How is Blizzard’s business model legal when it comes to selling the Rewards Track?
I’m trying to understand how the business model behind the Rewards Track works, but it seems like there’s a loophole that benefits Blizzard more than the person who buys the Rewards Track (In extreme situations Blizzards gets player’s money and player gets nothing).
Let me summarize why a player would purchase the Rewards Track. Those would not be the only decisions but probably major decisions to buy the Track:
Once unlocked your exp gains will be increased.
Once unlocked you will get more PACKS, CARDS, HERO PORTRAITS.
I think the ‘Once unlocked’ part of the Rewards Track has a loophole.
After purchasing the Rewards Track, players are not guaranteed to receive any of the rewards they paid for !!!
Instead, they must complete additional tasks and invest time, such as playing games, to earn the rewards, (to unlock the rewards). Additionally, there is a deadline before the next Rewards Track begins. If players don’t complete the required tasks by then, they will only receive partial rewards or none at all.
From official documentation:
If you have unclaimed rewards they will be automatically granted to your account, so you don’t miss on anything you unlocked.
If you didn’t make in time to unlock a reward, this reward is no longer obtainable and Customer Support cannot assist.
Perhaps a better analogy would be if you owned a PS5 and purchased 10 games from the PS5 store as digital downloads. The store informs you that you need to play a few games before you can receive your first game. Also there is a deadline, and if you don’t play enough games before the deadline, you won’t receive the rest of your digital download games. If Sony were to implement such a model, they could potentially face legal action.
What if there is a situation the player was not able to play enough to unlock most of the items, or none at all when the next Rewards Track goes live? Blizzard keeps the items and player gets nothing?
Its legal because they lay out what you are purchasing and make it very clear. YOu are purchasing a TRACK, not the rewards on the track, but you are Buying the track itself. If you decide not to progress the track then thats on you. But you still got what you paid for, the ability to progress on the track.
Look at it like this, You can pay to race on the go kart racetrack for a single day. You can race up to 10 times if you race all day long and finish every race you can that day. You are not buying 10 races that day, you are buying the ability to race 10 times that day. You arent entitled to any missing number of races on another day if you didnt get all 10 races in that day. If you only had time to race 9 of the 10 that day, so be it. You arent owed 1 more race the following day. You paid to race for one day and you could if all things were ideal and you finished all of them, could at the most have raced 10 times. If you arrived late or had a lunch break or whatever you excuse might be doesnt change what was sold to you, you can race all day.
The track purchase is essentially the same principle. And that is clearly laid out as they do not list all the additional prizes for progressing along that track as absolutely including in the purchase, but are prizes for progressing on that track. Its up to you if you actually make it all the way or not to claim them all.
It all makes sense. I am just having a tough time processing that your purchase (and yes, it is all laid out for you and you can make plan to play games on Mondays and get there) depends on an additional element during the purchase.
I purchased the item or item(s) but then possession of these items depends on me doing or not doing more work and it scales, the more work after purchase I perform, the more more of an item(s) I get. If that makes sense. It doesn’t feel fair. It feels like you bought a product, but only only will be getting more of a product after you begin constantly doing more and more work related to your product purchase and you can’t stop or deadline will not allow you to get the product 100%.
I guess this business model is fine but feels like a “loophole” and thank you for explaining btw.
ha ha you mentioned that, here is an analogy, I can do related to Auto Insurance.
You purchase an auto insurance policy but it starts at 0% coverage but the more you drive the more percent coverage goes up. Obviously it is a joke, but it reminds of how the Rewards Track works … need to stop thinking about it.
My point is that it is not illegal in any way to have someone pay for the privilege of getting nothing up front then only getting benefits if they do something afterwards. Entire legitimate industries are based upon that business model.
Not a loophole, let me try it this way. You buy a Nintendo Switch and the Subscription to the NES titles for 1 month. If you dont play any titles from the NES section that month, thats your decision. But if you did say play Mario, you could see yourself defeating Bowser. If you plowed thru you could beat the first Zelda, etc. All these things could be moments you can say youve earned. Not paid for, tho you did need to pay for the chance to earn them. But again, you can decide not to play that month and if the NES titles go away at the end of that month for other titles, that on you and you decided not to earn the things you could have.
Or a day at a theme park. You arent entitled to ride all the rides and get swag from each one like the photo of you on said rides. You just gotta make the best choices and hit up all you can in the day you paid for. If you spend half your day in line for a single ride, thats you doing that.
You get a diamond card on lvl 2 of the paid reward track, so there’s that.
Plus you get XP by doing just about anything in the game, i can’t think of a way to play the game and not receiving XP, thus advancing on the reward track
But frankly, if you don’t plan on playing the game for the next 4 month, the wise approach would be to not buy the tavern pass
So buying a 1 year gym membership doesnt guarantee me a 6pack of abs, being able to dead lift 1000 lbs, lose half my body weight in fat, or run a mile in under 3 minutes. It could over time give me these things if I put in the effort regularly and I may not achieve all my goals but I made progress towards them and got to meet or exceed some of them. See how the concept of you buying a thing facilitates you to get other things, but isnt a guarantee you will get all the things you dream of getting, is normal and legal and in no way strange or confusing at all?
Also the same no effort = no reward concept applies there too. You can still be lazy and never visit the gym despite paying for the full year, and its no surprise to anyone you cant do any of the things I stated above, or made any progress towards them.
Completely legal, also no reason for any refunds either if you just didnt put in the effort or because you didnt reach your goals in that time. I think this is the closest and best example Ive come up with.
There’s a scene in Meet the Fockers that does a good job making an example of this. Sure, the brick hit his car, but if the brick never hit the car, he paid for nothing except maybe piece of mind. Even the person who gave them the rental said they don’t need it.
There’s more advantage in buying the pass because you arguably control how far you get. I go into it assuming I may not finish it as I only play BGs and not a large amount of time. My value is to get to a certain point of the track to get everything I paid for. For me, I like to get to 90 on the pass for the new coins, which I haven’t failed to do yet. I think I’m sitting on late 70’s/early 80’s with some fresh weeklies/dailies. I’ll hit my mark and be good. Not to mention a decent amount of gold.
