NYT subscriptions and other venders using cheatware

What is cheatware? My term for it. It is when an electric eye is added to the printer you bought so that one third of the ink is left unused. You buy more ink.

The NYT shortened the subscription duration to 6 months from 1 year. After 6 months they charge $25 per month. Caught you! That is up from $4 per month.

When my subscription ends on principle I am done with the paper. My loss yes. But $25 is stoopid money for a few emails per day.

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I have commented before, a Norton AV update subscription was free for the life of the program, in the 90s. Then updates were $4/year. Now, it’s $60. A Quicken package used to run for three years. Then, it became a one year product, for the same price.

But wait, there’s more. The Ford Maverick came out in late 2021, with a base price of $20K, and was enormously popular. Now, 3 1/2 years later, the base price is pushing $30K. Ford CEO Farley brags about how much money he intends to take off customers with “subscription” fees.

Seems “JCs” don’t care about satisfying their customers, or providing a decent value. Their only objective seems to be working out ways to take more money off people.

Steve

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Dear Steve,

I am going to keep my video game out of here. My assets and my comments need a separation. Just like my politics and my assets need a separation.

I have a provisional patent application. That is called patent pending. In the application, I added economy. Things like buying a new vehicle or a character.

I am not going to have any economy in the game. People love Fortnite, but new games after that with economies are falling flat. Getting people to waste money does not make them subscribers. It is greedy and mean-spirited.

The reason to have it in the application, if someone completely copies my game and adds an economy it is a different game. They can patent that. But if I included the economy in my application, that is mine. They can not make that change to get around my patent. I thought of that, not my lawyer, but he agreed.

I am afraid I do not understand your use of “economy”.

The software companies I mentioned above have been milking people for years. I posted, last week, the article where the CEO of Ford Motor said he has no problem raising prices, because he is confident people will compensate by financing for a longer term, or make other cuts in spending, to make their car payment. As the President of RS said, in brushing off concerns about RS’ price competitiveness “we do people a favor when we sell them our stuff”. That attitude works until it doesn’t, but the CEO is figuring he will have made his stack and moved on, before the scheme collapses.

STeve

When you can buy a new life during the game, a new color whatever, or extra ammo etc…That is economy…stuff sold to enhance the game superficially.

This is what happened to a big release that tried to have an economy. The kids rejected it in larger part as another dumb scheme to milk them for nothing.

Yes, Sony’s Concord was a major flop, considered one of the biggest in gaming history. After a reported eight years of development and a budget of $200 million to $400 million, the game was released on August 23, 2024, and shut down less than two weeks later due to extremely low player numbers, with a peak of only 697 concurrent players.

Here’s why Concord was considered a flop:

  • Low Player Numbers:

The game’s player base was shockingly small, with a reported peak of just 697 concurrent players.

  • Early Shutdown:

Sony shut down the game less than two weeks after its release, a move that was unprecedented in the industry.

  • Financial Loss:

The game is estimated to have cost Sony between $200 million and $400 million, while generating only around $1 million in revenue.

  • Studio Closure:

The studio behind Concord, Firewalk Studios, was closed down, and its employees were laid off.

  • Unprecedented Shutdown:

The game was removed from all digital stores, and refunds were given to all players, a move that is rare in the industry.

However, it’s important to note that Concord’s planned monetization model aimed to avoid “nickel-and-diming” players with microtransactions that affected gameplay. The developers stated that:

  • All core content would be available for free.
  • Microtransactions would be limited to cosmetics, such as character skins, and would not impact gameplay balance or progression.
  • The game aimed to be “feature-complete” at launch, with 16 characters, 12 maps, and 6 modes available to all players who purchased the game.

In summary, while Concord didn’t have a pay-to-win model and intended to provide a complete experience with the initial purchase, its price tag was still a major obstacle in a free-to-play-dominated genre.

Ah. Thanks. I never had time to play games, so the usage was unfamiliar.

If one company tries to monetize everything there might be pushback. If all the “JCs” try to monetize everything, because they are all listening to McKinsey, then what do the Proles do?

Steve

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You would think the auto companies, of all industries, would know how that kind of stuff ends. In the 50s and 60s, the US auto companies dominated, not just dominated, but overwhelmingly dominated. So much so that they even had a whole pretty big city dubbed “motor city”, and the economy of that city was very strongly tied to the auto industry. In the 70s they started slacking off, and the few competitors that existed produced mostly junk. So junky that “Japanese” became a pejorative for low quality. Well, the Japanese were clever, and they listened to a guy named W. Edwards Deming, who I now call “the father of quality improvement”. And sure enough, with each successive generation of models, the Japanese cars improved. The auto companies used every trick in the book to slow the Japanese automakers entry into our market. By the 80s, not only did the Japanese models have better fuel efficiency, but they also had good quality, in other words they provided good “value”. By the 90s, they had good quality, they had good value, AND they had good styling. And the US automakers share was shrinking rapidly.

Well, it looks like they are playing that same game again. They will produce expensive cars, that are okay, but don’t provide good value. They will use political forces to keep Chinese cars out for a while. But at some point, the US cars will be so expensive, and provide so little value, that the people will demand access to Chinese cars that provide much greater value.

Dear Mark,

Yep, at that point, I call it treason.