Let’s be real though, they are only so expensive to produce because they have the notion that bigger and more expensive means better. Just look at what happened with Starfield. You can’t tell me that game wouldn’t be immensely better if there were just like 8 or even less planets. You don’t need to make things as massive and expensive as possible to make a successful game. You just need to have a good idea with a good execution. I’ll play a game like Deep Rock Galactic or RimWorld over and over again, but I got bored of Destiny within a year or so. Heck, I’ve probably put more hours into the Halo games over my life than I ever will in Destiny.
My general rule of thumb when it comes to this is that if they say “due to rising costs” within the first few sentences it usually means “not enough money for the important people.”
I’ve seen indie devs make more functional and graphically intensive games on a shoe string budget. And then go around and sell it for less than $60.
I don’t mind it if the game was always free to play. They gotta make their money somehow if that’s the case. The problem I have with Overwatch and the microtransactions is that they went free to play after they already made a fuck ton of money off of loot boxes and the fact that you used to actually have to buy the game. It’s just a cash cow and gameplay (including matchmaking, like you said) has suffered considerably. Not only that but they charge as much money as entire games for skins. Games like Overwatch when it first came out.
I don’t mind microtransactions in free to play games, I really don’t. It’s just the method they are using is just blatantly greedy and targeted for whales that will pay anything for fear of missing out.
Well, they also sell weapon skins that cost as much as the entire game used to cost. So I’m sure they are just trying to do damage control while also not changing their monetization.
I wish Valve had some sort of monetary incentive to fix this. If this happened to the cash cow that is Counter Strike this would have been fixed already. It’s sad to see this going on especially with the resurgence TF2 has been having lately.
As a person that didn’t really enjoy the borderlands games, I had no idea this was happening and this is easily the oddest thing if read all week. Before I read the article I was confused but interested. Now I’m informed, confused, and interested. But hey, I’m glad they were able to do this with a game. I’m an average science enjoyer so I’m always glad to see good news.