this post was submitted on 11 Feb 2024
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Potentially unpopular opinion: It's largely players' fault for buying into these ridiculous monetization schemes.
Execs care about one thing: Money. If doing this shitty stuff generates more money, they'll do it. If it doesn't, they won't. Sure, they could choose to do what's best for the gamer out of the goodness of their hearts, but they won't, that's not even in question. They're in it for money, they don't care about anything else.
As such, when gamers buy into predatory monetization, they're telling the execs, "This works! Do more of this!". If we as gamers just never touched the stuff, it would go away very fast. It's our fault.
It's not even the average gamer that generate the profits for these things. It's fucking Battlepass Georg who goes into debt buying bullshit digital items.
I used to work for a company that ran a free-to-play online game with predatory microtransactions; I can absolutely confirm this. More than 90% of their revenue was generated from less than 5% of the userbase. It was honestly pretty disgusting. Most players spent <$25 over their entire career, but a small number of people spent thousands.
I can kind of let it slide with free-to-play games; they do need to make revenue somewhere, but when it's a buy-to-play game that still pulls this BS, that's crossing a line.
When I pay 70 for a game I should get everything. Period. I'm paying up front for the cost of the game. If you create more content, it should be included. I don't even play games with loot crates for glams. Glams can be extra on free games or whatever, but it's pure cosmetic. It is not a game if you can't play all of it under paying for it. Fuckin a man. What happened to people where they think buying their concept gets to hold people to a different standard?
Yeah entire games built around whales is sadly where the money is
Always a few ruining it for everyone
It's largely kids with dad's credit card who don't understand that you shouldn't be spending $10+ / month on skins.
It's sad, but the target audience of a battlepass is people who can't fight their impulse.
$10 / month doesn't even rate on the whale scale. It's people with addictive personalities who get FOMO or lose a match and think "If I just bought 10 more loot boxes...", and can't stop themselves. They're the people these games are built to take advantage of. Some folks spend hundreds / month or more on these games.
Warthunder has loot boxes and airplanes that cost hundreds of dollars on their market, and people pay for them. I sold some random tank once for like $35 and it wasn't even anything special.
Its the same with alcohol, gambling and anything else that targets people with underlying mental health conditions. Instead it get stigmatized so johnny doesnt go to the (overexpensive) doctor for treatment and instead drinks, gambles, makes 10 children and the only love they know is expensive games.
I believe this isn't so much an unpopular opinion, but just factually wrong. Like you could read or commission scientific studies showing that a group of average people will react to certain stimuli. Video games are all about those stimuli. And also it's a small percentage of players. It's also about protecting kids and teenagers. So while it is profitable to do this, sometimes society shouldn't allow it.
You could also make the same argument for fraudulent crimes. They weren't always criminal but were made criminal and are now accepted as being criminal. You could say "It's our fault for falling for this!".