In a move that feels straight out of the "Did they really say that?" playbook, Ubisoft now claims that microtransactions don't just boost revenue—they actually make games more fun.
Have you ever watched someone play Candy Crush? It’s full-on manipulative. “Oh, soo close! You almost managed to beat this level! Don’t let this chance escape! Just pay 5 gems and you can continue!”
There are certainly different kinds of players and some are more or less easily manipulated. But somebody who manages to stay rational wouldn’t play Candy Crush eitherway. If you tell them beforehand that they have to pay €200 to play this stupid minigame they’d ask you what you are smoking. But with microtransactions it’s quite easy to draw money out of somebody’s pockets.
People like that have as much agency over their microtransaction spending as a smoker has over their next cigarette or a gambling addict has over playing the next bet. The mechanics of microtransactions are often close to identical to the mechanics of gambling.
You’re using an extreme example which is fine and I agree that what Candy Crush is doing is clearly trying to exploit people. However, I do believe there’s a stark difference between that and the examples we were discussing.
Tbh, I don’t think that Candy Crush is an extreme example. On mobile this is more the norm than an outlier.
And even on PC, there are far worse examples, like games that allow you to resell lootbox content, which is literal gambling. It’s a scratch card with extra steps.
Literally the only point for microtransactions to exist (versus e.g. expansions/DLCs) is to split up the cost into smaller chunks so that players lose track of how much they actually spent.
“I’m not paying €50 for a handful of cosmetic items” becomes “I’m just paying 20 gems for this one cool item, and then I’m going to do it again and again and again.”
The very concept of microtransactions is to hide the cost to manipulate and exploit players.
Otherwise they’d just release an expansion or a large DLC with all the content in it for a fair price.
Remember how everyone laughed at the horse armor? Well, that’s standard now.
Have you ever watched someone play Candy Crush? It’s full-on manipulative. “Oh, soo close! You almost managed to beat this level! Don’t let this chance escape! Just pay 5 gems and you can continue!”
There are certainly different kinds of players and some are more or less easily manipulated. But somebody who manages to stay rational wouldn’t play Candy Crush eitherway. If you tell them beforehand that they have to pay €200 to play this stupid minigame they’d ask you what you are smoking. But with microtransactions it’s quite easy to draw money out of somebody’s pockets.
People like that have as much agency over their microtransaction spending as a smoker has over their next cigarette or a gambling addict has over playing the next bet. The mechanics of microtransactions are often close to identical to the mechanics of gambling.
You’re using an extreme example which is fine and I agree that what Candy Crush is doing is clearly trying to exploit people. However, I do believe there’s a stark difference between that and the examples we were discussing.
Tbh, I don’t think that Candy Crush is an extreme example. On mobile this is more the norm than an outlier.
And even on PC, there are far worse examples, like games that allow you to resell lootbox content, which is literal gambling. It’s a scratch card with extra steps.
Literally the only point for microtransactions to exist (versus e.g. expansions/DLCs) is to split up the cost into smaller chunks so that players lose track of how much they actually spent.
“I’m not paying €50 for a handful of cosmetic items” becomes “I’m just paying 20 gems for this one cool item, and then I’m going to do it again and again and again.”
The very concept of microtransactions is to hide the cost to manipulate and exploit players.
Otherwise they’d just release an expansion or a large DLC with all the content in it for a fair price.
Remember how everyone laughed at the horse armor? Well, that’s standard now.