I think there hasn’t been a change that hits the nerve too much for a lot of people to care.
Maybe the locked heroes thing was close enough
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The question you should ask is why the industry changed from box sales to F2P.
It’s not for gamers and never was. It’s for profit. Why are people suddenly pretending as if they believe that multi billion dollar corporations are interested in what’s good for consumers? It’s bizarre.
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Because it makes a lot more money, especially consistently/long term, which allows for continued content releases
It also leads to bigger playerbases by removing the barrier to entry (a box price fee)
And I like both of those things so 
This new model means my friends and I will be playing OW2 for years to come
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It’s so disingenuous that you lump 3 titles together and choose which parts of my statement to apply to which title. Lol… literally throwing away any dignity in an effort to defend a terrible decision by a multi billion dollar company, for free. 
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Compare the amount of content OW1 released with vs the “expansion” OW2. It’s to allow for less content while earning more money. Or compare OW2 to any box price expansion in another game.
There is nothing stopping Blizzard releasing a box price expansion with a huge amount of content every 1-2 years. Nothing at all. Except F2P makes more profit as they need less investment while bringing in more revenue.
That’s not in the interests of gamers. The best thing for gamers is the highest quality game possible. F2P is not that. F2P is the highest amount of money for the business.
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People pretending OW2 is free, we all paid for OW. OW2 is only free if OW is not being removed.
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You paid for a license for access. That’s all.
Still got mine. Stopped playing, close wallet, kept an eye on the game.
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I hope you have more than one example of it working over however many years of mass protests and boycotts.
And just to be clear, those protests weren’t against the monetization things mentioned. Because we ignored them. As I stated in the post.
Because gamers are addicts who cannot quit.
Hard to boycott and protest when you’ve been psychologically and biologically manipulated into playing a game.
Yes, biological changes in regards to your dopamine centers have taken place in your body during your time on OW.
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I am still having trouble wrapping my head around people supporting predatory monetization. Quietly accepting it is one thing, but people here are actually IN FAVOR of it.
Clown world man.
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Why does this direction mean that “gamer’s lost their backbone”?
For the past 30 years, I’ve seen nothing but gamers constantly latching onto and showing the industry “what it likes” and quickly leaving “what it doesn’t like” on the doorstep, no matter how much it cost or how successful it was.
- Popping quarters in arcades and subscription models quickly got left to the most niche markets.
- Old school and well crafted “difficulty and challenge” surged up the charts in the way of stuff like Dark Souls.
- “Casual nonsense” like Wii-motes and mobile games flourished and proved that a “gamer” isn’t just someone that likes Halo and Warcraft (and that they are at times the biggest market)
- Indie titles top the charts, with even well made gems like It Takes Two finding its way into the most toxic gamer’s library
Now, Industry giants all choose different routes to sell games, whether it is Steam moving away from gamedev to sell discounted games on a robust platform, Sony/Microsoft creating “netflix like experiences” with their platform specific subscription models and monthly free games, and of course the F2P experience relying on popularity and availability to cover their bases.
If gamers aren’t tossing their Battle/Season passes away in favor of last years 15-50 dollar DLC packs or the Subscription model before that then to me that is gamer’s “showing their backbone” and choosing what they want vs sticking to something they no longer enjoy. It might be the case that this “I don’t understand battlepasses” bubble is really just a bubble in a sea of people that are vibing with it.
Companies have never been good at forcing players down a path, the market is way too volatile for that, but successful ones are good at noticing what is currently working and isn’t working and basing their predictions off of that research, and the day “gamers” all shift and find some other monetization model they enjoy more will be the day a lot of these passes quickly start to fail or become the new ‘classic niche’.
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It’s not about what the majority wants. It’s about what generates the most revenue. Data shows whales fund games and a majority of gamers aren’t whales.
These business models are being normalized now that they’ve been proven to work. Soon there will be generations that never experienced games prior to them.
So probably less about backbones and more about enablement.
They get what they deserve. I’m just sad that this industry-wide trend degrades the quality of AAA titles and that affects everyone.
There are a lot of “I don’t like it, but that’s just how it is” people out there right now. The younger generation hasn’t seen a successful fight in ages. Some of us, like me, who got caught in overwatch for the last 6 years, completely missed the mass zombification of the younger folks. They just believe that these companies do their own thing and that’s the end of it. There was a time when we changed things. “If you don’t like it, leave” was not really something that people said when it came to things outside of the gameplay. It’s almost like I’ve been sound asleep living in my Overwatch bubble while they were trained to just accept predatory practices with their mouths shut.
Is it scientifically correct to really call it a backbone tho?
I’ve said this time and time again; they do it because it works, if it didn’t work or make money they wouldn’t do it, since it works we can determine that a majority actually either like it or don’t see it as something bad
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Or they are suckered into it, fall victim to the predatory nature of it.
because dollar for dollar we get more content now in our games nothing wrong with it
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