Why do people think microtransactions are acceptable?

[Connor]

Gamers nowadays just buy into this horrible trash and shill out over the latest popular franchise even if they've paid money for the game. It's ridiculous.

PUBG is a great example, you've already paid 30 USD for the game, now they're charging you more money to actually get in game items. It's unacceptable!

Remember not long ago when the older cods and halos even Halo 4 didn't have this trash? You bought the game and that was it, no toxic gambling system, no microtransactions. Just the game, you buy it and you can now obtain everything in the game via playing the damn game not just shilling out more money.

Kids are easily manipulated into this system through youtube and twitch streamers dramaticizing and glorifying microtransactions and gambling loot boxes and it's honestly despicable. When will people actually realize that they're falling prey to insane corporate greed? Even Valve themselves do it filling their games with horrendous gambling systems yet so many people seem to have no issue with it.

[alicerinz]

Escrito originalmente por Dxpress:

Haven't the PUBG devs been kind of repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot with their business practices though?
I don't know if I would call it a good example if it's actually driving players away.

Its still the best selling,most popular game on steam and its crates are all over the top market page.I dont really know why its so popular,i find nothing interesting in it whatsoever.

[76561198001062896]

cosmetics are still a lesser evil, unpopular opinion or not

beside its not even about being acceptable or not since as long as people will buy into it, it will keep happening

Escrito originalmente por secuda:

Escrito originalmente por slandy:

It gives you the option to not pay for stuff rather than setting the base cost to $90 instead.

This and frankly why are we still discussing this practice?
Most of you guys/girls where there when it started with CS:GO. why did you not satt your foot down straight away instead of making upp excuse to buy/support your favorite franchise (oh but its just skins, oh its just whatever ellse that is not to bad).

bescause its just cosmetics that hurt nobody, except people who play cs go as a barbie dresssup game

[Gus the Crocodile]

I can buy a coffee and, if I want, hand over an extra 50c for vanilla syrup or almond milk or whatever. That's fine. I can buy a car and, if I want, hand over some extra money for a metallic paint job or whatever. That's fine. Videogames are not some special class of product that it's arbitrarily horrible to sell accessories and customisation for.

There are, absolutely, things being sold in and around games that I think are gross (hi, gambling boxes). But that's not the whole of the concept of transactions.

[Tito Shivan]

Escrito originalmente por Gus the Crocodile:

There are, absolutely, things being sold in and around games that I think are gross (hi, gambling boxes). But that's not the whole of the concept of transactions.

Indeed there's two different subjects here. Microtransactions and lootboxes which are one implementation of microtransactions.

Escrito originalmente por secuda:

This and frankly i would hatte to pay €90-€150 for standard edition.

That's ont thing developers noticed that enticed the implementation of MTs. Not every player wants to be involved in the game with such a monetary burden.

With my coffee shop example above. Not every customer will be happy to pay $30 for a daily coffee bonus upfront. They will go and pay for a single coffee here and there. You're making $5 of a customer that would have never paid $30. Options.

Escrito originalmente por Toast:

MTs are fine as long as it's not
-buying power
-gambling
-forced

IMO it depends.
-'Buying power' can be done in ways that won't tilt the game into 'P2W' territory and some people may be interested in dropping money to save time and effort.
-'Gambling' is still a thing there's not even a consensus on what it really means in regards gaming and lootboxes. I don't personally consider them gambling, but that's just my opinion. We'll see where this road leads to in the future
-Gamers have such a biased view of what 'forced' means that I don't think a consensus of what are 'forced' microtransactions mean. I've seen DOTA2 & CSGO MTs called 'forced'... People have a tendency to feel anything under the sun is owed to them hence it's unfair if they have to pay for it.

I have a harder time understanding MTs implemented into exclusively Single Player games -Which don't follow that development and update cycle MP games do- Than for the reasons above.

[Mikasa Ackerman]

Escrito originalmente por Wii Sports Golf Course:

Kids are easily manipulated into this system through youtube and twitch streamers dramaticizing and glorifying microtransactions and gambling loot boxes and it's honestly despicable. When will people actually realize that they're falling prey to insane corporate greed? Even Valve themselves do it filling their games with horrendous gambling systems yet so many people seem to have no issue with it.

look , gambling is a good thing , and most of the games that have lootboxes dont have E for everyone ratings , most are rated M or atleast T

and imo a teenager should already be able to handle money , i got like 100€ pocket money when i was a teenager , saved up to buy really great things (sometimes had over 1000€ on my bank account because i only used the pocket money i got "physically" by my grand aunt and didnt touch the money on my bank account


so yeah , if a teenager puts way too much money into lootboxes or skins (League) they should get help before they earn their own money and end up being homeless because of their bad habbit

im honestly pro lootboxes and microtransactions , just look at rainbow six siege , the whole community plays the same game with the same operators , maps and weapons , theres only skins for everything and boosts you can buy ( and new operators ) but the community doesnt get split apart with season pass maps or new version of the game like in cod ( if blops 2 would still recieve updates i bet it would still be popular , it still sort of is for a 6 year old game )

csgo is 13€ once , Tf2 is free , pubg is 30€ once . imo its okay for these to have lootboxes / crates / cases , you dont need any of the items to be good and that way its 10% funding updates for all players instead of 20% buying season passes . community getting split apart etc

[TwinEdgedBastard]

Microtransactions slowly over time became normalized within gaming, especially when mobile gaming and F2P started to become popular and developers and/or publishers seemed to progressively become lazier and greedier.

I remember early mobile games being either free with ads, or premium with no ads. If you look at mobile games now, a good portion of them have gone down the route of "pay to progress" which when you think about it, is the worst kind of microtransaction since the developers often alter the game in such a way that it breaks the users patience, so they're enticed to pay to get to the "gameplay" portion, which kind of defeats the purpose of playing a game to begin with.

Similarly, PC and console game developers and/or publishers moved away from making expansions in favour of the more profitable microtransaction. Of course they wouldn't get away with this immediatly, so they had to slowly incorporate them into games subtly. Remember when Oblivions horse armor DLC was panned? Now days barely anyone bats an eye at these kind of microtransactions and I imagine it's because we were either taught to think that microtransactions could be worse, and/or my theory which is through pre-orders and GOTY editions, where by the pre-order/ GOTY content seems like a harmless bonus designed for fans, but then it gets released as a microtransaction for the rest of the public.

There's also the casual audience to take into consideration, who don't even realize that microtransactions are abnormal in gaming. EA recently removed lootboxes from SWBF2 yet they insist on keeping them in their sports titles, whose audience consists of primarily a casual audience who don't play many games.

A lot of people do have different opinions on what kind of microtransactions are considered "ethical". Personally I draw the line at exploitative microtransactions such as gambling, pay to win, pay to progress and content that should be in the game to begin with (i,e weapons). I also personally prefer that they only exist in F2P games and maybe premium MMOs (which I would prefer were F2P).

Overall, microtransactions are often designed to take advantage of human psychology and unfortunatly for us, it worked.