If 2016 was the year of the sequel, 2017 is the year of the loot box.
Every developer seems keen on boarding the bandwagon. And, for better or worse, a slew of games featuring slightly-different-but-mostly-the-same forms of monetization have been trickling out to the gaming public over the past few months. Some have been received more positively than others, and though there has been an uproar in the gaming community about the deluge of microtransactions (MTX) making their way into nearly every game this season, players are spending enough money to justify each system.
This article will take a look at how some of the biggest games in 2017 have jumped onto the MTX bandwagon. But first, we have to answer an important question: how did we get here?
In the Beginning
I’ve seen more than a few people lay blame for the current state of MTXs squarely on the shoulders of Overwatch. Plenty of other games have given players the ability to purchase in-game currency to spend – Grand Theft Auto Online, and even EVE Online, immediately spring to mind. Additionally, these systems have been a main fixture of free to play games (like Planetside 2) and MMOs (Star Wars: The Old Republic), that don’t require an initial purchase price to play, but rely on MTX to survive. Overwatch was one of the first AAA games to charge a fee for the base game and implement a solid loot box system that mostly worked (I say mostly because of the drop-rate complaints that many players had in the beginning).
But MTXs have been around for years. Any card game (like Magic) or collectible (baseball cards), offered booster packs. These packs contained a random assortment of cards that ranged from the mundane to the super rare. And before buying, there was no clue of what might be contained within. For players, and collectors, the mystery was part of the excitement.
Back when card collecting was popular (and it might still be…I don’t know), no one ever really made a big deal about the buying and selling of booster packs. And, to a degree, the same lack of care was offered to Overwatch.
But why?
Try, try again
Overwatch is a unique case: something spawned from years of Blizzard trying to figure out the “right” way to monetize a game (that wasn’t WoW).
Their first try was with the Diablo III marketplace, but it wound up being such a disaster, that Blizzard eventually closed it down altogether. Arguably, this was the right choice, as was the release of a paid expansion for the game. Aside from the expansion, Blizzard never found a way to monetize the title so that it would bring in a constant revenue stream.
Blizzard managed to change this with Overwatch. The game was good, and was released with a unique cast of characters that were remarkably different in look and playstyle. Players quickly built a roster of characters that they were good with. And, to differentiate players from one another, Blizzard offered a variety of cosmetic options that could be gained from opening loot boxes, or spending the in-game currency (also gained from opening loot boxes).
In Overwatch, loot boxes can be gained in a few ways: one loot box is awarded each time a player levels; loot boxes are awarded for playing in Arcade Mode (a grab-bag of play modes); and loot boxes can be purchased (in a variety of quantities). The result is that players who don’t mind a grind could play to gain loot boxes, but those unwilling to wait could spend a bit more to get their boxes early. Whichever way the player chose to get their boxes, drop rates for skins and other cosmetic items was the same.
Players were paying for convenience. And there were plenty willing to do so.
Unintended Consequences
The overwhelming success of Overwatch took a while to permeate the gaming space. Even though it released in May 2016. Battlefield One released in October of 2016 with a similar system, but it took nearly a year for MTX to hit prime loading. And they have been popping up this holiday season – in droves. In fact, the loot box craze has been so enthusiastically adopted by gaming developers that even some single-player games have their own systems in place.
So…let’s take a look at some of this year’s offenders (ranked from bad to worse):
Playerunknown’s Battlegrounds
PUBG makes it to the bottom of the list because of its short stint with loot boxes earlier this year. Most of the outrage with regards to paid loot boxes came from the fact that the developers stated that they wouldn’t monetize the cosmetic crate system before official release (the game just hit 1.0 on Steam). But, for a short time, they offered a special loot crate with unique skins that could only be opened by purchasing keys (the boxes were sold to fund an invitational, so once it was held, they went away). Many decried the situation as a betrayal by the developers, but just as many took advantage of it. Either way, the developers haven’t monetized the boxes since.
Assassin’s Creed: Origins
I haven’t played Origins yet (mainly because I haven’t decided whether I want it on PC or PS4…leaning towards PC), but many reviewers have made light of the fact that the latest Assassin’s Creed game – a predominantly single-player affair – actually has an MTX store. While not as blatantly offensive as loot boxes, it gives players the ability to purchase the items they want via a (supposedly) well-hidden, in-game store. Apparently, each item available for purchase can be found for free, but if players want it earlier, or don’t want to have to grind, there is an option to purchase it. This makes instant gratification an option in the latest AC title, however unremarkable.
NBA 2K18
Though fairly low on the radar, NBA 2K18 is another blatant offender with regards to MTX. Though the game stays away from implementing loot boxes, every aspect of character customization (including leveling up via stat increases) costs in-game currency. Since playing basketball nets minuscule amounts of currency compared to what things cost, a player that truly wants to have complete control of a character is going to be forced to purchase additional currency to get anywhere meaningful in a timely manner.
(Note: Even though I only mention this particular title on the list, my understanding is that a few of the other sports games available this year have equally overbearing MTX markets.)
Middle Earth: Shadow of War
The latest jaunt into Mordor offers players similar opportunities as the previous two games, but ones that are far more convoluted than necessary. Apparently, the game features four types of loot chests, and each type has a few sub-categories. On top of that, there are three types of currency in the game. All of this boils down to a system that’s borderline pay-to-win. Obviously, players aren’t required to pay for anything offered in the loot chests, but the game requires you to grind for countless hours for a player to get equivalent items if they decided to keep their wallets closed. I’ve also heard that to get the best ending, players are encouraged to spend money on MTX, or be forced to grind a ridiculous amount to obtain the same outcome.
This is possibly the best worst example of monetization of a single player game in 2017. And, if SoW winds up making enough money, the trend will likely continue into 2018.
Call of Duty: WWII
It’s CoD, so what did you expect? There are loot boxes in the game and even a feature where players can watch other players open their loot boxes in an attempt to make the aforementioned players want to buy loot boxes of their own, to open in front of other other players. Apparently, this is even a daily reward task as well. Let that sink in.
Destiny 2
Things seem to be getting worse for Destiny 2 as time goes on. Besides providing dubious amounts of enjoyment, the game’s loot system relies too heavily on engrams once players hit the level cap. With the recent discovery of XP throttling, and locking of content behind a paywall after the most recent DLC release, I’m wondering whether Destiny 2 won’t jump to the top of the list sooner rather than later. Right now I’m leaving it here because Bungie is trying, in earnest, to fix everything they’ve screwed up (they’ve started a dialogue with the community and detailed a list of tweaks they intend to make). But even if they do, the fact that players are required to perform a massive amount of farming for engrams is something that will be difficult to get past. Making a game so cumbersome that it’s a better option to buy loot boxes (especially ones that can contain game-changing equipment) is a big turn-off for me. And taking it a step further to lock content that was previously available behind a paid expansion? While this is a separate issue altogether, it’s still something that’s worth paying attention to. Expansions are fine, and plenty of games do them well (cough The Witcher 3 cough), but the way Bungie has handled the first expansion for Destiny 2 makes it feel an awful lot like a subscription (even more so if expansions are released every few months as initially planned).
Star Wars: Battlefront II
Note: Need For Speed: Payback features an identical loot box system, but since Battlefront II has been at the head of all EA controversy this fall, I’ll focus primarily on that game.
After the success of Star Wars: Battlefront, nearly everyone was excited for the upcoming sequel. Dice was apparently pulling out all the stops for the next game in the series: they added a single player campaign, more heroes, more levels, the kitchen sink, and everything else players might want.
But, on top of that, they added everything players didn’t want as well.
Despite the various improvements, EA pushed the game with an extremely controversial loot box system in place. Much of the early controversy centered around the star cards system embedded in loot boxes. The fact that loot boxes might potentially contain items that would make some players more powerful than others was inescapably pay-to-win. Issues became worse when players began to calculate how long it would take to buy heroes with the currency gained from opening loot boxes. In some cases, it would take 40 hours of play just to buy a single hero.
Nuances of the system notwithstanding, the bottom line is that Battlefront II was ruled by an MTX system that was hard-baked into the game. Player backlash forced EA to remove the ability to purchase premium currency. The result is that they had no other choice but to begin tweaking the free-currency costs of heroes and items, and they’ve continued to make tweaks as time goes on.
Things are so bad that the company also took a financial hit (something like a $3 billion dollar loss in November). Things aren’t looking great for EA at the moment.
The bottom line with Battlefront II is that the loot box/MTX marketplace built into the game was such an integral part, that removing it has severely hampered progression. At the very least, it’s far different from before. And though EA has stated that the removal of microtransactions is only temporary, I wonder whether they can even dare to input anything similar to what was in the game before. And, if they did, I wonder whether they would be able to survive a sustained push-back from angry gamers. I severely doubt it.
Games-as-service
It’s obvious that the success of some has caused others to sit up and take notice. After all, it’s hard to watch Overwatch or Grand Theft Auto Online rake in cash by the millions and not want a piece of the pie. So many have jumped on the bandwagon, that the practice of adding loot boxes, MTX, and marketplaces to games has its own name now: “games-as-service.” The whole idea behind this model is to develop titles that can be sustained over a long period of time, rather than finishing a title, then immediately begin working on a sequel that will replace it in a few years. Or develop expansions that will add significant amounts of content to the game for a reasonable price.
Right now, the most successful example of “games-as-service” is Grand Theft Auto: Online, which makes millions per year off of MTX. Before writing this article, I never really played GTA:O. Having put a fair few hours into it (now), I can definitely see the draw of spending money. For fans of the series, GTA:O simply takes the usually single-player mayhem of the Grand Theft universe into a social space. Everything in that space revolves around the accumulation of things – and with regards to guns and vehicles, the use of those things to create as much mayhem as possible. As a low-level player in GTA:O, you are constantly bombarded by others who have more than you. Whether they got those things through grinding, or spending money, the urge to spend in order to “catch up” is palpable. And since Rockstar is constantly adding new things, there’s always more to spend money on.
This is especially polarizing when considering the fact that Rockstar has made it clear that they won’t be supporting the game with any single-player DLC. Over the course of the game’s long life, many have held out hope that Rockstar would eventually release something that would add to Micheal’s, Franklin’s, and Trevor’s story. It took a while, but Rockstar has finally confirmed what many have suspected for a while now: there won’t be any more single-player DLC, and to get more GTA V content, players should turn to the ever-expanding world of GTA: O.
With this decision, and some other indications, Rockstar has made it clear that their interests lie in pursuing a “games-as-service” model moving forward. Which, for some, is fine. But what about the other side of the coin?
Expansions
Companies like CD Projekt Red and Paradox Interactive fall into the second category of developers I mentioned above. After The Witcher 3 released, CD Project released multiple free patches, and two paid expansions that added hours of gameplay to the already insanely dense base game. Paradox Interactive did something similar with Stellaris. Since its release, the game has received more than a few free patches and expansions. Each has been hefty and a few have even completely overhauled and expanded base-game systems in positive (and enjoyable) ways.
These developers, and others, are still focused on delivering high-quality offerings and supporting them with additional content. The development cycle is longer, and it could be argued by some that the amount of revenue made from a single sale + the expansion is lower than built-in marketplaces, but the quality is higher, isn’t it? In the case of the two games above, I’d argue that it is.
During the Game Awards, Bethesda announced a new “save single-player gaming” campaign. On one hand, it’s nice to see a developer that has spent so much time making fantastic single-player games and supporting them with awesome expansions take such a public stance on their support of high-quality single player offerings. On the other, however, it’s worth mentioning that Bethesda has recently come out with a marketplace of its own called “Creation Club.” Though they vehemently deny that it’s an easy way for them to monetize mods (which have always been an extremely popular add to Bethesda’s single-player offerings), that’s exactly what it is. Links to the latest and greatest mods are even displayed prominently on the Fallout 4 menu screen (and it’s no small irony that there’s already a mod to remove the link from the menu screen).
So, it seems like everyone is trying to get a piece of the pie. It’s almost comical when looking at all of the different models currently being implemented: no one is truly identical. Keeping that in mind, how do we determine what kinds of monetization are acceptable? How do we determine what amount of monetization to offer? How do we decide what to sell?
And, most importantly, how far is too far?
Legal Woes
As stated above, Overwatch offers only cosmetic items in their loot boxes, and none of the items contained therein change gameplay in any way. Grand Theft Auto Online is a bit of a different beast. It doesn’t base its marketplace on loot boxes, but offers the ability to buy in-game cash with real money. To a degree, it’s a pay-to-win system (because more money equals better weapons/vehicles), but it’s a system that takes advantage of a player’s desire for more. At its outset, no one really expected GTA:O to be as successful as it has been, but the fact that it has been such a big cash cow for Rockstar – for years now – has been nothing short of amazing. On the other hand, however, Rockstar has tempered the ability to spend money with a nearly-constant flow of new content. Does that make MTX any better? That’s a very subjective question, but I suppose it makes the players who spend time with GTA:O happier.
What about loot boxes then?
No one really seemed to care when Overwatch was offering purely cosmetic items for sale. But things got a bit more complicated as soon as developers decided to include a pay-to-win component. Now that players can spend money for a random chance at something that will make them more powerful in a game, calls of gambling have been slowly permeating the conversation surrounding loot boxes. The ESRB has already stated that they don’t consider loot boxes to be a form of gambling, but lawmakers have begun to take notice.
In the US, legislators have threatened to become involved in the conversation, with one official in Hawaii looking to restrict the sale of games with loot boxes to individuals 21 and over. And abroad, the Justice Minister of Belgium has called for a ban of loot boxes in Europe. More recently, and somewhat contrary to other potential legislation, the New Zealand Gambling Commission ruled that it was unable to regulate loot boxes under gambling laws because player’s can’t remove money from the system. Personally, I’d like to see the issue dealt with inside the gaming community. And I’m sure the last thing anyone wants are legislators making a mess of video games. It ruins the fun for everyone involved.
Depending on who you talk to, there’s either too much, or not enough, to say about the legal ramifications of loot boxes in video games. But that’s the double edged sword of politicizing something like this. For now, the process seems to be moving rather slowly and hasn’t picked up much steam. That can change on a dime, however, and it’s perfectly possible that legislators in the U.S. could push some convoluted law through at the drop of a hat. I’ll be sure to keep an eye on the legal and political aspects of this and report if there are any significant developments.
The bigger picture
The main question surround all of this is: Are loot boxes/microtransactions/in-game marketplaces a problem? For a long time, these systems didn’t really seem to bother players all that much. Or, at least, not as things are in their current form. A few years ago, the big thing was “Day One DLC.” Everyone remembers this. Games used to come out, then offer DLC on the first day. Whether items or missions, it was clear that this content was already in the game, but locked behind a paywall. All it took to unlock the content was a credit card number. At first, no one really seemed to mind all that much. But after a while, when everyone started doing it, players began to speak up about the practice. After that, offerings of Day One DLC began to decline dramatically. In fact, I can’t really remember the last time it was offered in a game (I haven’t seen it in any of the games I play, anyway).
With that in mind, it seems like we’ve reached a similar critical mass with the current systems in place.
So how do we fix it? The simplest answer is to remove loot boxes from games, but we all know that’s not going to happen. Alternatively, we could fundamentally change the way loot boxes are offered to players. I doubt that will happen, either.
Why? Because of players’ willingness to throw money at MTX in any form.
As much as people like to complain about the way developers have been attempting to monetize every aspect of games, there are just as many people who are willing to drop tens, or hundreds, of dollars on virtual items. If that weren’t so, the prize pool for The International wouldn’t be so high every year. And games like Planetside 2 would have died years ago. The fact that people will inevitably spend money on loot boxes or MTX is almost a guarantee nowadays. And as long as players are willing to do it, developers will be happy to oblige them with all sorts of convoluted systems designed to maximize the amount of money players will spend.
Plenty of players like to say that they don’t spend money on loot boxes. Or on MTX. Or on cosmetic items. Or any number of other things. But just as many do. And plenty of the people who complain are offending parties as well. It’s like putting a cookie on a table in front of a kid. The cookie will eventually disappear. When you ask the kid whether they ate the cookie, most kids will deny it. But you know they ate the cookie. It’s the same with loot boxes and MTX, only the punishment players get instead of a time-out is a game riddled with options to purchase content that, once upon a time, would have been free (included in the base game). Or would have been available in a bulky expansion.
For now, that’s the world we’re living in. And, honestly, I’m not sure whether things will wind up getting better or worse as time goes on.
The death of single-player?
Despite all the doom and gloom surrounding loot boxes in 2017, I don’t really think that we’re seeing the death of single-player games. Even with all of the dubious offerings that have come out in the second half of the year, and even though Bethesda would have you believe that single-player gaming is dying because of the (possibly) ridiculous campaign it just started, there are still more than a few fantastic single player experiences available across the gaming spectrum. Horizon Zero Dawn, Persona 5, Zelda: Breath of the Wild (which won game of the year at the Game Awards), Super Mario Odyssey, and Divinity: Original Sin 2 are just a few of the offerings that can scratch the single-player itch. And while some of them might have DLC available, none are built around the shameless cash grabs of loot boxes or MTX.
I’m sure some companies will continue to streamline their in-game marketplaces, but I doubt that the loot box craze will become a permanent fixture in gaming. Even now, I’m guessing that the fever pitch surrounding the way they’ve been implemented this year likely signifies a peak in what we’ll see moving forward. And I expect that there will be a decline in the prevalence of loot boxes in 2018 and beyond. Of course, I could be wrong, but I sorely hope I’m not.
Personal Responsibility
At the end of the day, we are all partially responsible for what is going on right now. Pretty much everyone I know has spent some money in one game or another. A friend of mine has dropped hundreds on League of Legends; I spent a bit on Planetside 2 when I was still playing it; And my wife is even considering buying a few cosmetic items for PUBG off of the Steam marketplace (we all start somewhere).
The bottom line is that the more we, as players, feed into the system, the more prevalent those systems will become. Whether through loot boxes, MTX, or some other form of marketplace, developers will find some way to shift the ability to purchase virtual items further to the forefront. In 2017, many developers and publishers have moved the goalposts farther than they ever have before. Hopefully, the vehement push-back we’ve seen in the last few months will be enough to relegate these overbearing systems to the waste bin where they belong.
Otherwise, get used to paying far more than $60 for a “complete” AAA gaming experience.
But wait, there’s more!
Since finishing the article, a few more things have happened with regards to loot boxes in recent days. First, Apple now requires that all games selling loot boxes on the App Store supply the chances of obtaining each item out of the box. Second, Bungie has managed to make things even worse for Destiny 2. Basically, there’s an extremely-hard-to-come-by currency in the game called bright dust. This currency can be used to buy choice pieces of gear in the Eververse shop. But, apparently, it’s so scarce that players barely get enough to buy any of the things they want. They can also spend bright dust on Dawning Engrams, which are usually only available through a specific set of missions – missions players can only complete once per day. But why would players want to buy these engrams if they could get a free one every day? Because not every Dawning Engram is available as a daily quest reward. That means that to get all of the Dawning Engram items, players will have to buy them from the Eververse store. Using bright dust. And to add insult to injury, even if they do, there’s a chance that bright dust (and real-life money spent) might still result in a bust for a player looking for a specific piece of loot. There’s even issues with the way the “free” engrams and “purchased” engrams break down – the “free” ones give players legendary shards, while the “purchased” ones actually provide bright dust, which can be spent in the Eververse store. Players only discovered this when they noticed that identical items were being sorted into different stacks (Bungie confirmed the unique sorting, but not the reason why). The bottom line in all this is that players are seeing the current holiday event as a shameless cash grab since there’s virtually no other choice than to spend real-life money in the Eververse store. There’s simply no getting around it. Players have gotten so upset about this that there’s even a petition on the Destiny 2 forums to remove Eververse from the game altogether.
