Written by: Bryce Jackson

Rant on Micro-transactions

Hot Take: Micro-transactions are the scum of gaming.

Anyone that’s paid attention even a little bit has noticed how nickel and diming in gaming has become prevalent. Between virtual currencies,  DLC expansion packs, player and equipment skins and even weapons and level advances, game publishers and developers are trying to squeeze all the money they can out of a consumer by dangling whatever they can behind a paywall.

In terms of general gaming, it isn’t a new thing to charge customers for little things in games. Mobile games have done it for a while, “Free to play” games even more. All those lives in Candy Crush? Pokemon Go hides the best egg incubators in the shop. World of Warcraft dangles items for you to salivate over. World of Tanks as well got high end tanks. Sure all those games give you the ability to earn the currency needed to get items or you could wait. In this instant gratification world, there is a price on all the necessary items.

But even paid games are becoming even more scummy with how they monetize everything. The Star Wars Battlefront II beta revealed how character upgrades are accessed by loot boxes you earn from leveling up… or you can buy them. In NBA 2K18 MyCareer, to get to 90 player rating so I can be respectable in pro-Am multiplayer I need to get my 74 rated player up to that level by continuing to play career games, Playground, mini-games etc. so there are ways to slowly gain currency. But everything cost currency: player upgrades, shoes, clothes, power ups. Or for $100 you can buy all you need to get that player’s stats up.

I can hear the detractors. “Stop being a broke boy and get gud scrub” You’re entitled to say that. But where is the line where the gaming community says enough? Is it the calls for transparency that China has enacted to know the value of loot boxes? Is it calls for investigating the similarities of loot boxes to gambling in the UK