When there is peer pressure, a saved creditcard (possibly from dad) and an few clicks to purchase involved. I get this stuff needs to be monetized, but they need to find another way.
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When there is peer pressure, a saved creditcard (possibly from dad) and an few clicks to purchase involved. I get this stuff needs to be monetized, but they need to find another way.
"Peer pressure, a saved creditcard (possibly from dad) and an few clicks to purchase", is exactly how everyone buys everything. None of this is unique to games. So, I ask again, is basically everything predatory to you then?
Stolen credit cards and bullying are real problems, but they have nothing to do with how expensive a skin is. These are social and technological problems.
They are all digital items that are simply cosmetic. People are willing to pay upwards to $1000 for the prestige of having some of those items. Why is $18 too much? How about the so called "arcanas", which cost somewhere around $35 and are not affected by virtual scarcity? Worth of an item is defined by the market. If people are willing to pay anywhere between $5 and $1000 for cosmetics, than let them.
If you want to discuss predatory tactics, that's a completely different issue than simply "this is a digital cosmetic and is not worth this price".
I honestly see nothing wrong with the pricing structure here. The only issue I took with the Iron Crown event is how they've locked the items people want to pay for behind loot boxes, like the heirloom in which you have to get 24 other items then pay for the heirloom on top of that - this was exploitive, but they've addressed the issue. How people spend their money is really none of your business, if you find it too expensive and don't see the value in purchasing it then don't.
C'mon you're not actually saying that there is a problem with kids buying thousands worth of sneakers online are you.
No, of course not. My point is that when a kid takes advantage of their parent and buys a really expensive item, it isn't the seller's fault for pricing it high, the item isn't predatory.
You appear to think differently because when I've asked you how the skin is predatory, and what makes an item predatory, all you've said is that maybe a kid is being peer pressured and can buy it in a few clicks, and so they buy it with their parent's card. And this makes it predatory. Therefore, I've pointed out, that your currently stated guideline for what makes something predatory applies for pretty much all luxury goods. So, again, is basically everything expensive online predatory to you then?
The difference is so obvious to me that I can't help but wonder if you're serious. The consumer purchasing path is unmonitored and a lot more focused on psychological pressure through loads of tricks than buying a pair of sneakers.
Mom wil notice when their closet is full, and sneaker webshops aren't places where you hang around to talk and play with your friends, all the while getting bombarded with easily purchased micorpayments that prevent sticker shock but can add up to huge numbers.
They have more in common with casino tactics than retail marketing.
Do you have a problem with ITunes then? Cus I could buy a lot of songs/albums with one click and it took a while before my mum noticed on her credit card build. Surprisingly, my mother did not consider me buying music "predatory"
you can see the other elements I put in my post, so I'm just going to leave it at that.
the elephant in the room is that, crummy monetization practices aside, competitive multiplayer gaming is breeding some toxic ass communities. it's part dunning kruger effect in action, and the fact that these games are churning out more losers than winners. you can bet the solo guy who hasn't won a game all day is more pissed about some overpriced skin, or some limited time event than a guy who's picking up wins on the regular with his pals. but the larger the playerbase, the more developers are going to get harassed, no matter the issue. hell, much of that harassment at times is because the developers are attempting to make changes to the game. we've all seen it. some grown ass man is having a tantrum because he can't kill frag the way he used to back in '08 on a franchise that's since had 10 new sequels come out; must be the developer's fault. i dont know what the answer is, but we all need to be better. i think developers have a part in attempting to foster good sportmanship and gracious defeats/wins in these competitive games which are driving so much of the toxicity, and we as a gaming community can certainly start by not getting offended by a single developer calling toxic comments for what they are.
And here you're ignoring that kids:
- Are really good at hiding stuff from their parents. The idea that, if they buy something they're not supposed to, their parent
- Are bombarded with advertising everywhere, TV, Movies, Youtube, Twitch, Sports and in-person by their friends. Mixing personal enjoyment with corporate advertising happens everywhere.
Even with all of this, you're still ignoring that the major problem here is kids getting a hold of their parents card, and being able to easily pay for stuff, not what specifically they can buy with that card.
It is NOT the same.
There isn't a systematic oppression towards gamers like there is towards black people.
Someone saying gamers are trash is not going to make it the lives of gamers harder.
So don't go there.
You're asking the wrong person. I never said $20 for a skin is too much. Review your notes and ask the right person about what is or is not too much.
My point is that you can't compare them because they're not apples to apples. There are people that literally make their living by selling and trading digital cosmetic items. The appeal and market are completely different from a game like Apex, where items literally have no value outside of sentimental value to the owner. Items in games like Dota and Path of Exile have real world value. Actual dollars and cents if you decide to resell. That completely changes how one must look at cosmetic items in those games and why people buy them.
I think marketing and selling luxury sneakers to kids is kind of predatory. There is some kind of market fetishism going on here. Just because a company can successfully make money or sell a product at a high price doesn't make it ethical. What makes loot boxes and those high priced skins predatory is that they target vulnerable customers that have poor impulse control or are susceptible to status pressure. Children and young adults especially have a difficult time with odds and impulse control
Children don't understand how money works. Children are susceptible to psychologically crafted ads that target them. Children are easily tricked into thinking they want something. These micro transactions are made in a way to fire the same pleasure receptors as gambling at casinos and harm people with addictive personalities. The game industry is starting to exploit children for profit because they can get away with it. Just like the tobacco industry did, just like the sugar cereal people do. It shouldn't be allowed and mtx should be heavily regulated.
At the very least, it shouldn't be defended by anyone as an okay thing to do.
At the very least, it shouldn't be defended by anyone as an okay thing to do.
I invite everyone defending respawn to read this:
It is one thing to sell overpriced cosmetics if you can actually get to buy them.
That is not the biggest problem with Respawn and EA at large, people aren't spending so much money because they can get what they want with it.
Ok, just so we are clear: Respawn engages in predatory practices. Which target children. This is what you're so eager to defend because they owned the gamerz or something.
It is one thing to sell overpriced cosmetics if you can actually get to buy them.
That is not the biggest problem with Respawn and EA at large, people aren't spending so much money because they can get what they want with it.
Ok, just so we are clear: Respawn engages in predatory practices. Which target children. This is what you're so eager to defend because they owned the gamerz or something.
Ok, Lets just ignore that f2p actually hire economists and psychologists to implement mechanics that are easy, addictive and yes predatory.
I'm not ignoring anything, you bring up examples that are nothing like in-game purchases. And we have seen excesses with kids buying in game gear and it's on a fucking other level than hiding a fucking gundamn doll. I'm actually getting rather annoyed because you keep denying this while we seen it over and over. Parental controls aren't there because these things are fucking safe. And even that's not enough! It's the combination of everything I mentioned, AT THE SAME TIME, while also being able to directly act on impulses. I fucking studied this stuff, it's not a joke, it's not fun, and it's not sustainable.
The games industry needs to grow the fuck up and take some damn responsibility.
As was delt with earlier in the thread, the only dev hiring a psychologists for monetisation is Valve. And there are parental controls on consoles and PC launchers, what are you talking about?
No need to get pissed
This predatory shit speaks for itself. Governments all around the world are catching on to what publishers and developers are doing to cash in.
There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about what people believe is fair. People keep focusing on the individual skin purchases. Respawn/EA never took down the lootboxes. People are acting like the lootboxes disappeared. The iron crown event puts them front and center.
Downplaying the iron crown event is all to common. By the time it's over they already cashed in on the people they were aiming in on.
How on earth could anyone here know which pubs/devs have done research on loot box gambling?
Because devs talked about it earlier in the thread that they don't hire psychologists and it's one of those myths that people keep spreading?
I don't see how that goes against what I said. People sell those cosmetics for those prices because people are willing to pay. And believe it or not, a lot of people that buy them when they become available (such is the case with arcanas and announcers, for example), pay $35 for the privilege of using them, not for the fact they can resell them later for a loss (not to mention they are not worth "actual dollars and cents", that money is stuck to the Steam ecosystem, and Valve will take 20% of those transactions with pleasure). Same reason people will pay hundreds of dollars to upgrade their battle pass, for the prestige.
So I will repeat: charging $18 dollars for a digital cosmetic is not absurd in a world where people have been paying way more than that for a long time.
Most people are not defending lootboxes. Most people are talking either about whether $18 is too much for a cosmetic, or if bad monetization models are worth harassing devs for. Feel free to pretend people defending the developers are automatically defending the lootboxes, though, as you've been doing this whole thread.
Even if they don't, the research behind gambling is well established already. Lootboxes prey on the same neural pathways as say, a slot machine.
Who cares if they hired psychologists for this particular case? Are they engaging in exploitative predatory practices or not?
By the way I invite you and the other respawn defenders to come up with a good justification for their lootbox model, unless there isn't one, then you may disregard this.
"User research" covers a lot of ground, let's put it that way. I know there are, I'm saying that isn't enough.
By the way, as someone with an MSc in economics, and consumer behavior, I have more than enough knowledge of psychological effects to be dangerous.
If one developer did it than it's no longer a myth that it can happen.
How large is the gaming industry?
Why wouldn't publishers like EA do it also? They're not to be trusted as your buddies.
It's right in front of our faces. It's got all the gambling mechanics of a slot machine. They know when to feed the dopamine.
So you are saying the devs in this thread are lying? And your expertise for saying this is....?
Most people that buy them for $35 buy them with the insurance of knowing that if they want to get rid of them, they will be able to months or even years later for roughly the same amount they paid for them. If they couldn't, sales would be demonstrably lower. But that's not really the point.
so I will repeat:
I agree charging $18 for a digital cosmetic is not absurd. That said, only having $18 skins and almost nothing else is their strategy because they want to push people towards buying loot boxes. It's really fucking transparent, and that context cannot be missed or ignored for the convenience of your argument. In no period did Dota 2, for example, have a phase where there were only Arcana skins or loot boxes on sale as your only choices. When their store was really humming (before the marketplace) you could get sets for as low as $2-$3. In League of Legends, you can get skins for as low as $2-$3 right now, and probably 80% are < $10. The same is true right now if you want to browse through all the sets available for sale directly:
If you never used the Steam Marketplace to buy Dota 2 items, you can still get any set for as low as $2 or buy an Arcana for $35. But there are OPTIONS.
And so the problem isn't the price in a vacuum for Apex Legends; it's the price in the context of not really selling anything for any less with the express purpose being to look like such a bad deal that opening loot boxes is actually a better value. If Apex sold skins in the $5, $10, and $15 range along with their $20 offerings, they would have no issues with the community. They don't, and it's intentional: to drive loot box sales, for all the nefarious reasons we all know and understand about lootboxes in this industry.
But again: having an $18 tier is not a problem at all. As long as it's not $18 or loot boxes. That's almost a false choice.
I don't think there's anything inherently predatory about selling the cosmetics directly, even at stupidly high prices. Its the loot boxes which are insidious.
By overpricing them they encourage people to try for them in lootboxes, funneling people into their monetization scheme.
I could say the same to every person in this thread pretending people criticizing predatory monetization practices are automatically justifying harassment of developers.
Looks like telling me I was derailing didn't actually work cause it was backseat mod nonsense, I wonder what's next in your poor attempts to tell me I'm wrong.
Correct.
In the context of Apex Legends, only having an $20 tier (you have to buy $20 worth of tokens, so let's just call it the $20 tier) or loot boxes as your only two options presents what is honestly a false choice, intentionally pushing people towards loot boxes.
They really shouldn't feel like they need to do so. The community would be happy to buy skins if they simply offered more in the $5-10 range like every other game that makes a ton of money off MTX/skin sales does. But they'd rather people buy loot boxes, so they price them high, limit the number of loot boxes you can earn, and provide no less expensive options. It's all by design to sell and get some people trapped in the loot box game and honestly it's really disappointing.
Doubly disappointing that some Era members don't see the game being played here or don't care.
Forgive me if I'm cynical and don't trust the words of developers and publishers who use gambling to hurt people.
They deserve the criticism but of course, gamers have no communication skills so this takes place.
Snipped out most of your post but it's a good analysis. Just highlighting this part because I have some "professional" opinions on it.
I don't think they did this by design to upsell loot boxes. I think they were probably pressed for time or resources to make interesting cosmetics, and resorted to adding a crapload of fodder, and the value proposition for their legendary content had to be at that price because they implicitly knew that their other content wouldn't sell, even at a lower price point. Either way, it's not a particularly good design, and it's definitely not one that would make them more money than if they'd adopted varying price points with interesting things to buy.
Like others have said the overpriced skins push people into the lootboxes by design.
I encourage a store that sells only cosmetics no lootboxes*
I encourage a store that sells only cosmetics no lootboxes*
I just leave this here to the ones that are not aware how bad respawn messed up on the pricing of these event and to show the users have plenty of reason to criticize them.
This does not excuse the behavior or certain players that are rude and attack the devs with insults and death treaths. Thers no excuse for that kind of behavior. But there are plenty of users being respectufully that are being ignored because the devs simply chose to focus they attention on the trolls, fighting toxicity with more toxicity.
What makes me sick is ppl defending this prices with the narrative that its a free 2 play game they have to make money. Look i play plenty of F2P games on mobile, its all i play, and all games i play ALL users have acess to everething. If you pay you get faster and easyer acess to the stuff, free 2 play users will have to grind for it but they can also get this event items. And thats not what Respawn is doing.
Just to remember that this all started years ago with Oblivion Horse Armor that costed 2.5$ and today we already reached the 20$ for a single cosmetic item and is already being seen as a normal price. (Just a reminder that 20$ is the price of most indie games that take alot of time and effort to create, and thers these corporation putting out 20$ in a single cosmetic item. If these are normalized today, then tomorrow nothing stops a dev to ask 200$ for a single cosmetic item... Oh wait, thats actually what respawn just did.
This does not excuse the behavior or certain players that are rude and attack the devs with insults and death treaths. Thers no excuse for that kind of behavior. But there are plenty of users being respectufully that are being ignored because the devs simply chose to focus they attention on the trolls, fighting toxicity with more toxicity.
What makes me sick is ppl defending this prices with the narrative that its a free 2 play game they have to make money. Look i play plenty of F2P games on mobile, its all i play, and all games i play ALL users have acess to everething. If you pay you get faster and easyer acess to the stuff, free 2 play users will have to grind for it but they can also get this event items. And thats not what Respawn is doing.
Just to remember that this all started years ago with Oblivion Horse Armor that costed 2.5$ and today we already reached the 20$ for a single cosmetic item and is already being seen as a normal price. (Just a reminder that 20$ is the price of most indie games that take alot of time and effort to create, and thers these corporation putting out 20$ in a single cosmetic item. If these are normalized today, then tomorrow nothing stops a dev to ask 200$ for a single cosmetic item... Oh wait, thats actually what respawn just did.
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You're probably right here. The quality of the skins up until this event have been...pretty poor, as has the selection.
A few pages ago I hoped that they were considering hiring some more help in the art department so that they could continue to crank out more weapon and armor skins, at a better pace. A lot of the problem with Apex skins (which also adds to the concerns about the pricing) is that many of them up until this even were generic, with animations and patterns found on several skins across classes. It made them feel cheap, and it's really important that if you're going to charge $20 for a cosmetic that a potential purchaser can look at it and say, "yea...they put their elbow into that one. That's really nice." That hasn't been the case very often for Apex, where you can see and feel that work and effort in the more expensive League of Legends and Dota 2 cosmetics. $20+ cosmetics in those games look and feel special. Usually with special visual effects, new voice-over work, new icons, and so on.
I'd like for it to not be an "push them to the loot boxes" situation and I hope with you that it isn't the case. I'll feel MUCH better about Apex's store in general if they can get to a place where they have more diversity in store prices. Even more so if they expand their art department so that the skins they offer on their Season Passes and such can really step up to where they should be for a game of Apex's stature in the market. Respawn can be doing so much better here and they're missing out on a lot of money by not having this part of the game ready.
Yeah, so I think a lot of this is cultural.
A lot of traditional PC/console studios like Respawn have lived their entire lives as midsize studios with no plans to scale their expansion. They've been in the industry for a long time and like the way they are. Being attached to (or owned by) a major publisher also contributes to this. They're ultimately unequipped to handle a major success because when they get product growth, they're incapable or unprepared to scale to the size of their product.
When Riot or Epic hit it big, their viewpoint was "we're gonna get as big as the product needs."
When I was at Riot, we scaled from 200 to 2000 employees. A friend joined Epic right before Fortnite BR released and gave me a similar sentiment to how they handled growth.
Generally, companies like Respawn think "we're gonna handle as best we can." They're obviously hiring people, but they're not expanding in the way they should if they actually wanted to truly scale the product.
The real problem is the rampant proliferation of in game currencies.
They want to sell a skin for $18? Fine, I'm not going to buy it anyway.
Where it gets scummy is the fact that they aren't literally selling it for $18. It's 1800 of their in game currency.
OK, so I'll buy 1800 coins for $18 and just get the one skin that I want? Nope, sorry, you can only buy our coins in predesignated amounts. You'll have to buy the 2000 coin pack for $20 to get that skin. Which leaves you with a leftover amount that you likely can't spend on anything worthwhile. Leaving you in the sunk cost fallacy. You're already spent more than you wanted to, so maybe you can spend a little more to get something else so you don't "waste" the coins.
The entire point of in game currency is to obfuscate the amount of real world money that people are spending on these games. It's intentionally deceptive by design. Obviously it's not exclusive to Apex, but I think much of the legitimate complaints go out the window if they just put real life price tags on items and sold them like a store.
When I go to buy a 50 cent stamp the post office doesn't tell me I can only buy them for 50 post office tokens, which can only be bought in multiples of 2000 for $20.
They want to sell a skin for $18? Fine, I'm not going to buy it anyway.
Where it gets scummy is the fact that they aren't literally selling it for $18. It's 1800 of their in game currency.
OK, so I'll buy 1800 coins for $18 and just get the one skin that I want? Nope, sorry, you can only buy our coins in predesignated amounts. You'll have to buy the 2000 coin pack for $20 to get that skin. Which leaves you with a leftover amount that you likely can't spend on anything worthwhile. Leaving you in the sunk cost fallacy. You're already spent more than you wanted to, so maybe you can spend a little more to get something else so you don't "waste" the coins.
The entire point of in game currency is to obfuscate the amount of real world money that people are spending on these games. It's intentionally deceptive by design. Obviously it's not exclusive to Apex, but I think much of the legitimate complaints go out the window if they just put real life price tags on items and sold them like a store.
When I go to buy a 50 cent stamp the post office doesn't tell me I can only buy them for 50 post office tokens, which can only be bought in multiples of 2000 for $20.
Yea, I can see that and I've greatly respected how they've decided to handle expansion of the game and issues like crunch. Very much so.
It's just...when you compare Apex skins (before this event) to similarly priced cosmetics and skins in other games...there's just sort of a standard that they hadn't been meeting. Real talk: 90% of $20 Apex skins would have been no more than $10 skins in any established MTX-based economy game.
But again, they really did step up their quality for this event. If I could have bought a couple of the skins for this event directly, I very well might have. That Lifeline skin continues to whisper to me, but not so much that I'm willing to buy loot boxes to get it. And that's a bit frustrating. At least in a game like Dota 2, I could wait for an item to appear on the Steam Marketplace if I don't want to play the RNG game. And in League this wouldn't have been an issue at all because there is next to nothing that can't be bought directly and at a reasonable price. And this is all before even discussing the Heirloom being locked behind buying at least 22 loot boxes, knowing full well that players can only earn 2 boxes. There's only so much spinning that can be done on that one. It almost makes having that Heriloom a badge of infamy.
I continue to hope for the best for them, but this is one aspect of the game that I am genuinely surprised they've been so slow at grasping and maximizing. They're not the first I've experienced this with, though. The last one with Frontier Developments and Elite: Dangerous. The Elite Dangerous store is now quite packed with cosmetics, but it took almost 2 years of me and the rest of the community begging them on their forums to step up their cosmetic game before they finally did and they started making really good money from it. Before they were only bringing in money from releasing expansions.
They just need to know that for $20 the stuff really does need to look *a cut above*...and it hasn't really measured up. You know, I think this would have all gone better for them if all of their skins up to now had been $5-$10 (because again, that's where they feel they should be just based on how they look and how many recycled effects they have across classes), then later introduced a $20 tier that looked like they were 2x the work (or at least 2x as cool). And of course, offered SOME OF (not all of) these event skins for direct purchase at that higher price point if desired. Ideally ranging from $10-$20. I think a lot of this controversy wouldn't have happened. IDK.
Yea but, yall are the ones also that didn't want items that actually affected or enhanced the game in anyway, so developers pushed away from that line of thinking and just put it into cosmetics that have very little impact on the game itself and are pricing them in a way that takes into account running an entire F2P game, ramping up an entire team to provide free content till the end of the games run. Yea it's not perfect, but acting like its some predatory act that is taking advantage and ruining lives is so disingenuous.
It could be better and they are taking strides to make it better, even the event being criticized is being changed to be better.
And it's funny how people are criticizing the lack of value behind paying for a single skin, when that's all I've ever heard gamers want, is for the pay items not to be overly valuable so if you decide you don't want to spend money you wont be disappointed as a non paying customer.
Shouldn't all this just justify yourself in not paying to play the game, instead of complaining it's not giving you enough?
Where are the parents? I am a parent and have consoles locked down. If I want to pay for something I do it. If my kids wants something, I'll consider it. MTX needs regulations in place for Loot boxes and such. Lets not get all high and mighty with gambling and addiction when gamer's themselves could suffer from gaming addiction. I can't believe I'm arguing for a bit for MTX, but when I hear things like this and I know developers have put so much time into making these games especially the f2p games how Apex is designed I do not see a problem with it so long as there are responsible folks around the kids that play these games. If an adult is destroying their savings with MTX, then boo F'n hoo. They can go seek some help like any other adult could with other issues like addiction etc.
So it's not predatory practices then? Would you mind elaborating or just giving your opinion as fact?
Still want to downplay this? Fire away.
This topic has so many posts that go into detail about how predatory in nature the pricing schemes are.
Lootbox gambling
timed events with lootboxes
Pricing that guides people into the lootboxes
Special currency
The iron crown event hasn't changed. By the time they change it it will have been over and all the people they predicted to be whales will have cashed out. They know exactly what they're doing. It's a focused and methodical attack.
You can't buy ANY skin in this game. I've looked. You can't. You need crafting material. If you don't you have to wait for them to be 18 dollars. They're automatically 20 dollars because they don't sell 18 dollars of currency, they sell 20$.
My god there is so much shady underhanded shit going on here and to see people stand behind it is disappointing. It shows you that the future is bleak for content without heavy policing of these companies.
First post nails it.
People complain about lootboxes (and honestly they have a point, they can be sketchy)
So then they sell skins direct and people complain they are too expensive.
Shit if I was a dev I would have to really hold myself back from posting about "Wah, my free to play game that I really enjoy playing has a free update and they have the nerve to charge me what for a skin!?"
And to make matters worse there are posters who said they love the gameplay but can't have fun anymore because they can't get a certain skin. What happened to playing games for the fun gameplay.
Let's ignore the callous disregard for people with addictions issues here. Gambling, around the word, is a highly regulated industry because of the predatory nature. The shit that EA and other major developers pull would straight up be considered illegal if a casino or lottery was doing it. Tbh, it probably is illegal - just no ones gone after them yet.
Things like advertising to kids, not disclosing odds, etc.