Fiscal Responsibility, Or How Game Publishers Keep Painting Themselves Into A Monetary Corner Before Punishing Everybody Else For Their Short-Sighted F**king Stupidity (The Jimquisition)

Something I've been thinking about for years now is the notion of the greedy exec. and whether it is necessary. Coming from Germany, leftists here privilege Marx's position, who emphasizes that Capital, not the capitalist class, is the "vampire"/"werewolf" sucking life and labor out of humanity (across all of his major texts). Capitalism is the rule of things over humans, rather than one class over another. Under Capitalism, execs too are commodities, materially privileged yes, but just as estranged from their social surroundings as anyone else. The affect German leftists tend to focus on in place of greed is fear. I seriously feel like this is (of course within limits and with plenty of exceptions) sort of a national thing. German leftist discourse was molded in opposition to Nazi-rule and post-1945 continuities. We don't like to talk about greedy capitalists, because there are frightening "overlaps with" antisemitism to the trope (I'd actually go as far as calling them "connections to"). What's more, it is theoretically false: what the greed theory implies is that what we're dealing with is a number of morally corrupted individuals in positions of power. If this were correct, the problem could be solved by killing these individuals. It can't. Capitalism is set up in such a way that they would immediately be replaced. The problem isn't that the Koticks of the world are evil, it's that the positions they are in are ones which "demand" evil actions. Being CEO of a company listed on the stock-exchange has "raising profits by all means" as semi-literal part of its job-description. Now, I love Jimquisition and these videos and I understand how the personalization of Capitalism's evils in the form of some tuxedo-wearing villains helps railing people up. Perhaps it is part of what makes these videos so great. I also acknowledge that Steph always points to the structural background, maybe seeking to imply that the Koticks aren't naturally the way they are, but that the way our markets/society are structured encourages them to it. But there's also a somewhat uncomfortable populist touch to it. I can't shake the feeling that there is a connection between this kind of indivualistic analysis, which seems especially prevalent among UK commentators, and the virulent antisemitism across leftist UK organizers and parties. And, even in very pragmatic, political terms, I feel like insisting on the evilness of individuals always entails a certain redemption of the systems and structures they inhabit. Why focus on CEOs for doing what is obviously, under the given circumstances, the most rational thing for them to do (i.e. putting profits over people), when we could instead focus on the social conditions wherein doing so becomes rational in the first place. Under Capitalism, everyone is put into competition with one another, self-interest is rewarded, etc.. Happy to hear your takes on this. Also, let us not make it an Israel/Palestine debate, please. ps.: If it isn't clear, I'm a huge fan, none of the above lessens my appreciation of Steph's tremendous achievements. The writing, the wit, the research, the analysis (in all but that regard), everything is just beautiful, inspiring, educational (I've honestly learned so much thanks to them), and fun! So yea, this is coming from a place of admiration!

Can anyone explain to me the visual gag of the shrimp/prawn whenever Steff says "however" or a similar transition word? I'm afraid I don't get it

The funny thing about Capcom is they're one of the few "AAA" publishers that haven't raised their game prices to $70 yet. Let's also not forget the absolute cretins at Embracer Group who spent ludicrous amounts of money that they didn't have yet only for it to fall through so they have to then fuck over hundreds of employees they'd literally just taken on. The other huge companies are callous, heartless monsters. Embracer Group is just run by fucking idiots.

See, the funny thing about Epic complaining about this specifically is that they just got a huge windfall from the Unity debacle, which is likely to continue growing as long as they don't do the same thing. So, Epic simultaneously gets money from the devs through the Unreal Engine, gets money from the customers through sales in the Epic Store, and takes money off the top of IAPs from their storefront...and they have the *audacity* to complain that games are too expensive? As a political moderate, Sterling and I have plenty of areas of disagreement...but I can absolutely agree with them that Epic can only get away with this due to a total absence of antitrust laws being enforced; Epic in its current form should be divested into dev/publisher/store/engine companies, and the Activision/Blizzard acquisition shouldn't even be on the table. One other area where we might *possibly* find some common ground would be the acceptability of a price increase for games that had a "nothing further to buy" sticker on it - no lootboxes, season passes, DLC, IAPs, NFTs, or any other post-purchase monetization functionality for the entirety of the game. If a game was dependent on a one-time purchase, I'd be willing to consider paying $99 for it. But, where Sterling and I would *definitely* find common ground is that Epic/Bethesda/Actiblizz/EA would *never* limit the $99 purchase price to games without monetization...and for that reason, I'll side with them daring Epic to raise prices and see what happens.

Fucking brilliant.