Context
I admit I’m coping right now and hope this is a blessing in disguise. Overwatch 2 went f2p because Blizzard wants to take advantage of the gaming culture in China. For those of you who don’t know, Moblie gaming, GaaS and f2p gaming is bigger in China then games that you have to pay $60-$70 for.
Game companies saw this which is why game quality (especially online gaming) has been declining rapidly. Online games has become nothing more but a place to advertise overpriced skins and sell p2w heroes/weapons/abilities etc. Hopefully Blizzard finally learns their lesson and stop stabbing their core base in the back.
The days of cash grabs are over. It’s time to produce content. It’s time to fix your disgusting monetization model. It’s time to start listening to your core fan base.
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Blizzard execs seething now lmao.
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This company? Listening to its fan base? That’ll be the day.
If anything, the more likely outcome is that they double down on monetization, but will aim it more towards kids with access to that kind of money.
Even Riot Games – though they say they “learned their lesson” – are going through a similar problem in League of Legends.
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Incoming raised shop prices……
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They most likely will try to push for more negotiations and wont change OW2 at all in the hopes to regain the chinese market. Imagine the amount of bad press they would get if they made OW2 have an actual good monetization system, regained their chinese market and then went back to how it currently is.
While I admit I’m not upset to hear that news, the free2play market is nothing new to North America.
You can date free2play and micro-transactions all the way back to 2006 when Bethesda sold their first horse armor DLC and when a little Korean company known as “Nexon North America” tried this new business model where you give a game service away for free, but offer highly appetizing “micro-transactions”, mostly cosmetic, to the end-user in place of a normal payment.
That game was Maplestory Global and it made something like $135M dollars in the first year, but I forget the exact amount as it doesn’t come up as readily in Google these days, but Wikipedia says they made $1.8Billion between 2006 and 2011.
Needless to say, this “experimental” business model that came from overseas was pretty enticing to North American and EU developers alike. Today we have had well over a decade of f2p games supported with various different payment models.
This is nothing new, but I suspect the shift of marketing/business have moved from Blizzard to Activision since about 2018 and it has been clear the focus has been on profits over quality. It’s most easy to see how Heroes of the Storm went down as their biggest example. A fun game turned to cash-grab toxic skin sales.
Even Hearthstone as their first f2p game was originally on-par with physical card games, $60 per expansion, roughly $2 per booster pack. But today it has time-limited bundles that expire each season (Battlegrounds) on top of season passes, skins, and all sorts of other side-game fluff.
Thank god the devs care enough about this game to at least keep it running, but I’m definitely not jealous of having to work for their bosses, knowing how they are twisting the product to make an extra buck before it all goes poof.
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Games is nothing but a market nowadays. Nothing is considered fun anymore.
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The CCP sees games as corrupting the minds of the youth.
But they’re more than willing to buy up companies to profit from them when it comes to other countries.
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the ccp arent the ones buying stock in video game companies
Please point out the Chinese companies that aren’t controlled by the CCP.
I’ll wait.
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Less cheaters but now expect higher scam store prices.
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Um, blizzard went f2p because they can make more money as a f2p game. Just like almost every other big FPS out there…
What would make you think this?
Also, did you even look at the list of games shut down? It has nothing to do with f2p, or cash grabs, or anything like that. I don’t know why netease is shutting them down. I’m guessing netease was asking for too much money, so blizzard is just looking for someone else. Those games will probably be available again in china sometime in the future.
Is this why the Event sucks? Spite?
Looks like they went Bye-jing.
Hehehaha
Microsoft can rehire those employees they let go to cover the court bills on this. No merger buy if China’s not there or it cuts the valuation damn near in half.
evergrande crisis from last year
No, Overwatch 2 went F2P because most of their competition was F2P already and there was a growing sentiment among Overwatch fans that they were not going to pay for what they felt was nothing more than a content patch.
You don’t even play with Chinese players, its difference server
Tell that to the Chinese players who kept ice walling me in the spawn in OW1. Maybe it’s been changed in 2 I don’t know.
