Microtransactions (Gaming)

by Kahzgul, Sunday, May 29, 2016, 16:36 (2891 days ago) @ cheapLEY

My issue with microtransactions is that there's simply no consumer protections in place to prevent them from being abused. Some games are like Mass Effect 3, where the money from the microtransactions turned into free and massive expansions to the game, available to everyone, as they were completed. And every one of those expansions was awesome and a huge upgrade. Other games are like Clash of Clans where the entire game is designed to funnel you into microtransaction hell and take thousands and thousands of dollars from you.

Still more games are like Destiny, where microtransactions exist, but give you basically nothing tangible. SRL was rad but temporary. Live team support for an always online game should have been included in the original cost and not dependant on microtransactions. Crimson doubles and other "events" are pretty much just minor custom gametype tweaks that gave us something different to do, sure, but feel an awful lot like they took maybe a week to whip up (with most of that time just being the reskinned art for the tower, which was fully unnecessary). The latest PoE patch is the best thing we've gotten out of microtrans in Destiny, but even that is taking one of the worst parts of the game and making it marginally better... It's not nearly an expansion's worth of content.

And then there's hearthstone, where the game is free but funded by microtransactions. There's ample in-game currency to support F2P players, but also a very large time commitment for those players if they want to "be competitive."

For all of these things, the players have no means of guaranteeing that what they are buying is in any way worthwhile. There are no legal protections to force the company to deliver on its promises of "your microtransaction fees pay for future development." There's no recourse if you feel like you've been ripped off. And there's no guarantee that there isn't some kind of super shady algorithm working behind the scenes to figure out who is willing to pay money when RNG screwed and then RNG screw them over and over, or - conversely - give favorable outcomes to people who paid money over F2P players.

Until we can see the man behind the curtain or have a means of legal recourse when that man turns out to be evil, I refuse to participate in microtransactions. It's a completely unregulated market with captive audiences and that combination scares the piss out of me.