8 Ways Greed Is Wrecking Modern Gaming
7. Graphical Downgrades
A particularly profitable little stunt that corporations pull these days is false advertising: allowing a consumer to believe a product has certain qualities, tempting a sale, and then intentionally not delivering to the implied standard.
In March 2016, buyers of The Division were left blinking in disbelief after discovering that, in the three year developmental period since the game was initially revealed at E3 2013, graphics had not only failed to improve (over three whole years, remember), but had actually gotten worse. Lighting, shadows, special effects, menus, and even sound effects had suffered a significant downgrade - a sneaky attempt by Ubisoft at short-changing the fans to maximise profitability.
A popular Youtube video further exposed Ubisoft as pulling the same dirty trick on numerous other games, in particular Watchdogs, Rainbow Six Siege, and Far Cry 4. The shameless lack of integrity provoked online outrage and a variety of angry reaction videos.