{"id":163888,"date":"2023-01-17T08:00:27","date_gmt":"2023-01-17T14:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/?p=163888"},"modified":"2023-01-17T02:58:56","modified_gmt":"2023-01-17T08:58:56","slug":"makes-games-monetization-feel-predatory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/2023\/01\/17\/makes-games-monetization-feel-predatory\/","title":{"rendered":"What takes a game’s monetization from “reasonable” to “unreasonable” for you?"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’m on record as having said that\u00a0Diablo Immortal<\/em> was a fun game and that it was possible to play it without spending a cent on it, and I stand by those statements. But I also have to admit that after two months of constant\u00a0Come to the in-game store for your free reward and oh, hey, while you’re here look at all the money you could spend,<\/em> I noped out of the game and I haven’t been back.<\/p>\n

I loved a lot of it — a\u00a0Diablo<\/em> game where you could customize your appearance? The ability to switch your character class? And there’s a\u00a0lot<\/em> of content in the game.\u00a0 But in the end, I just couldn’t with the endless\u00a0hey, have you heard about our Battle Pass<\/em> from the store. It felt like the game was a used car salesman always trying to get me to look at yet another car when I was just there to get the one I have serviced.<\/p>\n

It’s weird because in general, microtransactions don’t bother me — but Battle Pass style content really, really does. I think it’s because of what folks like Liz<\/a> have said about it — there’s something really off-putting to me about paying a fee to unlock this special Battle Pass, and then instead of getting something for it, I get chores<\/em> for it. I know, I could easily argue that’s no different than a subscription based MMO — you have to pay a fee to get to do anything in\u00a0World of Warcraft<\/em>, after all. Yet for some reason telling me a game is free to play but then sticking an asterisk on it saying\u00a0but if you want it to be fun, that’ll cost you<\/em> is pernicious at best.<\/p>\n

So let me turn this over to you. When are you okay with a game’s monetization and when does it feel like you’re getting squeezed? Are you okay with one-time cosmetics, mounts, and pets but draw the line on paying to do content to have the chance for such things? Should Overwatch 2<\/em> not have heroes unlockable from the Season Pass? When is it okay and when is it a problem?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’m on record as having said that\u00a0Diablo Immortal was a fun game and that it was possible to play it without spending a cent on it, and I stand by those statements. But I also have to admit that after two months of constant\u00a0Come to the in-game store for your free reward and oh, hey,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":159689,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[75926,24,275],"tags":[45897,2179,2220,76002],"yst_prominent_words":[8392,45891,8267,8180,9809],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163888"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=163888"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163888\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":164013,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163888\/revisions\/164013"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159689"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=163888"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=163888"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=163888"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blizzardwatch.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=163888"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}