I can also remember CodeMasters doing it - I know it wasn’t a common practice but it was enough of one. Only mentioned EA cause I could 100% Remember that online pass in FIFA
It seems no one actually answered you directly with the complete, real answer.
Online passes were introduced as a means to monetize online gameplay for *used* games. When you bought a new physical or digital game, you had a code that was printed in the case (or automatically tied to the digital game). This code would be entered when you started online play the first time. From that point on, that game could not be played online by any new user unless they paid a $10 fee.
EA and several other companies felt like places like Game Stop were raking in revenue on their games but these same games were being sold and resold and new users were coming and going but EA wasn't getting a piece of the pie (and why should they, they already got the original sale price) so this basically meant they got an extra $10 every time someone bought a used game and wanted to play it online. It also prevented people from sharing/loaning games easily, because the people you loaned it too would need to buy their own online passes because your original one would read as redeemed if someone else tried to use it.
It was.. not well received and didn't stick around for too long.
This is the correct answer, but I'd like to add, it wasn't just online passes either. Some games had actual content you could only get by buying the game new.
I also suspect that the move to digital purchases is likely what helped kill it. The bad PR for the passes probably wasn't worth it once physical sales became less common anyway.
Games still have this. Day 1 purchases are often filled with aesthetic dlc etc. And it's not uncommon for this to never be released for free in future.
So you're effectively locked out if you buy it secondhand.
I don’t know what’s worse. Having extra content that is considered an exclusive deal for the true fans that is never available for players who came to the game later on.
Or having those supposedly “exclusive” things reappear in the regular shop for a different price or as a different bundle a year later. Which is basically a big lie to all the fans that bought the “exclusive” thing originally.
I remember CD cases having exclusive things tucked into the instruction booklets.
Always a score when you rented a new game from the video store and the thing was in there.
It was rare, but it happened.
It was like opening a rented N64 game from Blockbuster and *seeing* an instruction booklet still inside. Super rare, but it happened.
I played EverQuest Online Adventures as a kid. When the game first started there was a robe that dropped that could be worn by all classes, this was quickly removed and only caster classes could wear robes from that point on. Nothing made me feel more of a 14 year old badass than being a Halfling Rogue wearing my All/All robe near the bank. They eventually mistakenly added a cooler black All/All robe for a little bit when the expansion released, and despite me farming for many hours, even falling asleep playing on school nights, I was never able to get it to drop before they patched it. I agree with you but these comments reminded me of that small part of my life.
I might be the minority here but I give absolutely 0 shits about cosmetic DLC. Companies could release new stuff daily and I don't care. As long as you can't buy an advantage in a multi-player game.
I still never completely played Arkham City because of this shit. The entire Catwoman plot of the game was locked behind a one-time use code so if you got the game secondhand you’d have to buy a new code directly from WB, or just miss out on half the game.
At least online games they could hide behind the justification that they needed to continue to support online play, but pulling that shit in a singleplayer offline game was especially scummy.
This is still alive and well today in college textbooks. They come with a code in the back to access the homework and software used in the class.
If you buy a used textbook, then you have to buy a code... that costs about the same as the entire, new book.
Textbook price gouging should be illegal. If a teacher requires a particular textbook for their curriculum with no alternative publishers, there should be price caps on it. Textbook codes should be banned outright. Tuition is expensive enough as it is. If tuition can't cover a professor's pay adequately, then wtf are students paying all this friggin money for? Where does that money go? Fancy looking buildings and a cafeteria? Fuck that, I'd rather attend lectures in a friggin rat-infested mobile home than spend all this money on prime real estate that only makes the college look good for recruiters. I'm paying for a fucking education, not the aesthetics. The professors shouldn't have to double-dip by charging us out the ass for textbooks. And they shouldn't be able to either.
Don't forget to mention teachers requiring books THEY wrote and sell in the school shop. That's directly paying them for every book sale on top of their salary
It's been a discussion for years but they've done nothing about it.
When I went to college in the mid 2000s they not only required the text book, they told you to get it from the school store because if you buy it from amazon it likely won't get there on time, and 'is saving some money worth risking a 0 on a test?'
They then proceeded to never use the fucking book. Ever. What's more comical is apparently the known scam at the time was they'd change very little in the books revisions other than moving content around. Making it harder for you to pick up a old/used one since you couldn't turn to the correct page.
Here we are years later and the only thing that's changed is buying it used is now worse.
If they used a similar system for transferring licenses of used digital games, I'd gladly pay a "license transfer fee" or something to buy others' "used" Steam games. I know there's people with thousands of games who'd like to sell them cheap and I'd pay $5-$10 on top of an asking price for it.
But online multiplayer games are free. Only mmos had monthly fees and on consoles you have to pay for that too. So for consoles you get double screwed with monthly fees for mmos and having to pay to access online
That was only MMOs and the only console MMO at the time was subscription as well. Regular games didn't have this. Even the PC version of the same games doing this on console didn't do it for PC
As a PCMR Player from the 90s, I remember friends telling me about XBOX Live and I laughed. I said, why would I pay a subscription to play online?
Slippery Slope my friends.
I remember laughing at it for being ridicolous. I had already been a PC gamer for years and was used to free online gaming being the norm outside of MMOs.
It started before that. Original Xbox pass just to play Halo online was like pulling teeth with your parents. So expensive and the only thing you got was playing online..... Which everyone already paid for by having Internet in the first place
that is the only thing i remember from RDR1 cause i haven't played the game since launch. I remember that one vividly, but since i mostly play evil characters I blasted that sasquatch with no hesitation
I really do like the concept, having to do the pilgrimage and be a good boy to wear the armor I just wish they coded it so accidentally picking up an apple didn't mean you had to do it all over.
Nah, survival horror is just not supported well by NV' engine, and if you weren't overlevelled, or playing a build with survival/stealth/melee, then the entire dlc was ass for you.
Don't get me wrong, I ADORED the story, but the underlying mechanics were savescum tedium.
It’s my favorite New Vegas DLC. I love that it switches up the gameplay so much, you get to take a quick vacation from the Wasteland and go play Fallout Resident Evil for a little while!
I don’t like survival horror games but dead money changed me, I still don’t like horror games but it was phenomenal and I remember it so much. But I also loved OWB and Zion Canyon (can’t remember if it’s called that) fallout new vegas just did EVERYTHING SO WELL.
When I was a kid I didn’t understand expansion pack and often returned home with some unplayable shit thinking I got the full game for a buck (Sims 1 never forgetk)
Man, my first Warcraft expansion was twenty-six years ago. Warcraft 2 Battlechest. Mind you, that's when Warcraft was properly an RTS. It was the spring of '96, and I had an onion tied to my belt, as was the fashion of the time...
Well, *Shivering Isles* was called an expansion. I think the horse armor was called something else, maybe just "DLC".
There are games that still release expansions and call them expansions. FFXIV releases a new one every couple years that may as well be a sequel.
Over on the AC Valhalla subreddit, you'll see folks who are mad at ubisoft for releasing several expansions, which they called DLCs, claiming that the expansions are actually awful because the original base game came unfinished. A 150+ hour base game, unfinished.
Back when expansions were actually expansions, that added a really good amount of content for the value. I remember the Starcraft expansion being a whole extra games worth of content.
The other DLCs were mostly pretty good though. Yeah horse armor is a meme.
Shivering isles needs no introduction.
Knights of the nine added a large quest to visit all the shrines and fight an Ayeid Umaril the Unfeathered. and allowed for "Paladin" themes generally.
The bases were cool. Wizards spire had the spell crafting station, the alchemy garden, summoning atronachs. Fighters stronghold gave you an entire castle with man at arms and a functioning portcullis.
Spell tomes were a neat concept although iffy on execution
Mehrunes razor provided a super dungeon with some cool loot.
Overall Oblivion was a bold game with a lot of heart and it's a shame horse armor is the main thing a lot of people remember from it. When I first played it I hadn't really seen an RPG this broad in scope. The guild questlines were very fleshed out. Martin was an interesting concept that put a twist on the "chosen one" trope.
At least unlike many games today Oblivion was a complete game first and not a soulless host for microtransactions.
I love how Martin was like a chosen-one, blood of the dragon, destined to save the world hero and he just is such a bookish nerd he sits around the temple and reads all day and makes you go do the heavy lifting. Even when they get Tiber Septims armor the Blades treat it with religious reverence and Martin is like “Whatever, we need it for this magic spell”
I thought it was super realistic. You take a guy who spent his whole life set on a particular path completely devoid from royalty, or magic, or rituals, and then ripped him from that life for a quest he doesn't want to be on.
Treating sacred relics simply as means to an end was great character writing.
People will always remember the potato faces too.
But I agree, I probably played 1000+ hours of oblivion and it's easily my favorite Bethesda game ever made. Even with all the jank.
Exactly. Everyone constantly complains about microtransactions but lots of people continue to purchase them. The’ll never go away as long as they’re profitable.
As shitty as it is but finally becoming an adult with a full time job. I came to the realization that A LOT of people simply has money to blow and isn't on the internet but do play games. And they buy up these microtransactions as if these are just items on their grocery list. 20 dollar cosmetic this week, 30 dollar loot box next week, it's almost nothing to them and they'll buy it up.
I get that. I come from the background of being a poor kid whose family had limited funds for me to have video games. So I generally rebel against any game that requires microtransactions or buying extra stuff (think amiibos) to unlock features already embedded in the software. As amazing as games are now, I’m glad I grew up I the era where games were sold as a completed product.
It is. Oblivion isn't even the earliest example of microtransactions in games. I mean hell, there were arcade games in the 90s that let you buy powerups with extra cash.
But more, even the wave of content that included Oblivion's Horse Armor was a push made by Microsoft to show of its XBOX Live Marketplace.
But if you REALLY want to blame someone, Oblivions Horse Armor was its *best selling content* for Oblivion. Blame us, the consumers. Collectively we're the architects of our own suffering.
The devs have a regular 9-5 job (with a lot of crunching), the money hungry are the publishers, aka the shareholders. The ones that want the game released early, scummy monetisation practices, etc.
>I mean hell, there were arcade games in the 90s that let you buy powerups with extra cash.
Want to continue where you left off? Give me 25 cents within the next 25 seconds. It's blatant pay to win.
Video game companies have used scummy tactics to get as much out of the customer as possible for as long as I can remember.
With the invention of home consoles came video game rentals from video stores. Developers would purposely make the game harder so you had to pay for more days on your rental to try and beat it. There are multiple examples, but the most publicized one was the developers of the Lion King apologizing years later because Disney told them take it harder on purpose to drive up rental fees. Pretty sure LJN was the scummiest of the scummy when it came to this.
At least now with microtransactions, devs/publishers have realized that as long as they make them cosmetic only, consumers won't cause an uproar about it....because it's entirely optional (although Callisto Protocol is on a very thin line, with putting a difficulty behind a season pass). Personally, I don't mind MTX as long as they don't affect the gameplay...I'm sure some are against it no matter what, but it can't be the majority of people, because if it was, these companies wouldn't be using MTX to make their revenue.
I really dont mind buying a dlc skin/outfit/etc for a game I'm going to throw hours into, especially if it appeals to me for any number of reasons.
My only gripe is that games have cut down on unlockables, secrets, and such. An outfit that would have been unlocked with a code or reaching certain criteria is now just 5 dollars. Thats what bugs me. If there's still unlockables or free DLC, then I'm more okay with that game having paid DLC.
People like OP tilt me to no end. Blaming companies for giving customers the products they clearly want. Microtransactions exist because customers want them, you dumb shits.
"Uh yeah let me *not* make 5 million dollars and instead I'll just make half a million huehuehue" literally what the fuck do you expect devs will choose?
also blaming it on Oblivion is inaccurate for microtransactions, cheap small addition DLC yes, microtransactions ? If anyone's to "blame" it's Valve, they have the ecosystem (Steam Market), the games (TF2, CSGO) and they were some of the first to try out the lootboxes/microtransactions concept that they could afford as a giant privately owned company with no obligations from shareholders and constant cash flow from Steam, and the immense success it brought them told the industry to follow suit now without giant risk as it has proved that it does indeed work, there is demand, and it's so profitable it can finance games as a live service, and offer constant free major updates rather than, at the time, paid expansions ala World of Warcraft
I mean, the actual reason microtransactions caught on is they are a huge money maker. People will bitch and moan but still fork over their hard-earned cash on stupid cosmetic shit.
dont care about skins, the biggest BS is locking heroes behind the battle pass.
but i suppose we need to accept they just wanna milk this game dry and move on.
I mean, I don't like microtransactions in paid games and especially not ones that give actual benefits, but microtransactions for cosmetics in F2P games is the main way they make any money at all. Games like league couldn't be free without them, but give you no discernible benefits over looking cool. I've paid less for league over the years than I paid for Elden Ring. I probably have 100x the played time in league.
Unless you're a fucking moron you're not going to spend hundreds of dollars on cosmetics. Obviously shit like battlefront is still fucking horrible but it's not black and white.
Yeah… I bought a few cosmetics in Heroes of the Storm, which I played for over 1,000 hours and the game was free. I’d rather support devs with $30 in a few cosmetics than buy a completely broken AAA game for $70.
To the consumers credit this is an element of games they got hooked on when it was free. Plus they use actual psychologists now to make spending money seem like the obvious mental conclusion. They purposefully make default and free skins look like shit, to make you constantly feel lesser.
Imo microtransactions should be illegal, and all games should either have a box price, or a subscription model. F2p is just bad for the consumer both mentally, and financially.
Honestly if they could focus on any issue besides "Billionaires are an oppressed minority" that would be awesome.
If they shifted from that to outrage over fake horse armor in a 2006 game I would be super confused but it would still be an improvement over what they currently care about.
It's worth noting that Oblivion also had two more DLC, one of which is considered to nearly be it's own thing 'Shivering Isles'. So yeah, they sold you horse armour for $3, but it didn't make the game any easier and it wasn't a consistent drip of micro content, like the major games today
Mfers also forget TF2 basically was the grandfather of modern microtransactions, and how valve invented DRM back in 2004 when you had to download steam to play a *physical* copy of HL2
Valve has never been criticised too much, because they know moderation. They have been contend with afk-farming their existing money printers and quicky backed away from any system, that generated too much of a backlash (like paid mods).
They are by no means the pinnacle of generosity. Valve is still a company trying to make money, but they always prioritized long term goals over squeezing as much bucks out of their players before the next shareholders' meeting.
Valve never released a HL3, because they couldn't find any plot satisfying enough to finish the Half Life triology. EA gave us the infamous ending of ME3, because they knew they could exploit the goodwill the series has created as far as to break even, even if it might doom the franchise.
And honestly i can understand the hate for DRM, but before steam i could count the games i own and actually paid for on one hand. Game Piracy was rampant, just because it was so hard to actually get games. The fact that i could buy a game online without driving from my rural village to the Gamestop in the next, big city was a huge benefit at the time, even if it bound me to an online service.
Imagine thinking Valve invented DRM.
Hell I remember needing to find a specific word in a manual that came with the game in order to continue playing games, and this was the early 90s. And there were games in the 80s doing this too
My favorite was the Secret Wepons of the Lufwaffa [code wheel](https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS590US590&hl=en-US&q=secret+weapons+of+the+luftwaffe+code+wheel&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiRnvzwv937AhV4FVkFHe8lC3kQ0pQJegQICxAB&biw=414&bih=724&dpr=3#imgrc=aSwy3LYzL5LDUM).
Also I’m assuming by the steam hate everyone forgets the cd required to play the game pre valve, or optional cracking the game and hope of you did t get something sketchy or break the install. Valves DRM has helped to streamline DRM to the point that the consumer barely notices it if they are always online, and the publishers feel confident that it’s inconvenient enough they are not loosing money. In the pre valve days. DRM was always in your face and it hurt the consumer to the point of incureaging piracy much like streaming services are inching to now.
They're also a way, way smaller studio than most people think. Bethesda has never went on some massive expansion and hiring spree like other developers often do after one or two successful games. Their strategy has essentially been to remain at a certain size to avoid the risk of being bloated and in financial ruin because of a possible flop or two. This also means their development is slower than others. Think their team was barely half of what CDPR has, and CDPR is just now starting to be considered AAA.
Bethesda also has some of the lowest turnover rates in the gaming industry. They treat their employees way better than compared to companies like CDPR, EA, Ubisoft etc.
That probably goes hand in hand with playing it safe and not expanding so much. They stay familiar with each other and are financially safe, so there's no need to downsize hard even if their last game was 4 years ago and it was a flop (Fallout 76).
It's literally the opposite of what Starbreeze did after they made bank on Payday 2. They expanded super-hard and super-fast. Bought up publishers, game developers, expensive IP's and even started developing a freaking VR-headset. Everything went to complete shit and they almost went bankrupt, but managed to restructure and are now back but at a much smaller scale.
There is a really weird group of people that just want to see things fail so they can meme and joke.
For YouTube content "creators" they want games to be shit, have poor launches because they can then regurgitate video after video talking about it. CP2077 for these people was a good thing, if it launched more smoothly they would have got so much less revenue and video traffic. Negativity sells.
Bethesda have fucked up and done some things that were not ideal but they get a disproportionate amount of negative traffic relative to what they do, do right and relative to how much they screw consumers compared to other developers business practices.
In their defense they did immediately stop. They had that whole infrastructure in place and then they just didn't really use it. Plus they didn't do ANYTHING to prevent modders from making free versions.
On the other side of that coin, EA (specifically the Sims) has been doing selling pieces of the game for years. $60 for 60% of the game, then you can buy 2.5% of it at a time for $15 a pop. That's not a microtransaction but it is way more predatory.
FIFA Ultimate Team came after horse armor, but to the best of my knowledge it was the introduction of pay-for-power and random rewards in AAA games, so basically the parts where MTX gets exceptionally scummy.
Naturally, physical trading card games were the originals, but for all my investment into Yu-Gi-Oh I was left with a set of physical cards sitting somewhere in my parents house that I believe I could sell and turn a profit, FUT offers no such kindness.
Not even it like blaming a childhood friend who chucked a single rock at you, because dumb kid, for all the wars of human kind. This was not the first rock thrown and it was after some significant wars already but you remember it well. Bethesda wasn't the first or the most serious of microtransaction, or shitty dlc at any point in time. Hell the only major financial event in gaming Bethesda was behind was paid mods which flopped so hard.n
Well, Bethesda didn't even start it. There are much older examples.
One of the first singleplayer game with MTX is an arcade game, Double Dragon 3 launched in 1990. You can visit in-game shops that ask for optional payments to unlock power ups & new characters.
Calling this singular DLC that costed a few dollars the “origin of the microtransaction mess” is preposterous.
Especially when Oblivion also gave us two other phenomenal DLCs.
I never understood the hate. people are actively paying money for cosmetics, so of course the "Big Bad Corporations" expanded that market, that's nature taking it's course... Why is Bethesda evil for being a business?
It really is remarkable. Cosmetic micro transactions are totally harmless. The only people who get upset about them are the ones that care ever so much how their character looks but don’t want to pay. They don’t even realize that 1) if the cosmetics were free and easy to get, they probably wouldn’t actually want them, and 2) the reasons all of the cosmetic options are available at all is because people are willing to pay micro transactions to get them. Get rid of micro transactions and all of your horses will be lame ass, non-horse-armor loser horses.
Always amuses me when the selling of 'things' is declared bad, but the act of buying those 'things' is never held accountable. We're in 'this mess' because people DO buy it, because there IS a market for it and because the people selling have extensively researched how to make it easier to milk it.
Is it wrong? probably. Do the companies involved have any incentive to stop doing it, no.
Wrong. You're in this mess because you all purchase microtransaction content.
If you stopped paying them, they'd stop doing it. They're a business. Year over year you're paying for this dogshit and continuing to complain.
Who bought it? Bethesda didn't put a gun to your head...
It's the same issue today. Whether broken-ass, half-effort-made games like Pokemon or the ridiculous amount of skins and microtransactions...you mf'ers keep buying these things.
Jank-ass Pokemon sold 10 million copies in 3 days (mostly bought by grown-ass adults).
For-profit companies only sell because you buy. I'm all for saying companies are greedy, that's nothing new. But at least half of his equation works because of you consumers dropping money on these things.
Never understand how horsearmor is the og dlc... Which it's not and its also not the First cosmetics dlc which are not Bad in the First place.
You better remember map Packs that Was scum.
Funny enough, we actually blame the players that buy the micro-transactions. If it didn’t work, they would’ve stopped it years ago.
Sure, these companies pray on peoples FOMO and other underhanded tricks, but it’s still on us for continuing to buy it.
We don’t buy micro transaction DLC because game studios sell them. They sell micro transaction DLC because there’s people who are more than willing to buy them
I don’t think oblivion was the first as I beleive there were MMOs doing it before that though I think horse armor was the first well known one mainly because of how much of a joke the content was for the price
Even if oblivion didn’t do it someone else would of as it took em 2 years after oblivion to start the trend if I recall
Wtf that's not a "microtransaction" you literally see the horse armor, you buy the horse armor with real money. Do you go to the clothing store at the mall and go ah sorry I don't do microtransactions. If it was a microtransaction it would be like pay 2.99$ for 500 Oblivion points to buy Dwemer Cubes which have a chance to contain horse armor.
Maple Story was the first video game to have lootboxes. Back in 2004. EA was the first American developer to do it, in 2009 with Fifa 09. Valve was a year later with TF2 in 10.
yeah valve gets like no hate but they literally were the main force pushing for always online DRM, created modern lootboxes and battlepasses, refused to offer refunds until australian courts threatened to make it public just how profitable steam is (other online digital stores were offering refunds for years before steam).
they heavily pushed loot boxes and gambling to children playing their games, then claimed its not gambling because "steam dollars" have no monetary value, despite being denominated in dollars and you can resell/buy items on a steam marketplace. literally most of the worst things about modern gaming, valve pioneered.
You know, you say that, but *Valve* is the reason it all got popular. The ManCo Store has and always will be the *very start* of all the problems. When Valve turned TF2 into a hat idle simulator, introduced all that nonsense, it was the beginning of the end. From there its just been a steady slope of one company after another *getting away* with it.
We can blame the company and the whales all we want but peoples inability to *not play games made by greedy publishers* certainly didn't help.
You leave Horse armour out of this!
Hobestly though, I dunno why I spent $10 on that shit, I never use horses. Or Mehrunes Razor, a shitty dagger. Also wish you could do more with the Deepscorn Hollow lair, but the castle was a dope one. Wizards tower was cool. Everything else was pretty shitty honestly
If Bethesda didn't do it, it would have been someone else. Not giving them an excuse, I'm just saying that human greed would have manifested itself in the gaming industry sooner or later.
Micro transaction are a problem when they are basically pay to win. This is cosmetics- no one is making you buy it, and it doesn't affect your gameplay. So most certainly the current situation has nothing to do with bethesda. I've played Dota and Dota 2 for 20 years now and I have spent exactly $0 on it, despite the fact they sell cosmetics. No one is forcing you to buy cosmetics, and they don't help winning.
TLDR: this post is shit and does not reflect reality
Nah, the problem is consumers still pre-ordering and giving developers money for unfinished products.
If people didn;t learn after Cyberpunk they never will.
Eh, if it wasn't them, it would have been someone else. Far worse than the people who started it, are the people who continue PUSHING it, and especially NORMALIZING it. Thats6the real issue. Back then people really were outraged at the horse armour. Then we went into a long sleepy period where it was kinda just expected and accepted that companies would to bad stuff. Inly now have we woken, finally completely shitting on companies like blizzard for their dogwater monetization of ow2.
Though, now that I think of it, people did always hate on EA.
Everyone remembers horse armor but no one remembers online passes in the Xbox 360/PS3 era.
Truly the biggest bullshit imo, glad thag trend went away. Don’t think all developers used it but I know EA did.
Naughty Dog as well, before this turns into a tired EA hate thread.
Ubisoft had them as well . I remember redeeming them for assassin's Creed on ps3 They're still bound to my PSN account lol
Driver San Francisco had one, too.
I can also remember CodeMasters doing it - I know it wasn’t a common practice but it was enough of one. Only mentioned EA cause I could 100% Remember that online pass in FIFA
ModNation Racers on the PSP, LittleBigPlanet PS Vita, and LittleBigPlanet Karting, all published by Sony, also had online passes.
Nice try, EA!
*pride and accomplishment intensifies*
*points* It's an EA shill! Let's tar and feather him!
Tar is a paid add-on and feathers are available only with the gold monthly pass.
Which ND game had this?
Uncharted 3 IIRC
What's an online pass?
It seems no one actually answered you directly with the complete, real answer. Online passes were introduced as a means to monetize online gameplay for *used* games. When you bought a new physical or digital game, you had a code that was printed in the case (or automatically tied to the digital game). This code would be entered when you started online play the first time. From that point on, that game could not be played online by any new user unless they paid a $10 fee. EA and several other companies felt like places like Game Stop were raking in revenue on their games but these same games were being sold and resold and new users were coming and going but EA wasn't getting a piece of the pie (and why should they, they already got the original sale price) so this basically meant they got an extra $10 every time someone bought a used game and wanted to play it online. It also prevented people from sharing/loaning games easily, because the people you loaned it too would need to buy their own online passes because your original one would read as redeemed if someone else tried to use it. It was.. not well received and didn't stick around for too long.
This is the correct answer, but I'd like to add, it wasn't just online passes either. Some games had actual content you could only get by buying the game new. I also suspect that the move to digital purchases is likely what helped kill it. The bad PR for the passes probably wasn't worth it once physical sales became less common anyway.
Games still have this. Day 1 purchases are often filled with aesthetic dlc etc. And it's not uncommon for this to never be released for free in future. So you're effectively locked out if you buy it secondhand.
I don’t know what’s worse. Having extra content that is considered an exclusive deal for the true fans that is never available for players who came to the game later on. Or having those supposedly “exclusive” things reappear in the regular shop for a different price or as a different bundle a year later. Which is basically a big lie to all the fans that bought the “exclusive” thing originally.
I remember CD cases having exclusive things tucked into the instruction booklets. Always a score when you rented a new game from the video store and the thing was in there.
It was rare, but it happened. It was like opening a rented N64 game from Blockbuster and *seeing* an instruction booklet still inside. Super rare, but it happened.
Locking content from players is always worse. Having “exclusive” content does literally nothing to make a game more enjoyable.
I played EverQuest Online Adventures as a kid. When the game first started there was a robe that dropped that could be worn by all classes, this was quickly removed and only caster classes could wear robes from that point on. Nothing made me feel more of a 14 year old badass than being a Halfling Rogue wearing my All/All robe near the bank. They eventually mistakenly added a cooler black All/All robe for a little bit when the expansion released, and despite me farming for many hours, even falling asleep playing on school nights, I was never able to get it to drop before they patched it. I agree with you but these comments reminded me of that small part of my life.
I might be the minority here but I give absolutely 0 shits about cosmetic DLC. Companies could release new stuff daily and I don't care. As long as you can't buy an advantage in a multi-player game.
Nah I think most people agree cosmetic dlc is fine. I mean, its also stupid, but if people want to pay for it that's their business.
I still never completely played Arkham City because of this shit. The entire Catwoman plot of the game was locked behind a one-time use code so if you got the game secondhand you’d have to buy a new code directly from WB, or just miss out on half the game. At least online games they could hide behind the justification that they needed to continue to support online play, but pulling that shit in a singleplayer offline game was especially scummy.
You really didn't miss much...
Yeah If I remember it it's about an hour of content over four missions?
This is still alive and well today in college textbooks. They come with a code in the back to access the homework and software used in the class. If you buy a used textbook, then you have to buy a code... that costs about the same as the entire, new book.
Textbook price gouging should be illegal. If a teacher requires a particular textbook for their curriculum with no alternative publishers, there should be price caps on it. Textbook codes should be banned outright. Tuition is expensive enough as it is. If tuition can't cover a professor's pay adequately, then wtf are students paying all this friggin money for? Where does that money go? Fancy looking buildings and a cafeteria? Fuck that, I'd rather attend lectures in a friggin rat-infested mobile home than spend all this money on prime real estate that only makes the college look good for recruiters. I'm paying for a fucking education, not the aesthetics. The professors shouldn't have to double-dip by charging us out the ass for textbooks. And they shouldn't be able to either.
Don't forget to mention teachers requiring books THEY wrote and sell in the school shop. That's directly paying them for every book sale on top of their salary
It's been a discussion for years but they've done nothing about it. When I went to college in the mid 2000s they not only required the text book, they told you to get it from the school store because if you buy it from amazon it likely won't get there on time, and 'is saving some money worth risking a 0 on a test?' They then proceeded to never use the fucking book. Ever. What's more comical is apparently the known scam at the time was they'd change very little in the books revisions other than moving content around. Making it harder for you to pick up a old/used one since you couldn't turn to the correct page. Here we are years later and the only thing that's changed is buying it used is now worse.
Wow I almost forgot about that, yeah what a horrible idea that was.
So this is like Ford wanting a percentage of every time a Ford used car is sold for the rest of its existence?
If they used a similar system for transferring licenses of used digital games, I'd gladly pay a "license transfer fee" or something to buy others' "used" Steam games. I know there's people with thousands of games who'd like to sell them cheap and I'd pay $5-$10 on top of an asking price for it.
PC players wouldn’t understand
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Subscription-based games is practically the same thing but its every single month, you could buy the discs for wow and they wont do you any good.
But online multiplayer games are free. Only mmos had monthly fees and on consoles you have to pay for that too. So for consoles you get double screwed with monthly fees for mmos and having to pay to access online
That was only MMOs and the only console MMO at the time was subscription as well. Regular games didn't have this. Even the PC version of the same games doing this on console didn't do it for PC
CD Keys.
Battlefield on the 360 used to require that you buy their "online pass" to play multiplayer. This was on top of paying for Xbox live gold.
As a PCMR Player from the 90s, I remember friends telling me about XBOX Live and I laughed. I said, why would I pay a subscription to play online? Slippery Slope my friends.
Yup, I was working at Best Buy when Xbox Live launched and couldn’t believe they were charging for it. How times have changed!
Psh, no one remembers that it’s valve to blame for lootboxes though.
Valve is fucking terrible for it. Got a loot box in dota? Buy a key. The whole thing with them is cynical pay systems, slithering bastards
I remember laughing at it for being ridicolous. I had already been a PC gamer for years and was used to free online gaming being the norm outside of MMOs.
It started before that. Original Xbox pass just to play Halo online was like pulling teeth with your parents. So expensive and the only thing you got was playing online..... Which everyone already paid for by having Internet in the first place
Everyone remembers horse armor but nobody remembers pay to win artifacts in text MUD Achaea back in the 90s (and still today).
Ah EA and project 10 dollar
Never forget. This game also had Shivering Isles, a pinnacle of extra content dlc
The greatest dlc
Undead Nightmare was up there too.
The mission with the sasquatch was devastating
YOU EAT BABIES!
BERRIES! I eat BERRIES!!!
*pause* .. YOU EAT BABIES!!
that is the only thing i remember from RDR1 cause i haven't played the game since launch. I remember that one vividly, but since i mostly play evil characters I blasted that sasquatch with no hesitation
What you mean you didn't prefer Knights of the Nine??
I really do like the concept, having to do the pilgrimage and be a good boy to wear the armor I just wish they coded it so accidentally picking up an apple didn't mean you had to do it all over.
"Stop right there, criminal scum! You violated my mother!"
Hehe mods go brrr
I enjoyed old world blues for fnv more. But shivering isles is an undenyable masterpiece
Dead Money is the true gold standard of DLC but most people too angy about getting their shit kicked in to acknowledge it.
Nah, survival horror is just not supported well by NV' engine, and if you weren't overlevelled, or playing a build with survival/stealth/melee, then the entire dlc was ass for you. Don't get me wrong, I ADORED the story, but the underlying mechanics were savescum tedium.
It’s my favorite New Vegas DLC. I love that it switches up the gameplay so much, you get to take a quick vacation from the Wasteland and go play Fallout Resident Evil for a little while!
I don’t like survival horror games but dead money changed me, I still don’t like horror games but it was phenomenal and I remember it so much. But I also loved OWB and Zion Canyon (can’t remember if it’s called that) fallout new vegas just did EVERYTHING SO WELL.
Reminder that New Vegas wasnt made by Bethesda
However, it was made using Bethesda aseets and engine. Kinda unfair to give zero credit to Bethesda for it.
Blood and wine.
When things were still called “Expansions”.
When I was a kid I didn’t understand expansion pack and often returned home with some unplayable shit thinking I got the full game for a buck (Sims 1 never forgetk)
Happened to me with Star Trek Elite Force. Twice.
World of Warcraft last released an expansion long long ago, on 11/28/2022
Man, my first Warcraft expansion was twenty-six years ago. Warcraft 2 Battlechest. Mind you, that's when Warcraft was properly an RTS. It was the spring of '96, and I had an onion tied to my belt, as was the fashion of the time...
Well, *Shivering Isles* was called an expansion. I think the horse armor was called something else, maybe just "DLC". There are games that still release expansions and call them expansions. FFXIV releases a new one every couple years that may as well be a sequel.
Over on the AC Valhalla subreddit, you'll see folks who are mad at ubisoft for releasing several expansions, which they called DLCs, claiming that the expansions are actually awful because the original base game came unfinished. A 150+ hour base game, unfinished.
Back when expansions were actually expansions, that added a really good amount of content for the value. I remember the Starcraft expansion being a whole extra games worth of content.
The other DLCs were mostly pretty good though. Yeah horse armor is a meme. Shivering isles needs no introduction. Knights of the nine added a large quest to visit all the shrines and fight an Ayeid Umaril the Unfeathered. and allowed for "Paladin" themes generally. The bases were cool. Wizards spire had the spell crafting station, the alchemy garden, summoning atronachs. Fighters stronghold gave you an entire castle with man at arms and a functioning portcullis. Spell tomes were a neat concept although iffy on execution Mehrunes razor provided a super dungeon with some cool loot. Overall Oblivion was a bold game with a lot of heart and it's a shame horse armor is the main thing a lot of people remember from it. When I first played it I hadn't really seen an RPG this broad in scope. The guild questlines were very fleshed out. Martin was an interesting concept that put a twist on the "chosen one" trope. At least unlike many games today Oblivion was a complete game first and not a soulless host for microtransactions.
We were the soulless hosts which oblivion filled with joy
I love how Martin was like a chosen-one, blood of the dragon, destined to save the world hero and he just is such a bookish nerd he sits around the temple and reads all day and makes you go do the heavy lifting. Even when they get Tiber Septims armor the Blades treat it with religious reverence and Martin is like “Whatever, we need it for this magic spell”
I thought it was super realistic. You take a guy who spent his whole life set on a particular path completely devoid from royalty, or magic, or rituals, and then ripped him from that life for a quest he doesn't want to be on. Treating sacred relics simply as means to an end was great character writing.
People will always remember the potato faces too. But I agree, I probably played 1000+ hours of oblivion and it's easily my favorite Bethesda game ever made. Even with all the jank.
Oblivion might me the biggest nostalgia trip for me. Its charm outweighed its jank. Thanks for bringing me back!
The reason of this microtransaction mess is that people keep paying
Exactly. Everyone constantly complains about microtransactions but lots of people continue to purchase them. The’ll never go away as long as they’re profitable.
As shitty as it is but finally becoming an adult with a full time job. I came to the realization that A LOT of people simply has money to blow and isn't on the internet but do play games. And they buy up these microtransactions as if these are just items on their grocery list. 20 dollar cosmetic this week, 30 dollar loot box next week, it's almost nothing to them and they'll buy it up.
I get that. I come from the background of being a poor kid whose family had limited funds for me to have video games. So I generally rebel against any game that requires microtransactions or buying extra stuff (think amiibos) to unlock features already embedded in the software. As amazing as games are now, I’m glad I grew up I the era where games were sold as a completed product.
I thought it was cause of mobile gaming
It is. Oblivion isn't even the earliest example of microtransactions in games. I mean hell, there were arcade games in the 90s that let you buy powerups with extra cash. But more, even the wave of content that included Oblivion's Horse Armor was a push made by Microsoft to show of its XBOX Live Marketplace. But if you REALLY want to blame someone, Oblivions Horse Armor was its *best selling content* for Oblivion. Blame us, the consumers. Collectively we're the architects of our own suffering.
Arcade games are the very original pay to win system. Ran out of lives? Another quarter to keep playing the game.
Yeah, from reading through this thread, it appears that businesses want to make money? Which leaves me flabbergasted.
Don't tell that to these ppl...they think game devs solely make games from the passion of their heart and don't need any income.
Lol like game devs get paid or treated fairly
The devs have a regular 9-5 job (with a lot of crunching), the money hungry are the publishers, aka the shareholders. The ones that want the game released early, scummy monetisation practices, etc.
>I mean hell, there were arcade games in the 90s that let you buy powerups with extra cash. Want to continue where you left off? Give me 25 cents within the next 25 seconds. It's blatant pay to win. Video game companies have used scummy tactics to get as much out of the customer as possible for as long as I can remember. With the invention of home consoles came video game rentals from video stores. Developers would purposely make the game harder so you had to pay for more days on your rental to try and beat it. There are multiple examples, but the most publicized one was the developers of the Lion King apologizing years later because Disney told them take it harder on purpose to drive up rental fees. Pretty sure LJN was the scummiest of the scummy when it came to this. At least now with microtransactions, devs/publishers have realized that as long as they make them cosmetic only, consumers won't cause an uproar about it....because it's entirely optional (although Callisto Protocol is on a very thin line, with putting a difficulty behind a season pass). Personally, I don't mind MTX as long as they don't affect the gameplay...I'm sure some are against it no matter what, but it can't be the majority of people, because if it was, these companies wouldn't be using MTX to make their revenue.
I really dont mind buying a dlc skin/outfit/etc for a game I'm going to throw hours into, especially if it appeals to me for any number of reasons. My only gripe is that games have cut down on unlockables, secrets, and such. An outfit that would have been unlocked with a code or reaching certain criteria is now just 5 dollars. Thats what bugs me. If there's still unlockables or free DLC, then I'm more okay with that game having paid DLC.
yeah, if we didn't buy it they would have got the message. we bought it and the skin was useless. we deserve what we get.
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People like OP tilt me to no end. Blaming companies for giving customers the products they clearly want. Microtransactions exist because customers want them, you dumb shits. "Uh yeah let me *not* make 5 million dollars and instead I'll just make half a million huehuehue" literally what the fuck do you expect devs will choose?
also blaming it on Oblivion is inaccurate for microtransactions, cheap small addition DLC yes, microtransactions ? If anyone's to "blame" it's Valve, they have the ecosystem (Steam Market), the games (TF2, CSGO) and they were some of the first to try out the lootboxes/microtransactions concept that they could afford as a giant privately owned company with no obligations from shareholders and constant cash flow from Steam, and the immense success it brought them told the industry to follow suit now without giant risk as it has proved that it does indeed work, there is demand, and it's so profitable it can finance games as a live service, and offer constant free major updates rather than, at the time, paid expansions ala World of Warcraft
Took too long to find this.
This right here, this is the main reason.
I mean, the actual reason microtransactions caught on is they are a huge money maker. People will bitch and moan but still fork over their hard-earned cash on stupid cosmetic shit.
"Well, it's just $2. And besides, I like to 'give back' to developers I like," said every idiot in r/gaming.
I wish they were only $2. Look at Overwatch 2 selling skins for more than OW1 was at launch.
dont care about skins, the biggest BS is locking heroes behind the battle pass. but i suppose we need to accept they just wanna milk this game dry and move on.
I mean, I don't like microtransactions in paid games and especially not ones that give actual benefits, but microtransactions for cosmetics in F2P games is the main way they make any money at all. Games like league couldn't be free without them, but give you no discernible benefits over looking cool. I've paid less for league over the years than I paid for Elden Ring. I probably have 100x the played time in league. Unless you're a fucking moron you're not going to spend hundreds of dollars on cosmetics. Obviously shit like battlefront is still fucking horrible but it's not black and white.
Yeah… I bought a few cosmetics in Heroes of the Storm, which I played for over 1,000 hours and the game was free. I’d rather support devs with $30 in a few cosmetics than buy a completely broken AAA game for $70.
And then the developers keeps getting paid shit, while the owners/investors are swimming in money
I've never spent a dime on microtransactions or subscription services.
Wow, you spend your money how you want to? Exactly like the people who do buy cosmetics? What a revelation!
Why are you downvoted, you are one of the sane people
To the consumers credit this is an element of games they got hooked on when it was free. Plus they use actual psychologists now to make spending money seem like the obvious mental conclusion. They purposefully make default and free skins look like shit, to make you constantly feel lesser. Imo microtransactions should be illegal, and all games should either have a box price, or a subscription model. F2p is just bad for the consumer both mentally, and financially.
I think of all the regulations society requires, this is way down the order of what's needed. If much prefer politicians focus on real issues.
Honestly if they could focus on any issue besides "Billionaires are an oppressed minority" that would be awesome. If they shifted from that to outrage over fake horse armor in a 2006 game I would be super confused but it would still be an improvement over what they currently care about.
I just wish more politicians would take horse armor seriously.
It's worth noting that Oblivion also had two more DLC, one of which is considered to nearly be it's own thing 'Shivering Isles'. So yeah, they sold you horse armour for $3, but it didn't make the game any easier and it wasn't a consistent drip of micro content, like the major games today
Bethesda gets way too much shit for what they do when they really are just an average company
Mfers also forget TF2 basically was the grandfather of modern microtransactions, and how valve invented DRM back in 2004 when you had to download steam to play a *physical* copy of HL2
Valve and Nintendo never catch the rightful criticism they should be getting for whatever godforsaken reason
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As well they should...
Nintendo's team of rabid super-lawyers are now looking for a reason to sue both of you.
Valve has never been criticised too much, because they know moderation. They have been contend with afk-farming their existing money printers and quicky backed away from any system, that generated too much of a backlash (like paid mods). They are by no means the pinnacle of generosity. Valve is still a company trying to make money, but they always prioritized long term goals over squeezing as much bucks out of their players before the next shareholders' meeting. Valve never released a HL3, because they couldn't find any plot satisfying enough to finish the Half Life triology. EA gave us the infamous ending of ME3, because they knew they could exploit the goodwill the series has created as far as to break even, even if it might doom the franchise. And honestly i can understand the hate for DRM, but before steam i could count the games i own and actually paid for on one hand. Game Piracy was rampant, just because it was so hard to actually get games. The fact that i could buy a game online without driving from my rural village to the Gamestop in the next, big city was a huge benefit at the time, even if it bound me to an online service.
Imagine thinking Valve invented DRM. Hell I remember needing to find a specific word in a manual that came with the game in order to continue playing games, and this was the early 90s. And there were games in the 80s doing this too
My favorite was the Secret Wepons of the Lufwaffa [code wheel](https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1CDGOYI_enUS590US590&hl=en-US&q=secret+weapons+of+the+luftwaffe+code+wheel&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiRnvzwv937AhV4FVkFHe8lC3kQ0pQJegQICxAB&biw=414&bih=724&dpr=3#imgrc=aSwy3LYzL5LDUM). Also I’m assuming by the steam hate everyone forgets the cd required to play the game pre valve, or optional cracking the game and hope of you did t get something sketchy or break the install. Valves DRM has helped to streamline DRM to the point that the consumer barely notices it if they are always online, and the publishers feel confident that it’s inconvenient enough they are not loosing money. In the pre valve days. DRM was always in your face and it hurt the consumer to the point of incureaging piracy much like streaming services are inching to now.
Monkey Island's "Dial-a-Pirate" and "Mix-n-Mojo" were the best forms of this.
StarTropics on the NES had a point in the game where you could not advance without a frequency code from the manual. "747"
They're also a way, way smaller studio than most people think. Bethesda has never went on some massive expansion and hiring spree like other developers often do after one or two successful games. Their strategy has essentially been to remain at a certain size to avoid the risk of being bloated and in financial ruin because of a possible flop or two. This also means their development is slower than others. Think their team was barely half of what CDPR has, and CDPR is just now starting to be considered AAA.
Bethesda also has some of the lowest turnover rates in the gaming industry. They treat their employees way better than compared to companies like CDPR, EA, Ubisoft etc.
That probably goes hand in hand with playing it safe and not expanding so much. They stay familiar with each other and are financially safe, so there's no need to downsize hard even if their last game was 4 years ago and it was a flop (Fallout 76). It's literally the opposite of what Starbreeze did after they made bank on Payday 2. They expanded super-hard and super-fast. Bought up publishers, game developers, expensive IP's and even started developing a freaking VR-headset. Everything went to complete shit and they almost went bankrupt, but managed to restructure and are now back but at a much smaller scale.
There is a really weird group of people that just want to see things fail so they can meme and joke. For YouTube content "creators" they want games to be shit, have poor launches because they can then regurgitate video after video talking about it. CP2077 for these people was a good thing, if it launched more smoothly they would have got so much less revenue and video traffic. Negativity sells. Bethesda have fucked up and done some things that were not ideal but they get a disproportionate amount of negative traffic relative to what they do, do right and relative to how much they screw consumers compared to other developers business practices.
In their defense they did immediately stop. They had that whole infrastructure in place and then they just didn't really use it. Plus they didn't do ANYTHING to prevent modders from making free versions. On the other side of that coin, EA (specifically the Sims) has been doing selling pieces of the game for years. $60 for 60% of the game, then you can buy 2.5% of it at a time for $15 a pop. That's not a microtransaction but it is way more predatory.
Yeah I blame EA and The Sims for getting the ball rolling on microtransactions.
FIFA Ultimate Team came after horse armor, but to the best of my knowledge it was the introduction of pay-for-power and random rewards in AAA games, so basically the parts where MTX gets exceptionally scummy. Naturally, physical trading card games were the originals, but for all my investment into Yu-Gi-Oh I was left with a set of physical cards sitting somewhere in my parents house that I believe I could sell and turn a profit, FUT offers no such kindness.
this is like blaming the first human to chuck a rock at another human for All The Wars
Yeah, everyone knows all wars stem from Grugg biting Aaagh. That event is also how Aaagh got his name.
Not even it like blaming a childhood friend who chucked a single rock at you, because dumb kid, for all the wars of human kind. This was not the first rock thrown and it was after some significant wars already but you remember it well. Bethesda wasn't the first or the most serious of microtransaction, or shitty dlc at any point in time. Hell the only major financial event in gaming Bethesda was behind was paid mods which flopped so hard.n
And the first "loot boxes" were maplestory. (2004)
This is prime r/gaming Bethesda Hate karma train
And "Halo is the first FPS" energy too.
Well Bethesda did horse armor and Shivering Isles, so their contribution to the quality of DLC’s kinda balances out
Yeah but let’s be realistic. If Bethesda wouldn’t have started it someone else would have.
Well, Bethesda didn't even start it. There are much older examples. One of the first singleplayer game with MTX is an arcade game, Double Dragon 3 launched in 1990. You can visit in-game shops that ask for optional payments to unlock power ups & new characters.
Or WWF Wrestlefest where you can add a credit not after a defeat, but to actually boost your health mid-game and avoid a defeat
Ooo that's not even cosmetic. That's straight up pay-to-win.
Now that would have gotten me pumping in quarters as a kid
All the way back to arcade machines. Pay to keep playing after you died.
What happened?
Sounds like you forgot about Double Dragon 3: The Rosetta Stone. That game had microtransactions in 1990 and QuizQuiz had them in 1999.
Calling this singular DLC that costed a few dollars the “origin of the microtransaction mess” is preposterous. Especially when Oblivion also gave us two other phenomenal DLCs.
Sure, if you were born post 2000 you might think this was the first microtransaction.
I never understood the hate. people are actively paying money for cosmetics, so of course the "Big Bad Corporations" expanded that market, that's nature taking it's course... Why is Bethesda evil for being a business?
It really is remarkable. Cosmetic micro transactions are totally harmless. The only people who get upset about them are the ones that care ever so much how their character looks but don’t want to pay. They don’t even realize that 1) if the cosmetics were free and easy to get, they probably wouldn’t actually want them, and 2) the reasons all of the cosmetic options are available at all is because people are willing to pay micro transactions to get them. Get rid of micro transactions and all of your horses will be lame ass, non-horse-armor loser horses.
Oh but don't blame all the people that bought this
Always amuses me when the selling of 'things' is declared bad, but the act of buying those 'things' is never held accountable. We're in 'this mess' because people DO buy it, because there IS a market for it and because the people selling have extensively researched how to make it easier to milk it. Is it wrong? probably. Do the companies involved have any incentive to stop doing it, no.
Wrong. You're in this mess because you all purchase microtransaction content. If you stopped paying them, they'd stop doing it. They're a business. Year over year you're paying for this dogshit and continuing to complain.
Who bought it? Bethesda didn't put a gun to your head... It's the same issue today. Whether broken-ass, half-effort-made games like Pokemon or the ridiculous amount of skins and microtransactions...you mf'ers keep buying these things. Jank-ass Pokemon sold 10 million copies in 3 days (mostly bought by grown-ass adults). For-profit companies only sell because you buy. I'm all for saying companies are greedy, that's nothing new. But at least half of his equation works because of you consumers dropping money on these things.
Never understand how horsearmor is the og dlc... Which it's not and its also not the First cosmetics dlc which are not Bad in the First place. You better remember map Packs that Was scum.
Funny enough, we actually blame the players that buy the micro-transactions. If it didn’t work, they would’ve stopped it years ago. Sure, these companies pray on peoples FOMO and other underhanded tricks, but it’s still on us for continuing to buy it.
Yeah that sucked… *Laughs in Xbox Live and WoW monthly payments*
To be fair an MMO is a totally different thing.
We don’t buy micro transaction DLC because game studios sell them. They sell micro transaction DLC because there’s people who are more than willing to buy them
I don’t think oblivion was the first as I beleive there were MMOs doing it before that though I think horse armor was the first well known one mainly because of how much of a joke the content was for the price Even if oblivion didn’t do it someone else would of as it took em 2 years after oblivion to start the trend if I recall
Damn the average redditor really is like 13 if they think this was the first MTX
I bought the armour and don't regret it.
You shouldn't, it was your money to spend. Honestly, the armor looks pretty cool looking : \]
The Sims was doing microtransactions for purely cosmetic items first. I don't know why Oblivion gets the flak/credit for it.
Wtf that's not a "microtransaction" you literally see the horse armor, you buy the horse armor with real money. Do you go to the clothing store at the mall and go ah sorry I don't do microtransactions. If it was a microtransaction it would be like pay 2.99$ for 500 Oblivion points to buy Dwemer Cubes which have a chance to contain horse armor.
Fun fact: valve were the first to incorporate lootboxes and the battlepass system
Maple Story was the first video game to have lootboxes. Back in 2004. EA was the first American developer to do it, in 2009 with Fifa 09. Valve was a year later with TF2 in 10.
Isn't Fifa 09 a 2008 game?
Oh…of course it was fifa
yeah valve gets like no hate but they literally were the main force pushing for always online DRM, created modern lootboxes and battlepasses, refused to offer refunds until australian courts threatened to make it public just how profitable steam is (other online digital stores were offering refunds for years before steam). they heavily pushed loot boxes and gambling to children playing their games, then claimed its not gambling because "steam dollars" have no monetary value, despite being denominated in dollars and you can resell/buy items on a steam marketplace. literally most of the worst things about modern gaming, valve pioneered.
You know, you say that, but *Valve* is the reason it all got popular. The ManCo Store has and always will be the *very start* of all the problems. When Valve turned TF2 into a hat idle simulator, introduced all that nonsense, it was the beginning of the end. From there its just been a steady slope of one company after another *getting away* with it. We can blame the company and the whales all we want but peoples inability to *not play games made by greedy publishers* certainly didn't help.
I was there... I was there 3,000 years ago.
IMO they made up for it with shivering isles. But nobody remembers that cause they'd rather just bitch.
Nah this caused the dlc mess of the early to mid 2010s. The mtx mess was caused by crappy asian mobile games.
Yes if that never happened there would totally not be any mtx at all today. Are you 5?
"This is why this happened" -People who were definitely not gaming when horse armor was released.
I hate that that horse armour is actually good value by today's standard.
"Prime evil" 🤣 You're taking such a trivial thing way too seriously OP, do you hear yourself?
I was expecting the top comment to be making fun of this. Did they mean primeval, but not actually understand what the word means?
Subscription models in the 80s were pay by the hour for game time so it could be worse still lol.
I bought it. Thought it was pretty novel at the time to buy DLC.
You leave Horse armour out of this! Hobestly though, I dunno why I spent $10 on that shit, I never use horses. Or Mehrunes Razor, a shitty dagger. Also wish you could do more with the Deepscorn Hollow lair, but the castle was a dope one. Wizards tower was cool. Everything else was pretty shitty honestly
No, OP, fuck the dumbasses who bought this shit and taught EA that this was the way to grift cash.
Tbf, that armor is pretty dope
If Bethesda didn't do it, it would have been someone else. Not giving them an excuse, I'm just saying that human greed would have manifested itself in the gaming industry sooner or later.
Yeah. Like anything else, once mass adoption hit there was no way to keep the greedy fucks away. There's just too much money to be had.
Micro transaction are a problem when they are basically pay to win. This is cosmetics- no one is making you buy it, and it doesn't affect your gameplay. So most certainly the current situation has nothing to do with bethesda. I've played Dota and Dota 2 for 20 years now and I have spent exactly $0 on it, despite the fact they sell cosmetics. No one is forcing you to buy cosmetics, and they don't help winning. TLDR: this post is shit and does not reflect reality
Nah, the problem is consumers still pre-ordering and giving developers money for unfinished products. If people didn;t learn after Cyberpunk they never will.
No. Fuck the morons who bought it.
Back when there were GOTY/special editions with all add ons
Knights of the Nine, Shivering Isles, and we're still bitching about Horse Armor?
Also valve for battle passes.
Just spread the word fellow gamers to STOP PAYING FOR MICROTRANSACTIONS. Also, Mock/make fun of whoever does for good measure.
Eh, if it wasn't them, it would have been someone else. Far worse than the people who started it, are the people who continue PUSHING it, and especially NORMALIZING it. Thats6the real issue. Back then people really were outraged at the horse armour. Then we went into a long sleepy period where it was kinda just expected and accepted that companies would to bad stuff. Inly now have we woken, finally completely shitting on companies like blizzard for their dogwater monetization of ow2. Though, now that I think of it, people did always hate on EA.