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[levyjl1988]

Can anyone name some video games that hold themselves to the highest and moral ethical standards?
I'm talking about games not imposed by psychological manipulation with questionable business standards, which means no nickel-and-diming players, no FOMO, something feature complete and built with ambition and intention.
It's a game that is praised by players and holds a special place in their hearts.
For such a game to hit those conditions it must have the following:


-No battle passes.

-No tiny DLCs.

-No loot boxes.

-Large expansions and patches ONLY.

-No daily/weekly bounties or challenge system.

-No daily log-in bonuses.

-No DLC promo codes from other purchases like food, drinks, toys, etc.

-No FOMO.

-No digital preorder DLC bonuses.

-No day-one Digital incentive bonuses.

-No store-exclusive preorder DLC bonuses.

-No live streaming Twitch etc digital content bonuses for watching a stream at a forced inconvenient time to get content.

-No manipulative crap.

-No other digital storefront to purchase DLC like UPlay or Ubisoft Connect.

-No complicated purchase chart of which edition has what and what is exclusive per edition.



What are some games that hit those conditions?


I know most of the games from FromSoftware, like:

DARK SOULS
Bloodborne
Elden Ring

It Takes Two

Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild

Super Mario Odyssey

Journey

Mass Effect Legendary Edition


Any others you recommend?

 

[feynoob]

Legend of Zelda: Breath of The Wild

Oh sweet summer child.

https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legen...miibo_Unlockables,_Rewards,_and_Functionality

 

[MagiusNecros]

Deep Rock Galactic easily. All DLC is completely optional and Cosmetic and super cheap.

And everything is discounted by 67% on Steam until the 31st.

It's easily my favorite game in recent years.

 

[Neff]

Go back to the '90s
Pick any random game off the shelf
You should be alright

 

[Ghost of Caelid]

Divinity original sins 2, wasteland 3, elden ring, damn near all indies, hollow knight, blasphemous, Signalis, cult of lamb, deaths door

 

[MidGenRefresh]

The Witcher 3

 

[levyjl1988]

Deep Rock Galactic easily. All DLC is completely optional and Cosmetic and super cheap.

And everything is discounted by 67% on Steam until the 31st.

It's easily my favorite game in recent years.

I wouldn't count that game on the list, still has external DLC, whether optional or not.
It doesn't meet the conditions above, otherwise, I would have listed my favorites like Dragon Age: Origins, Alice Madness Returns, etc, but they have tiny DLC from an external store.

 

[levyjl1988]

Oh sweet summer child.

https://www.ign.com/wikis/the-legen...miibo_Unlockables,_Rewards,_and_Functionality

technically the content is in the game, so no tiny DLC from the external store, but then again it does violate the manipulative crap on that checklist. Hmmm...

 

[Corian33]

Into The Breach

Outer Wilds

Squad

Divinity OS2

XCOM 1/2

I’m not sure about all of your criteria though. Daily/weekly challenges are just there to give you something fresh to do on a regular basis. What’s wrong with small patches? I like games where the devs are actively fixing bugs and balancing as needed.

 

[fart town usa]

Devil's Third

 

[levyjl1988]

Into The Breach

Outer Wilds

Squad

Divinity OS2

XCOM 1/2

I’m not sure about all of your criteria though. Daily/weekly challenges are just there to give you something fresh to do on a regular basis. What’s wrong with small patches? I like games where the devs are actively fixing bugs and balancing as needed.

Small patches are okay, it's on the list.

-Large expansions and patches ONLY.

Daily and weekly challenges are manipulative to be lazy quests. It's nothing fresh. Hitting milestones like in Halo Reach is acceptable, but daily and weekly progress time gates players.

 

[hemo memo]

Witcher 3?

 

[Majormaxxx]

Tie Fighter

 

[ANDS]

You're basically asking "What is a single player game from a small developer" - which excludes a ton of games that are designed to be Live Service, but are fair in the relationship between user and developer (like MARVEL SNAP).

. . .also Dark Souls 2 (at leas ton the PC) had one of the most notoriously hilarious pre-order DLC's (but perhaps not for the reason one might think).

 

[theStartupSound]

GTA IV and prequels.

Limbo/Inside.

 

[EruditeHobo]

I reject the premise, that the criteria that you specifically value is somehow "moral".

 

[Bonfires Down]

E.T.

 

[VN1X]

Diablo Immortal

 

[elladarapanta]

Kingdom Come Deliverance is a masterpiece and deserves every penny

 

[deeptech]

the whole ps1/2 library
e: i find it curious how even back then publishers were all about money, they pushed unrealistic deadlines and whatnot like today but still devs managed awesomely and made great games, today it's still about the money but in my mind games are usually way worse

 

[TintoConCasera]

Dragon's Dogma

 

[Guilty_AI]

There are shittons of them, unless you're refering exclusively to AAA titles?

 

[Dick Jones]

No Man's Sky. They could have scammed and ran off with the cash but stayed quiet and worked on delivering a great experience and more for free.

Rift Apart had no crunch.

 

[Danjin44]

 

[TheThreadsThatBindUs]

Very little of that has got anything to do with integrity, morality or ethics.

Monetization is neither ingerently a question of morality or ethics.

Hiring professional psychologists to help design game systems that lean into destructive addictive behaviours in order to manipulate people into spending, does align with a ethical and moral question. But how many games can you prove that the dev did this?

 

[Jigsaah]

Warframe does it right. I can't wait for cross save.

 

[Rockondevil]

Halo Infinite Campaign

 

[darth.shrimp]

Terraria. Game costs 5 bucks during sales on Steam, and has received enough content through the years to make it easily 5 times bigger than it was at launch - all for free.

 

[Bavarian_Sloth]

Fall Guys

For free. Unique Battle Royale. Lots of new maps since launch. Only (stupid) cosmetic skins in the ingame store.

 

[paprikastaude]

Crash Bandicoot N.Sane Trilogy - 3 fullfledged remakes at a budget price, super polished, in the beginning you even got free levels that were scratched from the original. Pretty crazy coming from Activision.

 

[ShadyAcshuns]

 

[Fuz]

The Witcher 3

 

[paprikastaude]

Any objections against these last gen games?

Sonic Mania
Streets of Rage 4
Cuphead
Mega Man 11
Yakuza 0 (unsure)
Hellblade

Also, the biggest chunk of 1st party singleplayer content across all platform holders, I'd say?

 

[nkarafo]

So basically, older games.

 

[DragoonKain]

Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness

 

[The Stig]

God of War: Ragnarok

 

[Hypereides]

Most games that aren't published by the "big boys" in the business.

Keep an eye on games from some of these publishers:

• THQ nordic
• Focus interactive
• Maximum games
• Fireshine games (formerly SoldOut)
• Badland publishing
• Pqube
• Inin
• Numskull
• Microids
• Nacon

They typically publish strictly plain, tradtional video games without some kind of catch.

 

[AJUMP23]

Hitman 3 or the rebooted Hitman trilogy has been an incredible value with tons of support. All the DLC is great.

 

[Paltheos]

I'll add that the Muramasa DLC is good too. Vanillaware released 4 content DLC packs on the Vita version of Muramasa (content which will become inaccessible whenever the Vita store is killed; someone please get Vanillaware's games out on PC ).

 

[AlteredForms]

 

[mxbison]

The big Sony games usually have none of that which is why I'm glad to pay full price instead of getting them on a sub service.

Also From Software games and a lot of AA or indie stuff.

 

[Drizzlehell]

 

[NightmareFarm]

Pretty much every character action game, most AAA games before like 2009, any indie or small studio games being released nowadays.

 

[a multicultural team of v]

God of War: Ragnarok

And the first God of War 2018. I think the only "DLC" ever released for that was a freaking comic book.

Actually quite a few big Sony games have absolutely zero DLC, which is kind of crazy because even releasing "good" story DLC would have made them a ton of money.

 

[01011001]

Kingdom Come Deliverance is a masterpiece and deserves every penny

andother -1 in the amount of meaning the word masterpiece has left... we're quickly approaching 0 at this rate

 

[01011001]

Pretty much every character action game

*DMC5 left the chat

 

[NightmareFarm]

*DMC5 left the chat

Why because they threw in an OPTION to buy red orbs at launch and then to buy Vergil for £5 2 years later rather than force you to buy special edition?

 

[01011001]

Why because they threw in an OPTION to buy red orbs at launch and then to buy Vergil for £5 2 years later rather than force you to buy special edition?

they literally sold lifes and in-game currency yes, so that's instantly a disqualification.

they even had log-in bonuses and day 1 launch bonuses for logging in.

this also completely fucked with the game's design. because you could instantly respawn after death and just keep fighting, making the game a farce because you can not only buy yourself to a win but also farm log-in bonuses n shit to basically skip bosses by just spamming and using gold orbs that you didn't get by playing the game but by doing mobile game shit.

 

[GymWolf]

Tetris maybe?

 

[NightmareFarm]

they literally sold lifes and in-game currency yes, so that's instantly a disqualification.

they even had log-in bonuses and day 1 launch bonuses for logging in.

this also completely fucked with the game's design. because you could instantly respawn after death and just keep fighting, making the game a farce because you can not only buy yourself to a win but also farm log-in bonuses n shit to basically skip bosses by just spamming and using gold orbs that you didn't get by playing the game but by doing mobile game shit.

Literally who cares. Just don't buy orbs if you want to play it the normal way. Simple. No one is forcing you to buy orbs.

This isn't the same as live service games where they constantly milk DLC after the game comes out so stop pretending like it is.