• MolochAlter@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      You realise this isn’t make believe at all, right? Stocks are ownership.

      If a stock dips low enough it’s possible to do what microsoft did with Activision Blizzard and buy out another company wholesale, for instance.

      Speculation on the stock market isn’t the reason the market exists, it’s a side effect of its pricing mechanisms, the actual point of it is to gather money for companies and gather stake for buyers.

      If a major company like Ubisoft keeps tanking, odds are you can look forward to another major buyout and merger which will make the already horribly oligopolistic game industry even smaller, which is not good for anyone involved.

        • MolochAlter@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Sure, but the stock is tanking now, and the regulations are not on the books.

          Like, I agree there needs to be an overhaul of a bunch of regulations regarding monopolies and such, but this doesn’t help analysing the current situation where they’re not in place.

      • Altima NEO@lemmy.zip
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        3 months ago

        Investors seemed to be pushing for the company to go private, possibly for that reason.

      • 1984@lemmy.today
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        3 months ago

        I think gaming in general have it hard now. There are millions of games and only a handful are best sellers.

        I feel the same about movies. So many, but just a few are worth watching because they are original.

        • MolochAlter@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          That’s just generally all of media right now. We are at perhaps the highest level of accessibility for media creation we’ve ever been, but that means that any schmuck with a pair of thumbs and time to waste can make something.

          High accessibility means abysmal signal/noise ratio, turns out.

          • TexasDrunk@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            It does. There are some upsides, though. One bonus is that, at least in some small ways, some of these shitbag companies that have acted terribly in the past are letting up because we have options. We don’t have to rely on a couple of big studios for every game we play. So EA has backed off of their terrible launcher.

            I also think it’s kind of cool that any schmuck can make their dream come true. I’ve definitely put out a bunch of music that I don’t market, just because I always wanted to do it. Anyone with an idea and a laptop can code up a game. The ridiculous amount of shovelware aside, I think that’s pretty cool.

            I just wish there was a better way to sift through the dreck to find the good stuff.

            • MolochAlter@lemmy.world
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              3 months ago

              Yeah I mean, it’s got upsides and downsides, like everything. Unparalleled access means anyone can make something, which means a lot of things that have niche appeal can find their audience, etc.

              It also means a lot of things without any appeal will be out there.

              It’s not good or bad in itself but it can be impractical on the consumer side of the equation, and it makes even the remarkable stuff very likely to just disappear in the shuffle.

    • Viking_Hippie@lemmy.world
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      3 months ago

      The problem isn’t the people voluntarily participating in the world’s biggest grift losing money.

      The problem is the real world consequences for other people.