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Feature: A very serious article
This article is not about microtransactions (that is, buying virtual products with small payments) within the game of Hearthstone. It is, in fact, an article about micro transactions; specifically, it's about how the various characters from Hearthstone would react to the initiation of transactions involving very small amounts of money, according to me and my mate Trevar. Micro transactions in the real world are situations…
The latest patch for Fallout 76 released today includes some shiny new additions Bethesda revealed earlier this month: cameras and item repair kits. The latter can only be purchased with meta-currency, a departure from the in-game storefront's focus on solely offering cosmetic items.
FIFA Ultimate Team to effectively stop selling loot boxes in Belgium
Electronic Arts have thrown in the towel in their battle with Belgium over whether or not paid loot boxes in FIFA's Ultimate Team mode constitute illegal gambling. Without admitting to anything, EA today announced that they will soon stop selling Belgian players the 'FIFA Points' microtransaction currency used to buy Ultimate Team 'packs', effectively stopping selling them. Technically if someone is sitting on €657965468476 of…
The Australian Senate are launching an enquiry into microtransaction loot boxes, investigating whether they constitute gambling and to what extent they "may be harmful". While the enquiry won't change any policy itself, it could inform future laws. A number of politicians and bodies around the world have cocked an eyebrow at microtransaction virtuacrates of random digicrud in recent years, most notably after the loud backlash…
The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB), the North American industry body which assigns games age ratings, will expand its labelling on physical boxed games to include warnings of "In-Game Purchases". This will cover everything that can be bought digitally for real money, from season passes and skins to microtransaction currencies and random loot boxes. They're only a decade late to noticing all this, then. Some…
Feature: Want a second character? Cough up...
Metal Gear Survive’s scuzzy microtransactions: paid saveslots, cash for emotes and buy-a-boost
I'm having a significantly better time than I'd expected with Solid crew spin-off Metal Gear Survive, but something about it does rub me up the wrong way - and I'm not talking about whether or not it stuck a dagger in Kojima's kidney or how heavily it borrows from other survival games. Like Metal Gear Solid V before, microtransactions have crept into Survive, and though…
Star Wars Battlefront 2’s microtransactions unlikely to include a pink Darth Vader
When Electronic Arts turned off microtransactions in Star Wars Battlefront 2 over that whole stinking loot crate progression system mess, they said they would bring 'em back after a rethink. Well, EA's chief financial officer said on Tuesday that is still very much the plan. While he isn't sure how and when microtransactions will return, he seems fairly certain they wouldn't include cosmetic items which…
Activision patent matchmaking system pushing microtransactions
Activision have created a matchmaking system which would attempt to put players in situations where they're more likely to spend money on microtransaction items. Perhaps it would match you against a great player with a fancy gun so you'd want to buy that gun and emulate that success. Or if you've already bought a fancy gun, it might put you in matches where that weapon…
League of Legends: Brexit pushes up price of in-game currency
Megahit MOBA League of Legends [official site] will raise the price of its premium microtransaction currency, Riot Points (RP), for UK players by 20% later this month. Seeing as the pound has tanked since the UK voted last year to leave the European Union, developers Riot Games say players elsewhere in the world have been paying more per point than Kingdomeers. Raising UK prices will…
Last year, Overkill Games upset a pretty vocal corner of their Payday 2 [official site] community by introducing microtransactions to the co-op heist 'em up - something they'd previously promised to avoid. In an announcement made yesterday, Starbreeze - Overkill's parent company - revealed they've now acquired full rights to the Payday franchise and as such will scrap paid-for in-game items via the next update.…
When Overkill Software first added TF2-like weapon crates to Payday 2 [official site], putting special gun skins with better stats in 'safes' unlocked by paying real money for 'drills', it went poorly. The vocal portion of the co-op heist FPS's playerbase were riled, to say the least. Overkill backpedalled a little, making it so folks might randomly earn free drills while playing, but it was…
We can be fairly certain that affordable time travel won't exist within our lifetimes because Payday 2 [official site] developers Overkill Software evidently haven't travelled back to last week and erase their mistake of adding microtransactions to unlock more-powerful versions of guns. If they had, memories of CS:GO-style weapon crates and keys concealing a random selection of garish weapon skins with better stats would fade…
An update due Wednesday (19 August) will bring six (6) new flavours of pet to Path of Exile [official site]. They include the fastest tortoise I've ever seen and a well-behaved lemur. Also a pukeko which I didn't know was a real bird until now. I'm mostly posting about this because it let me assess a bunch of digital pets.
Feature: So that PA arcana...
Part of a miscellany of serious thoughts, animal gifs, and anecdotage from the realm of MOBAs/hero brawlers/lane-pushers/ARTS/tactical wizard-em-ups. One day Pip might even tell you the story of how she bumped into Na’Vi’s Dendi at a dessert buffet cart. The current big news in the Dota 2 community is the kerfuffle surrounding the Foreseer's Contract. A short comic heralded the event on Friday and served…
The UK's Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is to issue new guidelines (pdf) about in-app charges for gaming loosely aimed at children. "Is to", which is news-speak for over-simplifying a story to make it sound like a proposal is a thing that's definitely happening. ("Government is to chop the heads off all left-handed people" will read the headline, while the story reveals this was actually…
So it was discovered by dogged data miners, so shall it be. After dabbling in microtransaction-based cosmetic items but largely buttering its bread with sweet, sweet subscription money, World of Warcraft is finally rolling out an in-game cash shop. Do you have excess moneydollars lining your pockets/sofa/cat? Are these "tough economic times" secretly treating you better than everyone else? Do you (for now) play exclusively…
(I know we call 'em microtransactions not in-app purchases on PC, but John will almost definitely shout at me if I let the headline run onto two lines). This doesn't come as much suprise in light of what EA did to Dead Space 3, but there's still a certain amount of gastric churn to be felt in response to an EA bossman's public declaration that…
Here's what's great about reality: people are great at breaking stupid stuff. So as Dead Space 3 launched yesterday in the Americas, people smarter than I had already figured out a glitch in the game to acquire all the items EA had hoped you'd pay for. Game Front have posted a video explaining how, which I've diligently included below.
Hm. Here's something that's leaped out of nowhere, descended upon us in a flash of bloodlust, and knocked us flat in much the same fashion as an enraged koala or, more pertinently, an assassin. Assassin's Creed III is not by any means a F2P game, but it'll still have a (seemingly entirely optional) pay structure just like one. Granted, that in itself isn't really a…
Sometime in the last five or so years, the notion that a game is something you keep on paying for after you've bought it took hold. We'd understood expansions and subscriptions for years, but this was something different. It wasn't about a drip feed of more stuff, or a wholesale extension to the original game, it was about paying for optional bits and pieces that…
