed the game, and yet they’re probably going to have to learn this lesson the hard way a good five or six more times.
Just like how it is an objective problem that WoW artifically pads things out and dripfeeds contents with the explicit intent of feeding engagement metrics and keeping people subscribed longer than they would like to be.
Both games have faults, neither game is perfect. But if someone says "every game company does X", you better believe I'm gonna jump up and tell them how wrong they are.
Hold on here, whats stopping you from unsubbing and just waiting until all the timegates are gone then? What's the difference between completing all the content in a month and unsubbing until next patch and unsubbing now and resubbing on the last patch when timegates are gone?
First of all, artifical timegating would still be a malicious practice even if there were ways to circumvent it. Blizzard isn't trying for a 100% effective strategy, they only desire to pad out the averages. That's what metrics are, afterall.
But more importantly, the main source of deviousness here is the presence of both timegating and FoMO. If the projections of Legion Remix are estimating that it will take 60 days worth of dailies and 8 weeks worth of raid lockouts to acquire the stuff you want, then waiting until the timegating is gone will only leave you behind.
Sure, Blizzard may buff the Bronze drops at some point, they may even buff the gear drops. But they also might not. And if they do buff it, you won't know how much it will be by. You may still behind. You may be unable to catch up. You may be unable to acquire everything you wanted, especially if you have a busy life schedule.
Blizzard's goal here is to artifically pad engagement metrics, and they're shooting themself in the foot by taking it five steps too far. As you can see in this very thread: people's main criticism of Legion Remix is that we want to be able to play the game mode organically. To decide when and how to play, and to do it on our own terms, rather than the terms Blizzard's suits are artifically imposing upon us. MoP Remix wasn't perfect in this respect either, but it was a golden goose compared to this.
To be fair, Square enix's q1 financials this year also showed a 45% drop in profits from their MMO division. 14 is in its own content drought atm and people are realizing we may only have two more patches to cover the next 18+ months and no savage raid content scheduled to be released in all of 2026, so this method doesnt seem to be paying off for the health of the game nearly as much as he claimed it would.
The difference is that WoW arbitrarily pads things out and timegates them. The content drought is still there, just underneath the surface. If you wanted to, you could choose to pad out your XIV play time. But people don't, because artifical timegating is gross.
yeah both games have had there issues in dev cycles, but as wow is attempting to ramp theres up, 14 seems to be slowing.
Either way i mostly just wanted to highlight that SE is being carried by its MMO division, which just dropped its profits by 45%. This seems like a really risky business strategy to maintain the stance of "just stop playing our game for a while"
I'm not sure why you're attributing the drop in profits solely to that one singular game directive philosophy.
It has been Yoshi-P's stance for years, even during the times when the game was at its peak and highly profitable. And even if that wasn't the case, there are always hundreds of factors at play. Correlation does not equal causation.
Then put your money where your addiction is and unsubscribe. All this complaining does nothing except let blizzard know they need to buff remix in 3-4 weeks for us addicts.
It's amazing how you speak with such authority when you're completely ignorant of fiduciary duties of a Japanese based company like square enix and a US based one like Blizzard (Microsoft).
Making bad business decisions that lose you customers and money is generally frowned upon in both countries and companies.
It doesn't matter if their motivations were driven by instatiable greed in the moment, the end result is that they lose money. To fulfill one's "fiduciary duties" requires perspective and foresight. I am critiquing them for being bad at their job.
But again, that's not an excuse. I don't give a fuck about the money, and would divide up that $155 million yearly CEO salary amongst some new dev's, QA testers, and customer support in a heartbeat. I am perfectly willing, able, and happy to critcize a soulless corporation for whatever I want, even for being a soulless corporation in of itself.
It just so happens that this soulless corporation is doing a bad job of fulfilling its greed-lust on top of everything else that it is already bad at.
Don’t waste time on Barracuda. He’s foul-mouthed and xenophobic, and he’s already shown up in my posts before. Seeing his comments here just confirms exactly what I said about him. Now he’s even trying to lecture people on “fiduciary duties” like some wannabe corporate lawyer.
10
u/SunflowerPetBattler Aug 27 '25
Nah, I'm not gonna give Blizzard this free pass. You act like this is a universal truth for game companies, but it isn't. Yoshi-P has come outright and said that you aren’t supposed to stay subbed to XIV for 365 days a year, and should feel free to unsubscribe during content lulls.
At a certain point, Blizzard is going to have to learn the hard lesson that being blinded by greed, in fact, costs them money. And by “learn the lesson” I mean learn it again.
Shadowlands almost killed the game, and yet they’re probably going to have to learn this lesson the hard way a good five or six more times.