Is Zenimax an Ethically Run Business?

VoidCommander

Over the years, zos has done a number of changes that were more or less questionable. Required subscription to play at launch, release of the crown store to compensate, the controversial crown crates, crown crate gem exclusives, rapids changes to promote new duo mounts, to only name a few of many things.

With the latest controversy of whether or not zos should uphold precedent and provide a minimum of three free race change tokens, the question I have for them is “do they think giving players nothing in light of these changes is the right thing to do?”

It is blatantly obvious to us as the players that any time you change racial passives, things that a player has no way of controlling nor predicting, they should not have to pay the price with their dollars nor hindered play experience. If zos fails to provide compensation for altering the races, then where they lie on the ethical spectrum will no longer be a question.

hafgood

Please can you explain how you are defining thickly run. You haven't done so in your blurb so without knowing what you are wanting us to vote on I find myself unable to vote.

My understanding of ethically run is that they are run in an honest and principled way, quite how yoi define that is up to you.

But they are honest and everything is laid out in the patch notes and PTS notes so is there for people to read. Nothing is hidden fro. That point of view.

Principles are harder to define as we all have different views.

This pill appears to be equating ethically run with rewarding players compensation for changes. And I'm not convinced thats how ethics works. An ethically run company would pay its suppliers a fair wage.

Whether a consumer chooses to make a purchase is up to the consumer. We are consumers not suppliers.

If this was a coffee company who changed the way they make their coffee would you as a consumer expect a refund on the jars of coffee you bought using the old recipe as it was no longer the correct flavour?

And that is essentially what you want, a refund on an old purchase in favour of the new flavour.

Not saying we shouldn't get race change tokens, just saying I'm not sure on what your definition of ethically run is

Firstmep

They're out here to make money.
Period.

That being said you can look at the multi layered monetization system of eso as both good and bad.
You can think that they want to milk customers any way they can, or you can think that having multiple options for spending money on the game being flexible.
For me it's the latter, I don't buy dlcs or crowns, I pay eso plus when I play, I get crowns for it, that I can spend on what I want(mostly), and get access to most of the games content, crafting bag etc.
Then again I'm not a compulsive gambler, so I don't spend my life's saving on rng boxes.
Frankly loot crates should heavily regulated everywhere in the world, but I don't think what Zos is doing is inherently immoral.

If you are someone with a gambling issue, seek help, contact customer service and ask them to restrict your purchases etc.

Apart from that, the current multi layered monetisation of eso allows me to pay the absolute minimum, while enjoying almost all of the benefits, so I'm happy with that.

Also I don't see the forced sub when the game launched as unethical, I mean wow still has mandatory sub to this day..

VoidCommander

hafgood wrote: »

Please can you explain how you are defining thickly run. You haven't done so in your blurb so without knowing what you are wanting us to vote on I find myself unable to vote.

My understanding of ethically run is that they are run in an honest and principled way, quite how yoi define that is up to you.

But they are honest and everything is laid out in the patch notes and PTS notes so is there for people to read. Nothing is hidden fro. That point of view.

Principles are harder to define as we all have different views.

This pill appears to be equating ethically run with rewarding players compensation for changes. And I'm not convinced thats how ethics works. An ethically run company would pay its suppliers a fair wage.

Whether a consumer chooses to make a purchase is up to the consumer. We are consumers not suppliers.

If this was a coffee company who changed the way they make their coffee would you as a consumer expect a refund on the jars of coffee you bought using the old recipe as it was no longer the correct flavour?

And that is essentially what you want, a refund on an old purchase in favour of the new flavour.

Not saying we shouldn't get race change tokens, just saying I'm not sure on what your definition of ethically run is

Ethics boil down to what you believe are right and wrong. These values differ with cultures. Most businesses have a code of ethics, which are moral rules their employees follow.

Zenimax does not have a publicly available code of ethics for me to research unfortunately.

To help you understand what I’m talking about ethically, I obviously am not asking you to make a judgement based on zenimax employee salaries or whether they recycle their paper. That isn’t info available to you as a player necessarily.

Lets say hypothetically zenimax released a crown store item for 3000 crowns that increased your damage permanently by 2%. Would you think that would be fair to the rest of the playerbase that could not afford the consumable?
If you think its fair, then you would be good ethical practices. If you think it would be unfair, select bad ethical practices.

The hypothetical example I used is actually quite real. Stamina dps players who are playing as orcs (the current meta race) will be 2% weaker than their dark elf counterparts following the adjustments next patch due to dark elves receiving a large max stamina increase.

This leaves orc players with no way to bridge this dps difference other than by purchasing race change tokens for...you guessed it....3000 crowns.

TheForFeeF

VoidCommander wrote: »

Over the years, zos has done a number of changes that were more or less questionable. Required subscription to play at launch, release of the crown store to compensate, the controversial crown crates, crown crate gem exclusives, rapids changes to promote new duo mounts, to only name a few of many things.

You lost me here

VoidCommander wrote: »

With the latest controversy of whether or not zos should uphold precedent and provide a minimum of three free race change tokens, the question I have for them is “do they think giving players nothing in light of these changes is the right thing to do?”

Then brought me back in here.

WoW requires a sub to play. RuneScape requires a sub to unlock all the content. Are those unethical? Requiring a sub to play isn't unethical at all. Servers are not cheap to run, you have to make that money some how. Subbing to play an MMO is a long time thing that has happened for 20+ years.

Crown Crates are not unethical, as long as there isn't any P2W in there, which there isn't.

If you spoke about how you can buy potions and poisons that are the exact same as the ones you can craft, then yes, that is unethical (especially, when, iirc, that they specifically said that anything you purchase in the crown store would not be as good as something you could craft...). But, on the whole, the crown store isn't unethical. Just, the pricing is ridiculous.

If there was a way to get a free race change within the game (except buy purchasing crowns via gold), then there wouldn't be an issue (I'm talking about a system similar to transmute crystals). But there isn't. Granted, this won't effect everyone as the min/maxers probably make up 5-10% of the playerbase at most. However, the racial changes are forcing these 5-10% to purchase race change tokens so they are able to be the best at the game.

I will always stick by this... if there is a nerf to a race you are playing, depending on your total time played with said character, you are entitled to a race change token. If there is a buff to another race, however, no change to your race, you are not entitled to a race change token.

That being said - this wouldn't be an issue if they had account-wide achievements. My main character (that I have logged 38 days play time on) is also the main character I use for endgame, which has been with me from the start of the game. That is a lot of progress to just lose.

VoidCommander

@TheForFeeF

I literally agree with everything you said. The focus wasn’t meant to be on required paid subscriptions, or that those were unethical. I was just trying to highlight some of the big controversial decisions zos has made in the past. In the first year, the reason the required subscription was unethical in my opinion was because the game was very broken. There was no group finder for dungeons, pvp barely worked, and there were hundreds of game breaking bugs. It was so bad, that if zos hadn’t gone buy to play, I’m convinced the game would have gone under, and it almost did regardless.

Sorry for not providing more clarifying context about that first year in the original post.

Firstmep

VoidCommander wrote: »

hafgood wrote: »

Please can you explain how you are defining thickly run. You haven't done so in your blurb so without knowing what you are wanting us to vote on I find myself unable to vote.

My understanding of ethically run is that they are run in an honest and principled way, quite how yoi define that is up to you.

But they are honest and everything is laid out in the patch notes and PTS notes so is there for people to read. Nothing is hidden fro. That point of view.

Principles are harder to define as we all have different views.

This pill appears to be equating ethically run with rewarding players compensation for changes. And I'm not convinced thats how ethics works. An ethically run company would pay its suppliers a fair wage.

Whether a consumer chooses to make a purchase is up to the consumer. We are consumers not suppliers.

If this was a coffee company who changed the way they make their coffee would you as a consumer expect a refund on the jars of coffee you bought using the old recipe as it was no longer the correct flavour?

And that is essentially what you want, a refund on an old purchase in favour of the new flavour.

Not saying we shouldn't get race change tokens, just saying I'm not sure on what your definition of ethically run is

Ethics boil down to what you believe are right and wrong. These values differ with cultures. Most businesses have a code of ethics, which are moral rules their employees follow.

Zenimax does not have a publicly available code of ethics for me to research unfortunately.

To help you understand what I’m talking about ethically, I obviously am not asking you to make a judgement based on zenimax employee salaries or whether they recycle their paper. That isn’t info available to you as a player necessarily.

Lets say hypothetically zenimax released a crown store item for 3000 crowns that increased your damage permanently by 2%. Would you think that would be fair to the rest of the playerbase that could not afford the consumable?
If you think its fair, then you would be good ethical practices. If you think it would be unfair, select bad ethical practices.

The hypothetical example I used is actually quite real. Stamina dps players who are playing as orcs (the current meta race) will be 2% weaker than their dark elf counterparts following the adjustments next patch due to dark elves receiving a large max stamina increase.

This leaves orc players with no way to bridge this dps difference other than by purchasing race change tokens for...you guessed it....3000 crowns.

I'm sorry but 2% difference in damage is what I call good balance. No race change token required.

relentless_turnip

I think the release of stadia was very shady. Where we were told we had to redownload the game in the name of performance. When in fact we had to redownload as they had changed the game on a fundamental level to make stadia work... It has had a horrible effect on the performance on all the other platforms since. A year on and it doesn't feel any better imo.

Beyond that I don't think their payment model is horrendous or unethical. I do question the value of the product given the amount of avenues of income they have and the performance being at its worst. [snip] I know that seems harsh, but it is unfortunately pretty accurate.

[Edited to remove Bashing]

hafgood

I'm sorry but I do not see how they are being unethical by not providing you with a free race change token.

There are constant changes to races and to skills - should they provide you with a free change token each amd every time?

I have used my tokens from last time but only because I have swapped some characters from stam to mag.

My main is a Redguard, he will always be a Redguard no matter what changes are made to the racial passives.

The way I look at it is its your choice what flavour of coffee you drink. If you decide one of the other blends is your new favourite the onus is on you to buy the new jar, and thats how I feel about this, if you want to change race because you have to have the extra 2% then that's on you. Get the gold together and buy a race change token from a crown seller, its not like gold is hard to come by.

Being unethical would be not telling you the changes are coming, the fact that you are wanting race change tokens tells you they are being open and honest about the changes as you know about them.

I'm not defending them, I'm just pointing out that by your definition of ethics they are being ethically run.

Oh amd that extra 2% won't make a difference to the best players in the game - they don't need it, they can take a potato and make it perform. No the ones who *** and moan are the wannabees who lack the skill necessary to be one of the best and who shout and scream whenever there is a.change that affects their perceived greatness.

VoidCommander

@hafgood
They DON’T change racial passives constantly. I have played since beta and they have only altered racial passives ONCE in 6 years, and they provided racial tokens so players could compensate for the changes since there were (and still are) no ways to change your race outside of the crown store.

Buying crowns with gold isn’t a standardized function of the game for one, and it doesn’t solve the actual problem that players who want to seek out their highest potential are forced to spend real money to reach it. Paying a monthly sub for dlc access is acceptable due to the content it provides, but what if I need to buy a stack of $30 race change tokens every other patch to keep my potential at its greatest?

Have you ever had to do a 100k to get into a hardmode trial group? Its not easy. In fact, its really *** hard, even with the correct racial passives. So how is it ethical for a company to arbitrarily change a meta, that the players themselves are powerless to adapt to without spending significant ADDITIONAL money?

As a side note, the reason just “buying crowns with gold” is a problem is because its still zos creating artificial demand for crowns using an unethical method. If they change the racial meta often enough, eventually there will be such a high demand for crowns that farming the gold for it would be longer and harder than roaming your neighborhood for spare change. We are already seeing massive inflation of crown prices, having well over doubled in half a year. Now imagine 10% of the playerbase needing to buy 3000-9000 crowns all at once.

TwinLamps

idk tbh

Meiox

Playing an mmo and beeing upset or demanding any kind of refund on changes, is like playing pvp and be upset about other people killing you ;-)

Josira

inb4 the lock or whatever it is people say.

Yeah. they are unethical. for more reasons then you say.

But from other threads ive deduced they are also...really bad at communicating within their own company. and I heard rumors,ages ago that its kinda a mess in Bethesda too. I think. again that is speculation,and could entirely wrong.
Really though,the Devs and the Forum Mods are just doing their jobs. its not up to them to change x or y if they are told to do something else instead.
Again these problems all stem from someone higher up,like all companies. and to not comply,is to lose your job,and therefor your lively hood.
its..kinda just the [snip] world we live in at the moment. and not enough people will be willing to try and change things,so we kinda just have to accept the bed we *** in.

[Edited to remove Profanity]

hafgood

@VoidCommander

You answered my question. Thank you.

I have no sympathy for you, just be glad there is the option to change if being "meta" is that important to you. Being honest though my experience is that the best don't care about meta because they don't need it. Just saying.

Imagine playing a game where race change wasn't an option, I'd live to see the tokens removed from the game so that players have to learn how to play the game rather than chase the so called meta.

Parasaurolophus

Hey ZoS! Could you pinned the feedback threads on the forum? Most of them read away under the pressure of such useless threads.

TheForFeeF

hafgood wrote: »

@VoidCommander

You answered my question. Thank you.

I have no sympathy for you, just be glad there is the option to change if being "meta" is that important to you. Being honest though my experience is that the best don't care about meta because they don't need it. Just saying.

Imagine playing a game where race change wasn't an option, I'd live to see the tokens removed from the game so that players have to learn how to play the game rather than chase the so called meta.

This, along with:

hafgood wrote: »

Oh amd that extra 2% won't make a difference to the best players in the game - they don't need it, they can take a potato and make it perform. No the ones who *** and moan are the wannabees who lack the skill necessary to be one of the best and who shout and scream whenever there is a.change that affects their perceived greatness.

this tells me that you don't understand endgame content at all.

2% extra damage, per second, is a lot during a boss fight which can last any where from 3 minutes to 10 minutes (on veteran hardmode level). Now, either multiply that by 2 (for DLC dungeons) or 8 (for trials)... that is a lot of missed damage.

Endgame, competitive, meta players will 100% care about the missed 1-2% damage.

CaptainVenom

If you guys knew how many terrible companies are out there... you have no idea how good Zenimax is.

VoidCommander

CaptainVenom wrote: »

If you guys knew how many terrible companies are out there... you have no idea how good Zenimax is.

I made this thread because of the manipulative tactics I’ve seen other companies use. I desperately do not want zenimax to follow in their footsteps. Telling ourselves “well there are worse companies” anytime zos does something against the player’s best interests is how you GET those horrible companies in the first place. Change like that doesn’t happen overnight, it is a gradual process, a process I’ve witnessed zenimax following over the years. That is why its more important now more than ever before to make our voices heard and to hopefully convince zenimax that their ethical standards are worth more than a quick payout.

Faded

Josira wrote: »

inb4 the lock or whatever it is people say.

Yeah. they are unethical. for more reasons then you say.

But from other threads ive deduced they are also...really bad at communicating within their own company. and I heard rumors,ages ago that its kinda a mess in Bethesda too. I think. again that is speculation,and could entirely wrong.
Really though,the Devs and the Forum Mods are just doing their jobs. its not up to them to change x or y if they are told to do something else instead.
Again these problems all stem from someone higher up,like all companies. and to not comply,is to lose your job,and therefor your lively hood.
its..kinda just the [snip] world we live in at the moment. and not enough people will be willing to try and change things,so we kinda just have to accept the bed we *** in.

I get the sense the people in charge of monetization are the ones with real power, and the people in charge of content work around that. And yeah, that's just the world.

Btw OP not providing you with free race changes may not be very nice, but it's hardly unethical. It weakens your argument considerably that it seems to be your real focus. Not that this thread is likely to last very long regardless.

VoidCommander

@Faded

I agree that artificially creating a demand for crowns by altering the racial meta may not be as severe as unequal pay, using child laborers, or human rights violations on the ethics spectrum, but I still feel that it isn’t right.

A respectable game like ESO wouldn’t sell you a permanent buff that increases your max stamina by 1000 for $30 right? That would look tacky for their image, and would be debasing themselves to candy crush levels of monetization.

Monetizing houses, furnature, cosmetics, mounts, mount levels, are fine because they can either be aquired in game via normal channels or are irrelevant to combat gameplay.

Flipping what race an endgame player needs to reach their max potential with the only way to adjust it being with their real money is acceptable to you now? What if they do it again in 6 months? And again 3 months after that? What if they purposely change the meta races for each role every patch to force the top 10% of players to buy race change tokens to stay relevant?

Assuming you think that last scenario *might* touch the side of less than ethical, I ask you this: what is the difference from them flipping the racial metas 4 times in a year, and doing it once in 6 years?

The answer: The players let them get away with it without protest, versus calling them out on the pile of bull crap the moment they try to exploit us like the FIRST time they changed the racial passives.

Only problem is this time they didn’t affect EVERYONE at once with the racial passives, so at most only a fraction of the playerbase is getting angry about it, while the rest can’t see the bigger picture at play here.

And yeah, this thread is mostly about the tokens. If no free tokens are offered, then zos will have revealed the extent of their moral compass.

BlueRaven

My issue is with how they handle the client. Everything dealing with the client feels sub contracted out and on the cheap. Creating what feels like a patchwork of fixes.

When dealing with the Mac client, there appears to literally be no one there who can help, instead it’s the fellow gamers that usually step in. Submitting tickets is pointless and major bugs have lingered for years.

Recent example, I purchased the solitude house, furnished. But my client keeps crashing upon entry sometimes trapping my character inside. So now that money is wasted on a home I cannot even enter.

They can’t hire one person familiar with the Mac client? Not one?

Faded

VoidCommander wrote: »

@ Faded

Flipping what race an endgame player needs to reach their max potential with the only way to adjust it being with their real money is acceptable to you now? What if they do it again in 6 months? And again 3 months after that? What if they purposely change the meta races for each role every patch to force the top 10% of players to buy race change tokens to stay relevant?

Meh. What if they made changes they felt necessary for reasons of their own and some players decided it meant they absolutely HAD TO change a character's race or the sky would fall, and the ways to do that remained exactly what they had been for the months and years before that.

Nobody is forcing you to do anything, including play this game.If you feel this strongly about it, making a new character with the BIS race is free. The absurdly overpriced token is a way to trade money for that time and inconvenience. If it's not worth the time and inconvenience or the money, then maybe the sky won't fall after all.

Nice? A good business decision? Maybe not. Unethical, no.

danno8

The only real ethical issue with the business model is that there are no detailed odds given with respect to your chances of getting any item offered in the crown crates.

They get around it (like all other gambling boxes in online games) by having you spend "tokens" not really money, and by having you technically "win" something every time.

This allows them to legally say it is not gambling, although everyone knows that in a very practical sense, it is.

edit: should this really be in the PTS area?

ZOS_ConnorG

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ThorianB

Over the years, zos has done a number of changes that were more or less questionable. Required subscription to play at launch, release of the crown store to compensate, the controversial crown crates, crown crate gem exclusives, rapids changes to promote new duo mounts, to only name a few of many things.

A business trying to make a profit isn't questionable... It's the entire reason it exists. None of these are "unethical practices".

things that a player has no way of controlling nor predicting, they should not have to pay the price with their dollars nor hindered play experience

This i agree with. You might have picked that race because of its racial features and if those features change, that race may no longer be desirable to you because of changes beyond your control.

Characters of the affected races should get 7 days of free race changes for that character only starting the first time that character is logged in. That would be fair compensation.

Fischblut

Required subscription to play at launch, release of the crown store to compensate, the controversial crown crates, crown crate gem exclusives, rapids changes to promote new duo mounts, to only name a few of many things.

With the latest controversy of whether or not zos should uphold precedent and provide a minimum of three free race change tokens

For me, nothing of this list is unethical
Changes to vMA and vDSA weapons in Greymoor were unethical. Pretty much the worst thing which could ever happen, and it remains the worst thing so far.

I'm also sad that ESO+ members don't get nice things like we used to... During ESO+ trials, paid members were getting free crate for every day of it. When new crate season arrived, we were getting free crates (although I don't remember if it was ESO+ exclusive).
Free ESO+ statuettes might as well not exist, zero value for me

1) Required subscription at launch - we are no longer required to have subscription (at least if we are not hoarders).

2) Release of crown store - when they introduced gifting in 2018, crown store became amazing for every type of player

3) Crown crates - same as crown store; before gifting, I totally understood the sadness if you are not player from good country and thus could not afford them; after introduction of gifting, getting some crates should not be a problem even for people from poor countries.

4) gem-exclusives - same as crown store and crates; my only sadness is that some mounts were unfinished and not perfect, not worth of 600 gems
For example, Blazeborn Wolf - same model as Frost Atronach wolf; no unique voice, no unique armor; not good texture (doesn't give me impression of lava or fire) etc.

5) rapid changes - they were actually amazing, cause they led to upcoming change when everyone will have rapids active at all times New duo mounts were scrapped cause they were bugged, so they are irrelevant when we think about Rapids.

6) should they provide free racial changes in this update? Not really, I don't see big changes to racial bonuses... If they provide tokens, it's okay... free stuff. But I would much rather take free crates for similar value of race change token

Pallio

Revenue for having the best product is no longer a reality, being one of the few in the market with a strong hististorical following is good. But, when that group gets smaller due to a superior product hitting the market, abusing the loyal base for short term gains will prove futile.

trackdemon5512

@VoidCommander

You can’t ask a poll question and then advocate a singular personal point of view. That creates and exhibits an inherent bias (clearly shown in your anger of lack of race change tokens) that absolutely ruins any relevancy of the survey. Don’t ask a loaded question to a population per-inclined toward a view which you already support. That’s how politicians work, not those looking for real answers.

And simply put players don’t deserve a race change token. The developers are not changing the core identities of characters like they did with Dragon Bones. Clearly if anytime racial attributes were changed you would ask for race change token with a belief that this isn’t fair. We can assume that because of how you loaded the initial poll question.

As for ZOS being ethical well then that’s neither here nor there but it can be said that ESO doesn’t have PTW, the developers actively try to right problems in their games, and they don’t mislead you in marketing (like CD Projekt Red for example). Ethical is a point of view but ZOS sure isn’t being greedy/manipulative.

NordSwordnBoard

I heard they had a company boat cruise around Chesapeake Bay and threw plastic six-pack rings at pods of dolphins. Not because they are evil or unethical, but because they are overly ethical towards mackerel and their right to prosper free of OP predators. Many mudcrabs were consumed in the form of cakes that day...

Just kidding, ...but Ethics? Really? They should've made the daily log in rewards Race change tokens before this, so loyal players could have them ready. Would doing it next month be too late? They recognize the skills and attributes should be free. Maybe make race change tokens 50% off or buy one get one free? Don't be surprised if ESO+ members get cheaper tokens than non subs.

I think you should've proposed a solution about race change instead of questioning their ethics though. It seems it more about that than pay to convenience and monetization. Its up to you to judge their entire moral compass based on a single thing though.

Nairinhe

*chewing popcorn*

Josira

really though.

Nairinhe wrote: »

*chewing popcorn*

can I have some?