I would love it if you could cover activision's patents. At this point I feel like im just shadowbanned as most my comments on channels seem to be hidden needing to sort by newest.
@@PropaneWP yeah. then when they get hit back huge backlash and bad press they'll quite down to show they "learned" their lesson and try to win our trust again and do it all over again.
Imagine if gamers had the will power to just leave a negative review, turn the game off and not turn it back on to make a point, stop giving these companies so much of your time and money when they dont respect you as a customer.
A large percent of the player bases of these games are casual players. Not people in the "gamer" community. It will never go away. Better off just moving on to something else if it's a deal breaker at this point.
@@mengkudu9478 Never bothered to install it and never will , like I said if I see free to play i stay clear btw also did not buy that rubbish d4 , I do play last epoch and grim dawn etc tho , cant wait for the new grim dawn expansion at least they treat their customers correctly , instant buy from me
I don't think all f2p games are in the same boat. A lot of them are though. Something to keep in mind is, if you play a f2p game and you are f2p or a small spender, you are the content for the whales. You essentially play into the power fantasy for the people with no self control spending stupid amounts of money.
I’m guessing he hasn’t seen the other events on Apex Legends. Every event requires you to spend 200-400$ to get the advertised heirloom. They literally took the mobile game price models and applied it to Apex.
Yeah but that was just the apex players. FF having few mobile games with such an egregious monetization scheme so bringing the mmo/single player rpg players is a large culture shock. So they’re the ones that are p***ed
Im a father of 3 and my oldest is 8. He loves fortnite and you are exactly right. He literally gets super excited when the store changes and just assumes all games have battle passes. I was playing Lies of P and had the santa hat on and he was like "why did you buy that? I thought you didn't like buying skins?" 😂 I have tons of examples of horrible manipulative examples from Roblox. Some of the games in Roblox literally try and trick you into spending your "Robuxs" or whatever there called. It's just disgusting to me.
you need to have a serious conversation with your son. no, 8 years old is not too young. if you dont open the door on this topic soon he'll be a gambling addict before you know it
My son play Roblox and god I hate that game for how much they put behind pay walls. He’s always saying that he needs robux for some skin or character. Me knowing he will only be interested in the game for 30 more mins I tell him we don’t spend real money on a game. He’s only 5 and doesn’t really understand how scummy some of these games are. I really hate what gaming has become. I remember back when I was growing up you wanted a new skin or cheat. Beat the game in a certain time or do something special or put in the cheat. These days things like that cost money and it’s retarded.
My daughter is 12 and she gets mad if she sees what she think is a skin on my character in any game because I don't allow her to get robucks. I have spent tons of time trying to explain the marketing and micro transactions to her. To the point where I made a power point about it. My son thinks all games have micro transactions and chapters like poppy play time and bendy. It's definitely a scary time for video games.
And a sucker born every minute = roughly a sucker turning 18 with disposable income every minute. That's the issue... there will always be an influx of suckers with enough money to pay for this nonsense, perpetuating this vicious cycle. Where they end up is partially based on what video game advertisements they receive (as well as a grain of chance). And those who leave this vicious cycle have already given them their money. And I'll admit: I was one of those long ago.
A fundamental issue of late stage capitalism is that growth is valued much higher than profit. Market routinely rewards a business that makes $1 in 1st year, $100 in 2nd year and goes bankrupt in 3rd much more than a business that will bring $20 year by year forever. If profit is very reliable but doesn't grow it means that the company is not a good *investment* and kills its market valuation because investors care much more about stock value than dividends. Sure, constantly pushing for more and more profit will inevitably kill any business, but that doesn't matter because when project A collapses they just move to project B and rake in the money that exponential early growth brings. Modern capitalism does not give a crap about anything but growth which is literally mathematically unsustainable.
These companies target children, that's 100% correct. I'd likely have fallen for this at age 18, but thanks to Skyrim showing me Bethesda's true colors, I now have zero interest in paying for trash like this. Some of these kids have way less self respect than I did when I realized. They'd spend 1000 bucks just so they can pretend they're cool.
As the parent of a young child the inundation of marketing she experiences on a daily basis is already terrifying. Thanks for including the thought in the discussion.
Look on the bright side, all that marketing at a young age might actually make them more or less immune to it at a later age cause they have learn to look past it.
I once had a discussion with a cousin of mine, who is a parent. She went to say that her child was not allowed to play The Forest, but was instead allowed to play Fortnite. I told her that if it was my child, i'd rather have them play The Forest. As she went on to ask why, I said it was because of the monetization and marketing in the game. Fear and violence is not something children should experience, but getting hooked on spending money on virtual skins to look cool in a game is far worse imo. As she (and most parents) are not into the gaming sphere, or industry at all, I don't think she realized just how exploited we are these days. And it gets worse every year too. They keep changing up their tactics, creating new ways to hook people when the old ways are seen through and getting ignored. @Yock1980 said that children might get immune to marketing, but they are going to be immune to only particular kinds of marketing at that point, new marketing techniques still have enough of a chance to drag them back into the spending loop. And not to mention the spending addiction they can develop at said young age, they can internally start believing that looking cool and fresh is all that matters, nothing else. That will change of course later, but those children will struggle with it for quite a while.
I dont understand why casinos have so many regulations in place but if your giving someone a virtual item and not giving them money then it's basically unregulated? It triggers the same part of the brain, its highly addictive for some people and these games may be targeted for younger audiences. Like gambling in the uk is 18+ but Apex is 16+ ?
Because Video Games is a bigger business then gambling in the US and prob the world, they have good lobbyist who block any attempt to stop this. You know just like Guns , and Liquor and tobacco
That's the ultimate problem I have with it. It isn't gambling because you can't re-sell the item, but as a consumer, I WOULD BE BETTER OFF having a way to get my money back in some form! Even if I can't get all of it back, at least letting me recoup some of the costs would be, by definition, better than the current system of duplicates. So this idea that "we aren't gambling" is actually worse than if they admitted they were and either prevented duplicate item drops or offered a way to sell them back.
Weirdly the key differences are the inability to cash out and typically you are also unable to directly earn money from the games(streaming does not count). You also have to start with the actual purpose of those gambling laws. I don't know and it will probably take too much effort to research but they probably don't exist for the reasons we are assuming. A lot of them probably came into being due to some inciting incident. Laws regarding lotteries and sweepstakes are probably more relevant.
We could argue about prices all day, but I think we can all agree that paying for a chance at something is scummy and should be illegal. You don't pay for a chance at getting a phone, a console or a pc, but it's somehow becoming the norm in gaming
It's gambling full stop and needs to be regulated and taxed at unprofitable rates to get the companies to stop if not just made illegal, where the profit stops, the corporate interest stops.
@@FOF275 the problem is the ones who talk shit just want an excuse, not to solve the issue, and the other side is either too old to understand the problem or too focused on other things.
@@Seoul_SoldierI hope you understand that business is not that simple. To think that a studio can just break away on a whim is a fantasy - Bungie getting away from Activision took many years and legal entanglements, and the people in charge at Respawn who aren't from EA likely don't have the money, means or desire to attempt something like that, or else they would have already.
Well, if the players feel betrayed, then they need to show itvwith their wallets and or by quitting. Affecting a company’s bottom line is the only thing they’ll listen to, not internet ‘outrage.’ 🙂👍
That's the unfortunate thing. The only wallet that matters are the one who don't feel betrayed because they have that much disposable income. Remember, MTX doesn't cater to a wide playerbase of a 100,000 people spending ten bucks here and there, it caters to that whalebase of people with addiction problems and/or huge amounts of disposable income spending a thousand bucks here and there.
@@JohnDoe-wg9sy Yeah. Sadly, the "Vote with your wallet and don't buy it to show you don't support them" philosophy simply doesn't apply with these jerks. 10k people who don't buy are simply people who don't vote at all. Then that one guy that buys it, has a vote that counts for 100 people. Trouble is, the people who play and care about these things are SIGNIFICANTLY less then the casual community who just "clicks button to play". And those guys could not care less about these things. They wouldn't be caught dead watching one of these videos. And then, there are the whales. The company in charge of these games literally does not care about us and has no incentive to do so. We could all stop playing tomorrow and they'd just be waving us goodbye whit a grin on their face and all their wads of cash in their pockets. This has been the state of gaming for the last 10 years. They have already won and we've just been coping since then. Welcome to reality.
"Guys just vote with your wallets!" One whale is like worth an infinite amount of players in a FTP game. This has been proven time and time again to not work.
Player: "This live service game wont stop pushing lootboxes. Its so scummy. I thought this game would be awesome" The internet: "You must be new here."
It's a slippery slope. They're trying to market to the gullible fresh children that are getting into gaming. The problem is how bad they're getting. Monetization systems like this have gotten people evicted from their homes, and have gotten children that have their parents' credit cards to draw their entire life savings out for one game. And sure, you can claim it's the responsibility of parents to not allow their kids to squander their cash, I agree that parents don't parent anymore and they need to. But then there's people that are psychologically inclined to be manipulated. They can't help it.
@@MorfsPrower Gambling addictions are very prevelant within the gaming community. There's also constant pressure to have the best drip and if someone has an edge, it might be the difference between you being popular in your guild, social group, or online. Social media is constantly pushing people to be competitive in things that are easily monitizable.
@@heavymetallabrat Competition can be healthy, but not when you're imbalancing your entire life just to show people you're better or fancier than everyone else. I have a perfect example. Currently, my best friend is playing Nikke Goddess of Victory, and before you say that game is predatory, which it is, he has every rollable character in the game and hasn't paid a CENT. Comparatively, he's been actively competing for the #1 spot in certain leaderboards of the game against one very specific whale whom keeps shilling out hundreds of dollars a week to try and stay on top, which my friend bests in half an hour by being a combination of scarily smart and equally scarily lucky. It's truly sad that people have to validate themselves by competing with their wallet alone, rather than the skill, effort, and honest luck he employs on a nigh-daily basis. He doesn't need money to win. He HAS money to spare, considering his two biggest hobbies are Magic and Warhammer 40K Tabletop... There's a lot of people out there with serious problems, desperate for attention and validation, but what does any of that matter when inevitably the servers will shut down one day? A gamer is ultimately as good as their skill, not how much money they have in the bank. They can't parse the fact that having to pay 1000 dollars to style on others is ultimately both pathetic and a sign of an underlying condition. Cosmetics are sad, but they're also an entirely different beast from P2W, which is antithetical to gaming as a whole. Why play a game you beat by paying 12k? You can try defending that, but all answers to it are forms of cope.
Did people forget that in 2019 there was a huge controversy over the legendary items in Apex Legends that would take over 1000yrs to "Earn" in game, and the devs called people who weren't willing to shell out some cash to get ingame stuff "Freeloaders" "Thieves" and many other names?
When 60% or more of a 70+ gigabyte game is dedicated to a cash shop, the industry has gone way too far into greed. That kind of configuration is not based on realistic attempt to fight inflation. Its based in greedy ceos treating players as spare wallets. Cash shops combined with loot boxes, which is nothing more than gambling.
FF7 has a permanent place in my heart as the first RPG I played as a child. There were others before it, but I had no idea what I was doing in them. but when I played FF7, my eyes opened to how combat works in these games and how amazingly cool the story can be in video games in general. I played that game so obsessively that I did so without a memory card. For the newgen - think not being able to save your game at all in Skyrim, or God of War, or Dark Souls, etc. I didn't care. If I died I was like "Oh well, time to restart!" In one sitting, I got all the way to Costa del Sol. Along the way I even defeated the Midgard Zolom because I didn't know I could just run away from it. I'm sure those who played the original FF7 just had their eyes widen at that one. That's just how dedicated I was as a kid. And when I had to go to bed that night? Turned it off. No save. Restarted the next day. (sidenote, a friend realized my plight and gave me a memory card eventually rofl) I stated all this just to say that even I, a huge, gigantic fan of FF7 (including FF7R), who has fantasized being Cloud and wielding the buster sword (A big stick) while defeating monsters (trees in a nearby forest), am not in ANY way interested in this horrible, FOMO-filled, whale-baiting, greed-driven event. In fact maybe I'm too big of a fan, because seeing Apex characters cosplaying as FF7 characters made me grimace. They look terrible (Barret lookalike is the most passable, but barely).
Have you played FF7 remake? It is pretty good. I bought a PlayStation4 for it a few years ago. Never regretted that decision. It's a hard game. The story is cut short within Midgard, but with middle story stuff added. FF7r is on PC now, so you don't need a console to play it.
@@rremnar I kinda went on a rant above so you probably missed it but yeah I played FF7 Remake and enjoyed it quite a bit too. Friend got me it for PS4 but I got it for myself when it hit PC. Planning on playing through it before Rebirth hits PC as well.
i don't get why people like it so much, i've played since FF I and for me it is just another one on the list, maybe it is a westerner thing, VI is way better and it was a 16bit game.
@Tamachii12 6 was brilliant but 7 was so massive because it was the First FF game on playstation and was many first FF game, also atleast in the west there's a large group of people who only like FF7 but aren't fans of the other games in the series.
This is partly why these brand deals make less sense to me from the brand’s perspective. People love FF7. Why tarnish your brand by having it associated with predatory gambling?
I can understand FOMO for physical goods, something you can actually touch and hold in your hands, something you can keep on a shelf or in a closet and look at in 10 or 20 years and (maybe) let it become a collectable that gains value over time. I will NEVER understand FOMO for digital cosmetic goods in games, especially Free to play ones that are guaranteed to be shut down at some point in the future, and once that happens you lose access to that digital skin or whatever it is
I can understand FOMO for digital goods, something you see for the majority of the time that you are playing a game which can be 2+ hours a day. I can't understand wanting a physical good to look at if you only glance at it for a minute a day, if that. I will never understand people buying an Artbook especially when it's guaranteed to deteriorate over time and have a high chance of getting lost. I don't particularly agree or disagree with your statement, just giving a counter point that physical goods can be worthless clutter either way.
@@kapkap5157There's a difference between digital goods, which is guaranteed to disappear after some years, and a physical good which is guaranteed to NOT disappear (unless you lost it or broke it, even if it's broke at least you still have the item though in pieces.) + it's physical that like OP said, can touch, feel, and whatever the hell you do with it. that's what OP is prolly saying.
In fairness to SC, while I haven't played it - at least the various insane mAcro-transactions has a promise of some function. The massive "Reclaimer" in SC costs about $400. You'd get one of the better heavy fighters for $240. Or even the "Constellation Aurora", which is a decent sized ship. ...too rich for me, but still - you get at least some form of improvement in game. ^^
They should really change to Macro at that point, anything above 10 dollars. Even regulate that stuff, because there is no way anything that high should be ignored by any bank processing.@@MisterZimbabwe
CIG doesn't call them micro nor macro transactions, they're "contributions," because the entire company is literally crowd funded. 45$ gets you access to Star Citizen and every ship in game. I know this is a shocker because of you don't actually follow the game and only pay attention to the click bait tabloids it would make sense that you wouldn't know that. If you do care about the game and are interested in supporting CIG, rather than obfuscating what you can get behind a loot box mechanic, they actually let you get what you want. Space Tomato(a YTer that follows SC mostly) recently had a Bethesda YTer on and they did a podcast type thing, it was a good listen, definitely recommend.
The more I see how big companies treat their customers/players the more grows my inner sadness and anger of how successful they can do it and in deep mourning I see how great Indie games didn't get the attention which they deserve. Because I bought games which amused me and gave me a fair amount of fun and sometimes it was really cheap so I felt being respected as a customer but the developer of some of these 5 to 8 year old games couldn't pay their bills so that the developers didn't exist anymore...
My entire monthly paycheck for a priviledge for smacking virtual people with left half of space shuttle door. No thanks, i'll rather have food, water and electricity this month.
@@Jubafree Yea like in most of these games. But those who do, especaly the whales, destroy it for everyone else. And im not telling anyone what to play and what not. Its their desicion. I just sad that i dont like Live Service Games or Free 2 Play games and that i dont waste my time nor money on them. Oh and the models are super ugly. *edit for some typos
@@Jubafree It is incredibly rare to see people using default or free skins. When I do I instantly suspect they are a cheater or a smurf. "Most players" certainly spend. I don't even know anyone in our Discord who doesn't at least have one heirloom, even if they mostly bought it using crafting mats, crafting mats are rarely free.
I've mostly quit playing mainstream games due to all the terrible changes the industry has made to everything. Only thing I play these days are indie games for the most part.
Games like Stardew Valley and Terraria sold once and keep updating for free for... 8 and 13 years respectively. For a sub 30$ price. And new games like Diablo 4, anything related to sports games and stuff, the biggest names in the industry, are somehow not profitable enough? Despite 70$ entry fee and microtransactions at every corner? The problem, in my opinion, is that hundreds of employees need to slave away to generate the revenue to payout leeches like Bobby Kotick, and the other half for the shareholders. This isn't sustainable, shouldn't be sustainable and "games" like Fortnight and Apex feel more like content engines churning out recognizable pictures of other, better franchises.
That's actually brings up a good point, undoubtedly people like Kotick are leeches but the size of a team it takes to make modern AAA games and the locations they are based at make it so even with a $70 price tag the product still can't make money. VS the $30 small team or solo developer living in a reasonable price area make is so a few good sales can keep them going for decades. So kind of a point of diminishing returns type deal.
What bothers me most about this is that Titanfall, and I refuse to call it "Apex Universe", has great lore that you can build really good stories on. And they just...don't.
Investors with big funds are more informed than ever before. They don't want to just make money, that's easy. They want to make x amount of profit in a given amount of time, or they may as well have their money elsewhere. So the result is micro transactions everywhere to win those investors and be able to sell stock to the next sucker before you're stuck holding a growthless bag of money.
@@lackinganame7857 to be fair AAA games manage their finances very poorly in the aspect of money/quality. Having hyperdetailed environments, gpu-melting particle effects, full body motion capture for every minor NPC affects the opinion of players much less than having well designed gameplay loop. Yet vast majority of effort and resources is being pushed into improving the eyecandy rather than making games that are more interesting to play. Breakthroughs in terms of approach to game design happen very rarely and when they do all AAA developers just start to make the same game over and over trying to compete in technical fidelity. Like, what was the most recent big shift in AAA? Battle royale I guess which reached mainstream what, like 8 years ago. No truly new AAA projects came out since then.
Am I the only person who remembers the 150-200 Axe with this same MTX system back in 2019? I don't really understand what has changed other than it being an item people actually want. Did people also forget that Respawn called consumers "FreeLoaders" and the person didn't even get fired? When someone shows you who they truly are, believe them.
Hold on... 240$? Can't you just buy an irl cosplay outfit for that at that point? Or even a professionally 3d printed and painted artwork of your favorite character?
That is the logic i fail to guess why people don't get. When they ask like $60 for some gun skin etc i really don't understand how anyone sees that as a good value when he can buy 3-4 games to even 10-15 on sale with that etc. How can a little skin be worth as much as many full time experiences with full worlds? What is anyone thinking buying that?
And if you get bored of cosplay, pretty soon they'll creep prices up enough where competitive shooter video games will start to approach the price of going outside and getting into competitive shooting irl.
@@thomasracer56 nonono friend- you don't understand, there's value in not having to go outside and shoot the guns yourself. You have to manage risks and what's worse you could get injured. For the more expensive than irl shooting price, you can experience the joys in your very own home!
That is why I simply will not play these games. All of us need to stop engaging with games using these money-sucking tactics if we want them to go away. Otherwise the industry will continue to be dominated with money first not fun first people. This is how Electronic Arts went from Trip Hawkins' dream of a place for 'electronic artists' to show off their work to....what EA is today. We have to start saying 'NO' in meaningful numbers.
One commonality with all these free 2 play games is the UI is illegable, 5 different currencies, 99 things on my screen and 8 different tabs with more information on, I went back on fortnite after not playing since the first year and I couldn't figure out how to get into a match for a not insignificant amount of time. As always with these things, obtuseness and obscurity should tell you something.
This isn’t even new to Apex Legends, this is how literally all of their special cosmetic events have been. I forget what they usually call them but it’s when characters get their super special “prestige” weapon skins, you have to usually spend $200 dollars every time if you want the stuff.
I bought skins in Apex without thinking about it, 4 years later i realized I spent over $1000 on a GAME! I haven't bought any skins since and my thought was "why play dress up in a video game when i can buy clothes in real life"
Just think this is what we get instead of Titanfall 3 so sad I feel bad for all the people that didnt play when Halo Reach was alive where u could get all of the cosmetics just by playing how far the gaming industry has fallen
This is why I've had to quit these online live service games. A co-worker got me to try The Finals and I can just feel that it's going to get worse with transactions over time. I don't even want to try a game even if it starts out fun.
You dodged a bullet there. Nexon's been known to monetize their games through hell and back and when the money and playerbase dries up, the games get shut down really quickly. I'm also concerned that when The First Descendant comes out later this year, it'll have something similar happen to it.
It’s ethical as it’s “what the market will bear”. If it’s overpriced, it will be discounted fast enough. And none of these cosmetics have any intrinsic value. So it’s all a waste of money in the end but each to their own. No skin off my nose if someone wants to spend $200.
I'm not sure which is honestly worse. The companies that pull this kind of crap. Or the people that go on and fall for this kind of crap and buy it again, and again, and again.
Exactly why I quit playing after Season one. Even though I started playing back in beta. Once they started doing "seasons" the writing was on the wall.
Not surprised by this. Live service games, like Apex, really really want that money. That said, if you want to see how to do a themed event (or as we call them in FFXIV, a crossover event) just look at FFXIV. You don't need to spend $240 for a chance at a cosmetic.
Live service games just don't hold my attenetion anymore. It's just so apparent with 90% of them that priorities 1-8 were maximizing profits and like 13b was creativity and innovation in gameplay
The predatory mobile monetisation hand book is wide open on their table. Apex doesn't need to do collabs to get engagement, all they have to do is add rewarding player progression systems, upgrade the servers, fix enemy audio, make ranked rewarding, and most importantly FIX MATCH MAKING. Apex has been my favourite game since launch but I have stopped playing. The match making is so bad its near impossible for me to have fun fair games. We used to have discord group full of Apex players and now none of us play because of the match making. Getting relentlessly humiliated by far better players is frustrating and exhausting and now the game just isn't fun any more.
I find it so sad that gotcha, and live services, online stores. skins for billions is a thing. The reason there is so much of it, its because someone looks at it, and think I need that. And then buys it. And that is the sad part. Why are people buying it. Even if you have the money, you gain nothing from it. Its sort of like NFT's. But more than that. because of how AAA gaming companies abuse players, and in many ways have the ability to do so because of weak laws. Buying skins, and lootboxes and what not. Is enabling them to make it worse and worse, making games worse and worse. So buying this stuff. Is self harm for those that enjoy the games they buy them for. And that is why its sad. Why are people doing it. There are no good reason. Not even if you are the child of a billionaire and dont have to work for money, and can just play all day spending your parents money. And use that as an excuse. Because the action of doing it, is also hurting you. because it makes games worse and worse. And companies more and more abusing, releasing less and less complete games, that is just build to hide a gambling machine. Sad. The only reason its a thing. Is because more people engage with it, than people that dont. While it might only be 10-30% of people here who engage in talking about it. All those who never read about a game, or what a company do. Is not on reddit all of that. There 80% just pay and pay, until there is nothing for them to play.
$240 for some pixels in an old game that may be replace by an "Apex 2" anytime now? No thanks, Also $240 is 4 new high end games(Dragons Dogma 2 is around the corner as well as a few other decent sounding experiences) or a bunch of probably better enjoyment indie games. Some possibly better things to spend on, upcoming soon: Helldivers 2, STALKER 2, Eiyuden, Manor Lords, Homeworld 3, Nightingale, Earth of Oryn, Once Human, Banishers, Animal Well, etc. $240 is also groceries for an entire family for a couple months sounds greedy. "EA it's in the game" JK it's in the overpriced DLC packs
I literally thought about playing Apex Legends because of the FF colab but not after seeing how greedy that is. EA managed to make Overwatch’s monetization look super generous.
i have never once blamed a company for charging people 240 dollars for a simple skin... people have always been stupid to spend money on something so outrageous. And i will never fill bad tha they will have to eat bowls of ramen and ice for 5 months. common sense isnt that common
Loot boxes need to be removed from all games, as they are no different than gambling. The last I checked gambling has an age limit well above the average age of gamers. Having cosmetics is fine but only if you pay for what you want and you get want you pay for, not a chance at said cosmetic.
@@rickmel3883 Anything to justify your point right. Kid's as young as 14 can have a job. But it doesn't matter where they get the money they can do it.
I fell into a gacha hole once and what I quickly learned from existing in the community is that most of the time, the "whales" aren't typically rich people. They obviously have access to a certain amount of wealth, but are for the most part just normal people caught up in predatory game design.
This got posted on some of the final fantasy subreddits, some people pointed out that for the cost of getting everything from this crossover, you can literally get a collector's edition of final fantasy 7 rebirth with a Sephiroth statue and you would still have money spare.
Uuuh, that's so scummy. They give you discounts for the first few so that those are gone you are "too deep to stop". To be fair, I don't really give a shit about cosmetic stuff. I much rather have a $1m skin than being able to beat someone because you spent $100 for power. The only problem with pushing the envelope is that eventually the greed gets out of hand and ruins potentially good games.
Never could get in this game, when I see that characters are locked behind paywall I jumped out never looked back, same for rainbow six siege, and I even brought that one and regretted.
God... i thought it was impossible for me to feel disgusted by this kind of stuff. But now i realized that nothing matters anymore. Everything i loved is either dead or dying.
The same way that greed destroyed actual arcades, $0.25 per play to $0.50, to $1 and so on, the same corpo greed has infected home gaming, and wont stop till everything is a copy of something you've already played monetized to the hilt with full fomo tactics. Infinte growth.
It's a game with one, maybe two game modes. Its driving factor is it's a battle royalle with Titanfall's parkour system and guns. They're expecting everyone to be interested in playing it all the time and buying all the cosmetics. That ain't happening. They're competing with too many other multiplayer shooters who do similar things, for one. And for two, not everyone is interested in multiplayer shooters. As far as I'm concerned, they're just gutting their own game for profit at the expense of alienating or hurting their existing player base. Because every whale runs out of fat eventually.
Two of my friends are well on their way to be whales in the moba smite. One of them has been banned once already and probably still spends money on it. To see them so excited for smite 2 knowing they will spend a large portion of their income on a free to play game is sad.
Diablo Immortal has $300 skins in a gatcha called "Phantom Market". You have a chance of getting the epic skin, but that chance increases with every "roll". The full 10 rolls guarantees you the cosmetic, and for most people it will take the full 10. First roll is free, of course, with the price going up with every spin. Add the fact the Phantom Market is limited time and never repeats, and it gives serious FOMO.
It's astounding how the Nier crossovers all *add* something to the game they're in - new fighters, stories, *content* - while the FFVII crossovers are always the most shallow stuff in the world and cost an arm and a leg.
Funniest part of this as a former whale in ESO, this system doesn't seem all that abusive (they have ones like this every month - they recycle each year though - and will cost you over 300 to not even get the best items). Then again, if you were to ask Apex players generally "would you pay $25 a month to play Apex and it came with free event loot?" I reckon most would say no way. Assuming that there is one major event like this per year that players would drop 300 on...
The Problem is it's not about being profitable any more, it is about the big Money. For a lot of this Mega Companys a profitable Brand is not enough, they don't want 10 healthy profitable games, they want 1 big cash cow that make Billions in the best case period (thats why they doubling down on live service trash). The only problem is its not a growing market any more. Every one who like live service games already playing them, and as much as they can afford and have time for. So any new live service game competes with all existing live service games. And the more live service games there, as wider spreads the playerbase, cause if there is a niche live service for everyone, everyone plays his niche game. But this also means the revenue for all gets down. So by doubling down on live service games the market is becoming increasingly competitive and this also means the monetization gets heavier and more aggressive to squeeze every little penny out of the remaining players. And they try hard to bait over gamer like me who play Singleplayer games mostly and once in a while a coop game over to there live service cash grab BS. But I can't care less about the games and even if I like a franchise, even if I am a Fan of a game series, if its live service it is a immediate and total skip for me.
I was expecting this. Actually, I'm surprised it took them this long. Fortnite has had a hard-on for licensed content and it's really paid off for them. Plenty of other games/shows/movies for Apex to snag too. I predict we'll see more of this in the future, it's a huge win for them. Monetarily. As for how they went about it? I give them a solid 2.3/10.
We've (de?)evolved to the point where kids will bully each other at school, if they dont have the newest skins. EA really know how to manipulate their target audience.
It's interesting how ea handles Need for Speed compared to their other games. Nfs unbound has gotten a year of free updates and has had multiple seasons with a battle pass that's 100% free. The only extra monitization it has is a few dlc packs that have cosmetics. No loot boxes, no weird currencies. It's interesting that after nfs payback git so much backlash ea has pulled back monitization completely in nfs.
The fact that "The only extra monitization it has is a few dlc packs that have cosmetics." is a very positive sentence shows how far video game industry fell in the last 20 years.
what most people say is not "it's just money"... they say it's not pay to win, you don't have to buy it and you still get free packs with a chance for these items by playing. where is the issue? you don't have to buy. it doesn't give you an advantage. it's just cosmetic. it's not even pay to convenience. none of that. would never pay that much for any of those items. they aren't worth it. also it's not the death box being 240 and the sword being 240. you get both and 100 other items for 240. it's our worth it? probably not. but it's it dishonest to pretend a single item is 240? yeah. again you don't have to spend. it's all cosmetic and optional. don't pay 240 for stuff that isn't worth it.
Its not the money for me, its the principal, looking cool in games and having great gear was a status symbol back in the old days. It said im good at the game and ill be an asset to the party/group/community. Now it just says i have money.
I've had this realization that's finally clicked properly for me. It's just... the publically traded company system. Shareholders. It really is. I mean it's not *JUST* that. Obviously. But it's at the root of so many problems. Okay, so say we do what most people imagine is the right thing to do: vote with your wallet. We realize that all these companies have other companies they've absorbed, right? If we give up on one, what do you think will happen? The company will get punished. They'll lay people off. Or the company just gets closed down and its members scattered to the winds. The talent that made it possible gets separated, with none of what they've built up to follow them. The IP that made them money might get shifted into something new, but it won't have the same soul, because it's been ripped out for money. Then, if that fails, which it usually does, the parent company moves on to the next one. And the next one. And the next one. "They'll eventually run out!" we might say. Okay. But here's the thing: there's no shortage of people who want to make and play videogames. They're wholly unique in the entertainment field. There is literally nothing like playing a good game. And once you have a good game that people love playing, someone will offer them a lot of money. If that money is taken, and they're now part of a publically traded company, according to US law- which who are we kidding, it'd be a US company that buys them- it becomes a financial and legal obligation to increase revenue. Say you have a spike because of an event or just a new mode or just SOMETHING the devs did that made things better- or goodness forbid we wind up having a streamer or whatever do something that makes the community explode and suddenly it makes a lot more money. Okay, cool. Then the next quarter comes along, and they don't have something just as big lined up. The shareholders want more money like last time, because number must go up. What happens when they don't have something like that lined up? Or.... something that won't be as big or even bigger...? They have to come up with a new strategy. Because number Must Go Up. It MUST. If it doesn't, it's a failure and it's time to move on to the next, because otherwise how will you earn more money? So.... they come up with ways to squeeze more money out of what they already have. And eventually, there's nothing left, or the goodwill the company had is gone, because the players leave. Then.... the cycle repeats. Another company is put between the two stones to get the tiniest bit more out of them until there's nothing left but paste. And then it's on to the next one. Over and over, round and round it goes. It's not even just games, it's just what this channel's about and relevant to the subject at hand. It's so depressing to think about. There's things that can be done, but I'm not smart enough to come up with it and I am nowhere NEAR brave enough to do what I CAN think of, because those aren't good choices either.
Apex also lets your earn in-game currency you earn to buy the stuff. I got about half way through the items to the death box before having to spend a single Apex Coin (aka irl money currency). If you DON'T ever play, then yes, this is extreme.
Just wanted to add that I love you guys, but this was a very misinformed rant in general. None of the gameplay is locked behind a paywall, none of the fun stuff to do is behind a pay wall. The even skins aren't even in the normal store, they're contained under their own tab. And as far as "never done something like this before", there are literally events every few months that cost just as much. To be honest, if anything, there is more FREE stuff than normal.
I really don't understand spending so much in a f2p game or any game for that matter. If you have the money, sure you can do that, but there will be two major problems with that: 1. This tells developers that it works and they can charge even more money. 2. It starts to bleed into premium and singleplayer games as well, which is absolutely atrocious. I'm also wondering how much of the money is coming from kids who got their hands on their parent's credit card information. I'm speaking from experience since my dad got a nearly one thousand dollar bill for gems in a game my little brother played. He never got the money back...
It's disgusting how these games have turned into gambling in the past decade. People who prey on the weak should be ashamed and out of a job, instead they're CEO or exec of some big name company.
uh... this is the standard structure and pricing for pretty much all collection events this game gets, which is now at 2 per season. Each one releases 24 new cosmetics (25 with the heirloom or prestige skin), which can be all collected for the generous asking price of $250 - $300. And the best thing: they allow broken legends with no heirloom (Seer, for example) dominate the meta and ruin everyone's good time for seasons on end with zero nerfs. Once he finally gets the heirloom, Respawn nerfs him into the ground and his pick rate drops from 12% to 1%. GOOD OL' RESPAWN AND EA!!!
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I would love it if you could cover activision's patents. At this point I feel like im just shadowbanned as most my comments on channels seem to be hidden needing to sort by newest.
13:56 Please! go over the activision patents. It will make your brain think this exact thing, but on overdrive.
I have complete faith in EA. Complete faith that they will screw us up at every opportunity
To be fair, EA does have the patience to rope in players by pretending to be nice for a while, THEN they screw them.
Its not that they screw us up. But its that they screw up and we get screwed as part of the process.
Full faith in the works of EA.... which is why I stay away from them.
@@PropaneWP yeah. then when they get hit back huge backlash and bad press they'll quite down to show they "learned" their lesson and try to win our trust again and do it all over again.
if you can trust in anything it is the existence of human greed
Imagine if gamers had the will power to just leave a negative review, turn the game off and not turn it back on to make a point, stop giving these companies so much of your time and money when they dont respect you as a customer.
A large percent of the player bases of these games are casual players. Not people in the "gamer" community. It will never go away. Better off just moving on to something else if it's a deal breaker at this point.
Why I do not play ANY free to play game , they are all just money grabbing rubbish simple as that , I will not even install any free to play game
@@Coroner_ZA even game like Path of Exile?
@@mengkudu9478 Never bothered to install it and never will , like I said if I see free to play i stay clear btw also did not buy that rubbish d4 , I do play last epoch and grim dawn etc tho , cant wait for the new grim dawn expansion at least they treat their customers correctly , instant buy from me
I don't think all f2p games are in the same boat. A lot of them are though. Something to keep in mind is, if you play a f2p game and you are f2p or a small spender, you are the content for the whales. You essentially play into the power fantasy for the people with no self control spending stupid amounts of money.
I’m guessing he hasn’t seen the other events on Apex Legends. Every event requires you to spend 200-400$ to get the advertised heirloom. They literally took the mobile game price models and applied it to Apex.
Yeah but that was just the apex players. FF having few mobile games with such an egregious monetization scheme so bringing the mmo/single player rpg players is a large culture shock. So they’re the ones that are p***ed
Can you blame them? it's stupidly profitable, vote with your wallets people jeez.
@@Electronica27 we're past that. we're so poor that they cater to another clientele that has the money to do this and will do this every single time.
@@Electronica27the problem with that is that those with no money don't get to vote.
@@Electronica27 they’re lookin for whales. Norm folks are too smart to pay those prices lol. Most I buy from Apex is the battle pass.
It's EA, what were you expecting?
Square is getting a cut of the proceeds
Nah it’s respawn not EA I’m so tired of people blaming publishers because of shit developers. Respawn fps division is a joke
It's not EA, it's capitalism, the constant need for growth
It's capitalism, what were you expecting?
@@acev3521It's definitely EA. The game is actually good but EA is EA. EA has always been trash
Im a father of 3 and my oldest is 8. He loves fortnite and you are exactly right. He literally gets super excited when the store changes and just assumes all games have battle passes. I was playing Lies of P and had the santa hat on and he was like "why did you buy that? I thought you didn't like buying skins?" 😂 I have tons of examples of horrible manipulative examples from Roblox. Some of the games in Roblox literally try and trick you into spending your "Robuxs" or whatever there called. It's just disgusting to me.
you need to have a serious conversation with your son. no, 8 years old is not too young. if you dont open the door on this topic soon he'll be a gambling addict before you know it
My son play Roblox and god I hate that game for how much they put behind pay walls. He’s always saying that he needs robux for some skin or character. Me knowing he will only be interested in the game for 30 more mins I tell him we don’t spend real money on a game. He’s only 5 and doesn’t really understand how scummy some of these games are. I really hate what gaming has become. I remember back when I was growing up you wanted a new skin or cheat. Beat the game in a certain time or do something special or put in the cheat. These days things like that cost money and it’s retarded.
Hello "father of 3", fornite is rated T
Why are you still using emoticon at your age?
@@ZETA14.88u from earth? Even grandmas on facebook use them.
My daughter is 12 and she gets mad if she sees what she think is a skin on my character in any game because I don't allow her to get robucks. I have spent tons of time trying to explain the marketing and micro transactions to her. To the point where I made a power point about it. My son thinks all games have micro transactions and chapters like poppy play time and bendy.
It's definitely a scary time for video games.
It's impossible for big companies to not mess with a winning formula because they rather make billions because "There a sucker born every minute.".
And a sucker born every minute = roughly a sucker turning 18 with disposable income every minute.
That's the issue... there will always be an influx of suckers with enough money to pay for this nonsense, perpetuating this vicious cycle.
Where they end up is partially based on what video game advertisements they receive (as well as a grain of chance).
And those who leave this vicious cycle have already given them their money. And I'll admit: I was one of those long ago.
"They don't want to make a lot of money, They want to make all the money."
I can't help but notice there's still a dollar in your pocket. Allow me to introduce myself.
A fundamental issue of late stage capitalism is that growth is valued much higher than profit. Market routinely rewards a business that makes $1 in 1st year, $100 in 2nd year and goes bankrupt in 3rd much more than a business that will bring $20 year by year forever. If profit is very reliable but doesn't grow it means that the company is not a good *investment* and kills its market valuation because investors care much more about stock value than dividends. Sure, constantly pushing for more and more profit will inevitably kill any business, but that doesn't matter because when project A collapses they just move to project B and rake in the money that exponential early growth brings. Modern capitalism does not give a crap about anything but growth which is literally mathematically unsustainable.
These companies target children, that's 100% correct. I'd likely have fallen for this at age 18, but thanks to Skyrim showing me Bethesda's true colors, I now have zero interest in paying for trash like this.
Some of these kids have way less self respect than I did when I realized. They'd spend 1000 bucks just so they can pretend they're cool.
As the parent of a young child the inundation of marketing she experiences on a daily basis is already terrifying. Thanks for including the thought in the discussion.
Same. I'm going to have to teach my kids about the dangers of fomo.
Look on the bright side, all that marketing at a young age might actually make them more or less immune to it at a later age cause they have learn to look past it.
@@B_Machine Hurry up and do it before they get to old to learn.
I once had a discussion with a cousin of mine, who is a parent. She went to say that her child was not allowed to play The Forest, but was instead allowed to play Fortnite.
I told her that if it was my child, i'd rather have them play The Forest. As she went on to ask why, I said it was because of the monetization and marketing in the game. Fear and violence is not something children should experience, but getting hooked on spending money on virtual skins to look cool in a game is far worse imo.
As she (and most parents) are not into the gaming sphere, or industry at all, I don't think she realized just how exploited we are these days.
And it gets worse every year too. They keep changing up their tactics, creating new ways to hook people when the old ways are seen through and getting ignored. @Yock1980 said that children might get immune to marketing, but they are going to be immune to only particular kinds of marketing at that point, new marketing techniques still have enough of a chance to drag them back into the spending loop. And not to mention the spending addiction they can develop at said young age, they can internally start believing that looking cool and fresh is all that matters, nothing else. That will change of course later, but those children will struggle with it for quite a while.
just dont have kids lol
I dont understand why casinos have so many regulations in place but if your giving someone a virtual item and not giving them money then it's basically unregulated?
It triggers the same part of the brain, its highly addictive for some people and these games may be targeted for younger audiences. Like gambling in the uk is 18+ but Apex is 16+ ?
Apex is rated T in the USA so 13+ but you know kids bypass that all the time in games
Because Video Games is a bigger business then gambling in the US and prob the world, they have good lobbyist who block any attempt to stop this. You know just like Guns , and Liquor and tobacco
That's the ultimate problem I have with it. It isn't gambling because you can't re-sell the item, but as a consumer, I WOULD BE BETTER OFF having a way to get my money back in some form! Even if I can't get all of it back, at least letting me recoup some of the costs would be, by definition, better than the current system of duplicates. So this idea that "we aren't gambling" is actually worse than if they admitted they were and either prevented duplicate item drops or offered a way to sell them back.
Weirdly the key differences are the inability to cash out and typically you are also unable to directly earn money from the games(streaming does not count). You also have to start with the actual purpose of those gambling laws. I don't know and it will probably take too much effort to research but they probably don't exist for the reasons we are assuming. A lot of them probably came into being due to some inciting incident. Laws regarding lotteries and sweepstakes are probably more relevant.
We could argue about prices all day, but I think we can all agree that paying for a chance at something is scummy and should be illegal. You don't pay for a chance at getting a phone, a console or a pc, but it's somehow becoming the norm in gaming
It's gambling full stop and needs to be regulated and taxed at unprofitable rates to get the companies to stop if not just made illegal, where the profit stops, the corporate interest stops.
@@michaellane5381 it's really weird that this is allowed to go on with how much politicians deride video games
I agree. Gacha is gambling when players are paying money for rolls/pulls.
@@FOF275 the problem is the ones who talk shit just want an excuse, not to solve the issue, and the other side is either too old to understand the problem or too focused on other things.
@@michaellane5381 unfortunately that's true
Whats worse is... none of the skins or in-game purchases ever amount to anything. In ten years... nobody will even be playing apex.
Even if people would still be playing Apex in 10 years nobody would give a crap about a 10 year old skin.
@@pm_me_ur_gluons yeah digital items are pointless if you can't resell them. 10 year old CSGO/Rust skins are worth a lot
5 at most and nobody cares about a last season skin
I used to hold Respawn in high regard. That was of course before they decided to bury their legacy and fall in line with the rest of EA's properties.
They were fine before Apex. If only Titanfall hadn't of died
@@SageOfLimitlessHandsIt died because they let it. They could have just kept working on it, instead they didn't even bother to fix it when it broke.
You realize that Respawn has NO say on how any of this works its basically the Heads at EA who decide who pays for what and how.
@@AlbertoMartinez765 Then they should leave. By playing ball they're part of the fucking problem.
@@Seoul_SoldierI hope you understand that business is not that simple. To think that a studio can just break away on a whim is a fantasy - Bungie getting away from Activision took many years and legal entanglements, and the people in charge at Respawn who aren't from EA likely don't have the money, means or desire to attempt something like that, or else they would have already.
Well, if the players feel betrayed, then they need to show itvwith their wallets and or by quitting. Affecting a company’s bottom line is the only thing they’ll listen to, not internet ‘outrage.’ 🙂👍
That's the unfortunate thing. The only wallet that matters are the one who don't feel betrayed because they have that much disposable income. Remember, MTX doesn't cater to a wide playerbase of a 100,000 people spending ten bucks here and there, it caters to that whalebase of people with addiction problems and/or huge amounts of disposable income spending a thousand bucks here and there.
@@JohnDoe-wg9sy Yeah. Sadly, the "Vote with your wallet and don't buy it to show you don't support them" philosophy simply doesn't apply with these jerks. 10k people who don't buy are simply people who don't vote at all. Then that one guy that buys it, has a vote that counts for 100 people.
Trouble is, the people who play and care about these things are SIGNIFICANTLY less then the casual community who just "clicks button to play". And those guys could not care less about these things. They wouldn't be caught dead watching one of these videos. And then, there are the whales.
The company in charge of these games literally does not care about us and has no incentive to do so. We could all stop playing tomorrow and they'd just be waving us goodbye whit a grin on their face and all their wads of cash in their pockets.
This has been the state of gaming for the last 10 years. They have already won and we've just been coping since then. Welcome to reality.
"Guys just vote with your wallets!"
One whale is like worth an infinite amount of players in a FTP game. This has been proven time and time again to not work.
Damned if you do damned if you don’t I’m afraid they’ll just lay off everyone and your mother there.
Activision didnt listen to either. The patents keep getting made.
Player: "This live service game wont stop pushing lootboxes. Its so scummy. I thought this game would be awesome"
The internet: "You must be new here."
I mean, yes, but also...for cosmetics that don't influence gameplay? You either pay it or not, i don't see how that matters tbh.
It's a slippery slope. They're trying to market to the gullible fresh children that are getting into gaming. The problem is how bad they're getting. Monetization systems like this have gotten people evicted from their homes, and have gotten children that have their parents' credit cards to draw their entire life savings out for one game. And sure, you can claim it's the responsibility of parents to not allow their kids to squander their cash, I agree that parents don't parent anymore and they need to. But then there's people that are psychologically inclined to be manipulated. They can't help it.
@@MorfsPrower Gambling addictions are very prevelant within the gaming community. There's also constant pressure to have the best drip and if someone has an edge, it might be the difference between you being popular in your guild, social group, or online. Social media is constantly pushing people to be competitive in things that are easily monitizable.
@@heavymetallabrat Competition can be healthy, but not when you're imbalancing your entire life just to show people you're better or fancier than everyone else.
I have a perfect example. Currently, my best friend is playing Nikke Goddess of Victory, and before you say that game is predatory, which it is, he has every rollable character in the game and hasn't paid a CENT. Comparatively, he's been actively competing for the #1 spot in certain leaderboards of the game against one very specific whale whom keeps shilling out hundreds of dollars a week to try and stay on top, which my friend bests in half an hour by being a combination of scarily smart and equally scarily lucky. It's truly sad that people have to validate themselves by competing with their wallet alone, rather than the skill, effort, and honest luck he employs on a nigh-daily basis. He doesn't need money to win. He HAS money to spare, considering his two biggest hobbies are Magic and Warhammer 40K Tabletop...
There's a lot of people out there with serious problems, desperate for attention and validation, but what does any of that matter when inevitably the servers will shut down one day? A gamer is ultimately as good as their skill, not how much money they have in the bank. They can't parse the fact that having to pay 1000 dollars to style on others is ultimately both pathetic and a sign of an underlying condition.
Cosmetics are sad, but they're also an entirely different beast from P2W, which is antithetical to gaming as a whole. Why play a game you beat by paying 12k? You can try defending that, but all answers to it are forms of cope.
@@rickmel3883 One can only hope.
Did people forget that in 2019 there was a huge controversy over the legendary items in Apex Legends that would take over 1000yrs to "Earn" in game, and the devs called people who weren't willing to shell out some cash to get ingame stuff "Freeloaders" "Thieves" and many other names?
I'm sure that's how all the other companies view "free-to-play" players who don't spend anything in-game.
I wonder if they would ban players who do nothing at all in their game except take up their bandwidth and server space.
When 60% or more of a 70+ gigabyte game is dedicated to a cash shop, the industry has gone way too far into greed. That kind of configuration is not based on realistic attempt to fight inflation. Its based in greedy ceos treating players as spare wallets. Cash shops combined with loot boxes, which is nothing more than gambling.
FF7 has a permanent place in my heart as the first RPG I played as a child. There were others before it, but I had no idea what I was doing in them. but when I played FF7, my eyes opened to how combat works in these games and how amazingly cool the story can be in video games in general. I played that game so obsessively that I did so without a memory card. For the newgen - think not being able to save your game at all in Skyrim, or God of War, or Dark Souls, etc. I didn't care. If I died I was like "Oh well, time to restart!"
In one sitting, I got all the way to Costa del Sol. Along the way I even defeated the Midgard Zolom because I didn't know I could just run away from it. I'm sure those who played the original FF7 just had their eyes widen at that one. That's just how dedicated I was as a kid. And when I had to go to bed that night? Turned it off. No save. Restarted the next day. (sidenote, a friend realized my plight and gave me a memory card eventually rofl)
I stated all this just to say that even I, a huge, gigantic fan of FF7 (including FF7R), who has fantasized being Cloud and wielding the buster sword (A big stick) while defeating monsters (trees in a nearby forest), am not in ANY way interested in this horrible, FOMO-filled, whale-baiting, greed-driven event. In fact maybe I'm too big of a fan, because seeing Apex characters cosplaying as FF7 characters made me grimace. They look terrible (Barret lookalike is the most passable, but barely).
Have you played FF7 remake? It is pretty good. I bought a PlayStation4 for it a few years ago. Never regretted that decision. It's a hard game. The story is cut short within Midgard, but with middle story stuff added. FF7r is on PC now, so you don't need a console to play it.
@@rremnar I kinda went on a rant above so you probably missed it but yeah I played FF7 Remake and enjoyed it quite a bit too. Friend got me it for PS4 but I got it for myself when it hit PC. Planning on playing through it before Rebirth hits PC as well.
i don't get why people like it so much, i've played since FF I and for me it is just another one on the list, maybe it is a westerner thing, VI is way better and it was a 16bit game.
@Tamachii12 6 was brilliant but 7 was so massive because it was the First FF game on playstation and was many first FF game, also atleast in the west there's a large group of people who only like FF7 but aren't fans of the other games in the series.
This is partly why these brand deals make less sense to me from the brand’s perspective. People love FF7. Why tarnish your brand by having it associated with predatory gambling?
I can understand FOMO for physical goods, something you can actually touch and hold in your hands, something you can keep on a shelf or in a closet and look at in 10 or 20 years and (maybe) let it become a collectable that gains value over time. I will NEVER understand FOMO for digital cosmetic goods in games, especially Free to play ones that are guaranteed to be shut down at some point in the future, and once that happens you lose access to that digital skin or whatever it is
Preach
I can understand FOMO for digital goods, something you see for the majority of the time that you are playing a game which can be 2+ hours a day. I can't understand wanting a physical good to look at if you only glance at it for a minute a day, if that. I will never understand people buying an Artbook especially when it's guaranteed to deteriorate over time and have a high chance of getting lost.
I don't particularly agree or disagree with your statement, just giving a counter point that physical goods can be worthless clutter either way.
@@kapkap5157There's a difference between digital goods, which is guaranteed to disappear after some years, and a physical good which is guaranteed to NOT disappear (unless you lost it or broke it, even if it's broke at least you still have the item though in pieces.) + it's physical that like OP said, can touch, feel, and whatever the hell you do with it.
that's what OP is prolly saying.
I’m just over here happily modding SP games wondering why on earth anyone would pay for a cosmetic they can’t own…
Apex Legends: Should we add a $240 microtransaction?
Star Citizen: Hold my beer...
There's nothing Micro about 240 USD.
At least the devs of star citizen don't try and obfuscate their prices behind fake currencies, rng and battlepasses.
In fairness to SC, while I haven't played it - at least the various insane mAcro-transactions has a promise of some function. The massive "Reclaimer" in SC costs about $400. You'd get one of the better heavy fighters for $240. Or even the "Constellation Aurora", which is a decent sized ship.
...too rich for me, but still - you get at least some form of improvement in game. ^^
They should really change to Macro at that point, anything above 10 dollars. Even regulate that stuff, because there is no way anything that high should be ignored by any bank processing.@@MisterZimbabwe
CIG doesn't call them micro nor macro transactions, they're "contributions," because the entire company is literally crowd funded.
45$ gets you access to Star Citizen and every ship in game. I know this is a shocker because of you don't actually follow the game and only pay attention to the click bait tabloids it would make sense that you wouldn't know that.
If you do care about the game and are interested in supporting CIG, rather than obfuscating what you can get behind a loot box mechanic, they actually let you get what you want.
Space Tomato(a YTer that follows SC mostly) recently had a Bethesda YTer on and they did a podcast type thing, it was a good listen, definitely recommend.
God, I feel bad for the next generation, this is gross. This doesn't appeal to me at all, but these kids are being programmed more than the games are.
dont feel bad for them, fk em, this started back in 2006! with the success of the oblivion horse armor
The more I see how big companies treat their customers/players the more grows my inner sadness and anger of how successful they can do it and in deep mourning I see how great Indie games didn't get the attention which they deserve. Because I bought games which amused me and gave me a fair amount of fun and sometimes it was really cheap so I felt being respected as a customer but the developer of some of these 5 to 8 year old games couldn't pay their bills so that the developers didn't exist anymore...
Honestly that's the reason i often stick to single player (focused) modes/games(think nms, subnautica ect.)
The first one is free and then.... Isn't that how drug dealers work? 🤔
My entire monthly paycheck for a priviledge for smacking virtual people with left half of space shuttle door.
No thanks, i'll rather have food, water and electricity this month.
I was a huge FFVII fan back on the day and this event is an insult to my memories.
If you think that's an insult, you should see final fantasy ever crisis.
I know, right? The Playermodels even look super awefull. Im glad i dont play Live Service Games. They are not worth my time nor my money.
@@BloodCat2142bro you know that most apex players don't even pay a single penny to play the game...
@@Jubafree Yea like in most of these games. But those who do, especaly the whales, destroy it for everyone else.
And im not telling anyone what to play and what not. Its their desicion. I just sad that i dont like Live Service Games or Free 2 Play games and that i dont waste my time nor money on them. Oh and the models are super ugly.
*edit for some typos
@@Jubafree It is incredibly rare to see people using default or free skins. When I do I instantly suspect they are a cheater or a smurf. "Most players" certainly spend. I don't even know anyone in our Discord who doesn't at least have one heirloom, even if they mostly bought it using crafting mats, crafting mats are rarely free.
Titanfall died for this btw
Long live the king!
I've mostly quit playing mainstream games due to all the terrible changes the industry has made to everything. Only thing I play these days are indie games for the most part.
Games like Stardew Valley and Terraria sold once and keep updating for free for... 8 and 13 years respectively. For a sub 30$ price. And new games like Diablo 4, anything related to sports games and stuff, the biggest names in the industry, are somehow not profitable enough? Despite 70$ entry fee and microtransactions at every corner? The problem, in my opinion, is that hundreds of employees need to slave away to generate the revenue to payout leeches like Bobby Kotick, and the other half for the shareholders. This isn't sustainable, shouldn't be sustainable and "games" like Fortnight and Apex feel more like content engines churning out recognizable pictures of other, better franchises.
That's actually brings up a good point, undoubtedly people like Kotick are leeches but the size of a team it takes to make modern AAA games and the locations they are based at make it so even with a $70 price tag the product still can't make money. VS the $30 small team or solo developer living in a reasonable price area make is so a few good sales can keep them going for decades.
So kind of a point of diminishing returns type deal.
What bothers me most about this is that Titanfall, and I refuse to call it "Apex Universe", has great lore that you can build really good stories on. And they just...don't.
This right here
Investors with big funds are more informed than ever before. They don't want to just make money, that's easy. They want to make x amount of profit in a given amount of time, or they may as well have their money elsewhere. So the result is micro transactions everywhere to win those investors and be able to sell stock to the next sucker before you're stuck holding a growthless bag of money.
@@lackinganame7857 to be fair AAA games manage their finances very poorly in the aspect of money/quality. Having hyperdetailed environments, gpu-melting particle effects, full body motion capture for every minor NPC affects the opinion of players much less than having well designed gameplay loop. Yet vast majority of effort and resources is being pushed into improving the eyecandy rather than making games that are more interesting to play. Breakthroughs in terms of approach to game design happen very rarely and when they do all AAA developers just start to make the same game over and over trying to compete in technical fidelity. Like, what was the most recent big shift in AAA? Battle royale I guess which reached mainstream what, like 8 years ago. No truly new AAA projects came out since then.
24:05 "...they're gonna start thinking this sort of thing is normal."
It's already normal. I don't know why people are surprised anymore.
Am I the only person who remembers the 150-200 Axe with this same MTX system back in 2019? I don't really understand what has changed other than it being an item people actually want. Did people also forget that Respawn called consumers "FreeLoaders" and the person didn't even get fired? When someone shows you who they truly are, believe them.
Buster sword only cost me like 35$. When I bought ff7 reunion on sale and Zack got Angeals sword in chapter 5
Hold on... 240$? Can't you just buy an irl cosplay outfit for that at that point? Or even a professionally 3d printed and painted artwork of your favorite character?
How are you going to flex on other players with your REAL items?
That is the logic i fail to guess why people don't get. When they ask like $60 for some gun skin etc i really don't understand how anyone sees that as a good value when he can buy 3-4 games to even 10-15 on sale with that etc.
How can a little skin be worth as much as many full time experiences with full worlds?
What is anyone thinking buying that?
no, you can get it cheaper
And if you get bored of cosplay, pretty soon they'll creep prices up enough where competitive shooter video games will start to approach the price of going outside and getting into competitive shooting irl.
@@thomasracer56 nonono friend- you don't understand, there's value in not having to go outside and shoot the guns yourself. You have to manage risks and what's worse you could get injured. For the more expensive than irl shooting price, you can experience the joys in your very own home!
That is why I simply will not play these games. All of us need to stop engaging with games using these money-sucking tactics if we want them to go away. Otherwise the industry will continue to be dominated with money first not fun first people. This is how Electronic Arts went from Trip Hawkins' dream of a place for 'electronic artists' to show off their work to....what EA is today. We have to start saying 'NO' in meaningful numbers.
So happy that i can not get into competition FPS type games that i never played Apex.
One commonality with all these free 2 play games is the UI is illegable, 5 different currencies, 99 things on my screen and 8 different tabs with more information on, I went back on fortnite after not playing since the first year and I couldn't figure out how to get into a match for a not insignificant amount of time. As always with these things, obtuseness and obscurity should tell you something.
Life feels slightly more liberating when you're not addicted to live-service games.
You don't lose any money being addicted to apex you lose money if you want certain skins to show off
@@Jubafree Yeah. And those types of issue usually starts **With** an addiction.
@@JubafreeThose are intertwined like the threads of a rope. The longer you play a game, the more likely you are to spend. It's just stats.
This isn’t even new to Apex Legends, this is how literally all of their special cosmetic events have been. I forget what they usually call them but it’s when characters get their super special “prestige” weapon skins, you have to usually spend $200 dollars every time if you want the stuff.
Gaming feels more like a casino at this point.
A casino at least deceives you into believing you're getting paid.
Then you’re playing the wrong games.
Only if you still play AA/AAA garbage. The Indie scene is mostly still fine.
EA didn’t want Activision/Blizzard to take their #1 spot in scamming their customers. Glad to see them claiming their crown!
I bought skins in Apex without thinking about it, 4 years later i realized I spent over $1000 on a GAME! I haven't bought any skins since and my thought was "why play dress up in a video game when i can buy clothes in real life"
Just think this is what we get instead of Titanfall 3 so sad I feel bad for all the people that didnt play when Halo Reach was alive where u could get all of the cosmetics just by playing how far the gaming industry has fallen
We will never see another Titanfall game as long as Apex is making a lot of money. Takes less effort to make cosmetics.
This is why I've had to quit these online live service games. A co-worker got me to try The Finals and I can just feel that it's going to get worse with transactions over time. I don't even want to try a game even if it starts out fun.
You dodged a bullet there. Nexon's been known to monetize their games through hell and back and when the money and playerbase dries up, the games get shut down really quickly. I'm also concerned that when The First Descendant comes out later this year, it'll have something similar happen to it.
It's been bad for a long time, this is just the most egregious event.
Each of their heirloom events have costed roughly $160 to get the heirloom.
That doesn't even look like the Buster Sword. It's like a bootleg Buster Sword.
It’s ethical as it’s “what the market will bear”. If it’s overpriced, it will be discounted fast enough. And none of these cosmetics have any intrinsic value. So it’s all a waste of money in the end but each to their own. No skin off my nose if someone wants to spend $200.
I'm not sure which is honestly worse. The companies that pull this kind of crap. Or the people that go on and fall for this kind of crap and buy it again, and again, and again.
If that exist, that mean it works sadly...
Some people are rich so they don't care, but some are just ruining themselves...
Exactly why I quit playing after Season one. Even though I started playing back in beta. Once they started doing "seasons" the writing was on the wall.
Not surprised by this. Live service games, like Apex, really really want that money. That said, if you want to see how to do a themed event (or as we call them in FFXIV, a crossover event) just look at FFXIV. You don't need to spend $240 for a chance at a cosmetic.
I dipped out of Apex around Season 7, the game was already starting to become more convoluted and monetized then, just gotten worse with each season
The more they tighten their grip the more players will slip through their fingers.
I'd actually pay 60 bucks - an entire game for the sword. I'm not willing to Gamble for it though, I won't be even opening up Apex because of this
Bro I wouldn't even wear that sword even if I get it for free. It takes too much screen space and it is actually a disadvantage to wear it.
I think this is the only ad the Ill actually use. Been meaning to get back into coding because I hated it back when I learned in college.
Honestly this about what I'd expect from any collab with Square Enix.
Live service games just don't hold my attenetion anymore. It's just so apparent with 90% of them that priorities 1-8 were maximizing profits and like 13b was creativity and innovation in gameplay
The predatory mobile monetisation hand book is wide open on their table.
Apex doesn't need to do collabs to get engagement, all they have to do is add rewarding player progression systems, upgrade the servers, fix enemy audio, make ranked rewarding, and most importantly FIX MATCH MAKING.
Apex has been my favourite game since launch but I have stopped playing. The match making is so bad its near impossible for me to have fun fair games. We used to have discord group full of Apex players and now none of us play because of the match making. Getting relentlessly humiliated by far better players is frustrating and exhausting and now the game just isn't fun any more.
I find it so sad that gotcha, and live services, online stores. skins for billions is a thing.
The reason there is so much of it, its because someone looks at it, and think I need that. And then buys it.
And that is the sad part. Why are people buying it. Even if you have the money, you gain nothing from it. Its sort of like NFT's. But more than that. because of how AAA gaming companies abuse players, and in many ways have the ability to do so because of weak laws. Buying skins, and lootboxes and what not. Is enabling them to make it worse and worse, making games worse and worse. So buying this stuff. Is self harm for those that enjoy the games they buy them for.
And that is why its sad. Why are people doing it. There are no good reason.
Not even if you are the child of a billionaire and dont have to work for money, and can just play all day spending your parents money. And use that as an excuse. Because the action of doing it, is also hurting you. because it makes games worse and worse. And companies more and more abusing, releasing less and less complete games, that is just build to hide a gambling machine.
Sad. The only reason its a thing. Is because more people engage with it, than people that dont.
While it might only be 10-30% of people here who engage in talking about it. All those who never read about a game, or what a company do. Is not on reddit all of that. There 80% just pay and pay, until there is nothing for them to play.
$240 for some pixels in an old game that may be replace by an "Apex 2" anytime now? No thanks, Also $240 is 4 new high end games(Dragons Dogma 2 is around the corner as well as a few other decent sounding experiences) or a bunch of probably better enjoyment indie games. Some possibly better things to spend on, upcoming soon: Helldivers 2, STALKER 2, Eiyuden, Manor Lords, Homeworld 3, Nightingale, Earth of Oryn, Once Human, Banishers, Animal Well, etc.
$240 is also groceries for an entire family for a couple months sounds greedy. "EA it's in the game" JK it's in the overpriced DLC packs
I literally thought about playing Apex Legends because of the FF colab but not after seeing how greedy that is.
EA managed to make Overwatch’s monetization look super generous.
If players felt betrayed, they'd stop being players.
i have never once blamed a company for charging people 240 dollars for a simple skin... people have always been stupid to spend money on something so outrageous. And i will never fill bad tha they will have to eat bowls of ramen and ice for 5 months. common sense isnt that common
Loot boxes need to be removed from all games, as they are no different than gambling. The last I checked gambling has an age limit well above the average age of gamers. Having cosmetics is fine but only if you pay for what you want and you get want you pay for, not a chance at said cosmetic.
@@rickmel3883 Nice way to be apart of the problem. You do realize kids can purchase pre-paid CC's right. So your point is just dumb.
@@rickmel3883 Anything to justify your point right. Kid's as young as 14 can have a job. But it doesn't matter where they get the money they can do it.
I stopped playing Apex years ago, figured I’d pop my head in to see how it’s going, and I can’t say I’m surprised
I fell into a gacha hole once and what I quickly learned from existing in the community is that most of the time, the "whales" aren't typically rich people. They obviously have access to a certain amount of wealth, but are for the most part just normal people caught up in predatory game design.
On the upside they made the decision to wipe it from my Steam lib easy. Thanks, EA!
The myth of infinite growth will be the downfall of many things we love.
This got posted on some of the final fantasy subreddits, some people pointed out that for the cost of getting everything from this crossover, you can literally get a collector's edition of final fantasy 7 rebirth with a Sephiroth statue and you would still have money spare.
Most importantly, you'd get a functional buster sword.
Uuuh, that's so scummy. They give you discounts for the first few so that those are gone you are "too deep to stop".
To be fair, I don't really give a shit about cosmetic stuff. I much rather have a $1m skin than being able to beat someone because you spent $100 for power. The only problem with pushing the envelope is that eventually the greed gets out of hand and ruins potentially good games.
I've not hated "gamers" more in my entire life.
EA what did you expect? Surprised they don't accept organs as down payment.
Organs are too cheap for them, obviously.
Never could get in this game, when I see that characters are locked behind paywall I jumped out never looked back, same for rainbow six siege, and I even brought that one and regretted.
God... i thought it was impossible for me to feel disgusted by this kind of stuff. But now i realized that nothing matters anymore. Everything i loved is either dead or dying.
It's been liked up for a decade
Dont take that black pill bro
if people pay, there is no problem and its the only reason companies do it.
The same way that greed destroyed actual arcades, $0.25 per play to $0.50, to $1 and so on, the same corpo greed has infected home gaming, and wont stop till everything is a copy of something you've already played monetized to the hilt with full fomo tactics.
Infinte growth.
All I'm saying is you all doomed Titanfall 3 for that.
It's a game with one, maybe two game modes. Its driving factor is it's a battle royalle with Titanfall's parkour system and guns. They're expecting everyone to be interested in playing it all the time and buying all the cosmetics. That ain't happening. They're competing with too many other multiplayer shooters who do similar things, for one. And for two, not everyone is interested in multiplayer shooters.
As far as I'm concerned, they're just gutting their own game for profit at the expense of alienating or hurting their existing player base. Because every whale runs out of fat eventually.
I like your phrase “cash-extraction system”. It sounds like a parody genre of “extraction shooters”!
Two of my friends are well on their way to be whales in the moba smite. One of them has been banned once already and probably still spends money on it. To see them so excited for smite 2 knowing they will spend a large portion of their income on a free to play game is sad.
wow that % off tactic is disgusting....
Diablo Immortal has $300 skins in a gatcha called "Phantom Market". You have a chance of getting the epic skin, but that chance increases with every "roll". The full 10 rolls guarantees you the cosmetic, and for most people it will take the full 10. First roll is free, of course, with the price going up with every spin. Add the fact the Phantom Market is limited time and never repeats, and it gives serious FOMO.
I left apex due to the aggressive monetization model, and that was 3 years ago.
It's astounding how the Nier crossovers all *add* something to the game they're in - new fighters, stories, *content* - while the FFVII crossovers are always the most shallow stuff in the world and cost an arm and a leg.
I think it's because the Neir series devs actually want people to enjoy gameplay and not "enjoy gameplay" when they collab with another game.
Funniest part of this as a former whale in ESO, this system doesn't seem all that abusive (they have ones like this every month - they recycle each year though - and will cost you over 300 to not even get the best items). Then again, if you were to ask Apex players generally "would you pay $25 a month to play Apex and it came with free event loot?" I reckon most would say no way. Assuming that there is one major event like this per year that players would drop 300 on...
This is the Iron Crown event controversy all over again. The only thing that will make them stop is a loss in playercount or government intervention.
The Problem is it's not about being profitable any more, it is about the big Money. For a lot of this Mega Companys a profitable Brand is not enough, they don't want 10 healthy profitable games, they want 1 big cash cow that make Billions in the best case period (thats why they doubling down on live service trash). The only problem is its not a growing market any more. Every one who like live service games already playing them, and as much as they can afford and have time for. So any new live service game competes with all existing live service games. And the more live service games there, as wider spreads the playerbase, cause if there is a niche live service for everyone, everyone plays his niche game. But this also means the revenue for all gets down.
So by doubling down on live service games the market is becoming increasingly competitive and this also means the monetization gets heavier and more aggressive to squeeze every little penny out of the remaining players.
And they try hard to bait over gamer like me who play Singleplayer games mostly and once in a while a coop game over to there live service cash grab BS. But I can't care less about the games and even if I like a franchise, even if I am a Fan of a game series, if its live service it is a immediate and total skip for me.
I was expecting this. Actually, I'm surprised it took them this long. Fortnite has had a hard-on for licensed content and it's really paid off for them.
Plenty of other games/shows/movies for Apex to snag too. I predict we'll see more of this in the future, it's a huge win for them. Monetarily.
As for how they went about it? I give them a solid 2.3/10.
We've (de?)evolved to the point where kids will bully each other at school, if they dont have the newest skins.
EA really know how to manipulate their target audience.
It's interesting how ea handles Need for Speed compared to their other games. Nfs unbound has gotten a year of free updates and has had multiple seasons with a battle pass that's 100% free. The only extra monitization it has is a few dlc packs that have cosmetics. No loot boxes, no weird currencies. It's interesting that after nfs payback git so much backlash ea has pulled back monitization completely in nfs.
The fact that "The only extra monitization it has is a few dlc packs that have cosmetics." is a very positive sentence shows how far video game industry fell in the last 20 years.
Probably due to the fact that NFS Unbound bombed. The game wouldn't have a big enough player base for paid battle passes IMO.
what most people say is not "it's just money"... they say it's not pay to win, you don't have to buy it and you still get free packs with a chance for these items by playing. where is the issue? you don't have to buy. it doesn't give you an advantage. it's just cosmetic. it's not even pay to convenience. none of that. would never pay that much for any of those items. they aren't worth it.
also it's not the death box being 240 and the sword being 240. you get both and 100 other items for 240. it's our worth it? probably not. but it's it dishonest to pretend a single item is 240? yeah.
again you don't have to spend. it's all cosmetic and optional. don't pay 240 for stuff that isn't worth it.
While watching this, got an ad for Butterfingers (US candy) contest for FF7 Rebirth 😏
... Anyone else remember when Apex was held up as the one that did live services right? Good freaking God
Its not the money for me, its the principal, looking cool in games and having great gear was a status symbol back in the old days. It said im good at the game and ill be an asset to the party/group/community. Now it just says i have money.
I've had this realization that's finally clicked properly for me. It's just... the publically traded company system. Shareholders. It really is. I mean it's not *JUST* that. Obviously. But it's at the root of so many problems. Okay, so say we do what most people imagine is the right thing to do: vote with your wallet. We realize that all these companies have other companies they've absorbed, right? If we give up on one, what do you think will happen?
The company will get punished. They'll lay people off. Or the company just gets closed down and its members scattered to the winds. The talent that made it possible gets separated, with none of what they've built up to follow them. The IP that made them money might get shifted into something new, but it won't have the same soul, because it's been ripped out for money. Then, if that fails, which it usually does, the parent company moves on to the next one. And the next one. And the next one.
"They'll eventually run out!" we might say. Okay. But here's the thing: there's no shortage of people who want to make and play videogames. They're wholly unique in the entertainment field. There is literally nothing like playing a good game. And once you have a good game that people love playing, someone will offer them a lot of money. If that money is taken, and they're now part of a publically traded company, according to US law- which who are we kidding, it'd be a US company that buys them- it becomes a financial and legal obligation to increase revenue. Say you have a spike because of an event or just a new mode or just SOMETHING the devs did that made things better- or goodness forbid we wind up having a streamer or whatever do something that makes the community explode and suddenly it makes a lot more money. Okay, cool. Then the next quarter comes along, and they don't have something just as big lined up. The shareholders want more money like last time, because number must go up. What happens when they don't have something like that lined up? Or.... something that won't be as big or even bigger...?
They have to come up with a new strategy. Because number Must Go Up. It MUST. If it doesn't, it's a failure and it's time to move on to the next, because otherwise how will you earn more money? So.... they come up with ways to squeeze more money out of what they already have. And eventually, there's nothing left, or the goodwill the company had is gone, because the players leave. Then.... the cycle repeats. Another company is put between the two stones to get the tiniest bit more out of them until there's nothing left but paste. And then it's on to the next one. Over and over, round and round it goes.
It's not even just games, it's just what this channel's about and relevant to the subject at hand. It's so depressing to think about. There's things that can be done, but I'm not smart enough to come up with it and I am nowhere NEAR brave enough to do what I CAN think of, because those aren't good choices either.
Apex also lets your earn in-game currency you earn to buy the stuff. I got about half way through the items to the death box before having to spend a single Apex Coin (aka irl money currency). If you DON'T ever play, then yes, this is extreme.
Just wanted to add that I love you guys, but this was a very misinformed rant in general. None of the gameplay is locked behind a paywall, none of the fun stuff to do is behind a pay wall. The even skins aren't even in the normal store, they're contained under their own tab. And as far as "never done something like this before", there are literally events every few months that cost just as much. To be honest, if anything, there is more FREE stuff than normal.
This is part of why I don't consider it canon to Titanfall.
I really don't understand spending so much in a f2p game or any game for that matter. If you have the money, sure you can do that, but there will be two major problems with that: 1. This tells developers that it works and they can charge even more money. 2. It starts to bleed into premium and singleplayer games as well, which is absolutely atrocious.
I'm also wondering how much of the money is coming from kids who got their hands on their parent's credit card information. I'm speaking from experience since my dad got a nearly one thousand dollar bill for gems in a game my little brother played. He never got the money back...
It's disgusting how these games have turned into gambling in the past decade.
People who prey on the weak should be ashamed and out of a job, instead they're CEO or exec of some big name company.
Yeah, I don't regret taking a break from this game one bit (sad, cause I REALLY LOVED Apex 😔)
uh... this is the standard structure and pricing for pretty much all collection events this game gets, which is now at 2 per season. Each one releases 24 new cosmetics (25 with the heirloom or prestige skin), which can be all collected for the generous asking price of $250 - $300.
And the best thing: they allow broken legends with no heirloom (Seer, for example) dominate the meta and ruin everyone's good time for seasons on end with zero nerfs. Once he finally gets the heirloom, Respawn nerfs him into the ground and his pick rate drops from 12% to 1%.
GOOD OL' RESPAWN AND EA!!!
I still largely blame streamers and content creators for micro transactions. Hell, a streamer spend $100k in diablo immortal for content
Preach