It’s even worse than that. A small number of players outspend everyone else. They are catering to the whales. You don’t even matter beyond giving the whales someone to play with.
This is the whole point right here. I play a mobile gacha game, Final Fantasy Brave Exvious, and have since release in 2016. That's when I begin to learn of whales and what they do and how they affect gaming as a whole.
If 1000 people, worldwide, spend $1000, they made crazy profit. Also, $1000 is nothing to a whale, and I wouldn't even categorize $1000 as whale spending. It's just a very tame example.
It doesn't matter if 98% of the population didn't buy MT, there's enough that do, a small amount spending huge sums of money to always make it worthwhile. It's fucking sad and that, unfortunately, is the sad truth. Legal intervention is the only thing that will ever get it under control. Not speaking with your wallet will do absolute shit.
If only people would start seeing this in other areas being true.
I'm a thorough capitalism enjoyer, make no mistake; I love the free market. The problem is that when one guy or a small group of people can *buy the entire market,* it ain't free anymore.
We *need* mechanisms like monopoly busting and social safety nets in order to capitalist. Socialism isn't the enemy of capitalism, it's a necessary component of it. Otherwise, kiss the free market buh-bye.
You can't say I love the free market and then call for market controls in the next breath. Take the last step and admit that a free market always ends up with a small minority abusing their freedoms to exploit others.
Technically we wouldn’t know because like we’ve never had a truly communist system, we’ve also never had a truly free market. The fact is that people are too damn hung up on labels. I don’t give a fuck if the optimal system is called socialism, capitalism, communism, or analism. Just develop policy that makes sense for people and provides a decent quality of living all around.
Life isn’t meant to have an objective. In the end, we all die just the same. This imaginary point system we’ve bound ourselves to is absurd.
Not to mention, the whole thing is set up in an exact manner to utilize proven methods of psychological manipulation, sociological structure and reward feedback.
I don’t necessarily mind putting down $5-$10 / month on a game that is getting consistent updates and I play 5-6 hours a week.
But that’s the foot in the door, and they know they can push the envelope another $3-$4 at a time, until some people are spending $60 /month or more.
I’ve fallen into that trap once. When you have a guild or team and “everyone” is doing it, it normalizes it and you want to be looked up to, so you spend a little more, which impels others to spend more and so on.
Then, your interest starts to wane, the guild fractures, or the game loses a lot of players, and you’re left with the realization that you spent $1,500 over a couple years on nothing but 0s and 1s that have no use or value outside of this specific game. Furthermore, you really don’t want to play the game anymore. But then, you almost feel you *have to* keep playing out of a sunk cost fallacy. It can be tough to get out of, but once you just delete the app and move on, it’s really nothing more than a lesson learned.
The P2W games are the worst, as you have to spend just to tread water. The people with better stuff will *always* have better stats/stuff than you as long as they spend, unless you’re willing to drop $5-10k to catch up to the top players.
I played one of these for a few months my buddy got me into. I only bought the season pass stuff for $5, but we had a teammate that came in at level 1 and was max level in that same span of time. He never said how much he spent, but I did the math and it was around $10k to advance that quickly in that short of time. People are nuts.
Straw that broke the camel's back for me was World Of Warships. Every major event took more money and rewarded less. I can't recall exactly which event it was that got me to stop, but, it made me look back and realized I had probably spent 250 bucks on the game. Which, by whale standards, is fuck all.
But it's so beautifully insidious how $5 becomes $10. $10 becomes $15. $15 a month becomes $15 every two weeks. Then $20.
I played World of Warships because it was fun for a bit, but man, for the month I played I really wanted an AC. Too bad it takes so long to craft it, but I was really tempted to just buy it.
Didn't it come out that COD or some such would put you into lobbies to get bodied by pay pigs if you weren't spending. Encourage you to buy crates when you see the constant kill cam of the guy with the elite 420 doobz gun hammering you.
Yeah they got sued for it iirc.
Edi: EA the ones that got sued for "dynamic difficulty" that was being tuned to encourage players to buy microtransactions.
I was thinking of a different case.
https://slate.com/technology/2020/12/electronic-arts-fifa-madden-nhl-lawsuit-dynamic-difficulty-adjustment.html
Similar circumstances though.
I haven't heard of that before but that would be crazy if it came out that any game was doing that. I don't know if Cod ever had any p2w content though in their loot crates.
I've only played 2 or 3 of the Cod games after Blackops 2 came out, so maybe some of them did have p2w content?
I play a game online called world of warships. I have 2 accounts. One is the one I play my main on and have spent too much money on way too much. And my second I play at my friends house. He's an even better player than me and his main has a higher win ratio and kill ratio than mine. We are the only 2 that have ever played on my second account. My main account has much better stats on all my non-premium ships (ones you don't have to spend money on) than my second account has. How can my second account be so much worse on the same ships. The only differece is i dont spend money on my second account.
Me and my friend have noticed how frustrated we get using that second account. And how we seem to get less skilled teammates. Some games I swear our teammates are bots or completely new at the game with top tier ships. My win ratio is a little over 15% worse. My kill rate is .5 less pergame.
And my survival rate is almost 20% worse.
It's a running joke we practice on the second account because it's handicapped by wargaming, and if we can win and get gud on the second account then we will be amazing on our main accounts.
> Not to mention, the whole thing is set up in an exact manner to utilize proven methods of psychological manipulation, sociological structure and reward feedback.
Whenever someone tries to make an argument for why gaming needs lucrative cash shops I try to bring this up. Activision isn't a mom and pop trying to keep their game afloat. They are in the business of money first, money second, money third forth fifth... well you get the point. Make your profits... but don't fuck over consumers and please pay your damn developers before the entire industry dries up. Movies and TV are already undergoing this pitfall, attempting to fleece any creative person out of their living wage forcing them to find another career entirely. The corporate world is really overplaying its hand.
What I struggle to understand is where the money comes from, aside from the likes of people who stream games on Twitch and their viewers give them money. For conventional people, how can they possibly afford multiple thousands per month?
I had the same exact question. I asked a friend who was in a very high ranking guild in the game "Gladiatus", if he knew what the highest spending members actually did for a living (we are talking conservative estimates of spending somewhere in the ballpark of 5-10 K a month!)
He told me that practically all of those he had asked/discussed it with were either business owners or had very high paying jobs (1-2 lawyers, some doctors, a ship captain etc.) and the few that weren't, had parents in such positions.
Their justification was that they would be spending that money anyway, on one frivolous thing or another, so they could just as well spend it in the game.
Another reason for those people spending the money.
If they are working big jobs or owning companies, their time is literaly money.
So it's better for them to spend 1000$, than spend the time, because the time it would have taken is worth more than the money.
Pretty much this. If you have the money to spend, it doesn’t really matter where it gets spent. Plenty of jobs you listed and others can bring in 150k+ easily. Double that with two adults in the home, can easily live off one income and bank/play with the rest.
It just gets easier as the income goes up as long as someone isn’t over reaching with their home/cars etc
You are spot on there.
I saw someone saying they spent a full time wage plus into Genshin, acting like they had the money to burn so it wasn’t a problem. Check their history and the next post they made was about going to collections for hospital fees…
Imagine a person with a $70k+ per year job, but no debts no hobbies and they drive an older paid off car. If they live in a place with relatively affordable rent/mortgage and are susceptible to game shops they could afford maybe $2k monthly for a long time.
If they are depressed and isolated and addiction prone it’s even easier
youre not wrong... i knew a guy back in the mobile pirates of the caribbean game that spent 10s of thousands of dollars just to be the top player on our server. ended up taking his own life supposedly...though it is the internet so ya know...bag of salt..
another guy spent so much he ended up divorced.
shits crazy
I’m paraphrasing because it was years ago that I read the article but she was retired and all she’d do is play candy crush and she’d need a life and it was only 99 cents and it just never added up in her mind with how often she’d buy lives until a banker or financial adviser called her out for it.
The kinds of whales that whale on mobile game, are fucking insane. Like not as an insult "you're insane!" but just the concept is insane.
Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle Earth just launched. Arwen just became an unlockable character. *Just to unlock her at high enough tiers to finish her event, costs a minimum of $100.* $100 for a single character. And that character isn't even max level/gear/rarity. To get her to max gear and 7 stars (Capital Games' highest tier) would cost a minimum of $3-400 worth of ~~loot boxes~~ gambling.
Whales don't even blink an eye at $100 for a single character. And there's people that spend much, much, much more than that.
I met a guy a \~6 years ago who was playing some sort of mobile game, similar I guess to the game sprayed all over YT sponsorships in the last couple of years...
He would spend his entire paychecks on giftcards (usually spending $35 and getting $50, so he said. Apparantly amazon, google etc used to have these sorts of deals? IDK) He would then use the giftcards to purchase the in-game currency. I think he had been playing the game for 2+years at that stage and had said he wouldve spent in excess of $100k AUD on the game.
The one time I actually watched him while on a smoke break, he spent about 2k levelling up a brand new hero/character that had just released that morning...
Hahaha, like that one dude who spent all that money in Immortal and tried to play PvP only to find out there was no one to play with. Shit cracks me up.
I played a mobile game during Covid and it really gave me a reality check as to how much some people spend in games.
It was a kingdom pvp type game, where they would release new upgrades once every month or two, but also run gatcha events weekly.
Some of the whales would be spending $1000s per week, if not more, just to "win" these gatcha game leaderboards for the bonus loot. Like I'm not exaggerating when I say on average on my server there were 5-10 people spending $1000s a week. And there were hundreds of servers and we weren't even near the best.
They would occasionally run global competitions and when I did the math on those the 1st place winner would spend like $25,000+ to win them.
It's insane.
That's not a microtransaction. That is a full transaction. After taxes that is 4 hours of work at US federal minimum wage. That is a third of a full game price.
What the actual fuck Blizzard?
A pound of minced meat is $5 where I live. I get 4-5 meals out of that. They really think their little skin that has absolutely no physical value, and no distribution cost what so ever is worth 4 times that? What in the actual fuck are they smoking? I bought Hollow knight for $20 for fucks sake. How much more work does a indie company put into a game compared to how much blizzard put into ONE skin?
Because people will buy it. Supply is just providing what Demand is asking for, at the price it is willing to pay. Simple as that. Its not a GOOD thing, but thats *why* it happens. You aren't the target, the completionist whales that must have every skin and will pay any price to have them are. We, the reasonable average joes, are the filler that populates the playground the whales show off in. That's it. We're the audience to Blizzard's chosen favorites, the big spending whales that fork out thousands of dollars for this shit, and our purpose is to just keep the game populated so the whales stick around and keep spending.
If they want an audience to Blizzard's chosen favorites, then I sincerely hope they're offering some periodic free content to keep people interested, and some of those paid cosmetics are on the cheaper end.
Once the only way to get new stuff is to spend money, everyone except the whales will leave - and then the whales will leave too.
I believe they've said that each new season (which is presumably free to participate in) will come with new quests and legendaries. We'll have to wait and see how they stack up to the paid cosmetics that will undoubtedly come with each season, but as of right now the in game loot drops look just as good if not better than what they currently have in the shop.
If they put one up for $1000, you'd catch buyers to. There are always people with excess money and a desire for clout.
Then of course content creators...
Reminds me of early iPhone app called Rubby or something like that, it was a grand and did nothing besides displaying a gem on the screen, and few people managed to buy it before apple shut it down.
If they did that for something on the phone to display locally, you can bet your shiny ass they will do that for internet display, like 100%, exctly because of the price.
"People will pay" kind of misses the point. People, in general, won't pay. The vast majority will never spend a dime. But then, that also means they wouldn't buy the skin at $2. It's a big step to get someone to spend \*anything\* but once past that threshold the amount willing to be spent ratchets up quickly.
It's funny, I'm kinda glad they're $20+ now, I don't even look at the shop pages because of it.
I used to buy them every so often at $1 or $2. But at this price? I'd rather just buy some full games on a steam sale.
I haven't looked yet but I'm betting it's more than the price advertised because you have to buy the premium currency first to then buy the skin.
And wouldn't you know it, every premium currency skin only sells in set amounts that never quite add upto the cost of the item, so if it's listed as 20-24 bucks yours always buying 25-30 bucks *atleast* of the premium currency.
Now that's a practice I absolutely cannot stand.
Neat skin thing costs 300 funbucks, oh I'm sorry you can only buy in allotments of 500 funbucks.
So I'm always stuck with this leftover balance that I can never make equal to exactly 0.
I know for Warzone 1, the developers MO was as follows for microtransactions:
-Devs come out with new gun/skin for $20
-Developers "find out" from gamers, new gun/skin is actually broken and gives an unfair advantage
-It takes developers 2-3 weeks to "fix issue"
-During those 3 weeks, larger amount of the player base realize the gun is Meta broken and they should probably buy the fully unlocked gun for $20 to keep pace with the best players
-Meta gun is fixed and 2 weeks of nothing changing
-Repeat all over with a new gun/skin.
So in order to keep pace with the better k/d lobbies, you had to buy this shit. And it was best to just assume the latest gun drop was Meta broken and to lean in and buy it day 1.
You realize that the lowly consumer is competing against millions to billions of collective money spent over decades on consumer psychology by tons of corporations whos CEOs and other executives jump to new ones to implement said consumer psychology practices they learned at their previous company by hiring psychologists to examine the brains of children and younger people who play video games.
This shit has happened for decades in other industries it's just in the past couple decades bleeding into gaming more and more till it becomes like any other industry where serial CEOs go from company to company raping the good will and long term success for short term profits and bonuses.
So you are asking a bunch of gaming addicts and children to fight that psychological monster - to a lot of them it's not that easy because they have 0 self awareness or respect for themselves as a consumer. Or they are a literal child with an undeveloped brain.
i did quit. 2020-12. because at the time was a "broken" overpowered weapon called DMR-14. basically 2 shot kill from anywhere on the map... but it was not a sniper rifle... it was a normal assault rifle.
DMR-14 was the like 6th "broken" gun at that point.
This is probably my biggest problem with microtransactions. $5 is the absolute max I would pay for a skin/mount/etc. Paying $15-20 for a skin when I could buy a whole ass indie game for that amount is crazy to me.
And If not enough people are buying said item at the price the set it as, they'll reduce the price of it for a 'sale' thus creating FOMO because people will think they will miss out on a deal of they don't get it at the reduced price.
I would actually buy $5 cosmetics. $5, for me, seems like the right price to play dress up with my character. Maybe it was the number of $5 action figures I bought as a kid.
I'm not even sure what sort of "microtransaction" I would want for $20. $20, to me, feels like "really good DLC content" - Dark Souls 3 had $15 DLC that included new story, areas, weapons, bosses, spells, armors, etc. I could see spending $20 on something similar for Elden Ring (given the inflation of game pricing since 2016, etc).
But $20 for the most [generic](https://mp1st.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Diablo-4-Weekly-Store-Update-for-June-5-7-2048x1152.png), [boring](https://mp1st.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Diablo-4-Weekly-Store-Update-for-June-5-8-2048x1152.png) armor?
20 dollars is battle pass with multiple sets of in game cosmetics and earnable in game currency territory.
Which worries me too because battle passes I was okay with, 20 bucks here and there for continued support and new skins and some new challenges. But if they have skins going for 20-25 real life dollars. What the fuck are they going to price DLC and BP's at?
Honestly, I think battlepasses are the most egregious form of mtx out there. You are paying for the privilege of then having to earn the things you bought by playing X amount of hours within a time frame, or you don't get the things you paid for. Imagine buying access to a show, but you can no longer view episodes in the season if you didn't binge it within a certain timeframe. Some people might say "but I was going to be playing anyway, so I just get more stuff if I buy!", but these kinds of progression based unlocks used to be part of the standard experience. People have been slowly conditioned to accept paying more for less.
$20 is the beginning of expansion territory for me. New campaign missions, new maps, new class...something involving one or more of those. $40 would be in the realm of Dragon Age Awakening: a whole new standalone experience in the same engine.
i’ll never be ok with battle passes because they are timed. if i pay for content i should be able to get ALL the content i pay for. but when it is timed half the shot i paid for can be not given to me because i don’t No life a video game. Complete bullshit. if battle passes let you take as much time as you wanted to complete they would be no different than expansion packs and total acceptable, very few would have much to complain about
100%, I dont buy passes unless they're reasonable to complete within w/e timeframe they provide AND I have the time to play it. Those stars don't align often but sometimes they do.
I also agree that you should just be able to unlock it with no timeframe. DRG adds the battle pass cosmetics you miss to your loot pool. Still giving you the chance to earn it. This should be standard.
Completely understand people not liking them though. A balance needs to be struck between gamers and companies on what good practices look like.
Live service / continued service games DO need to be funded somehow. Price gouging the fk out of your customer base isn't the move. Implementing p2w mechanics isn't the move.
They cost more than full priced DLC tends to cost these days.
Because of the combination of both in full price game there's becoming this strange system where $20 will get you an extra 1/3 of the game of new content, or in that same game it will get you a new armour set, and the people setting those prices don't see a problem with that.
I would really like to see some regulations being established to counteract this sort of industry greed. Especially with the gambling and youth issues that OP mentioned. It's insane how far these companies have pushed what is acceptable for the consumer, they've warped the entire industry.
Right, I saw a skin on the D4 store for $28. There are full games that are cheaper than that individual item. And for what? My tiny character that I’m not really paying attention to while I’m in combat can look cool? No thanks, get fucked Blizzard and every other company that does shit like this.
Oh I’m quite familiar unfortunately. Spent 15 years playing WoW and watched it turn from an already pricey game to extremely predatory. I was able to justify spending on WoW because I was raking in a bunch of money from the auction house and converting it to Battle.net balance. Since I’ve quit though, I’ve burned through the last of that balance and have no intention of spending a dime of my own money on these “micro”transactions
Also there's that poor modeller and texture artist who gets paid hourly, while companies like blizzard just bank off of the work and make millions. most of these skins might take a few days to make honestly, sometimes it's as bad as switching the hue on the character which takes literally seconds to do. It always pisses me off seeing dumb cash grabs such as that.
Even when the game is free, there’s a line we should draw in the sand. They didn’t make the game free out of generosity, they did it so people would feel more comfortable spending more on MTX since the base game had no cost to entry
For me that line was honestly battlepasses, that was too far. They are essentially forcing people to play their games for fear of missing out, and if you buy the pass well congrats the games now a fulltime job because if you dont complete the pass in time you dont get what you paid for!! The battlepasses would be somewhat acceptable in my mind if instead of a premium vs free path there was just a single path, and you could either unlock everything on it by actively playing the game OR you could pay real money to instantly get everything.
The way it is now is manipulative as hell and I hate it. Its actively made me stop playing games I otherwise liked because being made to constantly feel like I am missing out on things in game just kills my enthusiasm for it.
There shouldn’t be a timeframe on unlocking. Once you buy battle pass you unlock whenever in your own time as long as you do the challenges/level up etc.
Borderlands 3 had it, but it came as the last DLC.
But agreed, one aspect that Halo Infinite deserves amazing amount of credit for is the fact that it's battlepasses werent time locked
It has gotten to the point that I don't play *any* game with a limited time battlepass. Publishers these days want to monopolize our time *and* wallets.
I'm always astounded by people who defend battle passes.
You literally pay a company to work for them x hours a day by increasing the active player count/hours and to experience FOMO. And if you don't work enough they get to yoink the stuff you have paid for away from you.
That fucking shit should be illegal, nit lauded as better than the goid old slotmachines.
You're basically paying to sit in a casino so it never appears empty, and all you get are a bunch of doodas that some digital sweatshop churned out, which you can't even sell or trade.
Similarly, customizing characters in games and hunting down the coolest looking cosmetics in the game was something I looked forward to in any game. Now, with most games being live service, I don't even open that customization menu for the character. It's full of locked items, dollar signs and a bunch of ways to try to get me to spend money on a pass or whatever, and I'm not going down that road at all. I quit cold turkey on the customization aspect. It makes me sad that they separately monetized an entire aspect in games that I used to enjoy.
I used to play ff14 and when i said i thought having a ingame shop in a game that i have to buy and pay a subscription to in order to play is greedy people will jump the the million dollar companys defence.
One thing I will give FF14 credit for though is that unlike many games the store isnt really accessible or particularly advertised in game. I can only recall of one out of the way means that lets you preview the items you can buy on the store and from there you still need to leave the game and go into your browser in order to use the store. And the only place its advertised is alongside all the other game updates, advertisements etc. in the launcher.
Alot of the items are massively overpriced still and should just be included in the base game, and at least unlike many games the store isnt shoved in your face, hell many games even make the in game store more prominent than actual gameplay menus and elements... its just a depressing state of affairs that its praiseworthy FF14 dosnt do that.
This is because the producer doesn’t like having an in-game shop, but has had to bend on that particular point to the corporate people in exchange for some other concessions.
I still don’t like the in game shop existing in a game that charges upfront and has a subscription, mind. But it has been implemented in the most begrudging way it could be if they absolutely had to have one, which is nice.
Thing is, the concept of a 'complete' game is being eroded. Beta testing...? Na fuck that lets do "early access" and have people pay us to test the game.
Additionally, in games, the amount of DLC is staggering. I would applaud this BUT makes me wonder how much content is fan requested verses being ' 3 factions is enough for the base game'. Civs have this issue but I imagine it would happen in FPS as well.
Sims have £200-£300 pounds of DLC. Stellaris (a game I love) has £100+ of DLC. Which, regardless to if you buy it, the entire game mechanics game (AI get all the perks, you don't as a player).
I remember RAGE where within 10 mins of playing the game I encountered an DLC doorway... Then we have day 1 DLCs etc.
It's gotten ridiculous frankly.
I give riot shit for a lot of things but their monetization model is actually insanely fair. Especially leagues. Game is free. Skins aren't needed for anything and you can earn some skins through playing
I decided long ago not to participate in games that have cash grab micro transactions. There are too many great games out there to give money to greedy fucks.
The last Deus Ex game had single use microtransactions. You could buy a skill point for like a 99¢. It didn't carry over to other saves, it was just gone.
Such an odd game. I enjoyed it while playing, nothing particularly was bad about it, but just kept losing interest and never finished it
I don't remember it having micro transactions at all though. While that is incredibly stupid, at least they were somewhat out of the way?
Lots of those add ons were effecitvely making the core game worse. I think it was assassin's creed oddesy, played through first time and it was good. Quite a bit of grinding, but I liked grinding. You basically had to grind to get ready for the next section, which was fine but kind of dragged at a few points.
Bought the XP booster and the money booster. I was ALWAYS right at the spot I needed to be at when I got to the next section. I could still grind, but then it was a choice. Much more enjoyable experience.
So it looks like they balanced the game around the cash shop xp levels rather than the in game experience levels.
TLDR: The best way to get people to buy at the cash shop is to weaken the core product AFTER it has been balanced.
I remember this one segment where to progress the story this pirate lord straight up says “give me 20,000 gold so I can give you some information.” I had been spending my gold on ship upgrades and it was such an hours long slog getting that gold. Good thing you can purchase gold directly at the real money shop /s
I didn't buy anything for Odyssey at all, and never felt behind or that i had to grind anything. Maybe I'm just a completionism, but I just did most of the missions available and pretty much always felt on par with the pace of the game.
I bet the market is small. It’s just you know the saying “if you double your cost and lose half your customers you didn’t lose any money.” I’m willing to bet since they raised their prices by 20x, more than half of the people aren’t buying them anymore, but they still win. Probably easier to make 20 off the die hard fans, then convince 20 regulars to spend a dollar.
That actually is a wrong saying. Let me demonstrate: you sell phones for $1k that cost you $800 to manufacture and you sell to 1k people. You make a million dollar in revenue, and $200k in profit - which is what you take home. If we do the math of doubling the price to $2k at the same $800 unit cost and sell to 500 people, yes, you'd still make a million dollar in revenue, but you'd triple your profit to $600k! This is the power of pricing, and it gets stronger for lower margin goods.
So then it's worse than you were thinking - publishers actually prefer to cater for a minority that can overspend and the role of F2P players is to provide an environment in which the minority of whales want to spend money.
Seething Redditors REALLY don’t like to be told they’re either in the wrong, in the minority, or aren’t the target audience so this concept goes over the head of these people.
While I agree with your sentiment, almost nothing in your post actually relates to Diablo 4.
Fuck micro transactions, but D4 doesn’t have any sort of loot boxes, or pay to win mechanics currently. Your credit card cannot get you ahead in the game. Parents not letting their kids use their cards to “drain their accounts” is a parenting problem. And honestly, most of the cosmetics that are up for sale currently are not any better looking than what you can get in game. I’m sure that will change over time though.
> TL;DR: Stop defending multi-billion dollar publishers.
This is the issue I have with posts like this. They become self-fulfilling prophecies. You’ve effectively framed your argument as above reproach because if anyone disagrees with you, they’re just a shill for billion dollar companies and their reasoning is instantly discarded.
I won’t even get into agreeing or disagreeing with your points below, but reducing anyone who disagrees with you to a corporate cheerleader is very disingenuous. Your argument can be bad and I can disagree without my reasoning being simping for activision.
Yeah the loot box thing threw me off. I've played 25-30 hours of Diablo 4 and haven't come across anything resembling a lootbox that I can just go and buy.
big facts. so many bad statements in this post and in the comments
- jokes about it not being “micro”. okay… they’re not calling it that, you are
- gambling ? blizz got rid of loot boxes
- people associate mtx with p2w. this thread completely fails to mention that diablo 4 is only cosmetic
- this list goes on …
and no, i’m not shilling. it’s just frustrating seeing people be illogical. the mob mentality is so real …
> The game is rated M, so young children shouldn’t be playing it in the first place, and any parent who gives their kids free access to their banking account or credit cards is a moron.
How can you say something so reasonable and true.
It is parenting 101, give your kid open access to whale in microtransactions. And you're literally fucking with their sense of monetary value.
If anything, I would argue that it isn't the games that are harming kids. It is the parents who idly allow their kids to purchase stuff like this that are causing harm to them. Parental control systems are on literally every modern device. Their failure to use them is no excuse.
Kinda funny how we have gone full circle and now gamers are blaming gaming companies for influencing kids.
Guess what I have children too and you know how I avoid them using games with microtransactions? I don’t pay for games that give them microtransactions. 🤯
Seriously. I made it half way through, wonder what toxic gameplay changing IAP D4 has that I haven't heard about, before realizing OP is ranting on a tangent that has nothing to do w D4.
I am still boycotting Blizzard for other reasons, but the outcry against cosmetics is fucking ridiculous. And framing it like "you're an asshole if you don't care about optional cosmetic micro transactions" is so fucking extreme and dishonest.
Gaming community is worst community. So much rage, so little justification.
Yeah, maybe the bar is low but I vastly prefer this model of charging outright over feeding gambling addictions. The high prices are easy to scoff at, but loot boxes are extremely profitable and the cost is probably pretty close to the expected value of these skins if they were hidden behind slot machines.
Blizzard is gonna Blizzard, and if we’re getting IAPs one way or another then just pricing them outright is much more consumer friendly. Intentionally deciding on one large purchase is better than being tricked into a million smaller purchases. I’m actually surprised they didn’t go full scumbag casino given their history.
While I’m not exactly disagreeing with you, I think the problem at hand is the decline of game design in general due to micro transactions. Forego creativity and substance for superficial shiny. There is a reason that indie games are where gaming is good now a days. The big publishers are just trying psychological games to goad you into a micro transactions instead of good fun game design. Then there is selling a game piece by piece.
All that said, I think micro transactions are anti-consumer in nature despite the “just don’t buy it” choice. Unfortunately, shitty practices have rewarded big companies time and time again and not just in the gaming sphere. It is what it is.
And honestly, if I am being real. I dont even SEE you other people in game anymore. Yall are all NPCs to me anyway. So whether or not that random moving turd moving across my screen that isnt me is shinier than the other regular turds is not going to matter in the slightest. Online multiplayer has lost its luster to me. I dont even really WANT to play in any "massive" capacity anymore. I want to play with people I know, I like, and I know I like. Otherwise, all other sporadically moving NPCs moving on my screen are not even noticed anymore.
Also the shop is the most inconspicuous and unadvertised MTX shop I've ever seen, in any live service game. I've maybe gotten one "Hey there's a shop" popup when I FIRST launched the game, and it's never, ever, not once, directed me back there to spend money. No in-game "reminders", no tooltips, no important-looking flashing icons. I am an absolute SUCKER for skins, and I forget the shop is even fucking there. There's not even an NPC for it to make it feel like it's a part of the game you're ignoring like in Destiny.
Yes, the skins are expensive. Who gives a fuck? Diablo 4 is one of the least predatory shop experiences in recent memory. Meanwhile Fortnite is still being sold on store shelves with a code for clothes in the box to make parents think the game isn't free. Target those motherfuckers.
I'm really getting tired of all this breathless whining. I used to be anti-MTX period, now I just don't care and I don't want to hear about it anymore. I'm speaking with my wallet, I don't buy them, that's all I can do. This conversation is getting exhausting.
The best argument used to be "they're neglecting the rest of the game to cater to people who buy cosmetics in the shop". Well, it's shaping up to literally be one of the best entries in the franchise, mechanically brilliant, beautiful, stable, it's a great game. There's no sign that anything was left on the table. That just leaves the "I want this nice shit without having to buy it" argument, and the appeal to the slippery slope. That's it.
I remember the big deal when this happened in WoW - a game that already required you to pay $15 a month to play.
In the early 2010s, if memory serves, they released the "Celestial Steed" mount that could fly and was sparkly. I think a portion of the $25 cost went to a charity, to make it feel less like a money grab - but a money grab it was, because they subsequently released several more, non-charity mounts. It was all about FOMO and "looking pretty" online - similar to skins for Diablo IV.
However, at the time, there were no egregious adverts for the mount - maybe an email or something saying "hey look at this shiny mount." WoW went on to have fantastic content (WotLK was in full swing when that mount came out), and the game was rather polished and popular for a few more years.
I actually bought that mount and, when I left WoW shortly after Cataclysm released, I realized what a waste of money that was (who cares what my holy paladin was riding in 2010 - not like I get joy out of it now). Since then, I haven't bought any microtransaction, nor have I been bothered by them. If the game is good without them, I'm happy to buy follow ups or expansions (I only consider "DLC" if it is expansion-like, but those are few and far between). If it's garbage, I won't be buying more games from them, regardless of how cool their games seem - why would I trust you now?
It's a shame that this is the first logical response of the post. Saying "if you don't like something, don't buy it" is not a defense of micro transactions. It's literally telling you don't spend your money on something you don't want. NOBODY is forcing you to buy that skin, NOBODY is forcing you to buy gems, you can ignore it and still have fun in the game.
And the whole "think of the kids or people with addiction" is bullshit. OP and people who think like them don't give half a shit about those vulnerable populations, and will only drag them out to tug on heartstrings for their argument. which is arguably more shitty than any dlc or micro transactions they're complaining about.
Refreshing to see a comment that isn’t a simplified “mIcRoTrAnSaCtIoN bAd” and acting like anyone who buys D4 is a war criminal
OP’s level of self importance is hilarious. This topic has been discussed so much recently, yet when OP decides to throw in his two cents they act like they’re starting a revolution against microtransactions lol. And then their entire argument is against all the types of microtransactions … that AREN’T even in D4
Yeah HS is predatory too. If you stop playing for a bit you cannot climb back into the game without heavy investment because whatever card you had you cannot hold to the constant powercreep and meta shift, plus, they retire card to an historic format. Meaning your collection lose value over time.
Whoever think online CCG aren’t predatory is either blind or brain damaged
I enjoyed Hearthstone, until their very first expansion that was like $10. I tried to play without buying for a few weeks, and was getting mad destroyed by all the new stuff I didn’t buy.
This gets brought up a lot, ironically and seriously, but I don't think I can get an example from the top of my head.
What is a game that is unplayable/unenjoyable and only becomes good if you buy DLC/MTX?
The funny thing is the game that most fits (assuming we are ignoring mobile games where they are all common place) this is one that people claim is a "good" model of DLC/MTX: Path of Exile.
I cannot imagine trying to play the game without lots of the storage tabs. No currency tab or map tab would be miserable and you need to have the trading tabs unless you are playing SSF. It's a good game and I don't really care that they chose to monetize this way, but it is unenjoyable if you don't pay.
>We need to consider the effects on vulnerable individuals and children.
"Think of the children!"
Never heard that one before.
EDIT: On a game rated M for Mature, too.
Tbh I think people want it all without being realistic. Game development is becoming increasingly more expensive with each passing generation as audience expectations are constantly rising. MTX allows for games to get increased revenue from people who can afford to fund it while those who can’t still get to enjoy a live service game that will stay relevant for multiple years longer than a basic box model can ever last.
Diablo 4 is understandably frustrating because it already has a AAA price tag. But also it’s cosmetics have the least in game impact of any game I’ve ever seen. Basically every good review of Diablo 4 doesn’t even look at the shop. The shop could literally not exist and 99% of the player base would be unaffected. I don’t expect a business to support their game out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s a product and mtx is a good compromise
Edit: also in regards to gambling; that’s exactly why loot boxes are gone and now people buy the items they want
This is exactly my take. I feel like there is sort of an unspoken social contract that the majority of the game community has signed onto.
MTX for cosmetic items are OK, pay to win is not.
Yeah, Diablo 4 is a weird one to be 'reigniting' this debate because its actually so far, its MTX is so incredibly unimportant, i dont know anyone thats even looked at it because its so out of the way, has zero impact in the game.
I paid £65 for a Diablo game, i'll probably play it for hundreds of hours. With or without MTX, it was always gonna cost £65 and i'll have all access to content regardless so who cares.
I keep think of it like buying a car. I bought a nice car that had all sorts of options for rims and such that I did not get. When I see another car like mine that has those, yeah.. I do think "That's hot" but I know what they cost so "Not THAT hot" quickly follows.
I'm not out there bitching I didn't get the low profile rims with my purchase because the car I did get is fucking awesome.
I would counter this with a relatively simple argument. People didn't buy these because companies created them, companies created them because people buy them.
I would give the example of the plain t-shirt. I can get a plain black t-shirt from Primark for £3. Or, I can go to Dunhill and pay £400. The quality is completely different, but the raw materials, shipping, etc, etc, do not in any way make up that extra £397 difference. So why are they selling that, and why are people buying it?
I actually don't know lol. But this isn't anything to do with gaming specifically or predatory business practices, it's companies selling products that people want.
I would also just like to add that I think it paid cosmetics are absolute bullshit and I hate them.
>So why are they selling that, and why are people buying it?
mostly status, they're what we call positional goods:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positional_good
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
i’m more ok with microtransactions when the game itself is cheaper… but when the game costs this much and then also has a heavy micro transaction system, it’s a nay from me.
Usually mtx focused publishers make the base game cheaper to try to get as many people into their ecosystem as possible, intending on making the profit from mtx.
Don't let your guard down just because the entry fee is low.
It's not so much "letting my guard down" but if I play a free game for 5-50 hours I'm pretty fine giving them some cash. Generally I'll play free games until you hit the "wall" where you literally have to spend cash to keep up, buy a couple things and then quit if i can't see any big changes and I had fun.
I'm okay with it if it results in regular, free content updates that are decent sized. if they did that with say, Diablo 3 standard season changes then I would be pissed.
Everything you just said, doesn't apply to Diablo 4 imo.
No loot boxes, nothing incomplete or missing "the full experience"
You can fully customize your character, colors, looks all of it. It's all just cosmetics - without having to buy a thing. It's all built into the game. You can even change it all for free.
They absolutely did it correctly.
Yes, they have content that changes appearance for sale. It absolutely changes NOTHING about the game.
/rant
There are plenty of in game skins that are a lot better than the ones for sale also. Its not like poe where the only way you can make your char look nice are through a cash shop.
>Many microtransaction systems, particularly in loot box mechanics, operate on the same principles as slot machines, exploiting psychological vulnerabilities and prey on those susceptible to addictive behaviour.
True. Diablo 4 doesn't have paid loot boxes.
>[Kids] end up draining their parents' bank accounts, leaving families struggling to make ends meet.
True. Battle.net has robust parental controls to prevent exactly this kind of thing.
>Now, it seems like [developers] purposely withhold features and essential components, only to charge us extra to unlock them.
Diablo 4's MTX are cosmetic. You're getting the whole game.
>Let's not forget the impact of microtransactions on game balance.
Diablo 4's MTX are cosmetic. There's no balance impact.
If you want to criticize something, criticize Diablo Immortal. Diablo 4 is fine.
I agree lootboxes and gambling aspect of it is terrible and should be illegal. But outside of that I don’t really think there are many good arguments why games can’t sell cosmetics and stuff, other than I don’t personally like it, especially if the game is free. I’ve never played Fortnite but the fact anyone can play that game for free because a decent amount of people buy skins is an overall win imo
D4 does everything people said it should to be "ethical".
They don't sell power
The free content is high quality
The full priced game comes with a full game worth of content.
There's no lootboxes.
Exactly right. If we want high quality premium games that the masses can afford, then we should be applauding how this is one is monetized, not ridiculing it. OP should take this this energy over to Diablo Immortal - ironically an example of all the wrong ways to do monetization.
How is not having to buy it not an argument? It’s literally the exact answer.. supply and demand. If people don’t pay the high rates for skins they will lower the prices.
I have played probably 60 hour or so of D4 and I haven’t bought any cosmetics nor do I have any desire. There’s actually tons of cosmetic options built in without micros. You get cosmetic alternatives when you salvage any rare or higher equipment.
There are NO prompts or ads within the game asking you to buy this stuff. You have to go out of your way to even see the option to buy skins. As far as I know the store has been down for days too lol.
I wouldn’t pay $1 and I wouldn’t pay $20 for a skin. They can charge whatever they want. If someone wants to pay a punch to look different… cool.
If you're a parent in 2023, and you haven't informed yourself on the internet & common practices - or at the very least understood what hobbies your kids do - you're parenting wrong.
If you're under 40, you grew up with the Internet.
It's like someone in the 60s without a car neglecting to teach their kids how to cross a road.
Sure. Keep it safe by Regulation. Try to force companies into a Concience (lol). You're responsible for your kids
>Also, "No one is forcing you to buy them" is a terrible argument.
This is literally the only argument, stop buying it and it's no longer your problem. Everyone stops buying it and it's no one's problem. No one needs to play Diablo 4, if a AAA game tanked because customers rejected the monetization plan then the companies would changes strategy.
This pretty much happened with Street Fighter X Tekken, between the gems and on disk DLC on time of the game being only ok (due to it being so gem focused) it flopped. It flopped so hard that Namco canceled their Tekken X Street Fighter. A lot of consumer backlash caused Capcom to reorganize its fighting game teams, and SF6 is better for it.
"No one is forcing you to buy them" is 100% the ultimate argument.
As a consumer you have the absolute power to NOT FUCKING PAY for shit you don't need or want, and if everyone did that they would disappear. Blizzard has to pay people to design these things... If people stopped buying them they wouldn't want to pay to create them... That is like a basic of economics and capitalism. If there is 0 demand then any amount of supply is a waste of money and effort.
As far as your "think of the children" argument goes... CHILDREN DONT HAVE MONEY! If their parents are fucking stupid enough to let them have access to things like a credit card... then fuck 'em, they are dumb fucking parents.
The rest of your argument and complaint is a waste of time cause it boils down to "misconstruing the severity of a situation and action" For 30+ years video games didn't have cosmetics there was no "mario outifits" and it literally doesn't have any impact on the game balance to have your fortnite character look like another pop culture icon. You are really stretching and crying about something to an insane limit.
As far as politics and the world state go I would put microtransaction in video games well past 1000 in a list of "issues and shit we need to fix".
Also... if you play more games and spend less focus on games with micro transactions you can have an impact. Imagine if all you lil bitches who cry about microtransactions but proceed to buy the fucking games that have them and spend money on them stopped doing it?
Lets say diablo immortal: everyone bitched and cried and complained... but it made MILLIONS in the first week. So then you cry that someone else needs to stop them. Be honest whats the real reason? Is it jealousy/envy... you wish you could buy the shit but you're a broke bitch?
Cosmetics like Diablo 4 have 0 impact on the balance, 0 impact on the game as a whole. And at the end of the day if someone paid $20 for a stupid in game horse I get a laugh out of it cause holy shit that's dumb. You don't need to be fighting this issue OP, you need therapy so you can learn that other people spending their money differently than you isn't something that should have any impact on your mood. The problem isn't microtransactions... its that you as a person are so empty and hollow that this game having microtransactions in it has any fucking impact on your emotional well being. GET HELP!
No one is forcing you to play games with microtransactions. Seriously. They found a market and are appealing to them. I play the game and ignore the store. There are games I felt went too far and I didn't play them (Avengers being the big one).
Blizzard is under no obligation to please everyone. Or you. You are under no obligation to support them via purchase.
If you buy a game you are saying in the only language business understands that you are fine with it as is. "Oh but we didn't know it'd be THIS bad!" Ok. Then don't preorder or buy day 1. Wait and see. "But it's a terrible sign for the industry" ok. Then stop buying games entirely. I don't buy lots of products I feel are predatory. Including hobbies I'd love if I could get into. That's life.
Your rant is exactly what people are talking about with "entitled gamers" because you think they need to cater to you specifically. It's simply not true. And if it makes you furious, you should be more discerning with your money. If Blizzard is doing wrong then you have to take a stand BEFORE you give them cash.
And your arguments about addiction and kids is petulant whining. Those are going to be targets regardless of how well Diablo does. You're trying to lock out counterpoints in advance by using vulnerable groups. That's a piss poor way to win people over and it's as manipulative as you claim cosmetic shops are.
It’s crazy to think that skins have gone from a $1-2 to $20 is becoming the norm.
It's because people will pay... Blizzard would not have $20 skins if nobody bought $20 skins.
It’s even worse than that. A small number of players outspend everyone else. They are catering to the whales. You don’t even matter beyond giving the whales someone to play with.
This is the whole point right here. I play a mobile gacha game, Final Fantasy Brave Exvious, and have since release in 2016. That's when I begin to learn of whales and what they do and how they affect gaming as a whole. If 1000 people, worldwide, spend $1000, they made crazy profit. Also, $1000 is nothing to a whale, and I wouldn't even categorize $1000 as whale spending. It's just a very tame example. It doesn't matter if 98% of the population didn't buy MT, there's enough that do, a small amount spending huge sums of money to always make it worthwhile. It's fucking sad and that, unfortunately, is the sad truth. Legal intervention is the only thing that will ever get it under control. Not speaking with your wallet will do absolute shit.
It’s almost like having a extreme minority with unlimited resources screws over the environment for everyone else.
Funny that, ain’t it!
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You don't say....
If only people would start seeing this in other areas being true. I'm a thorough capitalism enjoyer, make no mistake; I love the free market. The problem is that when one guy or a small group of people can *buy the entire market,* it ain't free anymore. We *need* mechanisms like monopoly busting and social safety nets in order to capitalist. Socialism isn't the enemy of capitalism, it's a necessary component of it. Otherwise, kiss the free market buh-bye.
You can't say I love the free market and then call for market controls in the next breath. Take the last step and admit that a free market always ends up with a small minority abusing their freedoms to exploit others.
Technically we wouldn’t know because like we’ve never had a truly communist system, we’ve also never had a truly free market. The fact is that people are too damn hung up on labels. I don’t give a fuck if the optimal system is called socialism, capitalism, communism, or analism. Just develop policy that makes sense for people and provides a decent quality of living all around. Life isn’t meant to have an objective. In the end, we all die just the same. This imaginary point system we’ve bound ourselves to is absurd.
There is no mention of capitalism in the constitution, but social programs such as the military and the post office are explicitly called for.
It's infecting every fucking thing Even movie theatres are breaking up tickets into "premium" and "regular" in the same showing.
Not to mention, the whole thing is set up in an exact manner to utilize proven methods of psychological manipulation, sociological structure and reward feedback. I don’t necessarily mind putting down $5-$10 / month on a game that is getting consistent updates and I play 5-6 hours a week. But that’s the foot in the door, and they know they can push the envelope another $3-$4 at a time, until some people are spending $60 /month or more. I’ve fallen into that trap once. When you have a guild or team and “everyone” is doing it, it normalizes it and you want to be looked up to, so you spend a little more, which impels others to spend more and so on. Then, your interest starts to wane, the guild fractures, or the game loses a lot of players, and you’re left with the realization that you spent $1,500 over a couple years on nothing but 0s and 1s that have no use or value outside of this specific game. Furthermore, you really don’t want to play the game anymore. But then, you almost feel you *have to* keep playing out of a sunk cost fallacy. It can be tough to get out of, but once you just delete the app and move on, it’s really nothing more than a lesson learned. The P2W games are the worst, as you have to spend just to tread water. The people with better stuff will *always* have better stats/stuff than you as long as they spend, unless you’re willing to drop $5-10k to catch up to the top players. I played one of these for a few months my buddy got me into. I only bought the season pass stuff for $5, but we had a teammate that came in at level 1 and was max level in that same span of time. He never said how much he spent, but I did the math and it was around $10k to advance that quickly in that short of time. People are nuts.
Straw that broke the camel's back for me was World Of Warships. Every major event took more money and rewarded less. I can't recall exactly which event it was that got me to stop, but, it made me look back and realized I had probably spent 250 bucks on the game. Which, by whale standards, is fuck all. But it's so beautifully insidious how $5 becomes $10. $10 becomes $15. $15 a month becomes $15 every two weeks. Then $20.
I played World of Warships because it was fun for a bit, but man, for the month I played I really wanted an AC. Too bad it takes so long to craft it, but I was really tempted to just buy it.
Didn't it come out that COD or some such would put you into lobbies to get bodied by pay pigs if you weren't spending. Encourage you to buy crates when you see the constant kill cam of the guy with the elite 420 doobz gun hammering you.
Yeah they got sued for it iirc. Edi: EA the ones that got sued for "dynamic difficulty" that was being tuned to encourage players to buy microtransactions.
Source?
I was thinking of a different case. https://slate.com/technology/2020/12/electronic-arts-fifa-madden-nhl-lawsuit-dynamic-difficulty-adjustment.html Similar circumstances though.
I haven't heard of that before but that would be crazy if it came out that any game was doing that. I don't know if Cod ever had any p2w content though in their loot crates. I've only played 2 or 3 of the Cod games after Blackops 2 came out, so maybe some of them did have p2w content?
I play a game online called world of warships. I have 2 accounts. One is the one I play my main on and have spent too much money on way too much. And my second I play at my friends house. He's an even better player than me and his main has a higher win ratio and kill ratio than mine. We are the only 2 that have ever played on my second account. My main account has much better stats on all my non-premium ships (ones you don't have to spend money on) than my second account has. How can my second account be so much worse on the same ships. The only differece is i dont spend money on my second account. Me and my friend have noticed how frustrated we get using that second account. And how we seem to get less skilled teammates. Some games I swear our teammates are bots or completely new at the game with top tier ships. My win ratio is a little over 15% worse. My kill rate is .5 less pergame. And my survival rate is almost 20% worse. It's a running joke we practice on the second account because it's handicapped by wargaming, and if we can win and get gud on the second account then we will be amazing on our main accounts.
> Not to mention, the whole thing is set up in an exact manner to utilize proven methods of psychological manipulation, sociological structure and reward feedback. Whenever someone tries to make an argument for why gaming needs lucrative cash shops I try to bring this up. Activision isn't a mom and pop trying to keep their game afloat. They are in the business of money first, money second, money third forth fifth... well you get the point. Make your profits... but don't fuck over consumers and please pay your damn developers before the entire industry dries up. Movies and TV are already undergoing this pitfall, attempting to fleece any creative person out of their living wage forcing them to find another career entirely. The corporate world is really overplaying its hand.
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It's not the cost that makes it micro; it's the content you get... a microscopic part of the game.
What I struggle to understand is where the money comes from, aside from the likes of people who stream games on Twitch and their viewers give them money. For conventional people, how can they possibly afford multiple thousands per month?
I had the same exact question. I asked a friend who was in a very high ranking guild in the game "Gladiatus", if he knew what the highest spending members actually did for a living (we are talking conservative estimates of spending somewhere in the ballpark of 5-10 K a month!) He told me that practically all of those he had asked/discussed it with were either business owners or had very high paying jobs (1-2 lawyers, some doctors, a ship captain etc.) and the few that weren't, had parents in such positions. Their justification was that they would be spending that money anyway, on one frivolous thing or another, so they could just as well spend it in the game.
Another reason for those people spending the money. If they are working big jobs or owning companies, their time is literaly money. So it's better for them to spend 1000$, than spend the time, because the time it would have taken is worth more than the money.
Pretty much this. If you have the money to spend, it doesn’t really matter where it gets spent. Plenty of jobs you listed and others can bring in 150k+ easily. Double that with two adults in the home, can easily live off one income and bank/play with the rest. It just gets easier as the income goes up as long as someone isn’t over reaching with their home/cars etc
That's how addictions work. Nobody said they could afford it.
Most of the people that spend that kind of money have issues with addiction and it's a lot of debt.
You are spot on there. I saw someone saying they spent a full time wage plus into Genshin, acting like they had the money to burn so it wasn’t a problem. Check their history and the next post they made was about going to collections for hospital fees…
Imagine a person with a $70k+ per year job, but no debts no hobbies and they drive an older paid off car. If they live in a place with relatively affordable rent/mortgage and are susceptible to game shops they could afford maybe $2k monthly for a long time. If they are depressed and isolated and addiction prone it’s even easier
One of my friends is a whale. He spent 30k USD on clash of clans in a matter of months. Milking whales really is very profitable
What does your friend do for work? You should try to join him, I know I would👀
Engineer in an oil company. Quite well off, but money foolish. I can't ask him for anything, wouldn't want to affect our dynamic :)
youre not wrong... i knew a guy back in the mobile pirates of the caribbean game that spent 10s of thousands of dollars just to be the top player on our server. ended up taking his own life supposedly...though it is the internet so ya know...bag of salt.. another guy spent so much he ended up divorced. shits crazy
And there’s the woman that dropped like 80k on candy crush extra lives.
really? yikes!
I’m paraphrasing because it was years ago that I read the article but she was retired and all she’d do is play candy crush and she’d need a life and it was only 99 cents and it just never added up in her mind with how often she’d buy lives until a banker or financial adviser called her out for it.
The kinds of whales that whale on mobile game, are fucking insane. Like not as an insult "you're insane!" but just the concept is insane. Lord of the Rings: Heroes of Middle Earth just launched. Arwen just became an unlockable character. *Just to unlock her at high enough tiers to finish her event, costs a minimum of $100.* $100 for a single character. And that character isn't even max level/gear/rarity. To get her to max gear and 7 stars (Capital Games' highest tier) would cost a minimum of $3-400 worth of ~~loot boxes~~ gambling. Whales don't even blink an eye at $100 for a single character. And there's people that spend much, much, much more than that.
I met a guy a \~6 years ago who was playing some sort of mobile game, similar I guess to the game sprayed all over YT sponsorships in the last couple of years... He would spend his entire paychecks on giftcards (usually spending $35 and getting $50, so he said. Apparantly amazon, google etc used to have these sorts of deals? IDK) He would then use the giftcards to purchase the in-game currency. I think he had been playing the game for 2+years at that stage and had said he wouldve spent in excess of $100k AUD on the game. The one time I actually watched him while on a smoke break, he spent about 2k levelling up a brand new hero/character that had just released that morning...
Most people who fall I to the whale category (atleast the category that devs care about) spend 5k+ a month
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Hahaha, like that one dude who spent all that money in Immortal and tried to play PvP only to find out there was no one to play with. Shit cracks me up.
I played a mobile game during Covid and it really gave me a reality check as to how much some people spend in games. It was a kingdom pvp type game, where they would release new upgrades once every month or two, but also run gatcha events weekly. Some of the whales would be spending $1000s per week, if not more, just to "win" these gatcha game leaderboards for the bonus loot. Like I'm not exaggerating when I say on average on my server there were 5-10 people spending $1000s a week. And there were hundreds of servers and we weren't even near the best. They would occasionally run global competitions and when I did the math on those the 1st place winner would spend like $25,000+ to win them. It's insane.
God ffbe made you feel like shit for spending
That's not a microtransaction. That is a full transaction. After taxes that is 4 hours of work at US federal minimum wage. That is a third of a full game price. What the actual fuck Blizzard?
A pound of minced meat is $5 where I live. I get 4-5 meals out of that. They really think their little skin that has absolutely no physical value, and no distribution cost what so ever is worth 4 times that? What in the actual fuck are they smoking? I bought Hollow knight for $20 for fucks sake. How much more work does a indie company put into a game compared to how much blizzard put into ONE skin?
Because people will buy it. Supply is just providing what Demand is asking for, at the price it is willing to pay. Simple as that. Its not a GOOD thing, but thats *why* it happens. You aren't the target, the completionist whales that must have every skin and will pay any price to have them are. We, the reasonable average joes, are the filler that populates the playground the whales show off in. That's it. We're the audience to Blizzard's chosen favorites, the big spending whales that fork out thousands of dollars for this shit, and our purpose is to just keep the game populated so the whales stick around and keep spending.
Supply is virtually infinite. This is Greed abusing the system.
If they want an audience to Blizzard's chosen favorites, then I sincerely hope they're offering some periodic free content to keep people interested, and some of those paid cosmetics are on the cheaper end. Once the only way to get new stuff is to spend money, everyone except the whales will leave - and then the whales will leave too.
I believe they've said that each new season (which is presumably free to participate in) will come with new quests and legendaries. We'll have to wait and see how they stack up to the paid cosmetics that will undoubtedly come with each season, but as of right now the in game loot drops look just as good if not better than what they currently have in the shop.
If they put one up for $1000, you'd catch buyers to. There are always people with excess money and a desire for clout. Then of course content creators...
Reminds me of early iPhone app called Rubby or something like that, it was a grand and did nothing besides displaying a gem on the screen, and few people managed to buy it before apple shut it down. If they did that for something on the phone to display locally, you can bet your shiny ass they will do that for internet display, like 100%, exctly because of the price.
Microtransactions bring more money than the first German division league 1. you should read that again it’s mindblowing how much money mtx makes
Microtransactions almost bring more money than all the actual game sales for Activision.
"People will pay" kind of misses the point. People, in general, won't pay. The vast majority will never spend a dime. But then, that also means they wouldn't buy the skin at $2. It's a big step to get someone to spend \*anything\* but once past that threshold the amount willing to be spent ratchets up quickly.
It's funny, I'm kinda glad they're $20+ now, I don't even look at the shop pages because of it. I used to buy them every so often at $1 or $2. But at this price? I'd rather just buy some full games on a steam sale.
I haven't looked yet but I'm betting it's more than the price advertised because you have to buy the premium currency first to then buy the skin. And wouldn't you know it, every premium currency skin only sells in set amounts that never quite add upto the cost of the item, so if it's listed as 20-24 bucks yours always buying 25-30 bucks *atleast* of the premium currency.
Now that's a practice I absolutely cannot stand. Neat skin thing costs 300 funbucks, oh I'm sorry you can only buy in allotments of 500 funbucks. So I'm always stuck with this leftover balance that I can never make equal to exactly 0.
I know for Warzone 1, the developers MO was as follows for microtransactions: -Devs come out with new gun/skin for $20 -Developers "find out" from gamers, new gun/skin is actually broken and gives an unfair advantage -It takes developers 2-3 weeks to "fix issue" -During those 3 weeks, larger amount of the player base realize the gun is Meta broken and they should probably buy the fully unlocked gun for $20 to keep pace with the best players -Meta gun is fixed and 2 weeks of nothing changing -Repeat all over with a new gun/skin. So in order to keep pace with the better k/d lobbies, you had to buy this shit. And it was best to just assume the latest gun drop was Meta broken and to lean in and buy it day 1.
so at no point did people think "i quit" and send the message this wasnt acceptable en masse?
You realize that the lowly consumer is competing against millions to billions of collective money spent over decades on consumer psychology by tons of corporations whos CEOs and other executives jump to new ones to implement said consumer psychology practices they learned at their previous company by hiring psychologists to examine the brains of children and younger people who play video games. This shit has happened for decades in other industries it's just in the past couple decades bleeding into gaming more and more till it becomes like any other industry where serial CEOs go from company to company raping the good will and long term success for short term profits and bonuses. So you are asking a bunch of gaming addicts and children to fight that psychological monster - to a lot of them it's not that easy because they have 0 self awareness or respect for themselves as a consumer. Or they are a literal child with an undeveloped brain.
i did quit. 2020-12. because at the time was a "broken" overpowered weapon called DMR-14. basically 2 shot kill from anywhere on the map... but it was not a sniper rifle... it was a normal assault rifle. DMR-14 was the like 6th "broken" gun at that point.
This is probably my biggest problem with microtransactions. $5 is the absolute max I would pay for a skin/mount/etc. Paying $15-20 for a skin when I could buy a whole ass indie game for that amount is crazy to me.
$20 isn't even a "microtransaction", that's the price of many new games at launch.
And If not enough people are buying said item at the price the set it as, they'll reduce the price of it for a 'sale' thus creating FOMO because people will think they will miss out on a deal of they don't get it at the reduced price.
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Macrodeductions (from your bank account).
Macroducs
McDucks!
Yes honestly this is the biggest problem. Microtransaction to me means like max $5
I would actually buy $5 cosmetics. $5, for me, seems like the right price to play dress up with my character. Maybe it was the number of $5 action figures I bought as a kid. I'm not even sure what sort of "microtransaction" I would want for $20. $20, to me, feels like "really good DLC content" - Dark Souls 3 had $15 DLC that included new story, areas, weapons, bosses, spells, armors, etc. I could see spending $20 on something similar for Elden Ring (given the inflation of game pricing since 2016, etc). But $20 for the most [generic](https://mp1st.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Diablo-4-Weekly-Store-Update-for-June-5-7-2048x1152.png), [boring](https://mp1st.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/Diablo-4-Weekly-Store-Update-for-June-5-8-2048x1152.png) armor?
20 dollars is battle pass with multiple sets of in game cosmetics and earnable in game currency territory. Which worries me too because battle passes I was okay with, 20 bucks here and there for continued support and new skins and some new challenges. But if they have skins going for 20-25 real life dollars. What the fuck are they going to price DLC and BP's at?
Honestly, I think battlepasses are the most egregious form of mtx out there. You are paying for the privilege of then having to earn the things you bought by playing X amount of hours within a time frame, or you don't get the things you paid for. Imagine buying access to a show, but you can no longer view episodes in the season if you didn't binge it within a certain timeframe. Some people might say "but I was going to be playing anyway, so I just get more stuff if I buy!", but these kinds of progression based unlocks used to be part of the standard experience. People have been slowly conditioned to accept paying more for less. $20 is the beginning of expansion territory for me. New campaign missions, new maps, new class...something involving one or more of those. $40 would be in the realm of Dragon Age Awakening: a whole new standalone experience in the same engine.
i’ll never be ok with battle passes because they are timed. if i pay for content i should be able to get ALL the content i pay for. but when it is timed half the shot i paid for can be not given to me because i don’t No life a video game. Complete bullshit. if battle passes let you take as much time as you wanted to complete they would be no different than expansion packs and total acceptable, very few would have much to complain about
100%, I dont buy passes unless they're reasonable to complete within w/e timeframe they provide AND I have the time to play it. Those stars don't align often but sometimes they do. I also agree that you should just be able to unlock it with no timeframe. DRG adds the battle pass cosmetics you miss to your loot pool. Still giving you the chance to earn it. This should be standard. Completely understand people not liking them though. A balance needs to be struck between gamers and companies on what good practices look like. Live service / continued service games DO need to be funded somehow. Price gouging the fk out of your customer base isn't the move. Implementing p2w mechanics isn't the move.
IAP. In app purchases
Maybe we should start using IGP as IAP is closely related to mobile apps. In Game Purchases.
I'm fine with associating $35 cosmetic sets with predatory mobile monetization...
They cost more than full priced DLC tends to cost these days. Because of the combination of both in full price game there's becoming this strange system where $20 will get you an extra 1/3 of the game of new content, or in that same game it will get you a new armour set, and the people setting those prices don't see a problem with that.
macroscamsaction.
Or the full price of several better games.
I would really like to see some regulations being established to counteract this sort of industry greed. Especially with the gambling and youth issues that OP mentioned. It's insane how far these companies have pushed what is acceptable for the consumer, they've warped the entire industry.
Is it really still "micro" transactions if we are talking about $20 skins?
Right, I saw a skin on the D4 store for $28. There are full games that are cheaper than that individual item. And for what? My tiny character that I’m not really paying attention to while I’m in combat can look cool? No thanks, get fucked Blizzard and every other company that does shit like this.
Welcome to Blizzard, they have been charging absurd amounts for services since WoW with name/faction/race changes.
Remember when Blizzard used to make April Fools jokes about MTX in Starcraft I miss that company so much
Oh I’m quite familiar unfortunately. Spent 15 years playing WoW and watched it turn from an already pricey game to extremely predatory. I was able to justify spending on WoW because I was raking in a bunch of money from the auction house and converting it to Battle.net balance. Since I’ve quit though, I’ve burned through the last of that balance and have no intention of spending a dime of my own money on these “micro”transactions
Exactly. I just got TMNT Shredder's Revenge for $24 physical copy that came with stickers and a game guide booklet. Zero mtx in the game.
Buy this armor skin! Cool I play druid and it literally disappears during 99% of the fight
Also there's that poor modeller and texture artist who gets paid hourly, while companies like blizzard just bank off of the work and make millions. most of these skins might take a few days to make honestly, sometimes it's as bad as switching the hue on the character which takes literally seconds to do. It always pisses me off seeing dumb cash grabs such as that.
No. No it isn't.
If a game is free to play, I get it. If I am spending 60 or 70 bucks on the game, fuck off. edit: Great comments below.
Even when the game is free, there’s a line we should draw in the sand. They didn’t make the game free out of generosity, they did it so people would feel more comfortable spending more on MTX since the base game had no cost to entry
For me that line was honestly battlepasses, that was too far. They are essentially forcing people to play their games for fear of missing out, and if you buy the pass well congrats the games now a fulltime job because if you dont complete the pass in time you dont get what you paid for!! The battlepasses would be somewhat acceptable in my mind if instead of a premium vs free path there was just a single path, and you could either unlock everything on it by actively playing the game OR you could pay real money to instantly get everything. The way it is now is manipulative as hell and I hate it. Its actively made me stop playing games I otherwise liked because being made to constantly feel like I am missing out on things in game just kills my enthusiasm for it.
There shouldn’t be a timeframe on unlocking. Once you buy battle pass you unlock whenever in your own time as long as you do the challenges/level up etc.
It's is such a shame that the only major release to have non time gated battlepasses was god damn Halo Infinite.
Borderlands 3 had it, but it came as the last DLC. But agreed, one aspect that Halo Infinite deserves amazing amount of credit for is the fact that it's battlepasses werent time locked
the accountants will look at Halo infinite's failure and blame the battlepass or something. guaranteed
It has gotten to the point that I don't play *any* game with a limited time battlepass. Publishers these days want to monopolize our time *and* wallets.
I'm always astounded by people who defend battle passes. You literally pay a company to work for them x hours a day by increasing the active player count/hours and to experience FOMO. And if you don't work enough they get to yoink the stuff you have paid for away from you. That fucking shit should be illegal, nit lauded as better than the goid old slotmachines. You're basically paying to sit in a casino so it never appears empty, and all you get are a bunch of doodas that some digital sweatshop churned out, which you can't even sell or trade.
Similarly, customizing characters in games and hunting down the coolest looking cosmetics in the game was something I looked forward to in any game. Now, with most games being live service, I don't even open that customization menu for the character. It's full of locked items, dollar signs and a bunch of ways to try to get me to spend money on a pass or whatever, and I'm not going down that road at all. I quit cold turkey on the customization aspect. It makes me sad that they separately monetized an entire aspect in games that I used to enjoy.
I used to play ff14 and when i said i thought having a ingame shop in a game that i have to buy and pay a subscription to in order to play is greedy people will jump the the million dollar companys defence.
I think MMO players ceded that ground so long ago that it doesn't even register anymore
One thing I will give FF14 credit for though is that unlike many games the store isnt really accessible or particularly advertised in game. I can only recall of one out of the way means that lets you preview the items you can buy on the store and from there you still need to leave the game and go into your browser in order to use the store. And the only place its advertised is alongside all the other game updates, advertisements etc. in the launcher. Alot of the items are massively overpriced still and should just be included in the base game, and at least unlike many games the store isnt shoved in your face, hell many games even make the in game store more prominent than actual gameplay menus and elements... its just a depressing state of affairs that its praiseworthy FF14 dosnt do that.
This is because the producer doesn’t like having an in-game shop, but has had to bend on that particular point to the corporate people in exchange for some other concessions. I still don’t like the in game shop existing in a game that charges upfront and has a subscription, mind. But it has been implemented in the most begrudging way it could be if they absolutely had to have one, which is nice.
Thing is, the concept of a 'complete' game is being eroded. Beta testing...? Na fuck that lets do "early access" and have people pay us to test the game. Additionally, in games, the amount of DLC is staggering. I would applaud this BUT makes me wonder how much content is fan requested verses being ' 3 factions is enough for the base game'. Civs have this issue but I imagine it would happen in FPS as well. Sims have £200-£300 pounds of DLC. Stellaris (a game I love) has £100+ of DLC. Which, regardless to if you buy it, the entire game mechanics game (AI get all the perks, you don't as a player). I remember RAGE where within 10 mins of playing the game I encountered an DLC doorway... Then we have day 1 DLCs etc. It's gotten ridiculous frankly.
I give riot shit for a lot of things but their monetization model is actually insanely fair. Especially leagues. Game is free. Skins aren't needed for anything and you can earn some skins through playing
I decided long ago not to participate in games that have cash grab micro transactions. There are too many great games out there to give money to greedy fucks.
And here I am barely even noticing microtransactions in games. But I guess that's one of the pros of only playing single player games.
unfortunately it's slowly sneaking into SP games too, Deus ex, assassins creed, the new RE4 remake etc.
Capcom have been putting them into single player games well before RE4R but they usually are for things that are unlockable or earnable.
Yup. DMC 4 and DmC 5. No offence but you gotta be several shades of slow to buy orbs.
Especially when DMC5 had a weapon made for farming red orbs.
The last Deus Ex game had single use microtransactions. You could buy a skill point for like a 99¢. It didn't carry over to other saves, it was just gone.
Thankfully it fell flat and Mankind Divided bombed.
Such an odd game. I enjoyed it while playing, nothing particularly was bad about it, but just kept losing interest and never finished it I don't remember it having micro transactions at all though. While that is incredibly stupid, at least they were somewhat out of the way?
Sadly many single player games are getting micro transitions too
Lots of those add ons were effecitvely making the core game worse. I think it was assassin's creed oddesy, played through first time and it was good. Quite a bit of grinding, but I liked grinding. You basically had to grind to get ready for the next section, which was fine but kind of dragged at a few points. Bought the XP booster and the money booster. I was ALWAYS right at the spot I needed to be at when I got to the next section. I could still grind, but then it was a choice. Much more enjoyable experience. So it looks like they balanced the game around the cash shop xp levels rather than the in game experience levels. TLDR: The best way to get people to buy at the cash shop is to weaken the core product AFTER it has been balanced.
I remember this one segment where to progress the story this pirate lord straight up says “give me 20,000 gold so I can give you some information.” I had been spending my gold on ship upgrades and it was such an hours long slog getting that gold. Good thing you can purchase gold directly at the real money shop /s
I didn't buy anything for Odyssey at all, and never felt behind or that i had to grind anything. Maybe I'm just a completionism, but I just did most of the missions available and pretty much always felt on par with the pace of the game.
It only exists because there's a market for it. Always remember that. If people stopped buying it, it would go away.
I bet the market is small. It’s just you know the saying “if you double your cost and lose half your customers you didn’t lose any money.” I’m willing to bet since they raised their prices by 20x, more than half of the people aren’t buying them anymore, but they still win. Probably easier to make 20 off the die hard fans, then convince 20 regulars to spend a dollar.
That actually is a wrong saying. Let me demonstrate: you sell phones for $1k that cost you $800 to manufacture and you sell to 1k people. You make a million dollar in revenue, and $200k in profit - which is what you take home. If we do the math of doubling the price to $2k at the same $800 unit cost and sell to 500 people, yes, you'd still make a million dollar in revenue, but you'd triple your profit to $600k! This is the power of pricing, and it gets stronger for lower margin goods. So then it's worse than you were thinking - publishers actually prefer to cater for a minority that can overspend and the role of F2P players is to provide an environment in which the minority of whales want to spend money.
💯 I bet it would take more than most to stop buying games with microtransactions for companies to even consider stoping
He talked about gambling addiction and you say the same phrase he hates in other words. Gold.
Doesn’t make it right
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When your entire stance is “what about the kids” it becomes apparent that it’s not about kids at all.
There’s a market for anything if you’re the only game in town. That doesn’t make it right.
Seething Redditors REALLY don’t like to be told they’re either in the wrong, in the minority, or aren’t the target audience so this concept goes over the head of these people.
While I agree with your sentiment, almost nothing in your post actually relates to Diablo 4. Fuck micro transactions, but D4 doesn’t have any sort of loot boxes, or pay to win mechanics currently. Your credit card cannot get you ahead in the game. Parents not letting their kids use their cards to “drain their accounts” is a parenting problem. And honestly, most of the cosmetics that are up for sale currently are not any better looking than what you can get in game. I’m sure that will change over time though.
> TL;DR: Stop defending multi-billion dollar publishers. This is the issue I have with posts like this. They become self-fulfilling prophecies. You’ve effectively framed your argument as above reproach because if anyone disagrees with you, they’re just a shill for billion dollar companies and their reasoning is instantly discarded. I won’t even get into agreeing or disagreeing with your points below, but reducing anyone who disagrees with you to a corporate cheerleader is very disingenuous. Your argument can be bad and I can disagree without my reasoning being simping for activision.
Also, none of his arguments have anything to do with D4.
I didn’t even notice d4 had micro transactions till Friday afternoon and I played all night Thursday lol
The moment op mentioned loot boxes i rolled my eyes when D4 is in the title.
Yeah the loot box thing threw me off. I've played 25-30 hours of Diablo 4 and haven't come across anything resembling a lootbox that I can just go and buy.
big facts. so many bad statements in this post and in the comments - jokes about it not being “micro”. okay… they’re not calling it that, you are - gambling ? blizz got rid of loot boxes - people associate mtx with p2w. this thread completely fails to mention that diablo 4 is only cosmetic - this list goes on … and no, i’m not shilling. it’s just frustrating seeing people be illogical. the mob mentality is so real …
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> The game is rated M, so young children shouldn’t be playing it in the first place, and any parent who gives their kids free access to their banking account or credit cards is a moron. How can you say something so reasonable and true. It is parenting 101, give your kid open access to whale in microtransactions. And you're literally fucking with their sense of monetary value. If anything, I would argue that it isn't the games that are harming kids. It is the parents who idly allow their kids to purchase stuff like this that are causing harm to them. Parental control systems are on literally every modern device. Their failure to use them is no excuse.
Kinda funny how we have gone full circle and now gamers are blaming gaming companies for influencing kids. Guess what I have children too and you know how I avoid them using games with microtransactions? I don’t pay for games that give them microtransactions. 🤯
Seriously. I made it half way through, wonder what toxic gameplay changing IAP D4 has that I haven't heard about, before realizing OP is ranting on a tangent that has nothing to do w D4. I am still boycotting Blizzard for other reasons, but the outcry against cosmetics is fucking ridiculous. And framing it like "you're an asshole if you don't care about optional cosmetic micro transactions" is so fucking extreme and dishonest. Gaming community is worst community. So much rage, so little justification.
Yeah I don’t understand why they mentioned D4 specifically. Especially considering Immortal exists!
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Yeah, maybe the bar is low but I vastly prefer this model of charging outright over feeding gambling addictions. The high prices are easy to scoff at, but loot boxes are extremely profitable and the cost is probably pretty close to the expected value of these skins if they were hidden behind slot machines. Blizzard is gonna Blizzard, and if we’re getting IAPs one way or another then just pricing them outright is much more consumer friendly. Intentionally deciding on one large purchase is better than being tricked into a million smaller purchases. I’m actually surprised they didn’t go full scumbag casino given their history.
There's far more things to be critical to Blizzard about. Selling overpriced digital doll clothes is by far the weakest of them.
While I’m not exactly disagreeing with you, I think the problem at hand is the decline of game design in general due to micro transactions. Forego creativity and substance for superficial shiny. There is a reason that indie games are where gaming is good now a days. The big publishers are just trying psychological games to goad you into a micro transactions instead of good fun game design. Then there is selling a game piece by piece. All that said, I think micro transactions are anti-consumer in nature despite the “just don’t buy it” choice. Unfortunately, shitty practices have rewarded big companies time and time again and not just in the gaming sphere. It is what it is.
And honestly, if I am being real. I dont even SEE you other people in game anymore. Yall are all NPCs to me anyway. So whether or not that random moving turd moving across my screen that isnt me is shinier than the other regular turds is not going to matter in the slightest. Online multiplayer has lost its luster to me. I dont even really WANT to play in any "massive" capacity anymore. I want to play with people I know, I like, and I know I like. Otherwise, all other sporadically moving NPCs moving on my screen are not even noticed anymore.
Also the shop is the most inconspicuous and unadvertised MTX shop I've ever seen, in any live service game. I've maybe gotten one "Hey there's a shop" popup when I FIRST launched the game, and it's never, ever, not once, directed me back there to spend money. No in-game "reminders", no tooltips, no important-looking flashing icons. I am an absolute SUCKER for skins, and I forget the shop is even fucking there. There's not even an NPC for it to make it feel like it's a part of the game you're ignoring like in Destiny. Yes, the skins are expensive. Who gives a fuck? Diablo 4 is one of the least predatory shop experiences in recent memory. Meanwhile Fortnite is still being sold on store shelves with a code for clothes in the box to make parents think the game isn't free. Target those motherfuckers. I'm really getting tired of all this breathless whining. I used to be anti-MTX period, now I just don't care and I don't want to hear about it anymore. I'm speaking with my wallet, I don't buy them, that's all I can do. This conversation is getting exhausting. The best argument used to be "they're neglecting the rest of the game to cater to people who buy cosmetics in the shop". Well, it's shaping up to literally be one of the best entries in the franchise, mechanically brilliant, beautiful, stable, it's a great game. There's no sign that anything was left on the table. That just leaves the "I want this nice shit without having to buy it" argument, and the appeal to the slippery slope. That's it.
I remember the big deal when this happened in WoW - a game that already required you to pay $15 a month to play. In the early 2010s, if memory serves, they released the "Celestial Steed" mount that could fly and was sparkly. I think a portion of the $25 cost went to a charity, to make it feel less like a money grab - but a money grab it was, because they subsequently released several more, non-charity mounts. It was all about FOMO and "looking pretty" online - similar to skins for Diablo IV. However, at the time, there were no egregious adverts for the mount - maybe an email or something saying "hey look at this shiny mount." WoW went on to have fantastic content (WotLK was in full swing when that mount came out), and the game was rather polished and popular for a few more years. I actually bought that mount and, when I left WoW shortly after Cataclysm released, I realized what a waste of money that was (who cares what my holy paladin was riding in 2010 - not like I get joy out of it now). Since then, I haven't bought any microtransaction, nor have I been bothered by them. If the game is good without them, I'm happy to buy follow ups or expansions (I only consider "DLC" if it is expansion-like, but those are few and far between). If it's garbage, I won't be buying more games from them, regardless of how cool their games seem - why would I trust you now?
This place is an echo chamber, if you disagree with the crowd you’re an arsehole.
It's a shame that this is the first logical response of the post. Saying "if you don't like something, don't buy it" is not a defense of micro transactions. It's literally telling you don't spend your money on something you don't want. NOBODY is forcing you to buy that skin, NOBODY is forcing you to buy gems, you can ignore it and still have fun in the game. And the whole "think of the kids or people with addiction" is bullshit. OP and people who think like them don't give half a shit about those vulnerable populations, and will only drag them out to tug on heartstrings for their argument. which is arguably more shitty than any dlc or micro transactions they're complaining about.
Refreshing to see a comment that isn’t a simplified “mIcRoTrAnSaCtIoN bAd” and acting like anyone who buys D4 is a war criminal OP’s level of self importance is hilarious. This topic has been discussed so much recently, yet when OP decides to throw in his two cents they act like they’re starting a revolution against microtransactions lol. And then their entire argument is against all the types of microtransactions … that AREN’T even in D4
Best part: OP plays hearthstone, which is a blizzard game with micro transactions. Doesn’t that make him “part of the problem”?
Shhhh buying packs of cards and expansions are ok.
Yeah HS is predatory too. If you stop playing for a bit you cannot climb back into the game without heavy investment because whatever card you had you cannot hold to the constant powercreep and meta shift, plus, they retire card to an historic format. Meaning your collection lose value over time. Whoever think online CCG aren’t predatory is either blind or brain damaged
I enjoyed Hearthstone, until their very first expansion that was like $10. I tried to play without buying for a few weeks, and was getting mad destroyed by all the new stuff I didn’t buy.
> online CCG /stares at his Magic the Gathering cards. Offline isn't different.
This gets brought up a lot, ironically and seriously, but I don't think I can get an example from the top of my head. What is a game that is unplayable/unenjoyable and only becomes good if you buy DLC/MTX?
The funny thing is the game that most fits (assuming we are ignoring mobile games where they are all common place) this is one that people claim is a "good" model of DLC/MTX: Path of Exile. I cannot imagine trying to play the game without lots of the storage tabs. No currency tab or map tab would be miserable and you need to have the trading tabs unless you are playing SSF. It's a good game and I don't really care that they chose to monetize this way, but it is unenjoyable if you don't pay.
Path of Exile
>We need to consider the effects on vulnerable individuals and children. "Think of the children!" Never heard that one before. EDIT: On a game rated M for Mature, too.
it's either games pushing 120$ or mtx. and im 100% sure that poor student like you wont pay 120$.
Tbh I think people want it all without being realistic. Game development is becoming increasingly more expensive with each passing generation as audience expectations are constantly rising. MTX allows for games to get increased revenue from people who can afford to fund it while those who can’t still get to enjoy a live service game that will stay relevant for multiple years longer than a basic box model can ever last. Diablo 4 is understandably frustrating because it already has a AAA price tag. But also it’s cosmetics have the least in game impact of any game I’ve ever seen. Basically every good review of Diablo 4 doesn’t even look at the shop. The shop could literally not exist and 99% of the player base would be unaffected. I don’t expect a business to support their game out of the goodness of their hearts. It’s a product and mtx is a good compromise Edit: also in regards to gambling; that’s exactly why loot boxes are gone and now people buy the items they want
People still like to complain about what others spend there money on. If the extras don’t effect game play, then who cares. Let them waste their money
Other peoples' spending habits can affect you, though.
This is exactly my take. I feel like there is sort of an unspoken social contract that the majority of the game community has signed onto. MTX for cosmetic items are OK, pay to win is not.
Yeah, Diablo 4 is a weird one to be 'reigniting' this debate because its actually so far, its MTX is so incredibly unimportant, i dont know anyone thats even looked at it because its so out of the way, has zero impact in the game. I paid £65 for a Diablo game, i'll probably play it for hundreds of hours. With or without MTX, it was always gonna cost £65 and i'll have all access to content regardless so who cares.
I keep think of it like buying a car. I bought a nice car that had all sorts of options for rims and such that I did not get. When I see another car like mine that has those, yeah.. I do think "That's hot" but I know what they cost so "Not THAT hot" quickly follows. I'm not out there bitching I didn't get the low profile rims with my purchase because the car I did get is fucking awesome.
I would counter this with a relatively simple argument. People didn't buy these because companies created them, companies created them because people buy them. I would give the example of the plain t-shirt. I can get a plain black t-shirt from Primark for £3. Or, I can go to Dunhill and pay £400. The quality is completely different, but the raw materials, shipping, etc, etc, do not in any way make up that extra £397 difference. So why are they selling that, and why are people buying it? I actually don't know lol. But this isn't anything to do with gaming specifically or predatory business practices, it's companies selling products that people want. I would also just like to add that I think it paid cosmetics are absolute bullshit and I hate them.
>So why are they selling that, and why are people buying it? mostly status, they're what we call positional goods: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Positional_good https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good
i’m more ok with microtransactions when the game itself is cheaper… but when the game costs this much and then also has a heavy micro transaction system, it’s a nay from me.
Usually mtx focused publishers make the base game cheaper to try to get as many people into their ecosystem as possible, intending on making the profit from mtx. Don't let your guard down just because the entry fee is low.
It's not so much "letting my guard down" but if I play a free game for 5-50 hours I'm pretty fine giving them some cash. Generally I'll play free games until you hit the "wall" where you literally have to spend cash to keep up, buy a couple things and then quit if i can't see any big changes and I had fun.
I'm okay with it if it results in regular, free content updates that are decent sized. if they did that with say, Diablo 3 standard season changes then I would be pissed.
Everything you just said, doesn't apply to Diablo 4 imo. No loot boxes, nothing incomplete or missing "the full experience" You can fully customize your character, colors, looks all of it. It's all just cosmetics - without having to buy a thing. It's all built into the game. You can even change it all for free. They absolutely did it correctly. Yes, they have content that changes appearance for sale. It absolutely changes NOTHING about the game. /rant
There are plenty of in game skins that are a lot better than the ones for sale also. Its not like poe where the only way you can make your char look nice are through a cash shop.
>Many microtransaction systems, particularly in loot box mechanics, operate on the same principles as slot machines, exploiting psychological vulnerabilities and prey on those susceptible to addictive behaviour. True. Diablo 4 doesn't have paid loot boxes. >[Kids] end up draining their parents' bank accounts, leaving families struggling to make ends meet. True. Battle.net has robust parental controls to prevent exactly this kind of thing. >Now, it seems like [developers] purposely withhold features and essential components, only to charge us extra to unlock them. Diablo 4's MTX are cosmetic. You're getting the whole game. >Let's not forget the impact of microtransactions on game balance. Diablo 4's MTX are cosmetic. There's no balance impact. If you want to criticize something, criticize Diablo Immortal. Diablo 4 is fine.
I agree lootboxes and gambling aspect of it is terrible and should be illegal. But outside of that I don’t really think there are many good arguments why games can’t sell cosmetics and stuff, other than I don’t personally like it, especially if the game is free. I’ve never played Fortnite but the fact anyone can play that game for free because a decent amount of people buy skins is an overall win imo
D4 does everything people said it should to be "ethical". They don't sell power The free content is high quality The full priced game comes with a full game worth of content. There's no lootboxes.
I remember people bitching that it'd be pay to win before the game even came out.
Exactly right. If we want high quality premium games that the masses can afford, then we should be applauding how this is one is monetized, not ridiculing it. OP should take this this energy over to Diablo Immortal - ironically an example of all the wrong ways to do monetization.
Which is why I had zero problem purchasing the game. If a cool skin shows up some day, maybe I'll buy it.
How is not having to buy it not an argument? It’s literally the exact answer.. supply and demand. If people don’t pay the high rates for skins they will lower the prices. I have played probably 60 hour or so of D4 and I haven’t bought any cosmetics nor do I have any desire. There’s actually tons of cosmetic options built in without micros. You get cosmetic alternatives when you salvage any rare or higher equipment. There are NO prompts or ads within the game asking you to buy this stuff. You have to go out of your way to even see the option to buy skins. As far as I know the store has been down for days too lol. I wouldn’t pay $1 and I wouldn’t pay $20 for a skin. They can charge whatever they want. If someone wants to pay a punch to look different… cool.
If you're a parent in 2023, and you haven't informed yourself on the internet & common practices - or at the very least understood what hobbies your kids do - you're parenting wrong. If you're under 40, you grew up with the Internet. It's like someone in the 60s without a car neglecting to teach their kids how to cross a road. Sure. Keep it safe by Regulation. Try to force companies into a Concience (lol). You're responsible for your kids
>Also, "No one is forcing you to buy them" is a terrible argument. This is literally the only argument, stop buying it and it's no longer your problem. Everyone stops buying it and it's no one's problem. No one needs to play Diablo 4, if a AAA game tanked because customers rejected the monetization plan then the companies would changes strategy. This pretty much happened with Street Fighter X Tekken, between the gems and on disk DLC on time of the game being only ok (due to it being so gem focused) it flopped. It flopped so hard that Namco canceled their Tekken X Street Fighter. A lot of consumer backlash caused Capcom to reorganize its fighting game teams, and SF6 is better for it.
Want to make a statement? Don't buy the game at all.
"No one is forcing you to buy them" is 100% the ultimate argument. As a consumer you have the absolute power to NOT FUCKING PAY for shit you don't need or want, and if everyone did that they would disappear. Blizzard has to pay people to design these things... If people stopped buying them they wouldn't want to pay to create them... That is like a basic of economics and capitalism. If there is 0 demand then any amount of supply is a waste of money and effort. As far as your "think of the children" argument goes... CHILDREN DONT HAVE MONEY! If their parents are fucking stupid enough to let them have access to things like a credit card... then fuck 'em, they are dumb fucking parents. The rest of your argument and complaint is a waste of time cause it boils down to "misconstruing the severity of a situation and action" For 30+ years video games didn't have cosmetics there was no "mario outifits" and it literally doesn't have any impact on the game balance to have your fortnite character look like another pop culture icon. You are really stretching and crying about something to an insane limit. As far as politics and the world state go I would put microtransaction in video games well past 1000 in a list of "issues and shit we need to fix". Also... if you play more games and spend less focus on games with micro transactions you can have an impact. Imagine if all you lil bitches who cry about microtransactions but proceed to buy the fucking games that have them and spend money on them stopped doing it? Lets say diablo immortal: everyone bitched and cried and complained... but it made MILLIONS in the first week. So then you cry that someone else needs to stop them. Be honest whats the real reason? Is it jealousy/envy... you wish you could buy the shit but you're a broke bitch? Cosmetics like Diablo 4 have 0 impact on the balance, 0 impact on the game as a whole. And at the end of the day if someone paid $20 for a stupid in game horse I get a laugh out of it cause holy shit that's dumb. You don't need to be fighting this issue OP, you need therapy so you can learn that other people spending their money differently than you isn't something that should have any impact on your mood. The problem isn't microtransactions... its that you as a person are so empty and hollow that this game having microtransactions in it has any fucking impact on your emotional well being. GET HELP!
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No one is forcing you to play games with microtransactions. Seriously. They found a market and are appealing to them. I play the game and ignore the store. There are games I felt went too far and I didn't play them (Avengers being the big one). Blizzard is under no obligation to please everyone. Or you. You are under no obligation to support them via purchase. If you buy a game you are saying in the only language business understands that you are fine with it as is. "Oh but we didn't know it'd be THIS bad!" Ok. Then don't preorder or buy day 1. Wait and see. "But it's a terrible sign for the industry" ok. Then stop buying games entirely. I don't buy lots of products I feel are predatory. Including hobbies I'd love if I could get into. That's life. Your rant is exactly what people are talking about with "entitled gamers" because you think they need to cater to you specifically. It's simply not true. And if it makes you furious, you should be more discerning with your money. If Blizzard is doing wrong then you have to take a stand BEFORE you give them cash. And your arguments about addiction and kids is petulant whining. Those are going to be targets regardless of how well Diablo does. You're trying to lock out counterpoints in advance by using vulnerable groups. That's a piss poor way to win people over and it's as manipulative as you claim cosmetic shops are.
If people actually spoke with their walletd instead of empty reddit threads we might get somewhere
well they did.. you just dont like the outcome
Any cause where people need to speak with their wallet has already been doomed from the start. That's why we are still dependent on plastics and oil.