Microtransactions in games

I think its ok in some games that you like a lot, for the most part though I try to avoid them, but once in a while I dont mind paying if I want the item badly or feel like I like the game enough to purchase some extras.

BadSheep said:

We are paying a LOT less for games nowadays. We are are essentially paying $30 from the late nineties, which would still have been about $50 cheaper than the cartridge games. I know its a rough estimate, but it gives you the same idea.

Click to expand...

Yeah, but I think one important thing to note about this is that despite the fact that games cost less now, overall people pay more for them. Reason being, these days coverage is bigger, game advertisement is everywhere, and storefronts throw hundreds upon thousands of games at you. Not only are their more games around today in general, but the promotion behind them as well as their availability towers over those of the days of yore, and similarly a lot of these games with lootboxes generally have special editions that make them around as much as 70-80 bucks anyway.

Gamers are paying more and companies are getting more. While, yes, the cost of creating games has gone up as well, so, too, has the playerbase that would invest in these games and the money they'd be willing to shell out for them, so the price difference between today and yesterday is pretty negligible (and, ironically, there's probably a fairly large gap between how much games cost now and how much they would have to cost before companies would have to recoup sales on lootboxes alone).

Well, at least in the UK, it looks like enough gamers think Loot Boxes (the predominant form of MT) should be considered gambling, and held to the law as such. A petition just got enough signatures to force the government to investigate the practice and decide whether or not it is gambling (it is!).

Hopefully this starts of positive trend of other countries declaring this gambling and holding Pubs and Devs accountable to gambling laws (and then maybe they wont want to keep doing this shitty Loot Box stuff anymore!)

Proof

I hate to double post, but here is an excerpt from a Activision patent that was filed in '15 and only got approved now.

For example, in one implementation, the system may include a microtransaction engine that arranges matches to influence game-related purchases. For instance, the microtransaction engine may match a more expert/marquee player with a junior player to encourage the junior player to make game-related purchases of items possessed/used by the marquee player. A junior player may wish to emulate the marquee player by obtaining weapons or other items used by the marquee player....The microtransaction engine may match the junior player with a player that is a highly skilled sniper in the game. In this manner, the junior player may be encouraged to make game-related purchases such as a rifle or other item used by the marquee player.

Click to expand...

Activision put out a statement that this was made by a (I assume contracted) unaffiliated r&d company and isn't used in any of their games.

Bungie also tweeted that this system isn't in Destiny.

My question is how long until this greedy manipulative stuff is put into games, because it's certainly the direction this shit-show of an industry is going.

Honestly every major publisher and developer should be deeply ashamed the industry has gotten to this point... they all need to strive to do better, and fix this clusterfuck of an industry.

Sorry for DP but this is too good to pass up! TRIPLE POST ACTUALLY WOOOOO



While this is just a joke mod made for the game, this is the direction we're headed in. Better bend over and get those wallets ready for Daddy publisher!