The Year Of The Loot Box (The Jimquisition)
This is the year loot boxes came to gaming in a big way.
Encouraged by Overwatch, "AAA" publishers went all-in on destroying their games in the name of easy money.
And no, Blizzard, you're not special. You deserve as much blame as EA, Activision, Ubisoft, 2K Games, WB, and Microsoft.
In fact, j'accuse!
Comments (28)
Isn’t this whole charade a flagrant violation of the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of 2006?
No. It isn't. I don't like loot boxes, but they are in no way gambling just being your rewards are randomized. If some loot boxes contained literally nothing, then maaaybe it could be a violation. Maybe.
Right now, the stock market is viewing EA as any other stock... Wall Street believes it will rebound. They believe that EA knows what they're doing - they know how to manipulate their market because they've done it so well in the past... probably. Well, I'm not buying this game. I don't have time or money to save up for Darth Vader or whatever else it is that they're trying to peddle, so you get value for your time. I saw the first Star Wars movie in 1978 in the theater when I was 5, but you can shit on the whole franchise for what it's become.
"Giving players the choice to skip parts of our game" is still my favorite excuse for this kinda shit. Like, "We'll admit our game isn't actually fun if it means people will give us money" would be more truthful but... we... we're talking about video game PR people here so...
I decided to pop a dollar a month over the next couple of years instead of buying another Activision game over the same period. Huzzah!
you must get a lot of love from the local deer population with all that salt X'''D
Good god, please don't even suggest making the non-mobile market "free-to-play" across the board, even in jest. You think the vast majority of Steam's offerings are a wasteland of Unity asset flips NOW?
Happy to pledge . Thank God for Jim Sterling !
Keep up the amazing work!
That was a pretty damn sizzling Jimquisition. You're doing good work Jim, to the point and yet entertaining. Keep it up!
Thanks to you, I've put a kibosh on buying paid content for most modern games now (except League of Legends, that still goes to them directly and the season 8 changes are really fun). Instead of being bilked by Blizzard for upwards of $50 every time some new skins come out, I'll just throw Jim a few dollars instead. Saves me money overall, and is a damn sight more fulfilling than pulling the slot machine lever over and over again. Most triple-A games aren't worth it; I'll be looking to Japanese games to scratch my itch until North American publishers get their act together (Pokemon, Monster Hunter).
Here's a dollar. Hopefully this will pass and you'll have new bullshit to talk about soon enough. (EDIT: In the sense of "Maybe this shit will finally get regulated or cause an industry collapse and disappear from the goddamn market.")
This is the Video I finally joined Patreon for. Thank God for you Jim!
Is there anyway to share yoyr video on Reddit? Not sure if you've noticed but there's a huge upswell of anti EA microtransaction going on in the Reddit community (EA just earned the most downvoted comment in Reddit history when trying to defend micros in BF2), Jims video series are a great way to educate the reddit masses.
Should be able to just link the Youtube version directly, as far as I know.
Bang on again Jim! Should I mention EA is hiring a Futurist to double-down on how to take the current AAA monetization regime INTO THE FUTURE.
Reply by ea, down votes are priceless lmao
<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7cff0b/seriously_i_paid_80_to_have_vader_locked/dppum98/?st=j9yio461&sh=d0aa8351" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://www.reddit.com/r/StarWarsBattlefront/comments/7cff0b/seriously_i_paid_80_to_have_vader_locked/dppum98/?st=j9yio461&sh=d0aa8351</a>
Don't think I missed the little snippet of Doom music you snuck in there--nice touch. ;)
as he said, rip and tear!
If anything Blizzard is MORE to blame than every other dev, since it was a lot more popular after they did it. Sure some games did it before but once blizzard decided to throw them into their game the entire industry decided to follow suit.
How do you feel about Team Fortress 2?
Thank God for Jim. Glad to see you still on this. There was a discussion of the sustainability of the games market on reset era recently. If this is the way the AAA games companies want to continue doing business, good riddance.
And in general just Fuck Konami...
Nice reference to Orwell's 1984 Jim!!!
Which part?
Joined the Patreon, thank god for Jim Sterling. :)
I didn't get a "harrumph" out of that guy.