You'd be amazed to know that some lawyers actually know the difference between law and justice and sometimes don't do their best on purpose, thus helping the other part indirectly. It's rare, but I know that for a fact.

I think that's probably what's going on.

If it wasn't so long, I'd use your post for my signature.

Lol, I've even seen webapps using an animated gif as a progress bar :P

Also (and sorry about the double post), game companies seem to forget that people who sell their games more often than not use that money to BUY MORE GAMES. Game companies are already getting benefits from the used game market, but as they can't put a figure in their anual reports, they're blind and think they're getting nothing.

I've already heard about this. Is not patches and bugfixes they're aiming at. Its more like "our new FPS comes with the incredible amount of 2!! multiplayer maps, and as a free DLC you get another 10maps!!". Of course if you got the game used, you've got to ditch $10 bucks to get those 10 maps. But they're totally optional, right? :D

Seems game companies like Ubisoft and EA are keen on sending more ammunition to ppl defending piracy to be used against them. Oh well...

Exactly my thoughts.

The "keep your mouth shut when person X badmouths person Y" is a good advice, though.

Another trait that I found very useful in my first job was: When you have a problem/question, do some research first, but do not waste a whole day researching!! That will show your colleges/bosses that a)you have some initiative and are not a lazy bastard that wants everything explained to you like a 5yr old. And b)that you know that spending a whole day to find out something that a college can probably tell you in 5mins is not a productive way to spend your time.

The pirated version will allow to play without internet connection ;)

IIRC, you can also put steam in "offline mode" and then play without internet connection. But to do that you must be logged in the first place, so it's only a valid method when you're planning ahead of time to do that. If your ISP/router/whatever goes down you're fubared.

Lol, then why are 95% exploiting the same old concepts over and over again??

I disagree. By the time you finish the SP campaing of latest MWs and similar games it's like WTF?? This is already ended???

Many times I start playing a game, get bored mid-way, leave it installed and untouched for 3 months, then one day I feel like "hey, lets finish that Bioshock 2". And I go back and finish it. I mostly blame it on games being too repetitive and not engaging enough, not on games being long/complex.

For example, I bought Deus Ex as a steam offer for 2.5€. And played it to completion (23h, but that's cos I already knew the game). That game has you glued to the computer till you finish it, even if you already know the story. So it's definitely not a problem of games being too long (or at least not for me).

So these so-called "game designers" from TFA see that people don't bother finishing the games.

So... do they say "hey, maybe our games suck bigtime!" or "hey! maybe we should make games that are not repetitive ad-nauseam and become dull after 5hours" or hey "our games are so predictable that gamers see the end of the history miles away"??

No!! They say "it's obvious that gamers want shorter, simpler games". Yeah right

But then, deeper in TFA, we start to see the real reasons:
"it seems that games will become increasingly modular in order to accommodate different tastes. Currently, Microsoft's development guidelines tell developers and publishers that the optimum time to release DLC is "within the first 30 days" of a game's release"

They want to milk the cow more!! They want you to pay $60bucks for a shitty, incomplete game, and then pay some more for some lame excuse of DLC that should have been included in the game from the 1st time.

Sony officially stated they had not paid a penny of those $50 and that any similar issues are a matter between the final seller and the client and had nothing to do with them.

I had around 60 floppies back around 1994-1998. After that I had a more than enough around so even if some failed I had more than enough. So in my case is clearly "more than 10 years ago" even if I continued using them well into the 2000s.