Why can’t we have our items on certain platforms moved to another? I’m not complaining, I’m genuinely curious. Many people, myself included, would like to have items go across platforms but it isn’t possible. I put about 800 hours into console and have lots of skins, sprays, and player icons that aren’t available anymore and have spent lots of money on lootboxes, but I want to play on PC now. So isn’t there a way that we could get our console overwatch stuff on PC using our battle net account or something? I think it would be really nice even if we have to re-purchase the game on another platform, I’m fine with that, I just want my items is all.
Because Sony and Microsoft would flip if Blizz allowed players who spent money on their platform and stores to suddenly up and move to PC or the other platform.
Not to mention they’d have to delete the console account/items or it would create an account cloning problem where people could just sell the PC connected accounts, filled with massive amounts of event exclusive items on fresh accounts that can place anew in competitive.
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I remember Jeff Kaplan saying he wants this possible in Overwatch but there are complications preventing it.
If the Battlenet account is linked and has to be linked it shouldn’t matter. I hate to use this god-awful example, but fortnite did the exact thing that I want. Sony and Microsoft allow the cosmetics on other platforms and it is linked through the epic account. So if you sell the account, you’re selling the epic games account, and thus the whole thing. The exact thing could be done in theory with Battlenet, so I’m just wondering why haven’t they yet?
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Am I remembering this wrong… but I seem to recall Microsoft considering but Sony still holding out?
I’m not sure but if Sony will do it for fortnite, a game where doing this would lead to massive amounts of profits being lost, Id hope they’d do it again for a game that isn’t small, but is certainly smaller than fortnite.
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I wouldn’t be surprised if that was the case. It took them a long time and a lot of backlash to do Fortnite crossplay.
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Crossplay is a much bigger and more difficult thing to do than just the items as well. So I would hope Sony changes their minds.
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The real interesting question is: what will happen when the innards of consoles are placed inside TVs? Sony hinted a direction towards that. If it becomes a mainstream thing, the user base (using controller) may one day outgrow PC for gaming (if you merely go by the fact that there are more TVs per household than PCs).
Or we’ll end up standing with goggles on our heads or in front of a screen convulsing our bodies in an attempt to release an ULT.
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This is an interesting topic so might as well go into detail.
The simplest reason is Console Manufacturers get a portion of sales from microtransactions on their platform.
The Complicated reason is infrastructure cost.
One does not simply “move” items from one platform to another.
After all it has to be instantaneous and requires multiples servers and networks to accomplish.
You need 2 separate login servers
A central authoritive server run by Blizzard. This is where players “login” to and acts like a middle man.
The Secondary Authoritive server run by console manufacturers that allow players to login to the game and connect their console account to the Blizzard account.
Console companies handle Payment transactions and confirmations on their side. Then gives a portion of the sales to the developer. Which means they control the ownership rights of items of that player profile and keep track.
Now this list has to be constantly updated when dealing with tracking from other accounts from other consoles. So it would mean Console company 1 Server -> Tells blizzard servers purchase was made -> Tells Company 2 server that purchase was made.
When dealing with millions of accounts and you want to maintain a 0 delay in updating it is going to cost quite a bit of money. So unless all companies benefit its a problem.
Free unlocks by the Developer are a different story, as they do not need purchase confirmation to handle.
P.S
There are ways around this by Blizzard controlling all information.
It also means No more free unlimited accounts for Console users.
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Here’s the quote and thread. It’s not much but yeah:
(Don’t post in there necrobumping can get you suspensions).
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So it’s more or less a cost factor as opposed to greed or just being incapable? That does clear things up as I didn’t know how it worked. A game as successful as fortnite has the money to spend on something like this I guess.
I imagine Fortnite absorbs the costs because it makes so much from Microtransactions. They likely offered a better deal to the manufacturer in return.
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The console and PC accounts with Fortnite are the same accounts, plus it’s a free to play game. OW is in a different boat as the physical discs are the purchase on console, plus there is no crossplay with the PC version to consider. How would you transfer the account purchase to PC without having them rescind the physical disc, which would make it unplayable on the console, thus robbing Sony/MS of future income.
Hate to nitpick on this, but you can still download the game digitally. Not everybody owns a physical copy of the game when it comes to the Console versions, contrary to belief. You can download it digitally from the respective Console Store by searching it accordingly.
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Players have been able to link their BattleNet accounts to their console accounts since day one.
On PC your Overwatch save data is already stored in Blizzard’s cloud, so you can login on a different computer and have all your stuff and settings. Since your BattleNet account is linked to your XBL/PSN account, you ought to be able to just upload the relevant data from your console straight into Blizzard’s cloud.
I don’t know where you’re getting this idea for authentication and login servers when you’ve already authenticated and logged in.
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I don’t think the disk has anything to do with it, because if you had disk and played the game, then bought it digitally, all your things would still be there, meaning it’s linked to the PSN account. So if they made it through battle net instead it would at least be a step in the right direction I think.
True, true, my point is that it’s just messy because of the mandatory purchase through the console manufacturer instead of it being a free to play game with a separate account system.
I suppose, but I wouldn’t mind re-purchasing the game on another platform if it meant I got my items, if that’s what your referring to.
They’d need to integrate the account system between the three seperate platforms to do this. I think the issue is that there just isn’t the demand for this, and the technical resources that it would require are far beyond what would be profitable or necessarily worthwhile for the small number of people who would benefit from it.
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