A line crossed.

 A playerbase scorned

There seems to be an accepted scale of severity when it comes to dealing with those games that demand monetary tribute from it's players. First of, yes- we've passed through the fact that certain games feel the need to be constantly supplied with funds to in order cover the terrible incurred costs of server maintenance, (that was sarcasm) but live service titles tend to get a bit more leeway because at least those recurrent funds appear to be actually going somewhere. Free-to-play live service games almost get a free pass to nickel and dime as much as they want, simply because they wave you in at the door with a free sample to get you hopelessly hooked before begging you for spare change out of your pocket. No quite the classic dealer-grift, but you can see where these companies developed their inspiration at least. But no platform exists without it's limits.

Once upon a time we used to be decently okay with the idea of subscription models for games that allow for a regular paycheck to be fed into the development studio in exchange for unfettered access to everything that online experience had to offer. There was no case of blocking off content for the most generous players or sinking more effort into paid content whilst giving free players the table scraps- in some ways this was the most universally fair system. However, today these ideals are looked on as relics of the past, probably due to the fact that people are a little bit more aware of the ways they're wasting money these days, and how much time in your favourite online game goes wasted? I don't want to spend a monthly subscription for a game I only get to play a few hours each weekend! What kind of value proposition is that? Still- with the directions we veer off into nowadays, I'm starting to miss that standard...

Because as you may have heard, the free-to-play online COD platform, Warzone, has recently been fingered as the latest company to push it's way past the line of decency in it's attempt to rake in that microtransaction revenue money. Whilst other games of this style are happy selling cosmetics and colour-kits to keep it's lights on, COD have unveiled preliminary bundles with skins that have actual effects in the game. Paid-for skins that will grant extra weapon slots or a free UAV on spawn. These effects are specifically for the DMZ game mode, which appears to be a Tarkov inspired take on the Warzone formula- which in itself highlights the disparity even more between the relatively level playing field that veteran tittle offers and the skewered version of that same kind of play space COD is proposing to thrust upon the world with avarice blinding it's eyes.

You see, this is what is know of as 'Pay to win'. Systems of classism within the player community reinforced by who pays and who doesn't is only worsened when you start making paid content actually significantly effect the playing of the game. Any sort of extra advantage you can pay hard real-world money for spits in the face of fair competition that lies in the bones of any PVP game. And Warzone already skirted that line for years, with certain skins that were objectively harder to see then the base model thanks to camouflage patterns or ghillie aesthetics- but this pushes way beyond even that. It is a pollutant to enter into the gaming ecosystem and a line past which even the most insanely avarice companies in the world typically know not to cross. Ubisoft happily would, but who in their right mind lives their life to the standard of freakin' Ubisoft? I mean, come on!

We've been almost exactly here before, in the whole 'Power card' 'lootbox' debacle that ended up forever tainting the legacy of Star Wars Battlefront 2 when EA thought it oh-so-clever to sell their upgrade path improvements in randomly stocked digital crates. Of course, by the very nature of the idea that was a good percentage worse, because in a competitive game those bonuses are a world of difference between winning or losing- but the principle stems from the same short-sighted place. The entire concept of a game is a special magic box within which everything you do is removed from consequence to everything outside of that box. I'm talking fundamental game design philosophy here. Philosophy that EA, and now Actvision, are wantonly violating with hair-brained polices!

And why do we get so irate about these systems? Is it because we're all cheapskates who shudder at the prospect of paying an uncapped amount of small transactions in the hope of being competitive with other players? Well that's certainly a factor for me, but this does run deeper than that. All of the most successful competitive games which still persist in today's ecosystem, Counterstrike Global Offensive, League of Legends, Apex Legends- all of them feature non gameplay affecting cosmetics that can be purchased with real money. Because when you place gameplay power under a price tag you enter into a whole new economy of weight which influences how every system is then presented to the player. We've not got a competitive multiplayer game which has sold itself fully enough to this devil for comparison yet, but we do have examples from other genres.

Diablo Immortal famously sells chances to obtain it's highest gear under differing 'rift token' accessories that straight up prevents non-paying players from even attempting to roll some of the best gear in the game. What happened to that game? It became a social pariah and it's player base shrivelled up to a small, albeit loyal, contingent of glorified paypiggies. And on an even grander scale- Star Citizen pre-sells it's grandest and newest ships for thousands of dollars before the game is even built, essentially creating a broken economy of progression before the final product has even been stuck together. Some people are going to load into the final game at the end of the progression chain, with nothing left to grind for, others are going to start hopelessly small in comparison with no hope of ever catching up thanks to the nature of the set-up.

As it turns out- anti consumer practices tend to test poorly on, you know, the audience. That special line of decency exists to maintain the thin façade of respect between us and them; and when it's trodden on, even in the smallest of ways- a backlash isn't just justified, it's nigh-on duty bound! Experience has taught us well how these are boundaries written in sand, easily shifting, and without the most vigorous 'watch-dogging', liberties will be taken as they've been taken in the past. Let this indiscretion go and tomorrow's will be worse. Outfit buffs today will be purchaseable ammo care drops mid-game in a month from now; and early start UAV's absolutely will become consumable tactical nukes in a year or two down the line. Nerfs aren't good enough- this needs to be ripped out at the stem!