Problems of imbalance in value: When companies get greedy and skew more toward business-value-first instead of customer-value-first, quality declines or crashes outright. This is enshittification. Cory Doctorow coined the term to encapsulate this problem of overextending into maximizing shareholder value and revenue at the expense of everything else, especially at the expense of customer experience. Despite the focus on shareholder value, private companies are not immune. It's simply greed and misalignment (or complete tossing out) of principles at the core. Not running a business. Getting rich. Not serving customers. Growth at all costs.
While Cory Doctorow primarily discussed online products and services regarding enshittification, I believe problems of misaligned principles and imbalanced value propositions are common everywhere, including video games and tabletop gaming. Shrinkflation, another example of corporate greed in line with enshittification, is reducing the amount of product consumers get versus what's charged, increasing the price while simultaneously reducing the content. This is related to my problem with influencers and content creators: When their income is tied to constant engagement rather than quality, it’s easy to misrepresent and mislead followers, creating a cycle of low-value offerings propped up by artificial hype.
Business leaders want the quickest payout they can get for themselves or shareholders, adopting the "growth at all cost" mentality that throws long-term sustainability or customer value out the window. The "lucky ones" in this camp get an exit and a big payday, leaving the rest of the business and those it serves (us) to suffer. I believe these problems are systemic, pointing to broader societal issues around wealth inequality, but that's not what I'll be talking about.
Years ago, Ubisoft quickly became my favourite gaming studio after playing the first three Assassin's Creed games back-to-back. While I had never played any of their pre-2000s games, I got sucked into many of their past, present, and future releases after that. My girlfriend at the time (who later became my wife, go us) fell in love with Rayman Origins and the Rabbids party games. I started to explore some of their other titles, like I Am Alive, Far Cry 3, Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, Child of Light, and Valiant Hearts: The Great War. I felt like this studio was highly creative, trying new things with existing IP and pumping out quality work.
Gamers will have both objective and subjective measures of a quality game. Sometimes, being really good in one area can completely outweigh another. For example, extremely satisfying gameplay may outweigh a lack of story, but that can be subjective. One thing most folks can agree on—a more objective measure—is "what was promised vs. what was delivered."
Let's briefly touch on the subjective areas first.
For me, the biggest thing I'm looking for when it comes to judging the quality of a game is if it feels like fun or if it feels like work. And if it feels like work, am I working for me, or am I working for something/someone else? What I mean is, am I putting in the effort to gain something rewarding, or am I just being duped into playing because an executive hopes I'll get sucked into a micro-transaction or see some more ads?
Secondary things I'm thinking of when judging the quality of a game include:
Notice that I didn’t include graphics or sound outright. Those are more about preference than quality. However, if one area of the game is vastly more polished than another, that’s a problem. Or if a game demo showcased something revolutionary but the final product was stripped-down (looking at you, Dying Light 2), that’s a significant quality failure.
Ubisoft’s decline into enshittification began soon after the golden era I described.
Update: If you focused on the subjective aspects of that list, thinking something along the lines of "but I like aesthetic upgrades" or "I didn't care for such and such story anyway" then you are completely missing the point. This is about money– Real-world money–, commitment, and quality.
Perhaps Ubisoft’s most egregious enshittification move has been removing access to content customers already paid for. Online services shutting down? Okay, maybe. But when single-player elements disappear because of DRM, that's just theft.
The pattern is clear: introduce a quality experience, gradually degrade it, and milk every last cent from customers before they get fed up and leave.
It's no wonder that my friends, my wife, and I have all stopped playing Ubisoft games as of late. Of course, these are only a few examples that speak to the quality of Ubisoft's games and not the numerous allegations the company has faced otherwise.
The interesting thing that happens to some companies that enshittify too much for too long is that people start to catch on to their grift. They realize they're getting the same experience repackaged but now with more micro-transaction bloat. People are noticing Ubisoft and are beginning to vote with their dollars. Of course, this is how we can most effectively push back on corporate greed: not give them our money until they change. Stop pre-ordering, do not support micro-transactions, do not buy low-value DLC, and quite literally stop buying their games for a time.
So, we've defined how enshittification works in video games: revenue-first increases while actual fun and innovation decrease. How does this manifest in tabletop gaming?
Wizards of the Coast (WotC) and parent company Hasbro are the most obvious examples.
Gaming groups like mine were interested in playing books like Ghosts of Saltmarsh and Tales from the Yawning Portal, although we were leery because they're essentially a repackaging of older material– would they be adequately rewritten and adapted? In most cases, yes, they were; however, eventually, I (as the DM) would discover several typos, mismatches between old and new systems, incorrect references to old page numbers and items that didn't match the new material, and other quality issues. They repackaged these old products, and quality dropped, but they made more money.
Around the same time my group was starting a new game, WotC acquired DnDBeyond, a website that helped players digitally manage character sheets, game rules, and more for a fee. Subscription revenue is the cream of the crop for enshittifiers: if they can get you to give them money monthly and sell you additional products, ooh, baby.
It's no wonder as our 3-year Dungeons & Dragons campaign comes to an end we are looking to play numerous other games.
If we wanted to enshittify tabletop gaming using the same playbook as Ubisoft, here’s what we’d do (How many of these sound like the current state of WotC to you?):
We haven’t reached full enshittification yet, but the warning signs are there.
The only way to push back against corporate greed is to vote with your wallet.
Ubisoft, WotC, and many other companies will enshittify their products and services as much as they think they can get away with. The question is: will we let them?
