Has the accepted definition of 'paywall' changed?

[Eightball]

I am an old gamer and have seen a myriad of changes in the industry over time; some good and some bad. And these changes have included the language used when talking about games.

A paywall used to mean exactly that, a player needed to purchase access to additional content with real money.

A good example is a game having a free-to-play character level limit meaning you could play the game for free up until your character hit a certain level and if you wanted to continue to progress you had to purchase the ability to do so. There was no way to earn some form of in game credit/currency to make that purchase. It was money only. A true paywall.

Now I see more and more comments about games being 'paywalled' even though there are ways to earn currency/credit while playing the game itself to purchase the additional content. The option to use real money may exist, but it is not the only way. How is that a paywall?

Is it more a case of players wanting additional content immediately, but don't want to pay real money and also don't want to earn in game currency because it might take them longer than others so they feel 'left behind'?

[Fox]

No, people are just impatient and whiny. Instant gratification is the only thing they understand, so the fact that collecting enough SC takes a moderate but indeterminate amount of time due to RNG and the other instant route requires money, their addled brain can only see a paywall.

Of course these are the same people who continue to feed the beast by continuing to spend utterly insane amounts on MTX skins. The corporate greed thst infused the bulk of AAA studios can only respond to that demand.

[A Suspicious Crayon]

No, the definition or rather the criteria of what qualifies as paywall or in other games pay 2 win hasn't changed, the people changed, to the worse, they became dumber and suddenly paywall and pay2win is used as a scape goat for their own inabilities.

A Paywall is simple, a wall you can only overcome by paying, considering you can archive to climb that wall without ever investing a cent would make the battle pass not a paywall.

Pay2Win is fairly simple as well, an item that is overpowered and can ONLY be bought with real money.

somehow people see a shop and its content and immediately gravitate towards one of the two completely ignoring the fact that sometimes these things can be acquired by just playing the game.

[Shy0]

a lot of gaming terms have been diluted with time. "pay-2-win" used to mean having cash shop-exclusive items that gave you an advantage in pvp modes, hence paying to literally win matches, but nowadays people use it for literally anything that gives you a perceived advantage even in non-competitive pve and co-op where you "win" nothing.

"paywall" to me means what you've said, you need to spend money to get past the wall and progress. people like to exaggerate and use popular words without knowing the correct meaning, or they have an agenda by accusing games of having paywalls they don't really have. eventually "paywall" will go the way of "p2w" simply due to the internet being the internet.

[PariahMessiah]

Yes it has. This kind of model would have gotten devs strung up by their thumbs 20 years ago. However they've been slowly pushing it a little more each time with things like F2P models to the point where you're getting that in a retail game. Turns out the slippery slope isn't a fallacy when the slope actually turns out to be slippery.

[Mathias Giovanni]

Pay or Play model? Not sure what to call this.

It is gated by progression if you will that you can pay to bypass.

In Warframe I think their slogan was something like Ninjas play for free. People who sink tons of time to unlock items which can be done or you can buy them. It has the 4 player coop as well.

I think the Warframe model is a bit more elegant than Helldivers. But I'm not sure what to call it.

[That person]

Pay to win and pay to expedite are 2 different things

[Kipp]

I never bought any credits. I have all warbonds just by playing. It's not that hard of a grind tbh just have fun and play with a good team. It's about a week of playtime for me to get to 1000 credits. Don't buy in the super store if you don't really, really want the armour there.

Trust me, once you have everything in the game most players need some kind of purpose. Mine is to search for super credits. But I can understand that for new players this will look different. I played almost since release and new players will have a hard time to catch up.

Just play and have fun, the standard weapons are good as they are. Then if you get enough credits get the warbond that you find is the most interesting.

[Sasha Mason]

I have all 3 Premium Warbonds unlocked without spending a dime on SC.
Still have to play a ton to get all the medals required on unlocking.
Can't really say there is such a thing as a paywall.
You just play until you can afford it, the SC purchase option just makes that slightly faster.
Still need to play to actually unlock the content they provide.

[靐]

Thanksfully you don't really need that stuff to be a decent teammate. Also devs were generous enough to allow you unlock stuff by progressing in the game.

[Twisty]

Some gamers nowadays feel too entitled to all content that comes out for a game that the sheer thought of playing the actual game to unlock said content is unheard of.

- A paywall is like you said. You get to a point in the game where it is physically impossible to progress unless you pay.
- Pay 2 Win is, imo, a strictly PvP competitive term wherein you pay real money to have a clear advantage over free to play players.
- Pay 2 Expedite is when you can pay real money to progress quicker than free players, even though you can still unlock everything for free. Such as unlocking the warbonds in Helldivers 2.

[Xersin]

The Pay to [x] debate gets a little diluted in cases where you can earn things in the game. You have situations like this, where there's really no gate at all since the Medals, which can't be bought, are more of a gate than the Super Credits, and on the total other end of that, you have Gacha games. Where you could, in theory, earn items/characters in game, but at such a reduced rate compared to a player just buying them, that with bad RNG, you could end up never earning a specific character just by playing the game.

Then there are the examples like certain Korean MMOs, where there are systems in place to "enhance" your gear. But, those are tied to an RNG chance, where you lose both gear and mats if you fail, BUT, you can, of course, buy a guaranteed upgrade, for further and further increasing real life costs.

In general, though, when it comes to a system surrounding real money, the question always becomes "How did they make this worse to push spending real money?" Did they make the grind take longer? Did they reduce drop rates, or put in arbitrary time gates that can be bypassed?

That question doesn't have an immediate answer here. The first pass alone gives you 700 SC for the next one, which gives you 300 to the next one, and you'll be getting SC while you grind medals anyway.

Is it still shady? Absolutely. All MTX is, and always will be. This push to accept more of the game having to be acquired outside of the game is a blight on the industry. I'd argue that the system here, while not exactly predatory, is extremely shady, because it could prey on players who don't realize they're basically buying air, as easy as it is to get SC through gameplay.

[Neon Samurai]

I am an oldschool gamer going back to pong/light guns in the 1970s. While I am not at all fan of the monetisation of modern games, this one is fairly reasonable. If you play a lot it is very easy to end up with a lot of super credits. More than enough to pay for the warbonds, and buy armor as well. The warbonds have no time limit, and it does not sound like they are going to sell DLC. So it is ok IMHO

[adobo]

People see $dollar$ prices inside the game, they screech at it.

Remove the ability to buy super credits and its just a regular RNG grind. Its not that "paywall" meaning changed. People just got used to showing their pure stupidity on full blast on the internet.

[Mechaballe]

Originally posted by Eightball:

I am an old gamer and have seen a myriad of changes in the industry over time; some good and some bad. And these changes have included the language used when talking about games.

A paywall used to mean exactly that, a player needed to purchase access to additional content with real money.

A good example is a game having a free-to-play character level limit meaning you could play the game for free up until your character hit a certain level and if you wanted to continue to progress you had to purchase the ability to do so. There was no way to earn some form of in game credit/currency to make that purchase. It was money only. A true paywall.

Now I see more and more comments about games being 'paywalled' even though there are ways to earn currency/credit while playing the game itself to purchase the additional content. The option to use real money may exist, but it is not the only way. How is that a paywall?

Is it more a case of players wanting additional content immediately, but don't want to pay real money and also don't want to earn in game currency because it might take them longer than others so they feel 'left behind'?

No its just being being entitled and unreasonable.

[irysh]

Originally posted by PariahMessiah:

Yes it has. This kind of model would have gotten devs strung up by their thumbs 20 years ago. However they've been slowly pushing it a little more each time with things like F2P models to the point where you're getting that in a retail game. Turns out the slippery slope isn't a fallacy when the slope actually turns out to be slippery.

20 years ago we got horse armor dlc. THAT was the real slope...