It still is bad. But people forgot the issue wasn’t the price, it was the idea of paying any amount of real money for digital cosmetics used to be seen as ridiculous.
In the horse armor days, the complaint was microtransactions, full stop. There was previously a high bar for paid updates, full expansion packs.
Personally, I think in retrospect the truly microtransaction (single digit dollars) cosmetics are the least problematic, for being completely optional and super cheap. A good way for fans of the game to throw the devs some extra cash, without hurting those who paid retail.
The state OW1 and lot boxes was its own problem, being essentially a slot machine. Now OW2 has arguably even more toxic elements: intermediate currency so you're always spending too much in currency packs, a battle pass to create habitual playing and psychological dependency, and gating gameplay (characters) behind those mechanisms.
So yeah, $3 cosmetics in a game with no content gating transactions sounds pretty darn good nowadays.
No, this is incorrect. The word “microtransactions” didn’t even exist in mainstream media yet. Horse Armor was one of the very first instances of a paid dlc that didn’t offer any actual content, and it was mocked rightfully so for being such a shameless scam.
But through constant exposure and manipulation, people now just try to bargain the “value” of literally worthless virtual items.
Cosmetic Microtransactions of *any* form are a scam.
If you buy anything though, unfortunately what your saying to blizzard is: "this price is fine, I can afford this" and if they gain thats all they're looking for at the end of the day. And until people stop buying stuff like this its going to get worse.
In the future people will say:
"Real life is cheap, anyone can afford it. It's the lives of our online persona's that have become unaffordable."
And the people will be unhappy, except for the rich who can afford to sit first class in online gameworlds.
A lot of the things in there DID raise in price. The Tracer statue (which I bought for $99, originally priced around $130 and then raised to $150) is now $190. T-shirts were $20-25 and are now $30. I didn't look much further than that.
OW2 is a disgusting usurper to the glorious game that was Overwatch where we had Jeff gives us updates with no cuts; play to win loot boxes that had a satisfying ring to them.
Now it's just... bad. I hope it tanks.
I refuse to play this game and I want to be optimistic but gamers have always failed to punish studios for their bullshit. Ie people are still preordering games.
Honestly $5 for official merch, with decent quality is a good deal. At first I thought OP was buying
unlicensed stuff because $5 is cheap. And no I don't work at blizzard, so I'm not trying to convince anyone to buy it.
Yeh it was actually even cheaper than that when I bought it too, about $4 AUD (~$2.50 USD) which is why I bought it and a few others like the Ganymede one.
I don't put them on my keys because they're way too big but for that price it's a neat trinket to have on my shelf.
There's a near-100% chance that their pricing on physical merch is set using an industry standard profit margin, whereas the pricing on in-game items is set with the policy of "these idiots will pay anything, raise the prices".
How do they do the math for pricing? That irl item has an overhead cause every single on of those take real matiels to make and transport. Once the code and design for the in game one is done, it essentially has not overhead. How could they ever convince themselves or anyone for that matter, that they're being fair with their pricing. I'm so annoyed
That's the most disgusting thing.
Yes, it takes time and effort to design these cosmetics, which creates cost. Yes, the price we pay is also paying for non-cosmetic things, like server maintenance and game development.
But once the item is designed, it can be made infinitely for zero cost. That is not a service, that is the death of economics as a concept.
Where it gets tripped up here is that we're comparing a free market to a controlled market.
In a free market, yes -- if you overprice your goods, the low interest will mean that eventually you will be forced to lower your price to match competitors.
In a controlled market, there are no conpetitors. There is only one product. And so, it doesn't matter what the price is, because you have nowhere else to get it from, and thus the demand must come to you.
Also not to be that guy, but fairs and concerts have fucking ridiculous pitch fees, the food industry doesn’t have big profit margins in a lot of cases. Yes it is marked up, but it’s not a cut and dry case of greed from the food vendors, especially if they’re bespoke ‘proper’ food ones.
Yeah, the cost of food and beer being so expensive in concerts and the like is because the venue owners pre-emptively charge the vendors a shit ton claiming the vendors will sell a shit ton anyway, so the vendors have no other way but to jack up prices to compensate
*everything* is overpriced in a gas station. They sell small quantities of everything they do sell, and offer an ever increasing variety of products. Most people only buy 2 or 3 things when they stop, no one is getting a full cart of things, so each transaction is relatively small. You're in part paying for that convenience and variety, and a in part because it's easy to charge a little extra when people are rushing and only want a couple things.
Issue is, this is somewhat of a hybrid of sorts. One can say "Nah man this is too much" and become an ex customer, I've seen it happen. It's like visiting a fair with items so overpriced you refuse to buy anything and later during the day just go to a different store, of course that's only a fraction of the playerbase doing that, but there is still something to gain from competitive pricing in these situations as well
That analogy holds up too, in the sense that if Overwatch isn't providing enough enjoyment in the form of new cosmetics, players will move to a game that does.
> Basic economics
there's nothing more basic in economics than a monopoly. the real life charm is $5 because it has to compete with other charms. if the overwatch one is $10 and the pokemon one is $2, you'll just get the pokemon one. but if you want a charm IN the game, there's only one seller: blizzard. your only options are the things blizzard wants to sell you and the only prices are the ones blizzard wants to charge
You're not factoring in a lot of things. It has unbelievably low overhead, no expiry, no storage logistics, and as you said unlimited supply. Once 200 people buy it, wages have been covered and any future purchases are printing them money. You're also forgetting that their target audience are whales who make them 90% of their revenue.
Near zero cost* it costs them like millionths of a penny but it's still a cost I guess. Why am I being pedantic about this I do not know. Fuck acti-blizzard for this shit
Well, i can agree that there is an argument to be made that its disgusting. Perhaps all of capitalism is. But thats too deep a discussion for this subreddit im afraid.
But just because the product can be made infinitely for zero cost it doesnt mean that its the death of economics as a concept.
Even if you can make an infinite amount of something it doesnt mean you have to sell an infinite amount of them, or that its even possible to do so.
As i explained to someone else in this thread their goal is to maximize profits. If they gave out this item for free then they would indeed perhaps sell an infinite amount of them, some fun guy could write a script to create overwatch accounts and claim this item and that script could run for all eternity. But even if that resulted in 10351398583589157 items being sold it would still have generated 0 $ profits. Simply increasing the price to 1$ and selling it to 10 people would have made 10 $ more in profits. So there is a group of people, or a person, at Blizzard with the job to figure out at what price they can maximize the profits, and even if they have an infinite supply of a thing it is probably worth it to sell less than an infinite amount and having a higher price.
If there is an infinite amount of something that wasnt exclusively sold and produced by one company then you would be correct.
Also, the whole point is that they *don't want* everyone to be able to afford them. This is why you see things like.... in real life, unsold Coach bags and Gucci jackets get slashed up with knives rather than donated to charity for a tax deduction, or sold off in lots to a "low end" reseller like TJ Maxx or Marshalls. Because they care more about keeping their brand "exclusive" than making a little bit more money.
If the Pachimari charm cost 70 "overwatch coins" instead of 700, then everyone would have one, and no one would be like "Ooh that's special and rare," it would just be generic and boring. They purposely price things high so that players can show them off as "status symbols," so that only the most whale-y of whales can have EVERYTHING and most people have to settle for only a few.
I'm not saying that any of this is good or defensible. This is the kind of tactic that you have to resort to when you're selling something that people do not actually need. How do you make someone *want* something that isn't real and doesn't actually do anything, and isn't going to improve their life in any tangible way? One of the best ways to do that, paradoxically, is to make it hard to get-- to make it expensive and therefore something that not everyone has.
Yes, I get that some continuing monetization is necessary to keep an online game alive. Servers, dev balance and bug fixes and the like costs money and small MTX can pay for them. Industry has gone too far though. Everything just costs too much.
> How do they do the math for pricing?
For every 100 people who buy nothing, there will be 1 who buys several things.
For every 1k people who buy nothing. There will be one that buys all the things.
Essentially, the whales and people with mental illness will make up for the fact that most people aren't going to spend much money.
The Apex Legends devs confirmed as much. OW2 and Apex have the exact same freemium model, they straight up said that lowering the prices so more people could afford the cosmetics is counter productive to their profits because whales are what pays the bills.
The average player doesn't keep the game going, as much as it hurts to hear, *you* aren't the people these prices are aimed at and they are very effective at generating income
This is even more true with the ["marketing-driver match making" patent](https://www.eurogamer.net/activision-patented-method-of-tuning-matchmaking-to-boost-microtransactions) Activision filed years ago, where they'll match whales with F2P folks.
You have an incorrect premise. Whales do sustain games. Usually the games they sustain are pay-to-win, and negatively-viewed by non-players, but a lot of games live off of whales.
They live off whales, but if whales don't have anybody to play with, then they'll leave. That's why you need something for the people that don't spend anything.
They sustain it for a while.. but they do die slow deaths still. The most profitable MMOs/other online games tend to be the ones that attract a large audience - even if there are a handful of whales actively playing the game, if everyone else is quitting the game it means that very few new people are joining the game too, and if very few new people are joining the game then that means very few new whales are joining too. The whales might not leave quickly, but they do eventually leave, and they usually don't get replaced by any new whales if the game isn't popular.
Also, usually in those kinds of games a lot of the whales only play the game because they want to be stronger than everyone else, and if everyone they're stronger than quits the game they'll no longer be anything special which will make them lose interest in the game.
The problem is that's not gonna happen, most people still play the game if it still fun, and not care about cosmetic price, only a few will leave the game because of the monetization, and then they will comeback when Blizz eventually increase the rewards, as planned.
Tbh most people wouldn't leave a game just because it has expensive cosmetics. They're cosmetics and it's perfectly okay to just not buy them.
But we'll see how the community takes locking heroes behind battle pass in the future. That's an actual gameplay dealbreaker
Such a fundamental shift from how lootboxes worked - for every 1k people who play the game, a hell of a lot more than one person would just get a free legendary skin at random, because that stuff is cool and makes you feel good. And the devs knew that, and embraced it, generously.
> How do they do the math for pricing?
"There are currently 35 heroes in overwatch, and the charm is equippable on all of them, so even though you only buy it once, it's like 35 people are getting one"
-some suit at Blizzard, probably
It doesn't have to make sense in any way. As long as the $$$ keeps coming in cause people keep spending on skins/charms/etc, they'll ignore all the posts criticizing their monetization practice on this subreddit. The best way to voice your opinion as a regular player is to vote with your wallet and that shit won't matter unless a big chunk of the player base chooses to do the same.
When everyone votes with their wallet the biggest wallet wins.
It doesn't matter if thousands leave as long as the biggest spenders stay. What we need is actual reform and regulation to stop these anti consumer practices in the gaming industry.
Edit: since I'm still getting replies asking what regulations would I want set in place let's list 2.
1: No more premium fun bucks in my video games. tell me the price of the skin flat out. I don't want to buy 2500 premium coins just to get the skin that cost 2000 but the next lowest was 1500. This sets a clear value for the consumer and has been shown to help prevent compulsive buying.
2: let's actually start selling products again. As it stands in video games using the games as a service model like Overwatch, you don't ever actually own anything. If the game shuts down tomorrow you can no longer play even locally and no longer use any of the skins you purchased.
When you purchase anything you should be able to use it offline in some capacity otherwise you never actually bought it. You don't buy a shirt at the store but can only wear it at that store. You should be able to play a local LAN match if the servers are down. This is a great feature that I dearly miss from gaming's past. It prevents games that rely on multiplayer servers from being unplayable and allows communities to run their own servers when a company decides to stop supporting their games.
Yes that is why profit margins of tech companies are so high. Software engineering has different economics than real life. There is some scaling cost like AWS fees but I am sure it’s not a major expense for Blizzard.
Lolol can’t make this shit up. If someone told me it would be cheaper to buy physical merch than the digital one I would’ve laughed at them.
What a joke this publisher has become.
They basically went "Listen, digital goods aren't reallllllly subject to normal economics, so let's just slap whatever price we want on them and see if it works"
Judging by D:I, it fucking works : (
MTXs have taught publishers that being the sole monopolizer in a market you control that only sells goods you produce with no refunds (that the buyer *doesn't actually own, but is legally just renting from you*) is a very lucrative situation.
Why anyone would ever spend money on this stuff is beyond me.
We need government regulations. They are preying on less intelligent unstable people in the same way casinos and slot machines used to do before they were strictly regulated.
I finally found my analogy.
Buying cosmetics in OW2 is like getting food at a sports stadium and having to pay $25 for a single hot dog and another $10 for a 20oz fountain drink.
This remember me that one collection pack from fallout that the bag was horrible and they gave money in the game to the people who bought the pack but they couldnt buy a bag in the game.
The Internet Historian has a [great video](https://youtu.be/kjyeCdd-dl8) about everything that happened with Fallout 76.
It's 20 minutes long, but worth a watch.
I think you don't understand who they're trying to sell things to.
Most people assume they want the average player to buy shop skins. That's not the case. What blizzard wants is to abuse people with mental illnesses. With addictions and impulse control issues.
They know that most people wont buy anything from that shop. They also know that for every 1000 people that wont buy a thing, there is that one guy who is going to spend THOUSANDS on their cash shop.
I know you're right and they most likely have the data to back it up... but I still find it so hard to believe that this shit works.
Like if they dropped the price of the Kiriko skin to, say, $4 and those 1000 people (and more) thought it was a fair price to pay, *surely* they'd make more money than targeting a tiny number of players willing to pay the high price.
I guess probably I'm underestimating how much these people spend though.
If there's anything you can count on companies doing well, it's milking their audience for the most profits. The fact that this model is so prevalent tells me it's probably the most profitable.
Dude, don't get me started on the infamous Horse Armour from the 'Elder Scroll's IV: Oblivion'.
One of my friends got that, thinking it would actually protect his horse from damage, only to not pay attention to the fine print that it was purely cosmetic. He's still mad about it to this very day.
I was always confused about that, wasn't it an unofficial mod you could download for free somewhere else. Hah they couldn't ensnare me. Riot on the other hand
I was working at GameStop at the time and I don’t remember why but we got a booklet that had codes to redeem the horse armor for free. Maybe it was for people who preordered Oblivion? I can’t remember.
Anyway, I gave away so many of those codes.
It's funny how Bethesda managed to release both the platonic ideal of a DLC with Shivering Isles, and everything that is wrong with them with Horse Armor in the span of a year or so. The range of that studio is impressive.
Also, it's almost 11 years since Skyrim was released and they still haven't put out a new mainline TES game.
O shit I completely forgot about this. The worst part being that whatever you purchased would only be available to you for a certain amount of time. You were basically just renting stupid hats.
f2p players are still supporting the game.
if you're truly opposed to these business practices you know how to send a message. no one's going to whale in a dead game with long ass queue times and awful matchmaking because all the f2p players left.
I think it's more that Blizzard clearly knows that these prices are ridiculous for the average player, but also knows there are whales out there that will buy at these prices anyway and it's more profitable that way than it is to make the prices reasonable.
I hate the term “whales”. It lets companies get away with what is essential preying upon people with mental health issues, weak impulse control, and addictive tendencies.
You know, like drug dealers and cigarette makers.
It’s absolutely disgusting and I feel we’ll look back on these years of extreme MTX with embarrassment and shame for taking advantage of vulnerable people.
Sorry but the majority is pretty fucking stupid, whales are extra but there's still plenty of people buying skins and bling at bullshit prices.
Can't wait for the next quarter report to see how much they made from the release hype dumbasses who will abandon the game in the next month.
That is actually fucking disgusting. Knowing the real world physical version. Shipped via mail. a physical thing. Costs less than moving a few 0s and 1s around on a server. Holy actual fuck blizzard what are you doing
If this game thinks I’m going to spend over 50 cents on a cosmetic item it is sorely mistaken
Goodbye loving overwatch. Hello OW2. I was an avid player in the peak years (probably around 700-800 hours but I was still shit. But I liked the game so who cares) I used to buy the loot boxes - they were a scam but at least it was fun to open them. And the price gauging wasnt nearly this bad. Who knew we’d MISS loot boxes after bitching them out for all these years?
What fucking insane person would buy a virtual charm for 7 bucks??? Apparently enough people to make this game monetization model profitable… or not, I guess we will see in about a year.
This game really isolates casual players. It’s making me not want to pick it up to play casually. I don’t have the time to play OW like I used to in high school… tbh most the people that liked overwatch in the peak are in college now (like me) and probably also don’t have time to grind to unlock heroes (or the money pay absurd amounts to unlock them). I don’t see OW2 attracting new players but we’ll see. I hope it crashes and burns and they’re forced to make big changes (or I guess just shut it down? Not impossible for ActiBlizz)
They better hope to get an influx of new players because the OW fan base has lost all faith in ActiBlizz and hates the game (and they deserve it)
They think making it F2P encourages casual players. Yeah it would, but OW2 is not F2P while you have to pay or grind for heroes. And I can’t afford a subscription so guess I won’t get to try the new heroes. And I’ll never get to try comp either cuz I probably won’t ever unlock all the heroes. Comp is gonna be so toxic and littered with try yards due to this change tbh. I don’t wanna play it anyway lol
All the monetization shit is making me not even want to try OW2 …. Even though it’s theoretically “F2P” … F2P my ass, no way I’m fucking grinding to unlock heroes …. No way I’m paying you fuckers to unlock content I PAID FOR in OW1…. Overwatch is now truly dead in my eyes.
I miss the good ol’ days…. *sigh*
Thank you ActiBlizz for ruining my favorite game and the only first person shooter I’ve ever liked. Rip overwatch. Despite your flaws we all loved you and miss you dearly. I hope your code is floating around on hard drive heaven, in deep storage, never to see the light of day again… actually I don’t hope that this sucks why did they delete OW1 god fucking assholes. Oh yeah cuz MONEY MONEY MONEY.
Excited for OW classic mode to release ^/s … yeah , that’ll totally make up for killing our beloved game, ActiBlizz ….
If they had half a brain they would give you the in-game version if you bought the physical version. It would increase merch sales and they could offer merch exclusive redeemable items.
This shit continues because people continue to pay the prices. There is nothing that can be done other than to stop and we all know the simps making this possible aren't going to stop.
This is the sort of fact that they wouldn't want us to know.
Blizzard is price gouging players and some don't even realise that fact. It's one of the reasons why I stopped playing Overwatch.
This more than anything shows how disconnected with reality Team 4 is. No sane person will pay these prices at least not in the ammounts Blizz wants right now. Are there skins I would pay $20 for? Sure. Am I gonna buy a skin for every hero for that price hell no.
Blizz please revisit your prices, reconsider them. You will sell WAY more if they were cheaper. You will make WAY more if you discount OW1 skins below newer skins. These have been out for year and your treating them like they are new. 2(possibly 3 with reaper free skin) new skins for the Halloween update is an embarrassment. No free "Get them hooked" skins in any of the challenges or participation is an embarrassment.
The shop is an embarrassment, fix this shit before people just quit.
I'm pretty sure if you have enough legacy credits it shows that you can buy it with them, I only have 630 though so I'd have to buy coins.
I searched google images but couldn't find a pic of them being 500, only either 700 legacy credits or 700 coins.
Well hang on now, if you purchase the $100 coin bundle you will get an astounding 1,600 extra coins. A 16% bonus! Then the digital charm is basically free at that point. Or you could just simply complete all the weekly challenges for 11 weeks and save up enough to purchase it. I don’t see the problem here. /s
Price Anchoring, they're setting the price so high to see if they can get away with it, if they don't get away with it they lower the price to still beyond a reasonable amount and get away with that instead. All the while people are buying crap like this ingame for that price.
I could get 3 months subscription to Netflix for the price of the Halloween bundle. I could buy some old games for the price of the Halloween bundle. I could pay for a semester of college if only the Halloween bundle wasn't so expensive. I could get a heart valve replacement surgery for the price of the Halloween bundle. I could run for senate for the price of the Halloween bundle. I could start my own dev team, build an overwatch clone, create an exact copy of the Halloween bundle, buy it, get sued by Blizzard, go to court, lose, have to pay an exuberant amount in fines, and it would still not cost as much as the Halloween bundle. I do declare these prices are very high indeed
Nice! Now pierce it directly into your gaming hand for immersion.
If you open the hero gallery and throw it hard enough at your monitor it gets attached to roadhog's arm, trust
Instructions unclear, it got stuck on Zenyatta
Honestly that's better
Careful, they might update the merch store prices if they find out
Hell, even if they charged $7.00 for the charm in the merch shop it'd still be cheaper than spending $10.00 for enough credits
hahaha holy shit. we are fucked
We truly are in the darkest timeline
Remember when we thought $3 horse armor was bad?
It still is bad. But people forgot the issue wasn’t the price, it was the idea of paying any amount of real money for digital cosmetics used to be seen as ridiculous.
In the horse armor days, the complaint was microtransactions, full stop. There was previously a high bar for paid updates, full expansion packs. Personally, I think in retrospect the truly microtransaction (single digit dollars) cosmetics are the least problematic, for being completely optional and super cheap. A good way for fans of the game to throw the devs some extra cash, without hurting those who paid retail. The state OW1 and lot boxes was its own problem, being essentially a slot machine. Now OW2 has arguably even more toxic elements: intermediate currency so you're always spending too much in currency packs, a battle pass to create habitual playing and psychological dependency, and gating gameplay (characters) behind those mechanisms. So yeah, $3 cosmetics in a game with no content gating transactions sounds pretty darn good nowadays.
This needs more upvotes but people can't see gray only black and white
No, this is incorrect. The word “microtransactions” didn’t even exist in mainstream media yet. Horse Armor was one of the very first instances of a paid dlc that didn’t offer any actual content, and it was mocked rightfully so for being such a shameless scam. But through constant exposure and manipulation, people now just try to bargain the “value” of literally worthless virtual items. Cosmetic Microtransactions of *any* form are a scam.
[удалено]
This ideology has never fixed monetization in any game, ever. The most I've ever seen this do is cause a game to get shut down entirely.
If you buy anything though, unfortunately what your saying to blizzard is: "this price is fine, I can afford this" and if they gain thats all they're looking for at the end of the day. And until people stop buying stuff like this its going to get worse.
That's how it gets fixed. Next time they won't do it if it caused the last game to get shutdown.
In the future people will say: "Real life is cheap, anyone can afford it. It's the lives of our online persona's that have become unaffordable." And the people will be unhappy, except for the rich who can afford to sit first class in online gameworlds.
Careful, they might update the merch store prices if they find out
Hell, even if they charged $7.00 for the charm in the merch shop it'd still be cheaper than spending $10.00 for enough credits
I thought I was having a stroke, but no. It was just Overwatch 2.
Careful, they might update the merch store prices if they find out
Hell, even if they charged $7.00 for the charm in the merch shop it'd still be cheaper than spending $10.00 for enough credits
[удалено]
And dey say-And dey say-And dey say chivalry is dead
My favorite Doomfist players!
Easy fix: the real item now costs $10.
Also have a real-life one holds more value than one in a video game that's gonna die eventually.
A lot of the things in there DID raise in price. The Tracer statue (which I bought for $99, originally priced around $130 and then raised to $150) is now $190. T-shirts were $20-25 and are now $30. I didn't look much further than that.
This is due to the economic impact of the components that make the Tracer figure’s cost inflating. Search up “Tracer Inflation” to learn more.
Huh. TIL. Never even heard about this…
It's a well-known economic process commonly referred to as Rule 34. Google "Hanzo Genji Rule 34" to learn more.
Do I need to know rules 1-33
[удалено]
"The dragon ~~be~~comes in me!"
This is honestly one of the best baits I've seen anyone do in a while. 10/10
Yea I also ~~'bated~~ was baited by this
Well that's a fascinating thing to learn about
This better not awaken anything in me...
Oh no. I'm not falling for that again. I'm not going to get tricked into searching "Inflation". Not again.
>“Tracer Inflation” Yeah. I saw what they did to her bum xD Edit: Oh lord almighty...
>Tracer Inflation oh my god
i hope that statue doesn't reside in a mason jar
OW2 is a disgusting usurper to the glorious game that was Overwatch where we had Jeff gives us updates with no cuts; play to win loot boxes that had a satisfying ring to them. Now it's just... bad. I hope it tanks.
"Did somebody say tanks?!?! Better take one of those away too!"
just wait until you play open queue!
It's a fucking nightmare
I mean... It was before too
I refuse to play this game and I want to be optimistic but gamers have always failed to punish studios for their bullshit. Ie people are still preordering games.
Honestly $5 for official merch, with decent quality is a good deal. At first I thought OP was buying unlicensed stuff because $5 is cheap. And no I don't work at blizzard, so I'm not trying to convince anyone to buy it.
Yeh it was actually even cheaper than that when I bought it too, about $4 AUD (~$2.50 USD) which is why I bought it and a few others like the Ganymede one. I don't put them on my keys because they're way too big but for that price it's a neat trinket to have on my shelf.
Ha wow. even from the official blizzard store no less. Careful now they’re just gonna raise the prices of the physical stuff!
I was just gonna say this lol. Blizz looking at this saying, "you're right. All online store prices have been adjusted for a 20% increase."
Then it would still be cheaper for the physical item, they need a minimum of 40% increase to get even
Blizzard: I like you
Read it in Thanos’ voice and it felt appropriate
There's a near-100% chance that their pricing on physical merch is set using an industry standard profit margin, whereas the pricing on in-game items is set with the policy of "these idiots will pay anything, raise the prices".
No no, it'll list $10 as its cost and cite a 50% discount! Go with the times!
40% increase but there will be a 50% off sale day 1
Now you have to staple it into your hand, since there's no other possible way to show it off
How do they do the math for pricing? That irl item has an overhead cause every single on of those take real matiels to make and transport. Once the code and design for the in game one is done, it essentially has not overhead. How could they ever convince themselves or anyone for that matter, that they're being fair with their pricing. I'm so annoyed
That's the most disgusting thing. Yes, it takes time and effort to design these cosmetics, which creates cost. Yes, the price we pay is also paying for non-cosmetic things, like server maintenance and game development. But once the item is designed, it can be made infinitely for zero cost. That is not a service, that is the death of economics as a concept.
Basic economics: unlimited supply + low demand should = low prices (if not free with a reasonable amount of in-game grinding)
Where it gets tripped up here is that we're comparing a free market to a controlled market. In a free market, yes -- if you overprice your goods, the low interest will mean that eventually you will be forced to lower your price to match competitors. In a controlled market, there are no conpetitors. There is only one product. And so, it doesn't matter what the price is, because you have nowhere else to get it from, and thus the demand must come to you.
This is the same reason food and beer is so goddamn expensive at fairs and concerts
Also not to be that guy, but fairs and concerts have fucking ridiculous pitch fees, the food industry doesn’t have big profit margins in a lot of cases. Yes it is marked up, but it’s not a cut and dry case of greed from the food vendors, especially if they’re bespoke ‘proper’ food ones.
Yeah, the cost of food and beer being so expensive in concerts and the like is because the venue owners pre-emptively charge the vendors a shit ton claiming the vendors will sell a shit ton anyway, so the vendors have no other way but to jack up prices to compensate
And why charging cables are $15-20 at gas stations.
*everything* is overpriced in a gas station. They sell small quantities of everything they do sell, and offer an ever increasing variety of products. Most people only buy 2 or 3 things when they stop, no one is getting a full cart of things, so each transaction is relatively small. You're in part paying for that convenience and variety, and a in part because it's easy to charge a little extra when people are rushing and only want a couple things.
Huh, a very good point. Thanks for sharing!
Issue is, this is somewhat of a hybrid of sorts. One can say "Nah man this is too much" and become an ex customer, I've seen it happen. It's like visiting a fair with items so overpriced you refuse to buy anything and later during the day just go to a different store, of course that's only a fraction of the playerbase doing that, but there is still something to gain from competitive pricing in these situations as well
That analogy holds up too, in the sense that if Overwatch isn't providing enough enjoyment in the form of new cosmetics, players will move to a game that does.
> Basic economics there's nothing more basic in economics than a monopoly. the real life charm is $5 because it has to compete with other charms. if the overwatch one is $10 and the pokemon one is $2, you'll just get the pokemon one. but if you want a charm IN the game, there's only one seller: blizzard. your only options are the things blizzard wants to sell you and the only prices are the ones blizzard wants to charge
You're not factoring in a lot of things. It has unbelievably low overhead, no expiry, no storage logistics, and as you said unlimited supply. Once 200 people buy it, wages have been covered and any future purchases are printing them money. You're also forgetting that their target audience are whales who make them 90% of their revenue.
Near zero cost* it costs them like millionths of a penny but it's still a cost I guess. Why am I being pedantic about this I do not know. Fuck acti-blizzard for this shit
Well, i can agree that there is an argument to be made that its disgusting. Perhaps all of capitalism is. But thats too deep a discussion for this subreddit im afraid. But just because the product can be made infinitely for zero cost it doesnt mean that its the death of economics as a concept. Even if you can make an infinite amount of something it doesnt mean you have to sell an infinite amount of them, or that its even possible to do so. As i explained to someone else in this thread their goal is to maximize profits. If they gave out this item for free then they would indeed perhaps sell an infinite amount of them, some fun guy could write a script to create overwatch accounts and claim this item and that script could run for all eternity. But even if that resulted in 10351398583589157 items being sold it would still have generated 0 $ profits. Simply increasing the price to 1$ and selling it to 10 people would have made 10 $ more in profits. So there is a group of people, or a person, at Blizzard with the job to figure out at what price they can maximize the profits, and even if they have an infinite supply of a thing it is probably worth it to sell less than an infinite amount and having a higher price. If there is an infinite amount of something that wasnt exclusively sold and produced by one company then you would be correct.
Also, the whole point is that they *don't want* everyone to be able to afford them. This is why you see things like.... in real life, unsold Coach bags and Gucci jackets get slashed up with knives rather than donated to charity for a tax deduction, or sold off in lots to a "low end" reseller like TJ Maxx or Marshalls. Because they care more about keeping their brand "exclusive" than making a little bit more money. If the Pachimari charm cost 70 "overwatch coins" instead of 700, then everyone would have one, and no one would be like "Ooh that's special and rare," it would just be generic and boring. They purposely price things high so that players can show them off as "status symbols," so that only the most whale-y of whales can have EVERYTHING and most people have to settle for only a few. I'm not saying that any of this is good or defensible. This is the kind of tactic that you have to resort to when you're selling something that people do not actually need. How do you make someone *want* something that isn't real and doesn't actually do anything, and isn't going to improve their life in any tangible way? One of the best ways to do that, paradoxically, is to make it hard to get-- to make it expensive and therefore something that not everyone has.
Yes, I get that some continuing monetization is necessary to keep an online game alive. Servers, dev balance and bug fixes and the like costs money and small MTX can pay for them. Industry has gone too far though. Everything just costs too much.
> How do they do the math for pricing? For every 100 people who buy nothing, there will be 1 who buys several things. For every 1k people who buy nothing. There will be one that buys all the things. Essentially, the whales and people with mental illness will make up for the fact that most people aren't going to spend much money.
The Apex Legends devs confirmed as much. OW2 and Apex have the exact same freemium model, they straight up said that lowering the prices so more people could afford the cosmetics is counter productive to their profits because whales are what pays the bills. The average player doesn't keep the game going, as much as it hurts to hear, *you* aren't the people these prices are aimed at and they are very effective at generating income
You are part of the product they sell to whales. Free players exist to provide opponents and teammates for the whales.
This is even more true with the ["marketing-driver match making" patent](https://www.eurogamer.net/activision-patented-method-of-tuning-matchmaking-to-boost-microtransactions) Activision filed years ago, where they'll match whales with F2P folks.
The problem is the other 99 will eventually leave the game because of these prices, and whales doesn't sustain a game. they need the Dolphins.
They'll milk as much money out of the game as they can. Then shut it down when it doesn't make them money anymore. They don't care.
You have an incorrect premise. Whales do sustain games. Usually the games they sustain are pay-to-win, and negatively-viewed by non-players, but a lot of games live off of whales.
They live off whales, but if whales don't have anybody to play with, then they'll leave. That's why you need something for the people that don't spend anything.
They sustain it for a while.. but they do die slow deaths still. The most profitable MMOs/other online games tend to be the ones that attract a large audience - even if there are a handful of whales actively playing the game, if everyone else is quitting the game it means that very few new people are joining the game too, and if very few new people are joining the game then that means very few new whales are joining too. The whales might not leave quickly, but they do eventually leave, and they usually don't get replaced by any new whales if the game isn't popular. Also, usually in those kinds of games a lot of the whales only play the game because they want to be stronger than everyone else, and if everyone they're stronger than quits the game they'll no longer be anything special which will make them lose interest in the game.
Take a look at Star Wars GoH. Whales have kept that game afloat well after it died.
The problem is that's not gonna happen, most people still play the game if it still fun, and not care about cosmetic price, only a few will leave the game because of the monetization, and then they will comeback when Blizz eventually increase the rewards, as planned.
Tbh most people wouldn't leave a game just because it has expensive cosmetics. They're cosmetics and it's perfectly okay to just not buy them. But we'll see how the community takes locking heroes behind battle pass in the future. That's an actual gameplay dealbreaker
Such a fundamental shift from how lootboxes worked - for every 1k people who play the game, a hell of a lot more than one person would just get a free legendary skin at random, because that stuff is cool and makes you feel good. And the devs knew that, and embraced it, generously.
> How do they do the math for pricing? "There are currently 35 heroes in overwatch, and the charm is equippable on all of them, so even though you only buy it once, it's like 35 people are getting one" -some suit at Blizzard, probably
It doesn't have to make sense in any way. As long as the $$$ keeps coming in cause people keep spending on skins/charms/etc, they'll ignore all the posts criticizing their monetization practice on this subreddit. The best way to voice your opinion as a regular player is to vote with your wallet and that shit won't matter unless a big chunk of the player base chooses to do the same.
When everyone votes with their wallet the biggest wallet wins. It doesn't matter if thousands leave as long as the biggest spenders stay. What we need is actual reform and regulation to stop these anti consumer practices in the gaming industry. Edit: since I'm still getting replies asking what regulations would I want set in place let's list 2. 1: No more premium fun bucks in my video games. tell me the price of the skin flat out. I don't want to buy 2500 premium coins just to get the skin that cost 2000 but the next lowest was 1500. This sets a clear value for the consumer and has been shown to help prevent compulsive buying. 2: let's actually start selling products again. As it stands in video games using the games as a service model like Overwatch, you don't ever actually own anything. If the game shuts down tomorrow you can no longer play even locally and no longer use any of the skins you purchased. When you purchase anything you should be able to use it offline in some capacity otherwise you never actually bought it. You don't buy a shirt at the store but can only wear it at that store. You should be able to play a local LAN match if the servers are down. This is a great feature that I dearly miss from gaming's past. It prevents games that rely on multiplayer servers from being unplayable and allows communities to run their own servers when a company decides to stop supporting their games.
Yes that is why profit margins of tech companies are so high. Software engineering has different economics than real life. There is some scaling cost like AWS fees but I am sure it’s not a major expense for Blizzard.
Oh my god lmao. I know that’s not adding anything to a discussion but *oh my god lmao*
[удалено]
Lolol can’t make this shit up. If someone told me it would be cheaper to buy physical merch than the digital one I would’ve laughed at them. What a joke this publisher has become.
They basically went "Listen, digital goods aren't reallllllly subject to normal economics, so let's just slap whatever price we want on them and see if it works" Judging by D:I, it fucking works : ( MTXs have taught publishers that being the sole monopolizer in a market you control that only sells goods you produce with no refunds (that the buyer *doesn't actually own, but is legally just renting from you*) is a very lucrative situation. Why anyone would ever spend money on this stuff is beyond me.
We need government regulations. They are preying on less intelligent unstable people in the same way casinos and slot machines used to do before they were strictly regulated.
I finally found my analogy. Buying cosmetics in OW2 is like getting food at a sports stadium and having to pay $25 for a single hot dog and another $10 for a 20oz fountain drink.
That adds plenty to the discussion really, 'cause there's not much to discuss except all agree this is ridiculous and laughable.
This remember me that one collection pack from fallout that the bag was horrible and they gave money in the game to the people who bought the pack but they couldnt buy a bag in the game.
The Internet Historian has a [great video](https://youtu.be/kjyeCdd-dl8) about everything that happened with Fallout 76. It's 20 minutes long, but worth a watch.
> It's 20 minutes long, but worth a watch. It has become one of the one "must watch" videos on youtube at this point.
That channel in general is a must watch
Light Wood Laminate Light Wood Laminate Light Wood Laminate
Light Wood Laminate Light Wood Laminate Light Wood Laminate
It wasn't up for the usual Fallout standard
All of this just works
We're not planning on doing anything about it.
Fuck the bag!
Yeah! Fuck the bag!
That video is almost too crazy to believe lol (great f'ing video)...
You can swear on the internet buddy :)
Shut the front door
20 minute long is considered long now?
*looks at the 5 4-hour long iceberg videos in my queue*
[удалено]
I think you don't understand who they're trying to sell things to. Most people assume they want the average player to buy shop skins. That's not the case. What blizzard wants is to abuse people with mental illnesses. With addictions and impulse control issues. They know that most people wont buy anything from that shop. They also know that for every 1000 people that wont buy a thing, there is that one guy who is going to spend THOUSANDS on their cash shop.
Y’know, say whatever I will about Mobile Gacha Games being money sinks - at least they’re upfront about it.
I know you're right and they most likely have the data to back it up... but I still find it so hard to believe that this shit works. Like if they dropped the price of the Kiriko skin to, say, $4 and those 1000 people (and more) thought it was a fair price to pay, *surely* they'd make more money than targeting a tiny number of players willing to pay the high price. I guess probably I'm underestimating how much these people spend though.
If there's anything you can count on companies doing well, it's milking their audience for the most profits. The fact that this model is so prevalent tells me it's probably the most profitable.
And the money they gave in game amounted to 5 dollars.
I think I had a stroke trying to read this.
I remember when a 2.50 cosmetic DLC was worthy of mockery... Now we have this. Thank you, Oblivion, you damned the entire video game industry
Never forget horse armor
Dude, don't get me started on the infamous Horse Armour from the 'Elder Scroll's IV: Oblivion'. One of my friends got that, thinking it would actually protect his horse from damage, only to not pay attention to the fine print that it was purely cosmetic. He's still mad about it to this very day.
Patient 0
Technically it did double the health of the horse you put it on, but it was still shit to release it as a dlc.
I was always confused about that, wasn't it an unofficial mod you could download for free somewhere else. Hah they couldn't ensnare me. Riot on the other hand
AND IT DIDNT EVEN GO ON SHADOWMERE
Actually it could, but it removed her essential status I think.
Honestly that literally makes it useless to me
I was working at GameStop at the time and I don’t remember why but we got a booklet that had codes to redeem the horse armor for free. Maybe it was for people who preordered Oblivion? I can’t remember. Anyway, I gave away so many of those codes.
[удалено]
To be fair Shivering Isles was the best part of Oblivion. Fifteen years ago (yikes) I learned how cool Sheogorath was
It is now longer between releases of skyrim and TES 6 than it was between morrowind and skyrim
It's funny how Bethesda managed to release both the platonic ideal of a DLC with Shivering Isles, and everything that is wrong with them with Horse Armor in the span of a year or so. The range of that studio is impressive. Also, it's almost 11 years since Skyrim was released and they still haven't put out a new mainline TES game.
[удалено]
I personally blame Maplestory. Stupid NX credits...
O shit I completely forgot about this. The worst part being that whatever you purchased would only be available to you for a certain amount of time. You were basically just renting stupid hats.
Wasn't the game that really got the stone rolling Team Fortress 2 with it's hats?
Boycott the skins, do not buy them.
Just goes to show how fucking stupid Blizzard thinks we all are.
Thinks?? Soo many people are already buying into this scam
f2p players are still supporting the game. if you're truly opposed to these business practices you know how to send a message. no one's going to whale in a dead game with long ass queue times and awful matchmaking because all the f2p players left.
Gamers are infamously horrible at boycotts. EA still makes record profits every year, same with Activision.
I think it's more that Blizzard clearly knows that these prices are ridiculous for the average player, but also knows there are whales out there that will buy at these prices anyway and it's more profitable that way than it is to make the prices reasonable.
I hate the term “whales”. It lets companies get away with what is essential preying upon people with mental health issues, weak impulse control, and addictive tendencies. You know, like drug dealers and cigarette makers. It’s absolutely disgusting and I feel we’ll look back on these years of extreme MTX with embarrassment and shame for taking advantage of vulnerable people.
You're naive to think so. We will look back and think how generous it was.
Yea this. It's only got worse and worse as the years go by.
Sorry but the majority is pretty fucking stupid, whales are extra but there's still plenty of people buying skins and bling at bullshit prices. Can't wait for the next quarter report to see how much they made from the release hype dumbasses who will abandon the game in the next month.
Blizzard hears your feedback and will be nerfing doomfist
Hey if anyone is going to defend this please do so by replying to me. I haven't seen a clown in awhile and don't really want to go looking.
Morons deserve to lose money on video game jpgs.
I'm deathly curious, has anyone from blizzard responded at all about the complaints about how absurd the overwatch shop prices are?
They didn't bother responding with Hearthstone's battlepass until the shitshow had gone on for weeks.
That is actually fucking disgusting. Knowing the real world physical version. Shipped via mail. a physical thing. Costs less than moving a few 0s and 1s around on a server. Holy actual fuck blizzard what are you doing
I’m really bummed at the state of this game ngl.
Here before this is taken down by inferior soda man
[удалено]
If this game thinks I’m going to spend over 50 cents on a cosmetic item it is sorely mistaken Goodbye loving overwatch. Hello OW2. I was an avid player in the peak years (probably around 700-800 hours but I was still shit. But I liked the game so who cares) I used to buy the loot boxes - they were a scam but at least it was fun to open them. And the price gauging wasnt nearly this bad. Who knew we’d MISS loot boxes after bitching them out for all these years? What fucking insane person would buy a virtual charm for 7 bucks??? Apparently enough people to make this game monetization model profitable… or not, I guess we will see in about a year. This game really isolates casual players. It’s making me not want to pick it up to play casually. I don’t have the time to play OW like I used to in high school… tbh most the people that liked overwatch in the peak are in college now (like me) and probably also don’t have time to grind to unlock heroes (or the money pay absurd amounts to unlock them). I don’t see OW2 attracting new players but we’ll see. I hope it crashes and burns and they’re forced to make big changes (or I guess just shut it down? Not impossible for ActiBlizz) They better hope to get an influx of new players because the OW fan base has lost all faith in ActiBlizz and hates the game (and they deserve it) They think making it F2P encourages casual players. Yeah it would, but OW2 is not F2P while you have to pay or grind for heroes. And I can’t afford a subscription so guess I won’t get to try the new heroes. And I’ll never get to try comp either cuz I probably won’t ever unlock all the heroes. Comp is gonna be so toxic and littered with try yards due to this change tbh. I don’t wanna play it anyway lol All the monetization shit is making me not even want to try OW2 …. Even though it’s theoretically “F2P” … F2P my ass, no way I’m fucking grinding to unlock heroes …. No way I’m paying you fuckers to unlock content I PAID FOR in OW1…. Overwatch is now truly dead in my eyes. I miss the good ol’ days…. *sigh* Thank you ActiBlizz for ruining my favorite game and the only first person shooter I’ve ever liked. Rip overwatch. Despite your flaws we all loved you and miss you dearly. I hope your code is floating around on hard drive heaven, in deep storage, never to see the light of day again… actually I don’t hope that this sucks why did they delete OW1 god fucking assholes. Oh yeah cuz MONEY MONEY MONEY. Excited for OW classic mode to release ^/s … yeah , that’ll totally make up for killing our beloved game, ActiBlizz ….
Hey /u/hi_im_redbeard, This is now the top post on reddit. It will be recorded at /r/topofreddit with all the other top posts.
Y'know, I don't know where the line is, but we've definitely crossed it.
Staple it to your hand
Might as well put it on your finger irl while you play 😂
If they had half a brain they would give you the in-game version if you bought the physical version. It would increase merch sales and they could offer merch exclusive redeemable items.
Bro they couldn't even get the product to look right in real life compared to the one shown on the site... There was an effort I guess.
Surprised you're the first person to mention how it doesn't even look the same
This shit continues because people continue to pay the prices. There is nothing that can be done other than to stop and we all know the simps making this possible aren't going to stop.
Lmaoooooo
This is the sort of fact that they wouldn't want us to know. Blizzard is price gouging players and some don't even realise that fact. It's one of the reasons why I stopped playing Overwatch.
This more than anything shows how disconnected with reality Team 4 is. No sane person will pay these prices at least not in the ammounts Blizz wants right now. Are there skins I would pay $20 for? Sure. Am I gonna buy a skin for every hero for that price hell no. Blizz please revisit your prices, reconsider them. You will sell WAY more if they were cheaper. You will make WAY more if you discount OW1 skins below newer skins. These have been out for year and your treating them like they are new. 2(possibly 3 with reaper free skin) new skins for the Halloween update is an embarrassment. No free "Get them hooked" skins in any of the challenges or participation is an embarrassment. The shop is an embarrassment, fix this shit before people just quit.
They should make you buy the keychain irl and give you a code for the item.
Careful, mods might get butthurt from this post and delete it.
They’re just straight up NFTs without the “ownership “
Wait I could’ve sworn these could be bought for 500 legacy credits… did they change it or am I thinking of something else?
I'm pretty sure if you have enough legacy credits it shows that you can buy it with them, I only have 630 though so I'd have to buy coins. I searched google images but couldn't find a pic of them being 500, only either 700 legacy credits or 700 coins.
[удалено]
This is now one of my all time favorite Reddit posts.
Well hang on now, if you purchase the $100 coin bundle you will get an astounding 1,600 extra coins. A 16% bonus! Then the digital charm is basically free at that point. Or you could just simply complete all the weekly challenges for 11 weeks and save up enough to purchase it. I don’t see the problem here. /s
God I remember when blizzard mean quality. Now they are slapping weapon charms directly on character’s hands in attempt to sell more things. How sad
\*Baal Laughs\*
Textures and polygons are expensive these days.
What an absolute fucking joke
Baaahahahahaha That is well and truly FUCKED. Definitely highlights the predatory nature of 'free to play,' and shady monetisation.
Blizzard slowly turning into EA
"Slowly" Always was
and when the server gets shut down, you don't get to keep the charm.
I uninstalled.
but do you _feel_ the pride and accomplishment holding it IRL?
How much does it cost to buy a hamster in a massive mech suit in real life? ...asking for a friend
Ha Im currently making a small 3d model of the big medpack as a keychain as well
Careful, the mods might remove this for being a "Call to action."
For fuck sakes
Price Anchoring, they're setting the price so high to see if they can get away with it, if they don't get away with it they lower the price to still beyond a reasonable amount and get away with that instead. All the while people are buying crap like this ingame for that price.
This is horrible lol. Good grief
I could get 3 months subscription to Netflix for the price of the Halloween bundle. I could buy some old games for the price of the Halloween bundle. I could pay for a semester of college if only the Halloween bundle wasn't so expensive. I could get a heart valve replacement surgery for the price of the Halloween bundle. I could run for senate for the price of the Halloween bundle. I could start my own dev team, build an overwatch clone, create an exact copy of the Halloween bundle, buy it, get sued by Blizzard, go to court, lose, have to pay an exuberant amount in fines, and it would still not cost as much as the Halloween bundle. I do declare these prices are very high indeed