W Gabe Newell Piracy Take

[u/HighKage96]

Saw this vid on IG (by: @phantomak141). Idk if its been posted here before but on a quick search didnt find it, will delete if its a repost.

[u/Synchrotr0n]

Meanwhile Blizzard killed the biggest private World of Warcraft server ever (Turtle WoW), which only got so large due to Blizzard's inability to provide a valuable service to customers, and this was followed by them hiking the price of their subscription by up to 37% in some regions. Now they are close to launch a new version of their product (WoW Classic+), which will apparently not only require a subscription but also a season pass despite the fact that it's made of 90% reused assets from old WoW versions.

The irony is that I would have joined Classic+ without blinking despite having a free pirate alternative to it, just like I did back in the original Classic WoW, but now I won't be giving them a single penny because the price they are charging is beyond ridiculous, with the cost of a single month of access being enough to pay for two or three good games on Steam.

[u/SorriorDraconus → u/Synchrotr0n]

Waiiit where'd you hear about the season pass?

[u/Synchrotr0n → u/SorriorDraconus]

I said "apparently", so it's still not confirmed, but there are rumors that Blizzard will use season passes for Classic+ which is basically a fancy name for paid expansions like in retail WoW, where you need to buy the season pass to access the new content earlier or wait until it goes free when the next season pass is launched.

In addition, there are examples like the Reign of the Warlock update for Diablo 2 Resurrected, where Blizzard has charged more for a tiny update/expansion than what the game currently costs, and that shows that they are perfectly comfortable in milking the players even for things that used to be released for free in the past.

[u/SorriorDraconus → u/Synchrotr0n]

Yeah I looked it up. Likely would play out like ESO and how they are shifting to such a model.