Who is to blame for loot boxes?

[El Héroe Oscuro]

I think there is no question that loot boxes has emerged as of late as the predominant money sucker in the video game industry these last few years. Some will say these are a good thing, some will say these are a bad thing. However, who is to blame for the emergence of loot boxes? Is there one specific industry that can be blamed for it?

 

[pkmin3033]

I don't think there is really any blame to be placed on one specific group of individuals. Greed is simply a part of human nature - greed of the people who buy these things to have stuff that is better than everyone else's, and greed of the people who make money off such a disgustingly exploitative practice. You can blame the consumer or the supplier in equal measure - if people didn't want these things other people wouldn't make them, and if people didn't make these things other people wouldn't buy them.

I suppose, if you want to be pedantic about it, the blame arises from the first area where lootboxes were successful. Had they not had such a success in the first market, they wouldn't have spread to the point that they've become generally accepted practice in some areas. Maybe. But then, the idea may not have been conceived at all if such things didn't already exist in physical format - trading cards, stickers, general collectibles, etc. - so you could take it one step farther than that and blame those. It's difficult to find a start point for all this, and when you get right down to it, it's just greed at work, being practiced and exploited.

Although I would love to see someone defend randomized loot that you pay for as a good thing. I am genuinely curious how that would be justified.

 

[TY]

That is a good question who to blame. You can blame multiple parties and have good reason for all of them.

First off the ones who started it all, they began using this system after all. But back then it wasn't so dominant as they are now, so can they be blamed for something they could not see coming? Maybe it started in a F2P game where they needed some form of income to keep it up for people to play for free. And how do you figure out who was the first one to use this system?

Secondly the triple-A titles that shove it down our throats. These companies may be the first people would blame since they are fairly popular games that tons and tons of people play and now have this system adopted in their 60 dollar games. And people keep buying them cause they wanna invest in their favorite game. Overwatch, CoD, CS:GO, Battlefield and so on.

 

[Murassa]

Loot boxes have been a money sucker longer than people remember. The concept of loot boxes in video games have existed for more than half a decade. TF2 added loot crates in 2010. Puzzles and Dragons released in 2012 and is one of the older gacha games to exist... a genre of video games where the entire game revolves what are functionally loot boxes. There's a lot of different games you can point to for being the "cause".

Gacha games are relatively niche games outside of Asia, particularly Japan. And they were confined to being mobile games. But they had a very notable presence within their own market, raking in so much money, the top 6 gacha game companies in Japan had to agree to cut out the mechanic of Complete Gachas before the government stepped in to do something about it. Complete gachas are where users need to collect certain items/units to obtain an exclusive item/unit only obtainable through that "sacrificing" that certain collection. You can see how predatory that is.

TF2 is a weird case. Due to being linked to Steam accounts, as well as limited-availability items, crafting, random drops, and trading, TF2 developed its own hat economy. No need to throw money at loot crates that much, just participate in the trade.

CS:GO features a similar item economy to TF2, with crates and trading, but the big discussion revolving around CS:GO's skins involved the illegal gambling and betting sites that took advantage of said item trade system. Loot boxes existed, but people were more focused on a separate controversy related to the items being used and distributed.

Overwatch, I feel, became the spark for discussion on the controversy of loot boxes because there's no smoke and mirrors obscuring this predatory practice from the general populace.

Overwatch is a massively popular game in the western markets, and practically all over the world.
Overwatch features no way to trade skins, items, or in-game currency. The loot box items are contained solely to the player's account.
Overwatch didn't have a betting controversy due to trading system.

I wouldn't be surprised if the recent implementations of loot boxes is because of Overwatch's massive financial success.

A lot of games have implemented loot boxes. Overwatch made the world aware how damn profitable they can be.

 

[Arsenic]

CSGO brought loot boxes to the forefront, of the up-front. Ever since the arms deal update was released it has been down hill for gaming as a whole

There is one man normally blamed with starting the lootbox plague around here... he is...

Spoiler:

gaBAN

The herald of our destruction.

 

[machomuu]

Casinos and human nature, plain and simple. Regardless of whether you consider lootboxes to be gambling, it's pretty plain to see that they play off of avarice and the joy of discovery and acquisition. I think one defense that people have for lootboxes is that, unlike gambling, even if you don't get something expensive you always get something, whereas with gambling you earn nothing if you lose and thus most people either get hooked by trying to make more after a taste of victory or the desperate, generally self-destructive pursuit to make back their losses.

Personally, though, I'd go the other way and say that lootboxes are more addictive simply because they don't play on negative emotions or have nearly as high a risk factor. As I mentioned, people love getting things, and because you can't get nothing out of a lootbox there's theoretically inherently no risk. Add in that lootboxes are cheap and there's no reason not to try one. Or two. Or seven. And so people are constantly drip fed these items of questionable worth and occasionally maybe possibly get the items they want- it really speaks more volumes than I can just how easy it would be for someone to get addicted or, scarier, someone to throw a ton of dough in without getting addicted simply because there's something they want and they just won't get it because, say it with me, RNG is bullshit.

That might seem a bit off topic but I think it feeds really well into the core question. If we're to look at the source, I've almost no doubt that gambling was the source for all this. That was the base, anyway, as what followed from there seemed to mostly be shaping and molding the idea into what it is today, with bigger players being Gacha, the introduction of DLC into gaming (and by extension, microtransactions), Lootcrate itself, and where popularity's concerned, Overwatch. It wasn't the harbinger of what was to come, it was simply the messenger- though one could say that thanks to how widely popular it was it played about as much of a role as any of the four big players I just mentioned.

 

[Sawsbuck]

Greedy companies

 

[Lusus]

While TF2 and CS:GO might have started the entire loot box trend, but I think everybody agrees that it is the success of Overwatch that popularized loot boxes(it's kind of in the name, instead of cases or crates or w/e). Idk about TF2, but CS:GO needs you to buy keys in order to be able to open loot boxes, meanwhile in Overwatch every loot box can be opened for free. Most games now copy the Overwatch system and make loot box openings free and let you buy a bulk of them like Overwatch does.

 

[Arsenic]

While TF2 and CS:GO might have started the entire loot box trend, but I think everybody agrees that it is the success of Overwatch that popularized loot boxes(it's kind of in the name, instead of cases or crates or w/e). Idk about TF2, but CS:GO needs you to buy keys in order to be able to open loot boxes, meanwhile in Overwatch every loot box can be opened for free. Most games now copy the Overwatch system and make loot box openings free and let you buy a bulk of them like Overwatch does.

Halo 5 was released before overwatch and uses the same system. Lots of games before Overwatch used the keyless system. Overwatch didn't start jack didly squat, it's just the most recent flash point in the lootbox argument due to it being one of the most recent big titles to feature them.

 

[Lusus]

Halo 5 was released before overwatch and uses the same system. Lots of games before Overwatch used the keyless system. Overwatch didn't start jack didly squat, it's just the most recent flash point in the lootbox argument due to it being one of the most recent big titles to feature them.

But if Overwatch didn't popularize loot boxes, then why are they called loot boxes? Instead of crates and cases and whatever came before them? Why did loot boxes only become a absolutely huge thing (and by that I mean literally every game has them) in the last year? Even the most popular game in the world, League of Legends is getting it's reward system changed to be like Overwatch (you level up, you get a box), but clearly that's just a coincidence, just like it was a coincidence that they announced a loot box system shortly after Overwatch's was praised before the game even came out.

Like I said, Overwatch didn't start the trend but it sure as hell popularized it in the last year. LoL jumped on the trend, Blizzard added them to HotS since they had success in OW, and it just went downhill from there.

 

[Arsenic]

Halo 5, Cod AW, Battlefield 4, Payday 2, CSGO, TF2, even Destiny hopped on the lootbox train before OW was even released. (And this is only a small selection from the top of my head, and only includes the first games of a series to feature the model)

This is the direction the market has been going for years, OW is just another nameless cog in the machine. Sure it helps all the newer cogs spin but not anymore than all the others do aswell.

As far as why they are called lootboxes. Well, I personally don't remember calling them anything else. I mean it's a box, and it's full of loot (a very common gaming term already)

I mean you could probably even accredit games like Borderlands to the rise of MT Lootboxes, for showing big companies that player love to hunt for a chance to get something out of a box.

 

[Yukari]

Gamers. Really.

You can blame companies for shoving them down our throat but if they didn't make money they wouldn't be using them. Sure, they do push the envelope but as long as the continue to be profitable they're here to stay.

 

[mew_nani]

People say it's been there since 2010 but to be honest loot crates, gachapons, or whatever you want to call the concept of trading real life money for a random item goes back farther than that. Maplestory, a Korean free-to-play MMO had a gachapon mechanic where you traded real money for a ticket that gave you a random item at least as far back as 2007 (it's hard trying to find the exact update the gachapon was implemented), and Mabinogi (a game published by the same company as Maplestory, Nexon,) had them in 2010 much like Team Fortress 2 did. It's when smartphones became capable gaming devices that the whole idea I think became a lot more mainstream. Gachapons were previously restricted to free-to-play games and the mobile sphere but once companies saw just how much money they could make from it it was only a matter of time until they were implemented in pay-to-play games like we're seeing here today.

In short, as far as I can tell it formally began in MMOs that weren't subscription based, and from there it wormed its way to the mobile games market and finally to $60 and up titles that aren't even multiplayer to begin with, and as long as we have idiots who are willing to throw thousands at games like this just to get the perfect weapon or outfit I don't see it going away anytime soon, which is a major issue considering how much games are now being gutted just to accommodate this feature when it cuts away from the game's balance and design.

 

[SirBoglor]

I feel like loot boxes have developed as a form of the best compromise between consumer and gaming business. The blame is definitely shared, and not as black and white as people would like to think.

Gamer greed comes from expecting as much content as possible for as little money as possible. They expect periodical content drops for their games even if they don't spend a nickel for the developer's time. This is obviously a problem for developers, as they are a business not a charity.

Developer/publisher greed comes from well, being a business. They want money. That in itself is not a moral crime, but the methods used can be. How do you get people to spend more money on a game without pissing them off? Charging for DLC has become less and less popular over the years. Pay-to-win has killed off tons of games, so that practice has essentially died as gamers won't even consider playing a game like that anymore.

Cosmetic items have proven to be the best way to compromise in recent years. Many MOBAs are completely free to play, and that is thanks to the immense amount of cash flow they get from skins and the like. The loot box is simply a variant of this concept that adds RNG to the equation to potentially favor the business more. What the consumer gets is that enticing dice-roll as well as the satisfaction of getting that super cool skin they were hoping for.

So who is to blame? Definitely both. The concept of the loot box specifically came from the publishers, but the consumers are the ones letting it stay. However, the cosmetic DLC rush as a whole has come from consumer entitlement. Gamers expect free and frequent content drops, with little room left for the Developers to make a profit. So I do blame the consumer for this a bit more than the business itself. But nonetheless, we're all to blame here.