The problem isn’t gamers have no will power, it’s the issue of value per user. I would venture most people don’t buy Loot Boxes to excess, most don’t buy them at all. The thing is the whales of the industry buy hundreds, if not thousands of dollars worth of boxes. That is a huge amount of profit for a digital product that takes next to no effort to make and maintain.
Companies are making profits in the realm of full priced game releases, for a few hours/days of work on a cosmetic skin.
I mean even if your super generous and say only 1% of people who buy a game buy MTX regularly, that is still a lot of money when talking about games like Grand Theft Auto V.
I remember Animal Jam from it’s early days when my sister and I used to play it. We got memberships for the sole purpose of actually being able to customise our characters…
When we got older and stopped playing it, the process of cancelling the memberships was, from memory, so complex. There was no “cancel membership here” button and our mum kept losing about 20 dollars or however much is was every month thanks to that system, and it took an email to the developers to cancel it…literally YEARS after we quit the game. Talk about predatory…
Yeah… not uncommon sadly for a subscription service. A lot of ISP work that way, entire website about how to sign up for an account and nothing about how to close one down or talk to real person.
Worst comes to worst get your credit card/bank involved and cancel that card. Keep a copy of your letter to cancel, then call the credit card company to report that charge as fraud or what ever if they keep going. Get a new card, with a new number and your golden. Obviously don’t ever log in or use said service so they can’t claim your still using it.
I admit Overwatch’s aren’t as bad as others but it still scummy. In the past you’d unlock skins for you fave hero by playing that hero and being rewarded for it, spent 300 hours on Dva? well you unlocked this awesome Dva skin etc.
Now they slap that “kickass skin” in box and tell you to roll a 5000 sided dice and hope you get lucky, oh you didn’t? well its a shame you have to grind out another box but wait… did you know can always just $BUY A BUNCH MORE .
There is 0 progression in this game, no rewards for playing certain heroes, no way to show off the time you spent mastering them beside the lousy golden weapons.
Why is this? because all that content can instead just be cut out and locked in a loot box.
I would say the worst part about OW loot boxes is one the large up front cost of trying to get into the game. IF you haven’t been playing for years there are a ton of items to be had, the chances of getting any one you want for the character you want is nearly impossible.
You also wont’ be earning many coins until you start to get duplicates on a regular basis. Add to that the default loot pool really hasn’t been updated much so most the skins are all tied to limited time events… Making earning them before they are gone even a harder prospect.
Once you get into the game and have been around a while it’s fairly ingenious but that massive wall to get into the cosmetic scene is crazy. You could buy 200+ loot boxes and get nothing you want or have enough coins to buy a new legendary.
I mean, this I can definitely agree with. I do wish they’d make “prestige” or “veteran” skins like that.
But I don’t think that issue is directly linked to lootboxes. Well, maybe somewhat in that Blizzard won’t make something to be earned for free that they can charge for - I’ll give you that.
I see no reason why we shouldn’t have both, though. /Wishful thinking.
Oh it would be, the people in suits who don’t give one lick about gaming or what makes gaming good are the ones in charge and they force these kind of thing on us.
It’s all about $$$ and how to make more $$$ the game itself isn’t important, it just needs to hook a few whales and the cash rolls in
People do realize one of two things will happen right?
No lootboxes means every new piece of content is behind a paywall.
If they don’t go with that option, then they stop producing content beyond the game’s release as it becomes expensive to produce new content with no way to fund it.
I hope this is the case. I am more than fine with banning pay to win. I am not okay with banning a system that allows you to get all the cosmetics for free with enough dedication.
That’s not how government intervention works, as goverment becomes invasive companies will find new ways to replace old revenue with justification. It’s always a stimulus for companies to screw you over harder, the costs of doing business fall to the consumer. Thinking legislation makes something better in a consuer market isn’t a given.
You do know that there was a time before lootboxes, right? And that games were developed and even supported without them? Hell, a lot of whats in lootboxes now used to be stuff you’d get for free in games without random chance lotteries.
Gambling is gambling. It should be regulated, but not banned. OW lootboxes are very tame compared to what else is out there. It would likely have a negative impact on a game like this, imo.
