Paid loot boxes removed from Overwatch and Heroes of the Storm in Belgium - Sensationalist Headlines

Given the quality of the content and how often they release it, it makes sense that they'd want to make money off of some players post-release. This is much better than having the game die after a few years, in my opinion.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/activision-blizzard-profits-2017 Acti-Blizz also dumps a fuck ton of money into the League, and on top of that has deals with the likes of LEGO for sets based on the game, a deal with Twitch for streaming rights, and a deal with Disney/ESPN for rights to have League games on TV.

This is great, shows that they're willing to abide by the rules, they could alternatively have shut down the games there but they didn't, hopefully this means more of the world will make the same demands.

Well, that's just a corporation being a corporation. They're designed to make money for the shareholders, end of. In the case of games companies, an important part of making money (well, hopefully, depending on your business model) is keeping players happy, which the model in Overwatch does very well. It both makes money and doesn't destroy the game, and you're able to ignore the monetary aspect completely and still enjoy the full game.

Except that same thing(the job) prevents you from saving piddly shit.

Why do people get upset over lootboxes? They don't give you any in game advantage except for looking cool. Them being similar to trading cards gets brought up a lot, but thats pretty much exactly what they are. All you have to do is not buy the boxes if you get that upset over them.

RNG is bad.

I don't think it's so much the fact that they exist, but that they're so close to if not literally gambling, something which companies obviously don't want to be straight up honest about. They could just sell the skins outright, but put em behind a gambling system and you have certain people who are most likely prone to gambling addiction throw down huge amounts of money on them and the company makes tons more money than if they simply had sold them. Now exploiting the psychology of humans is a part of any kind of marketing strategy, but there's a blurry line between what's ethical and what is not and there are several arguments to be made that lootboxes in a lot of these cases has crossed that line.

Now if Blizzard was smart they'd make the contents of the lootboxes available for sale instead of just shutting down the whole thing, they'd still make money from people buying exactly what they want. Although maybe do this when lootboxes are completelly removed from the game everywhere, I wonder what hell would be unleashed if a single country was able to buy items directly instead of through lootboxes, suddendly the whole population of the game becomes belgian

Why is this getting dumbs? He's not excusing or justifying it he's just saying how it is and he's right, companies walk a fine line between making as much money as they can and appeasing their market in order to keep it. It's why we need regulations like this in order to disincentivize companies to grow so unaturally large and fuck over the consumers.

You're "able to enjoy the full game" but no, you can't ignore the monetary aspect entirely. Regardless of what you think about the cosmetics, they are a part of the game itself - they're content just as much as everything else is, and that content is affected in a negative way by the microtransactions. While you can 'ignore' them in the sense that you don't need to spend money to get them, you're still affected by it as your experience of that quite significant amount of content is going to be much slower, time consuming and more difficult to take part in because of them. The microtransactions cannot be ignored because they've already inherently affected the method of implemenation and players ability to make use of that content.

oh fuck off you wankers, this one was a long time coming

Thank you for understanding the meaning of my post. The content I'm referring to isn't the skins. It's the maps and new characters. I don't know about anybody that plays the game with skins as their primary goal. I don't really see the point, I play games to play the game and not to collect skins, so I only spend credits on those that I really want, which is free. Overwatch as a game would still be just as good without skins. Sure, they're fun collectibles, but they're just that; collectible. They're not supposed to drop into your lap. I'd really love to see some more performance-based cosmetics WoW style, but as it stands the system allows you to enjoy the full gamut of what the game has to offer without spending anything after initial purchase.

Obviously skins aren't the primary reason people are playing Overwatch. But it's a huge part of it. If the game was crap, it wouldn't be a big part of it. The game is good, and that in turn makes the cosmetics valuable, most people play the game because it's fun, and cosmetics make it even more fun, and the more fun the game is and the more people that play it the more important the cosmetics become. It's complicated and I don't know if I put it properly here but on one hand yes they're they're just fun collectibles, on the other hand because of the social status the game has, they're also a big part of the game itself, if not through gameplay than through it's artistic and cultural significance.

I suppose you have a point there. On the other hand, I feel like any prestige that comes with skins comes from the assumption that you played the game for a long time to earn the cool ones, so buying them really is just a shortcut to actually playing the game which, in my opinion, kinda defeats the point of the game itself. Then again, the items that have the most prestige (Well, had, since everyone and their grandmother is kitted out with them now) seem to be golden weapons which can't be purchased through any means.

You're right but the point I'm making isn't about prestige or anything, it's that the value that cosmetics have in a game such as overwatch are dependant on the state of the game itself and that lootboxes inflate that value by exploiting human psychological nature to an unethical extent.

I disagree, but I also see where you're coming from.

They could simply have a store that allows you to purchase the skin you want, but paying once to get what you want doesn't make as much as making you instead pay to open one, two, ten, twenty loot boxes until the RNG gives you what you want, and by then you've gotten far more than you would have on a one-time purchase. Lootboxes objectively exist to scam you. There's no way to defend them when there's ways to let the player buy them with real money that don't involve being scumbags.

Gee I sure would like a steady and reliable way to get currency at a decent rate Oh wait it's also RNG

You forget the minor detail that overwatch isn't a free to play game and that it already made billions from the game sales alone, that means not counting whatever fortune they've made with lootboxes. They Don't need to sell those lootboxes, their servers aren't at risk of shutting down if they dont' sell. Activision-Blizzard isn't a small indie developer.

That's nearly one half of the problems with Overwatch I have dealt with (at least in Belgium). The other half is hoping Blizzard stops doing drastic reworks of nearly every hero if someone so much as sneezes anything negative about them. Seriously, I mean I get that you can eventually get the skin you want through the free lootboxes, but not everyone has the many hours required to grind out on RNG in the vague hopes of getting that one skin you want. Between work, friends, and other games, the average person just has no other option but to buy the lootboxes if they want to get their skin without having to put in all the hours. Honestly, I'd just prefer if you could buy the skins outright. At least in that case, you're buying what you want instead of buying the chance to get what you want.

Yeah ok fair enough. I believe the system works better with Killing Floor 2.

I like poptarts.

The loot box system is manipulative. You also can't use the defense that buying boxes is merely a time saver because the RNG during limited events almost guarantees that you cannot get every skin without spending extra. Naturally not everyone will do this but Blizzard is relying on the minority that does to make bank. Even more troubling is that many of these 'whales' will be minors.

Give parents the ability to sue whenever their <18 year old kids gambles money on lootboxes and set precedent by letting them win against giant moneyhouse. Not that it's ever going to happen.

You are either lying or heavily exaggerating. Event-locked skins are close to mathematically impossible to get without paying or account sharing, if even with that.

i started playing OW again recently, and the one thing i wanted from this lazy-ass summer event was the ana skin. i opened up like two dozen lootboxes, and i'd say at least two thirds of the items i got were shitty sprays and player icons. i couldn't buy the skin using currency, as despite having enough coins saved up (1200~) to buy a legendary skin (1000), the new legendary event skins cost three times as much as a normal legendary, so luck was literally the only way i could possibly get the skin, since there is no way to consistently get coins and the amounts you get from lootboxes are pathetic. considering how miniscule the chance of unboxing the skin was from free boxes, literally the only feasible choice for getting it would be to pay out the ass for a ton of lootboxes. it's fucking absurd that a full-priced game nickel-and-dimes its customers for fucking cosmetics. this "but the lootboxes pay for the game!" shit is absurd. blizzard is not some struggling indie company. they have millions to waste on overwatch league. it's not like any of the money goes back into the game, as 90% of the content is just cosmetic shit to sell more lootboxes. even the gameplay content is restricted to limited-time events that are excuses to rush people to buy lootboxes

Overwatch might be a bit stingy with the credits and event skins, but I think Blizzard's microtractions on the whole tend to be among the least offensive in the industry. Heck, I still think TF2's "Mind if we just leave this locked crate that you can't open that might have a ~super rare and exclusive~ item sitting here? Also, enjoy your glacial drip of scrap." is one of the worst. Or how about STO having that AND both extortionate prices for powerful ships and cosmetics and timegating out the wazoo.

Hey at least they're not doing the whole "we believe in blah blah" they're just saying "yeah we dun get it but we do understand lawsuits so here you go"