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[THEaaron]

Of course does voting with your wallet work. It is even one of the most successful methods. The thing is: those loud people being the minority are going to cry the sh*t out of forums because voting with your wallet only works for the majority.

¯\_(&#12484_/¯

 

[kamineko]

I think it can work, but it's often presented in a one-sentence post as some kind of all-healing panacea, which is just silly.

I think not buying, within a context of internet rage/bad press, is what really works.

 

[dark_inferno]

Never worked.

Because most People buy shit even trough there is complains.

People complained because L4D2 came 1-2 years after 1. But then people bought it.

Modern Warfare 2 has no dedicated servers on PC. People bought it.

Microtransaction in game XYZ. People buy it.
Always online? People buy it.
DLCs everywhere? People buy it.
Game is shit even trough reviewers say its good? People buy it.

Its like most gamers arent informed enough about issues in games. Just like Jim Sterling said.

 

[fvng]

People also expressed alot that they dislike it.

money speaks louder than words. perfect example of it

 

[bede-x]

It does work. Publishers will follow the money and if enough people say no, they will change their model. Only problem is it also works the other way around. If enough people say yes, they'll follow that too. It's a scale that's constantly balancing back and forth.

 

[Fbh]

Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't. The industry has been shaped in no small part by people voting with their wallets. Everytime you buy or don't buy something you are voting with your wallet. Why is Sony not thinking about making a new portable? Because the Vita didn't sell, why did big budget JRPG's start to dissapear from home consoles? because people weren't buying them, why has the Japanese games industry shifted over to mobile games? because people are spending more on mobile games than console games, why do we have a new AC every year? Because people keep buying them

As with most things like this, it all depends on how many people participate


Anyway, I like to vote with my wallet and I will continue to do so.
People that say that they hate a lot of stuff that some companies are doing but then go and buy their games anyway are the same as people that complain about a certain presidential candidate winning the election but they didn't actually go out there and vote for someone else because "my single vote doesn't have any impact on the outcome"

 

[soultron]

You have the right to vote with your wallet but you have to accept the fact that not everyone thinks like you do and that's OK. There are tonnes of other games to play so if one gets messed up by something you're not really OK with, then try to find something else you enjoy.

You can also try expressing your distaste for things through social media and/or publisher/developer forums, but try not to be a dingaling about it.

 

[LincolnSixVacano]

Voting with your wallet does work OP.

The Xbox being behind so much for the first 2 years is a remainder of the fallout about the always online policies they tried to pitch before the release. By turning back around in time they managed to get back part of the lost audience.

Also, your argument is flawed about the publisher not noting a 4,5 millions sales instead of a possible 5 million. You are thinking from the consumer perspective.

Companies (especially AAA publishers) are pretty good at predicting sales. Destiny cost reportedly 500 million to make. They have to be pretty damn sure about it to invest that kind of money, and they are. If they are significantly under their sales target, they will know they did something wrong. And a quick investigation will reveal why that happened.

Why this "voting with your wallet" thing isn't working, is because 90% of people on the internet stating they are "making a point" or "not buying the game" will cave anyway. It's just the way it is. So we need to let ourselves be heard, otherwise we're just mindless sheep being herded around.

 

[Darkstorne]

The Xbone thing was because of all the bad press and how it became very clear the market didn't want games tied to one system, they wanted what they have always had before, and the fact their main competitor was offering that and they were generating an absurd level of negative press, it made sense to reserve that

They didn't just check a spreadsheet and see pre orders were down 17% and then change everything

"Early data for console preorders from major online retailers in the United States show consumers preordered approximately three PS4 units for every two Xbox One consoles" - IGN

That's an insane sales gap, and the primary reason they back-tracked on their original plans. Consumers voted with their wallets for Sony's machine, Microsoft is here primarily to make money (like every business) so reversed many of their decisions to attract more customers, and as soon as they did the pre-order gap started closing. In the US anyway. EU remained a landslide victory for Sony.

 

[Eighty Deuce]

How? The game sold a bunch.

I still have 60 dollars and the game player base is dead

 

[Devilgunman]

"Voting with wallet" always works. If you feel like it doesn't, it means more people voting their wallets on the opposite side.

 

[tearsintherain]

It works when a bunch of people do it and tell other people about it.

Gaming really is buzz driven nowadays for the megaton sellers. Few people are reading magazines and making buying decisions based on that, they are doing it on internet buzz, friends, twitch, etc.

Beta's are a two edged sword: if they live up to the hype and everyone loves it, they will help your game tremendously. Nowadays though most betas seem to do the exact opposite, and turn a bunch of people against your game. Evolve, The Crew, Rainbow Six, Need for Speed are all recent examples I can think of where the buzz from the beta was mostly negative and it seems like sales were impacted. Hopefully Star Wars Battlefront fares better.

Tomb Raider is going to be an interesting case. The xbone exclusivity and the release date (Fallout 4) makes it feel like the internet is pretty uninterested in it right now, if the sales end up being very good that would be a good argument for marketing beating forums/friends/twitch.

There is also the issue of so much output across so many platforms right now that many games just can't rise above the noise.

 

[Goldenroad]

If, as you say, the "majority don't care" (about microtransactions, on disc DLC, etc), then they are casting their vote with their wallets as "not caring" and if anything that proves that voting with your wallet does work. Just because the side you are backing doesn't win, does not mean that the system doesn't work, in theory anyway.

 

[inner-G]

People making a big stink about broken games on social media is way more effective than a couple people not buying the game.

 

[Arthea]

If, as you say, the "majority don't care" (about microtransactions, on disc DLC, etc), then they are casting their vote with their wallets as "not caring" and if anything that proves that voting with your wallet does work. Just because the side you are backing doesn't win, does not mean that the system doesn't work, in theory anyway.

That actually not how it works, not caring shouldn't affect voting because it means not voting, and that's why voting with the wallet doesn't work, not caring does harm and "wins" in this case.

 

[JORMBO]

It works as long as everyone does it. A lot of the shitty DLC is probably cheap to make and if they sucker a small amount of people in then they have their profit. They will keep on putting this stuff out and I will continue to ignore it.

 

[SmartBase]

If you're planing on buying a game, then decide not to because of something in the game, do you send the publisher a letter explaining why they lost the sale?

If not how will they know how many sales they lost because of wallet voting?

There are probably a handful of people that didn't buy MGSV because Hayter wasn't voicing Snake, then others because they didn't like the FOB stuff, how does the publisher get this information?

It's a marketer's job to determine all of that, a pretty basic part of the marketing mix. Just exchange the word "game" in the first sentence with some other medium and see how ridiculous it sounds.

See below, people are willing to do the marketer's job for them. Amazing.

The big flaw that so many people ignore is that "Voting With Your Wallet" is a 2-step process.

1. Don't buy it.
2. Let them know WHY you didn't buy it.

Otherwise, they'll just assume you don't like the franchise anymore or make some other insane excuse for why a game didn't sell ("It starred a woman", "The genre is dead", "It didn't have multiplayer", etc.)

 

[sleepykyo]

Is there any proof that this has ever worked? Even the infamous Xbone reversal was something that happened before the console came out, so it wasn't something they reacted to because of poor sales, that was entirely down to them realising what it was offering wasn't something consumers wanted

They realized it wasn't a small vocal minority because of low preorder. There is also DmC.

 

[Garlador]

The big flaw that so many people ignore is that "Voting With Your Wallet" is a 2-step process.

1. Don't buy it.
2. Let them know WHY you didn't buy it.

Otherwise, they'll just assume you don't like the franchise anymore or make some other insane excuse for why a game didn't sell ("It starred a woman", "The genre is dead", "It didn't have multiplayer", etc.)

 

[Emperor_EL]

DmC is the worst selling game in the franchise so it clearly worked there. There's even articles & blog posts condemning the fanbase for voting with its wallet despite being told to do so in response to their complaints & criticisms.

 

[Tobor]

If you're planing on buying a game, then decide not to because of something in the game, do you send the publisher a letter explaining why they lost the sale?

If not how will they know how many sales they lost because of wallet voting?

There are probably a handful of people that didn't buy MGSV because Hayter wasn't voicing Snake, then others because they didn't like the FOB stuff, how does the publisher get this information?

Maybe I wasn't clear in the OP, I'm not saying democracy doesn't work, I mean the "vote with your wallet" argument that is made on GAF when someone posts complaining about something anti consumer in a game, isn't a productive argument, because the majority don't care, and it won't change anything

We could all complain about microtransactions in paid games for the next decade, voting with our wallets and all, but every big holiday game for 2025 is going to contain microtransactions, that is the way the industry is going

You're still missing the point. It's not that "voting with your wallet" doesn't work. It's that you're on the losing side of the vote.

 

[ANDS]

If anything, microtransactions making a publisher less than expected will probably cause them to push for the design of the game to change in order to recoup more from them in future games

Do you have any proof that this is a trend in console games development?

 

[Cindres]

This is basically why it doesn't work. I believe in practice it might, but in reality most people just cave and get it anyway.

 

[Loona]

It only h a chance of working if you're trying to reject something - if there's something you want but it's not for sale, or at least not where you can buy it (ex.: a game localization, sequel, etc...), how can you get your bleep in the creator/publisher's radar?

When something like Namco X Capcom was announced a lot of people were interested, even if the gameplay turned out disappointing - yet the game wasn't localized. Yet someone bothered to translate the entire script for the game. Even with the spelling errors in that, if that level of interest and effort didn't affect the publisher, what possibly could?

In that particular case, at least it got followed up by Project X Zone, which did get localized, so I made it a point to buy that on release day along with a new 3DS just for the occasion, so now a PXZ2 is on the way with even more stuff that interests me.

But if I want something like a Samurai Shodown 5 Special port on something other than the NeoGeo, how do I vote with my wallet if there's nothing to buy?

 

[patapuf]

Never worked.

Because most People buy shit even trough there is complains.

People complained because L4D2 came 1-2 years after 1. But then people bought it.

Modern Warfare 2 has no dedicated servers on PC. People bought it.

Microtransaction in game XYZ. People buy it.
Always online? People buy it.
DLCs everywhere? People buy it.
Game is shit even trough reviewers say its good? People buy it.

Its like most gamers arent informed enough about issues in games. Just like Jim Sterling said.

Have you seen sale numbers of COD on PC?

The only always online SP game on PC where it worked is Diablo. Ubisoft stopped doing it, Sim city is dead, as are pretty much all franchises that went that route who aren't MP games.

And i would damn hope that reviewers aren't the metric by which sales numbers are decided.

Microtransaciton and DLC are here to stay. People enjoy the payment model for many games in numbers that's more than just uninformed gamers.


Game for windows live is another fantastic example of consumers just going "nope" at BS business schemes.

 

[VariantX]

It does work, but only with convincing others to vote the same as you obviously.

 

[VeryGooster]

Voting with my wallet is easy for me because I don't feel like I'm missing out if I choose to ignore a particular game for whatever reason I don't buy it nor do I really bother with any supplemental items like preorder bonuses and such.

Although I don't really get as vocal about shitty industry practices as I did maybe two years ago because it's exhausting and goes in one ear and out the other and I have other life worries.

 

[Greddleok]

I hate that picture. It's one page out of 17, hardly a representation of whether people in that group bought the game or not.

 

[Vormund]

Xbox one is one of the best examples of voting with your wallet when preorders were at worst 4:1 and at best 2:1. (Depending on region)

That said you can vote with your wallet by not allowing yourself to get ripped off. Sometimes that's enough.

 

[inm8num2]

If enough consumers don't purchase a product and this affects a company's profits significantly, that company will notice. The key word is 'enough'.

But even if your 'vote' doesn't effectuate a change, you can rest easy knowing you didn't spend your money on something you didn't actually want or agree with.

 

[erawsd]

A lot of the time when it's revealed a game is doing something anti consumer or adopting an unpopular financial model, a lot of the time there are people who make the "vote with your wallet" argument

Is there any proof that this has ever worked? Even the infamous Xbone reversal was something that happened before the console came out, so it wasn't something they reacted to because of poor sales, that was entirely down to them realising what it was offering wasn't something consumers wanted

With games in particular, a lot of the stuff they are implementing doesn't cost much to add into the game, and even if most players ignore it, the few that don't will make it worthwhile, and keeping this kind of thing in games will cause the majority to get used to them being there anyway

If anything, microtransactions making a publisher less than expected will probably cause them to push for the design of the game to change in order to recoup more from them in future games

If you outright don't buy the game at all, that doesn't send a message either, if a game sells 4.5m and not 5m, and they lose 500k in sales from people "voting with their wallet" they have no idea that was the case, there is no way they will analyse that data and think "shit, we lost 500k in sales because we included a pay to win mechanic"

What do you think, GAF, does voting with your wallet work? Why do people think it does?

Edit for clarity:

"Voting with your wallet" absolutely works, the same way voting works across any large population of people. Just because you've "voted" one way does not mean that you'll get what you want since there are millions of others who have a "vote" that is every bit as important as yours. If everyone accepts the "my one vote doesnt matter" mentality, then you aren't giving your cause a chance at all -- and a slim chance is still better than none.

There is also some personal piece of mind that is tied into it as well. Even if my vote doesn't effect change, I'm still content with the fact that I didn't support something I don't believe in.

 

[Tigress]

The Xbone thing was because of all the bad press and how it became very clear the market didn't want games tied to one system, they wanted what they have always had before, and the fact their main competitor was offering that and they were generating an absurd level of negative press, it made sense to reserve that

They didn't just check a spreadsheet and see pre orders were down 17% and then change everything

Uh, yeah. They did. They had every intention of ignoring people until their preorder numbers said people really weren't going to buy it. You really think ms decided to reverse it just cause we didn't like it? If that were true they would never have announced it cause there was plenty of uproar about the pretty accurate rumors of what they were going to do. They absolutely knew we wouldn't like it when they announced it. They just thought we would buy anyways. They only cared that we didn't like it when it was shown we weren't going to buy.

 

[Oersted]

Voting with your wallet does work OP.

The Xbox being behind so much for the first 2 years is a remainder of the fallout about the always online policies they tried to pitch before the release. By turning back around in time they managed to get back part of the lost audience.

Also, your argument is flawed about the publisher not noting a 4,5 millions sales instead of a possible 5 million. You are thinking from the consumer perspective.

Companies (especially AAA publishers) are pretty good at predicting sales. Destiny cost reportedly 500 million to make. They have to be pretty damn sure about it to invest that kind of money, and they are. If they are significantly under their sales target, they will know they did something wrong. And a quick investigation will reveal why that happened.

Why this "voting with your wallet" thing isn't working, is because 90% of people on the internet stating they are "making a point" or "not buying the game" will cave anyway. It's just the way it is. So we need to let ourselves be heard, otherwise we're just mindless sheep being herded around.

Xbox One 180 on policies was due to backlash against said policies. There was a wave of hate and disdain on Twitter, Facebook etc. Its some revisionism to say it was only voting with the wallets.

 

[Tigress]

Xbox One 180 on policies was due to backlash against said policies. There was a wave of hate and disdain on Twitter, Facebook etc. Its some revisionism to say it was only voting with the wallets.

See my post above yours. Ms didn't care about the uproar. The uproar was there before they announced the Xbox for months due to accurate rumors about the policies. They only reversed course when they had a chance to see pre order numbers. They very obviously showed they couldn't care less if we didn't like it as long as it sold.

 

[Kor of Memory]

Xbox One 180 on policies was due to backlash against said policies. There was a wave of hate and disdain on Twitter, Facebook etc. Its some revisionism to say it was only voting with the wallets.

You don't remember that for a couple of weeks after the conference that Xbox just assumed this would all blow over, and then their preorders started dropping off at an insane rate.

The 180 was due to preorder cancellations, not due to vocal uproar.

 

[Give War A Chance]

It only works if large amounts of people do it. When GAF is the only group, it doesn't matter.

 

[AtomicShroom]

Well it would work if there weren't so many people buying that shit anyways. Maybe you voted with your wallet, but 99 others probably didn't.

 

[TheGraykid]

"I voted in an election and the people who I didn't like won! Voting doesn't work!"

That's what you sound like.

It's a vote, voting for something doesn't guarantee it to occur, it's just raising your personal flag for something. If the rest of the gaming community doesn't agree with you then you won't get what you want, and frankly isn't that a good thing? A minority of gamers shouldn't decide what is successful on the market, and what type of games everyone else gets to play.

 

[Sho_Nuff82]

The Xbox One reversals happened as soon as MS saw the first tangible pre-order numbers after E3. They honestly believed, up until that point, that people would buy it anyway.

Kinect was removed from a mandatory pack in because people were choosing the PS4 over the Xbox 2:1 in North America when it cost $100 less.

Motion gaming was largely abandoned because no one bought the last few sequels of Wii Sports, Wii Fit, and Kinect sports.

Speaking with your wallet only works if you genuinely don't buy a product. Buying it in the millions, then complaining on a message board, tells the company that you're just a vocal minority, or that the issues you have with the product aren't big enough to prevent a purchase on the future.

You don't remember that for a couple of weeks after the conference that Xbox just assumed this would all blow over, and then their preorders started dropping off at an insane rate.

The 180 was due to preorder cancellations, not due to vocal uproar.

This. Mattrick and Co did not give 2 fucks about Internet backlash.

 

[DannyDanger]

Wasnt Xbox 180 based on low preorders?

 

[Love Deterrence]

support what you like, ignore what you don't. who cares, it's your money dog

 

[NoKisum]

The big flaw that so many people ignore is that "Voting With Your Wallet" is a 2-step process.

1. Don't buy it.
2. Let them know WHY you didn't buy it.

Otherwise, they'll just assume you don't like the franchise anymore or make some other insane excuse for why a game didn't sell ("It starred a woman", "The genre is dead", "It didn't have multiplayer", etc.)

In response to this, in some cases, it's hard to tell what are the right places to deliver feedback in which the companies will actually listen/care.

Like, I would absolutely love to tell the heads of Nintendo to deliver GBA/SNES VC support to the 3DS, but I have absolutely no idea who to email/tweet/etc that will make a difference.

 

[Ranger X]

Joke thread?

Why voting?
That's the same question for the same answer. You vote alone will not do much, but each vote is needed because its a collective decision. If water drops where alive and thinking, do you really think they would doubt their importance in matter of forming an ocean together?

Its stupid to even think that demonstrating your customer insatisfaction by simply not buying a product is useless. Do you buy everything that can be possibly targeted at you? You can't even earn the necessary money for that. Why do you think some stuff sell better than other stuff? Why do you think so games are failing and some selling well? Its all because the customers in general MADE A CHOICE. Voting with your wallet is just that. And as soon as you buy something, the message you send it "that's what I wanted".

That's all there is to it.

 

[Htown]

I hate that picture. It's one page out of 17, hardly a representation of whether people in that group bought the game or not.

especially since Steam groups sort currently playing users to the front, so any small percentage of people that bought the game near launch would have filled up the front page regardless

 

[Servbot24]

Voting with your wallet works great, because what it really means is "don't buy shitty games". It may not change the industry but it will save yourself some time and money.

 

[SmokedMeat]

I'm not so sure it does.

I haven't gone through the whole thread, but examples I've seen were social media working to change things.

 

[Doc_Drop]

I'm aware, it's doesn't mean I have to approve. OP asked did voting with your wallet works, in my experience it doesn't, as I said I can't think one one example where it actually worked, because there are people that defend anything, because of us being different, having different preferences and all that stuff.

Ok, so what you're saying is that it doesn't work for you. But it certainly works as a principle, as all those people that bought games with the stuff you mentioned got what they wanted. The system works, the problem is that the consumer base as a whole doesn't agree with you

 

[MagnesD3]

Better be popular opinion or it wont matter. So no voting with the wallet doesnt work.

 

[Hibiki Kurosawa]

Well it does work... Everyone just has to join in.

 

[Bluenoser]

If you're planing on buying a game, then decide not to because of something in the game, do you send the publisher a letter explaining why they lost the sale?

If not how will they know how many sales they lost because of wallet voting?

There are probably a handful of people that didn't buy MGSV because Hayter wasn't voicing Snake, then others because they didn't like the FOB stuff, how does the publisher get this information?

Maybe I wasn't clear in the OP, I'm not saying democracy doesn't work, I mean the "vote with your wallet" argument that is made on GAF when someone posts complaining about something anti consumer in a game, isn't a productive argument, because the majority don't care, and it won't change anything

We could all complain about microtransactions in paid games for the next decade, voting with our wallets and all, but every big holiday game for 2025 is going to contain microtransactions, that is the way the industry is going

I can agree with this, and to take it further (maybe even hyperbolic), since there are 25 million PS4 owners, and a game only sells 3 million copies, technically, didn't the side that chose not to purchase the game win 22 million to 3 in this particular "vote"? Obviously companies don't expect a 1:1 adoption rate, so my example is not that valid, but it goes to show that companies that make a game have no idea why person X didn't buy one. Maybe they had no money, maybe they don't like the game, maybe they were disgusted with a controversial practice the dev used. With no way of knowing, the best a company can do is subtract their actual sales from projected sales, and if that delta is too great, they know they fucked up somewhere, and may change it. If that delta is acceptable, they will assume they were just off on their projections. Either way, it's all math and assumptions that drive companies to do what they do.

Voting with our wallets absolutely works, but just like a real election, it won't always have an impact. All you can do is take pride that you didn't have a hand in supporting a shitty policy.

Spoiler

Fuck you Stephen Harper.