Microtransactions (Gaming)

by Kahzgul, Monday, May 30, 2016, 12:39 (3106 days ago) @ Xenos

For all of these things, the players have no means of guaranteeing that what they are buying is in any way worthwhile. There are no legal protections to force the company to deliver on its promises of "your microtransaction fees pay for future development." There's no recourse if you feel like you've been ripped off. And there's no guarantee that there isn't some kind of super shady algorithm working behind the scenes to figure out who is willing to pay money when RNG screwed and then RNG screw them over and over, or - conversely - give favorable outcomes to people who paid money over F2P players.

I would say that there is SOME accountability needed on both sides here though. Buying microtransactions just to support "future development" is not why they expect people to buy them. I'm loving Overwatch, and they put in microtrasactions to help them pay for future maps and characters, which will be released for free. Does that mean that their obligated to give X amount of content in the future for my microtransaction today? Absolutely not, because they straight up tell me what I'm getting for my money: a loot box like every other loot box I earn when I level up. That's not worth it to me so I have no plans to ever buy any loot boxes from them, but it's about the merit to you personally for the purchase that matters. As far as pay to win, they are never successful in mainstream gaming (mobile is a strange space).

Blizzard is arguably the most open company about their microtransactions. I really like how they handle it all on the surface, but there's still no guarantee that there isn't a coder somewhere with his thumb on the scale. When there's no financial incentive to deny content to people who haven't paid, there's a lot more trust between dev and player. I'm not saying Blizzard is doing this - in fact reddit testing with hearthstone shows they are expressly *not* doing this, but there is literally no way for players to verify that fact. Also, blizzard doesn't hold their content hostage for microtransactions - it's coming whether they get sales or not, where bungie straight up said they were switching to microtransactions as a means to fund new content, implying that if no one buys, no one gets new content. Maybe SRL isn't coming back because not enough people bought racing books (which would be *so lame* if that was the case).

And you're right about the flip side: There's no guarantee whatsoever that players will buy your microtransaction items. You can put a ton of work into something and get literally nothing in return. But that's a risk with any product. I prefer to pay for what I want (buying something) rather than pay for a chance at what I want (gambling).

If you compare the overwatch microtransactions with destiny's there's also a notable difference: in overwatch, the in game currency you can earn will let you buy more packages. In destiny, until sterling treasures, there was no way at all to get the other items they sold. It was pay more money or get nothing. Which is fine in a free to play game, but sucks balls when you already shelled out more than $100 for the game and all of its expansions.