When Overwatch 1 came out I paid $40 for the game and I was able to earn anything in the game that I wanted by playing the game and spending the points I earned. Now, I can pay $40 and get 2 skins and an emote. Basically the only way to unlock skins now is to buy the battle pass or buy them from the shop (at a ridiculous price). This change also makes the seasonal events like Summer Games, Halloween Terror, Anniversary etc. less exciting because the main focus of those events were the event-themed skins that are now also locked behind a paywall. I would love it if I could EARN skins again instead of having to buy them. I understand the game is F2P but there needs to be some other form of in-game currency that you donât have to spend real money on. As it stands right now there is practically zero reward for your time spent playing the game.
Also while Iâm on the topic of F2P/Battle pass: People who bought Overwatch 1 for $40-$60 shouldâve been given some coins or the first Battle Pass for free.
If Activision-Blizzard wanted to put out content for the game for 3+ years and thought $40 per game wasnât enough to do it, then they probably should have charged more for it up front.
Buying the game is player financing. Which many players did already when we bought Overwatch.
Well part of that is fewer buyers equals higher prices.
The other part is that I almost think they donât want you to use the cash shop, and would prefer you use the BattlePass.
Kinda like with OWL, they preferred you watch the OWL games, rather than just pay $10 a per skin.
I really donât think we deserved anything for free from owning a 6 year old game. Would I take free stuff sure, but we got so many hours out of ow1 for such a small price. It was so consumer friendly.
They should have set some expectation explicitly. Such as we are going to make skins and whatever for 3 years after the release of Overwatch 1. After which we are going to make Overwatch 2 that also costs $40 to fund the next 3 years of stuff.
I would have bought that game if that was the case. Instead we got this F2P battlepass garbage that costs $100 a year instead of $15 a year like it used to. That huge increase in cost is extremely offputting to a huge number of people. They highly misjudged what people were willing to pay for here.
Monitization is one thing. Itâs fine to seek compensation. However at this point we arenât talking about compensation. Itâs gouging that is both, what we have problems with, and whatâs going on.
$20 skins are gouging. $20 for a skin and pretending its discounted instead of marked up, is gouging us, while insulting to our intelligence at the same time.
People have issues with how disrespectful of peopleâs time Blizzardâs pricing is. If a skin costâs â$xyz.00â to make, and they expect to sell âABCâ number of those skins, the the a reasonable price would be $(âxyzâ/âABCâ)
Blizzardâs policy of saying âscrew that noise, +2,000% mark up!â rubs many people the wrong way.
(This also doesnât even mention that Blizzard pricing their products outside of their customerâs reach is a risky business strategy to say the least. As they say, you attract more flies with honey than with treating-your-flies-with-thinly-veiled-contempt.)
Itâs almost certainly a decision made by someone in a board room thats so* out of touch with the value of a dollar that they think $200 for a gallon of milk is what the going price is.
I donât think itâs Aaron Keller. I suspect itâs some rich jerk that hasnât worked an actual day in their life.
