Poll of the Day > Unpopular Opinions thread

(+) Yeah! (+)

EightySeven posted...

darkknight109 posted...

-Steam is one of the biggest mistakes gaming has ever made

I'm curious to hear you expand on this. Why do you think it's such a massive mistake?

It's tying an overwhelming portion of the PC gaming market to a single DRM system linked to a single company.

When Steam dies - and eventually it will, whether that's tomorrow or 50 years from now - it will take thousands of games with it.
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- Having children is essentially somewhat morally wrong

- It's okay if the human race dies out, the bad part would be if they die painfully
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darkknight109 posted...

EightySeven posted...

darkknight109 posted...

-Steam is one of the biggest mistakes gaming has ever made

I'm curious to hear you expand on this. Why do you think it's such a massive mistake?

It's tying an overwhelming portion of the PC gaming market to a single DRM system linked to a single company.

When Steam dies - and eventually it will, whether that's tomorrow or 50 years from now - it will take thousands of games with it.

Steam didn't invent drm and my games run fine offline. If Steam dies in my gaming lifetime, a patch either from Steam or the community will let me play freely.
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GhostGiblet posted...

- Having children is essentially somewhat morally wrong

- It's okay if the human race dies out, the bad part would be if they die painfully

I agree with the first point to some degree, world is getting a bit overpopulated with us humans. almost all if not all environmental issues wouldn't be a issue if there wasn't so many damn people.
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mooreandrew58 posted...

GhostGiblet posted...

- Having children is essentially somewhat morally wrong

- It's okay if the human race dies out, the bad part would be if they die painfully

I agree with the first point to some degree, world is getting a bit overpopulated with us humans. almost all if not all environmental issues wouldn't be a issue if there wasn't so many damn people.

Yeah, there's more to it than that for me, though. I think that part of the reason that murder is wrong is that you're taking away that person's agency to choose when they live or die. When you have a child you do something similar by forcing them to live without giving them a choice (since it's impossible to get consent). Then for the majority of your life you're socially considered obligated to stay alive. I think putting someone in that position is wrong.
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Dipping oreos in milk ruins the consistency of the cookie and as a result makes it worse.

darkknight109 posted...

It's tying an overwhelming portion of the PC gaming market to a single DRM system linked to a single company.

When Steam dies - and eventually it will, whether that's tomorrow or 50 years from now - it will take thousands of games with it.

We can't know that. It's possible its library will shift to a different service or its possible they'll release a patch to strip out the DRM before shutting down. I'll admit that that's a gamble, though, but it's not a sure thing. Also you can get a large portion of the Steam library from GoG DRM free and GoG only exists because Steam pioneered the model.

Duck-I-Says posted...

Dipping oreos in milk ruins the consistency of the cookie and as a result makes it worse.

Hmm, that's interesting. I think they're a little too crispy dry and that milk breaks them down to a very pleasant texture
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GhostGiblet posted...

mooreandrew58 posted...

GhostGiblet posted...

- Having children is essentially somewhat morally wrong

- It's okay if the human race dies out, the bad part would be if they die painfully

I agree with the first point to some degree, world is getting a bit overpopulated with us humans. almost all if not all environmental issues wouldn't be a issue if there wasn't so many damn people.

Yeah, there's more to it than that for me, though. I think that part of the reason that murder is wrong is that you're taking away that person's agency to choose when they live or die. When you have a child you do something similar by forcing them to live without giving them a choice (since it's impossible to get consent). Then for the majority of your life you're socially considered obligated to stay alive. I think putting someone in that position is wrong.

while I on one hand understand that mindset, on the other hand I can't help but feel like its whining from people who think life is unfair. humans and all animals are designed by nature to procreate. so you can't really blame the parents for that. social obligations or not, no one can really stop you from trying to kill yourself provided you get the job done the first time. fail that then they can make it harder for you.
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Finally, a thread for me! lol

-Death note is really dumb (the anime anyway, can't speak for the manga)

-solo is the only way to play skullgirls

-posthumanism is a dangerous and poorly reasoned ideology, and posthumanists need to be challenged

-globalism/one world government can totally work, just not yet.

-I literally couldn't care less about overwatch

-i don't like guns either, but outright banning them might not be the best idea

-1812 overture is the most boring thing tchaikovsky has ever composed

-megabots vs suidobashi went great all things considered and is exciting because of the implications

-I don't get "to pimp a butterfly" frankly.

-don't much care for the beatles

-FFXIII is a good game
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People have lots of impulses to do things that we still feel are wrong. I don't think instinct should be considered as a real factor in whether something is moral or not. It's true social obligation is not absolute but its power shouldn't be underestimated either
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darkknight109 posted...

It's tying an overwhelming portion of the PC gaming market to a single DRM system linked to a single company.

When Steam dies - and eventually it will, whether that's tomorrow or 50 years from now - it will take thousands of games with it.

I mean, how many games are really going to be "taken down" when Steam dies? Or I should say, how many worthwhile games - of course it will probably be thousands, but Steam is loaded with bad indie shovelware that nobody cares about, or decent games that people have in their library and aren't playing anyway. The major titles on there are usually still part of the retail market. So people might have to re-buy them, but they won't exactly disappear off the face of the earth. I know Steam is usually cheaper, but I guess not having full ownership is a sacrifice people have decided to make to save money in the short-term (and long-term as of now, since there's no sign of Steam ending).

Also I think the worse aspect of Steam is that it basically kickstarted the digital marketplace culture that's prevalent throughout all gaming now. By that I mean people expecting huge deals and hording games because they bought them when they were cheap, rather than because they wanted to play. Console gaming has to have these big price drops and sales to keep up with Steam's deals, and of course, as has been a popular topic lately, the constant price dropping (and lack of inflation) is leading developers to make money through DLC and microtransactions.

Rockies posted...

Also I think the worse aspect of Steam is that it basically kickstarted the digital marketplace culture that's prevalent throughout all gaming now. By that I mean people expecting huge deals and hording games because they bought them when they were cheap, rather than because they wanted to play. Console gaming has to have these big price drops and sales to keep up with Steam's deals, and of course, as has been a popular topic lately, the constant price dropping (and lack of inflation) is leading developers to make money through DLC and microtransactions.

DLC and microtransactions were standardised before Steam and Steam sales exist because gaming has fat profit margins.

Put simply; they started it.
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android sucks ass
basketball sucks
most people shouldnt go to college
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I think cheese is gross

Fight me
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Kyuubi4269 posted...

DLC and microtransactions were standardised before Steam and Steam sales exist because gaming has fat profit margins.

No they weren't

Doctor Foxx posted...

think cheese is gross

Fight me

dawg I like me some cheese but it's not really inconceivable to think that someone could find it gross. you're gonna have to say something more controversial than that if you want peeples to fight you
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The Big Lebowski is a horrible movie full of unfunny and unlikable characters.
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BeizlFreiz posted...

Doctor Foxx posted...

think cheese is gross

Fight me

dawg I like me some cheese but it's not really inconceivable to think that someone could find it gross. you're gonna have to say something more controversial than that if you want peeples to fight you

it smells like rotting bodily fluid

I guess technically it is

but I feel grossed out thinking about eating cheese that wasn't just mozza melted on a pizza or something mild and melty. cheese lovers can't seem to believe people don't enjoy cheese.
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GreenGoblinOck posted...

I think Amazing Spider-Man 1 and 2 are the best Spider-Man movies.

I also think ASM1 was the best Spidey movie. ASM2, not so much. Granted, I haven't seen Homecoming yet, so....

PK_Spam posted...

Maybe not a controversial opinion here, but I've gotten a lot of hate for this irl

Friends and HIMYM aren't good. At all. I hate every single character on that show, and I've seen well over 10 hours of each, so I have an educated opinion. I think Ted shouldn't be liked by anyone. Robin is a bitch. Lily too. Barney isn't as funny as everyone says. Marshall is pathetic in all the most unfunny ways. I think the show is bad and people just latch onto it and say "friendship goals" because they're too dumb to realize that none of those people would actually be friends irl.

And the cast of Friends? I shouldn't even have to say it.

I liked Friends and I don't consider it a good show. It had *great* moments, though, such as Ross's internal monologues.

Mario_VS_DK posted...

Here's a good one. We need companies to automate everything they can and lay off the people previously doing those so that we can pave the way for the future. It'll be a huge temporary sacrifice for an even bigger eventually payoff.

Well, new jobs will just appear as a result. It just removes some inefficiencies.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

DirtBasedSoap posted...

pokemon sun and moon fucking suck ass

That's fairly common too, current pokemon is stripped back bare formula.

Whaaaa? SM had a completely different campaign, which might have been why it's disliked.

PK_Spam posted...

Here's another one

I think a lot of people are faking having things like "high functioning depression" so they have an excuse for why they don't get shit done. I believe people have depression, but I don't believe people who say stuff like "I'm so smart and so talented by my depression is the one thing keeping me from practicing my art/studying/writing."

No, you're just lazy, and even if you weren't, you're probably just average at your "talent" like everyone else. The fact that it's been 4 years since you last drew a thing is your fault.

Sounds more like an issue with motivation than with talent. And, in general, talent is cheap compared to perseverance. The world is filled with talented people who don't amount to much. It's only the guys who keep going who really seem to make it big.
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darkknight109 posted...

Zeus posted...

Far-Queue posted...

Trump is a humble, selfless person.

Not sure how unpopular an opinion that may be in this day and age, although it's still a controversial one.

I'd say it would be - even amongst Trump's supporters, I can't think that there are many who would honestly consider him humble or selfless.

Hell, half his appeal is that he isn't that, when the last guy who held the office was to the point where his detractors felt it made him appear weak and a doormat.

I'm going to be honest and fess up to a major mistake because my mind must have been on auto-correct or something because I *think* originally read FQ's comment as "Trump is a horrible, selfish person" (or some variation). Which, you know, wouldn't be terribly unpopular of an opinion. Granted, saying Trump is humble and selfless isn't that unpopular either.
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GhostGiblet posted...

mooreandrew58 posted...

GhostGiblet posted...

- Having children is essentially somewhat morally wrong

- It's okay if the human race dies out, the bad part would be if they die painfully

I agree with the first point to some degree, world is getting a bit overpopulated with us humans. almost all if not all environmental issues wouldn't be a issue if there wasn't so many damn people.

Yeah, there's more to it than that for me, though. I think that part of the reason that murder is wrong is that you're taking away that person's agency to choose when they live or die. When you have a child you do something similar by forcing them to live without giving them a choice (since it's impossible to get consent). Then for the majority of your life you're socially considered obligated to stay alive. I think putting someone in that position is wrong.

I think you're confusing the "Unpopular Opinions thread" with the "Crazy Opinions thread" =p

BeizlFreiz posted...

-Death note is really dumb (the anime anyway, can't speak for the manga)

I concur... although I enjoyed "The Rise and Fall of the Yotsuba Group" story arc.

Doctor Foxx posted...

I think cheese is gross

Fight me

You and I have much more in common than you think.
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IAmNowGone posted...

EvilMegas posted...

Kwame doesnt exist.

u rite

I don't know why but i laughed alot
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Kyuubi4269 posted...

Steam didn't invent drm and my games run fine offline.

Never said they did, and (some of) the games you purchased run fine offline, which is going to be zero help to someone who is interested in playing those games but doesn't already own them.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

If Steam dies in my gaming lifetime, a patch either from Steam or the community will let me play freely.

I doubt Steam will release a patch if they're going under (despite their claims that they'd do that) - odds are no creditor would let them, and I wouldn't be surprised if they have legal contracts with some of their client-companies stipulating that they can't do that very thing, because part of the appeal of Steam as a distribution model for games companies is the fact that it is, by its nature, DRM.

If you're relying on the community, good luck, but they'll be operating illegally in doing that and piracy is no substitute for commerce. That's assuming enough of them care to even craft the thousands of patches that would need to be applied to thousands of games in the first place.

EightySeven posted...

We can't know that.

Which is why I posted it in an "unpopular opinion" thread, rather than an "unpopular facts" thread.

EightySeven posted...

Also you can get a large portion of the Steam library from GoG DRM free and GoG only exists because Steam pioneered the model.

Which is an excellent argument for abandoning Steam and switching over to GOG, not so much for Steam's continued existence.

Unfortunately, much of Steam's library is not on GOG, which somewhat hobbles this point further.

Rockies posted...

I mean, how many games are really going to be "taken down" when Steam dies? Or I should say, how many worthwhile games - of course it will probably be thousands, but Steam is loaded with bad indie shovelware that nobody cares about, or decent games that people have in their library and aren't playing anyway. So people might have to re-buy them, but they won't exactly disappear off the face of the earth. I know Steam is usually cheaper, but I guess not having full ownership is a sacrifice people have decided to make to save money in the short-term.

I don't really care what the ratio of decent-to-terrible games is on Steam - the point is, video gaming is part of our culture and should be archived as such. Yes, even the really shitty stuff. And this is going to become more and more of an issue in the future, the signs of which are already starting to emerge.

The example I love to give for this point is Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. Have you ever played it? If not, you likely never will now. The game has been pulled from sale on all digital distribution software platforms, due to rights expiring, and anyone who doesn't already own it cannot purchase or download it in any form.

It says something about our society that I can buy a book that's thousands of years old or watch a 100-year-old movie with ease, yet cannot purchase a fucking six-year-old game.

Kyuubi4269 posted...

DLC and microtransactions were standardised before Steam and Steam sales exist because gaming has fat profit margins.

DLC/microtransactions were rare-to-non-existent pre-Steam.

Rockies brings up another great point. The reams-of-low-cost-titles-flooding-the-market thing has been done before. Back in the early 80s. It predicated a crash that nearly wiped out the industry. That sort of wipe-out is unlikely today, but destroying a large portion of the market is much more feasible.
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Fat things that pretend to be female are nasty.

And sad thing is that's true and shouldn't be unpopular and wasn't a couple of years ago. It's like the internet trolls are trying to deny science.
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darkknight109 posted...

Rockies brings up another great point. The reams-of-low-cost-titles-flooding-the-market thing has been done before. Back in the early 80s. It predicated a crash that nearly wiped out the industry. That sort of wipe-out is unlikely today, but destroying a large portion of the market is much more feasible.

Err, low cost or low price? My understanding is that the 80's was a bunch of low cost games sold for a standard or high price. Now it's high cost games that are being charged at the same prices as 20 years ago, often lower (at least for the base price).

Skim milk is great.
Chicken is not so great
Inception and Pulp Fiction were mediocre at best
AWD>FWD>RWD
Turbocharged V6>Diesel V8>Gasoline V8
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darkknight109 posted...

Which is an excellent argument for abandoning Steam and switching over to GOG, not so much for Steam's continued existence.

It's also an argument for Steam pioneering an awesome new service model meaning it's less of a mistake and more a step in the right direction, but not perfect yet. That's why I brought that up.

darkknight109 posted...

Which is why I posted it in an "unpopular opinion" thread, rather than an "unpopular facts" thread.

And I was pointing out that opinion or not it's a spurious conclusion. You're free to have that opinion and I'm free to criticize it. Do you think that this is a safe space where opinions are immune from criticism just because they've been labelled unpopular from the start?

EightySeven posted...

It's also an argument for Steam pioneering an awesome new service model meaning it's less of a mistake and more a step in the right direction, but not perfect yet. That's why I brought that up.

None of Steam's service model is predicated on the things I'm complaining about. There's no reason why GOG could not have come first.

Steam's DRM is the issue and you don't need DRM to have widespread sales or digital distribution (as GOG itself proved).

EightySeven posted...

And I was pointing out that opinion or not it's a spurious conclusion. You're free to have that opinion and I'm free to criticize it. Do you think that this is a safe space where opinions are immune from criticism just because they've been labelled unpopular from the start?

This is a really facile criticism, though, because you're saying "You don't know that's going to happen", which is something that can be said of any prediction of future events.

If someone says, "I think the Flames are going to win the Stanley Cup this year" and someone responds, "You can't know that", it's true, but also kind of stupid given the subject material.
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darkknight109 posted...

Rockies brings up another great point. The reams-of-low-cost-titles-flooding-the-market thing has been done before. Back in the early 80s. It predicated a crash that nearly wiped out the industry. That sort of wipe-out is unlikely today, but destroying a large portion of the market is much more feasible.

I can *kinda* see it but the problem is that Steam is really fringe compared to the mainstream gaming market. I assume that PC gamers on average tend to be reasonably well-informed consumers since there's less of a parent/child market. And, in general, pc games have gotten away with glitchy issues for a pretty long time already.

Rockies posted...

darkknight109 posted...

Rockies brings up another great point. The reams-of-low-cost-titles-flooding-the-market thing has been done before. Back in the early 80s. It predicated a crash that nearly wiped out the industry. That sort of wipe-out is unlikely today, but destroying a large portion of the market is much more feasible.

Err, low cost or low price? My understanding is that the 80's was a bunch of low cost games sold for a standard or high price. Now it's high cost games that are being charged at the same prices as 20 years ago, often lower (at least for the base price).

I think a lot of it was just flooding the market with poor quality titles which led to market oversaturation and consumer fatigue.
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Kyuubi4269 posted...

Steam sales exist because gaming has fat profit margins.

No, Steam sales exist because creating additional "stock" is free. It has nothing to do with profit margins whatsoever.

If you're distributing a game digitally, every sale is money in your pocket because your "material" costs for each copy of the game round down to zero. You could (in theory, anyways), make a billion-dollar game and sell it for pennies and still, by the strictest technical definition, be turning a profit (though it would take you a long, long time to make back your initial investment).

This is why digital distributors sometimes give away games for free, with no strings attached, because even that is advertising for their other products.

Rockies posted...

Err, low cost or low price? My understanding is that the 80's was a bunch of low cost games sold for a standard or high price.

Sort of but not really. What happened initially is that a bunch of low-quality crap got pushed onto the market by companies that wanted to make a quick buck. When they didn't sell, the companies folded and the retailers slashed the prices to try and recoup their losses. This created a double-whammy - most buyers wound up buying low-quality games which disincentivized them from purchasing anymore, and it also hamstrung the companies that actually were putting in effort, because they couldn't turn a profit on their (more expensive to produce and therefore pricier to sell) games.

Now take a look at the market Steam has set up.

There are shitty games being produced by people who want to turn a quick buck and keep their production costs low. These games usually sell for bargain-bin prices, often going for $5 or less. Now, yes, these titles are not going to provide any direct competition to, say, GTA5, but there's a ripple effect. The shitty titles are competing with the start-up indie titles, so those indie titles have to drop their price to stay competitive. Those, in turn, compete with the more polished indie titles, and those compete with the more small-scale/mediocre mainstream titles, which compete with the good games, which compete with the triple-A mega-titles. Everyone is experiencing this downward pressure on their prices as a result, and it's impacting people's bottom lines - games are now, in many cases, less expensive than they ever have been, and that's even before accounting for inflation. Back in the late 90s I can recall buying major PC titles for $60 or more; now it's rare that I see one being sold for more than $50 and plenty are pricing themselves at $30 or less. This in spite of the fact that the price to create a game, especially a non-indie title, continues to increase.

And this has bled into the games world itself and we're seeing the negative consequences:
-Features that were formerly free are now being hacked out and sold as DLC
-Microtransactions abound
-Games companies are leaning more on alternate revenue sources like crowdfunding, early alpha/beta access (essentially having people pay to test the game, instead of the other way around), ads, exclusivity deals, etc.
-Smaller studios are disappearing, going bankrupt or joining larger megastudios to reduce risk and ameliorate costs

Steam (and its mobile equivalent, the app store) is breeding a race to the bottom and doing real damage to the hobby as a whole, and while a wholesale crash like 1983 is unlikely, it's quite possible that there's a major shake-up in the pipes.

Zeus posted...

I can *kinda* see it but the problem is that Steam is really fringe compared to the mainstream gaming market.

Steam has 125 million active users, which - even accounting for bots and dummy accounts - is equivalent to a fairly successful console. I wouldn't really call them fringe.
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elder scrolls isn't a good series

Final Fantasy 13 > Final Fantasy 15

darkknight109 posted...

Zeus posted...

I can *kinda* see it but the problem is that Steam is really fringe compared to the mainstream gaming market.

Steam has 125 million active users, which - even accounting for bots and dummy accounts - is equivalent to a fairly successful console. I wouldn't really call them fringe.

The total userbase, while interesting, doesn't necessarily denote mainstream product knowledge or overall visibility. Steam's userbase is more widely spread across the world, its products aren't advertised on tv (as far as I've seen), and if you ask the man on the street what Steam is vs what a Nintendo product is, you're going to get recognition on the latter and a blank stare on the former. Hence why when a parent is shopping for something for his kid, he's not getting them a PC with Steam despite it being cheaper in some cases than a console.
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Zeus posted...

darkknight109 posted...

Zeus posted...

I can *kinda* see it but the problem is that Steam is really fringe compared to the mainstream gaming market.

Steam has 125 million active users, which - even accounting for bots and dummy accounts - is equivalent to a fairly successful console. I wouldn't really call them fringe.

The total userbase, while interesting, doesn't necessarily denote mainstream product knowledge or overall visibility. Steam's userbase is more widely spread across the world, its products aren't advertised on tv (as far as I've seen), and if you ask the man on the street what Steam is vs what a Nintendo product is, you're going to get recognition on the latter and a blank stare on the former. Hence why when a parent is shopping for something for his kid, he's not getting them a PC with Steam despite it being cheaper in some cases than a console.

I don't think Steam's userbase is any more or less spread out than any of the "consoles" - is there something that makes you think otherwise?

I agree that Steam does not have the brand-name recognition of Nintendo or Microsoft or Sony, although saying that their products aren't advertised is only half-true; I've seen plenty of ads for games that require installation of Steam in order to run (Skyrim, for instance).

I actually wish they were more explicit about that. I refuse to use Steam on principle, so there's been multiple times where I've gone to buy a game and had to jump through a tonne of hoops just to figure out if it requires Steam or not.
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darkknight109 posted...

I don't think Steam's userbase is any more or less spread out than any of the "consoles" - is there something that makes you think otherwise?

Mostly perception, but I've found *some* evidence to support that conclusion:
http://steamspy.com/country/

Under that model, players in the US make up 15% of Steam's market. You'll also notice that a large chunk of that market is in China, which is also relevant because China had laws restricting the sale of gaming consoles in the country. Then, of course, you also have Russia. China and Russia together make up a larger share than the US, whereas the US is responsible for iirc like half of all console sales.
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The Last Crusade was the best movie out of the three, ok?
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ducks are nasty assholes
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Mead posted...

ducks are nasty assholes

I'm pretty sure this is a scientific fact, ok?
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ZiggiStardust posted...

Mead posted...

ducks are nasty assholes

I'm pretty sure this is a scientific fact, ok?

Given that their mating rituals essentially amount to gang-bangs and they eat without chewing, they're pretty fucked up animals.
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Pineapple on pizza tastes best when the pizza is cold
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DistantMemory posted...

Skyward Sword is a serious contender for best Zelda game.

Twilight Princess is the worst 3D Zelda.

Everything in these topics always make me think you people are crazy.

But this one takes the cake.
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