9 years ago
4
Notch speaks out against Free-to-Play monetization, saying it should be illegal
The creator of Minecraft took to Twitter yesterday to address the free-to-play style of monetization and comments from another game develop, George Broussard, who made Duke Nukem 3D among other titles. The whole thing escalated quickly and actually started to get a little heated it seems.
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I think the topic itself here is more important than anything specific Notch says. Sure maybe F2P isn't inherently 'evil', but if the vast majority of games use it in a bad way, does that distinction matter that much?
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He has a point. Calling it "free-to-play" is really scummy when literally everything is behind a paywall. Especially when you have kids with their parents credit cards on their phone accounts, which is a big part of these games monetization strategies.
I miss the days when I could buy a game for $50, play all the content to my hearts content, and maybe buy 1-2 expacs and be done. I hope the gaming industry gets back on track at some point and stops abusing their customers to fleece them for more cash.
I completely disagree with his view, although there's not much content and he doesn't explain it.
Let's see: Some companies "bait" or are dishonest isn't exclusive to F2P games. There are a LOT of companies that charge the consumer and deliver an incomplete, bugged or exploitable game. Heck, look at Minecraft, it used to have the popular "Pay to enter Beta testing" model. You don't get much more baity than that.
Secondly, not a single F2P game is behind a paywall like wolfeater claims. It's as simple as this: If a F2P Game has content locked behind a paywall, it is the EXACT same thing as a full game with DLC. You have your content, you can pay for more content if you want.
Third, nobody forces anyone to buy anything in F2P games, you may be encouraged to, but you don't have to, even on the most imbalanced F2P MMORPGs I've seen, you're never forced to pay for anything.
So, if he could quit the bullshit, that'd be great.
I possibly misworded my post, but in my opinion the F2P does take advantage of people,
Whether they are kids, who don't have a solid idea of money, or adults who get sucked in through constant micro-transactions. While you're technically never "forced" to pay for anything, paying $1 or $2 or $3 dollars for core mechanics that would be included in a paid game adds up in a very fast way that most consumers aren't aware of.
For example, in candy crush, having to buy new lives if you die. There has been some discussion also that the brain can not necessarily always tell the difference between virtual and physical rewards.
I'm not sure I agree with notch that it should all be illegal, but the way these games take advantage of basic psychology to fleece people can be disturbing in some cases. I definitely think there should be set rules for how a game can and can't monetize,because right now some people are getting brutal billshock from these games, and making money through bill shock is extremely immoral in my (and many others) opinion.
Yeah, some F2P games take advantage of people's bad money spending habits, but so do most AAA games.
A fucking game for 60€ that has 15 hours of gameplay? I won't say it should be illegal, but it's definetly worse than ANY F2P game.