Massively Overpowered’s end-of-the-year 2017 awards continue today with our award for Worst MMO Business Model, a dishonor bestowed upon Star Wars The Old Republic last year in this award’s inaugural year. As a counterpart to yesterday’s award for the best business model of the year, this “award” is intended to recognize an MMORPG of any age that has demonstrated a particularly awful business model specifically in 2017, regardless of its past performance. We expanded this award to include pre-launch MMOs with launched business models as well. Don’t forget to cast your own vote in the just-for-fun reader poll at the very end!
The Massively OP staff pick for Worst MMO Business Model of 2017Â is…
​Andrew Ross (@dengarsw): I still can’t get back into ArcheAge because of its business model. Subscriptions, lockboxes, non-instanced land grabs, and server merges make for the perfect storm for keeping me away from a game. Runner up: SWTOR, mostly because its housing is instanced and therefore a bit safer compared to AA.
​Brendan Drain (@nyphur): Star Citizen. Holy shit Star Citizen. Selling fake land in a game that doesn’t exist yet for real money. Enough said.
Brianna Royce (@nbrianna): I don’t cavort with the trolls who insist Star Citizen is a knowing scam, nor do I think the studio is operating on its last penny. I also can’t knock the idea of crowdfunding, given that Massively OP wouldn’t be here without it. But the slow pace of this game’s development coupled with the incessant drip of paid and arguably pay-to-win pixel ships — and now pixel land claims — all from a multi-million-dollar company whose combined crowdfund all by itself is currently bigger than all the other crowdfunded MMORPGs put together? It has worn on my very last nerve.
Eliot Lefebvre (@Eliot_Lefebvre): Boy, this was just the year of Star Citizen doubling down on “sell something that doesn’t exist yet but we promise will at one point exist,” huh? Systems that aren’t even yet in obvious development can now be bought in advance for a bunch of money! This isn’t shady at all! Runner-up: Guild Wars 2 and the amzing mount-skin lockbox.
Justin Olivetti (@Sypster): Star Citizen. The longer that time goes by without a full game release, the more ridiculous it seems to be “selling land on the moon” (or pretend spaceships) that fans can’t fully enjoy right now. The expansion of this model to selling land claims was truly ridiculous and highlighted one of the big problems with many of these early access and crowdfunded MMOs.
Larry Everett (@Shaddoe):Â As much as I’d like to give this award to Star Wars: Battlefront 2, that doesn’t exactly qualify. But I can still say that EA has some of the worst business practices in all of video games. It shows in Star Wars: The Old Republic. Although SWTOR says it’s free-to-play, there is no good way to play the game for free, and every addition to the game seems to try to suck every dime from its fans and its developers. I’d like to see EA give BioWare a bigger budget and a bit more control over the business practices. Make a great game first, and monetize it after is my advice.
MJ Guthrie (@MJ_Guthrie):Â I don’t know that any game will ever topple SWTOR’s free-to-play for worst business model ever. If you don’t sub, you probably shouldn’t really bother playing. You either pay through the nose for each little tiny thing or you really just have a really poor experience. I am grateful I can avoid the worst of it on the “preferred” level, but I’d never log in if I had the base F2P plan.
Tina Lauro Pollock (@purpletinabeans): I have to echo the Star Citizen here because it really tops my naughty list of worrisome features in a business model: It stacks payment mechanics on like they’re sprinkles and the tiers and access is further convoluted by its early backer roots. I can’t see how its system doesn’t just boil down to rather confusing pay to win flashiness, in all honesty.
Star Citizen took our award for Worst MMO Business Model of 2017. What’s your pick?
Reader poll: Which MMORPG had the worst business model in 2017?
- Star Citizen (59%, 1,294 Votes)
- Star Wars The Old Republic (12%, 270 Votes)
- ArcheAge (6%, 125 Votes)
- Guild Wars 2 (1%, 20 Votes)
- RIFT (3%, 56 Votes)
- Pokemon Go (1%, 12 Votes)
- Elder Scrolls Online (1%, 28 Votes)
- Black Desert (2%, 34 Votes)
- Neverwinter (1%, 19 Votes)
- EVE Online (1%, 22 Votes)
- Revelation Online (0%, 9 Votes)
- Riders of Icarus (0%, 0 Votes)
- EverQuest II (0%, 6 Votes)
- Secret World Legends (1%, 13 Votes)
- World of Warcraft (1%, 18 Votes)
- Final Fantasy XIV (0%, 9 Votes)
- Star Trek Online (1%, 11 Votes)
- Destiny 2 (4%, 77 Votes)
- Blade and Soul (0%, 2 Votes)
- WildStar (0%, 3 Votes)
- Shroud of the Avatar (2%, 36 Votes)
- TERA (0%, 4 Votes)
- Chronicles of Elyria (0%, 6 Votes)
- Skyforge (0%, 7 Votes)
- Warframe (0%, 3 Votes)
- Ashes of Creation (0%, 4 Votes)
- ARK Survival Evolved (1%, 20 Votes)
- Crowfall (0%, 3 Votes)
- Camelot Unchained (0%, 4 Votes)
- Lord of the Rings Online (1%, 16 Votes)
- Elite Dangerous (1%, 27 Votes)
- Nothing (1%, 14 Votes)
- Something else (tell us in the comments). (1%, 24 Votes)
Total Voters: 2,196
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Massively OP’s Best of 2017 Awards: Most Underrated MMO of 2017
Massively OP’s Best of 2017 Awards: Biggest MMO Story of 2017
Massively OP’s Best of 2017 Awards: Most Improved MMO of 2017
Massively OP’s Best of 2017 Awards: Best MMO Business Model of 2017
Massively OP’s Best of 2017 Awards: Worst MMO Business Model of 2017
Massively OP’s Best of 2017 Awards: Best MMORPG PvP of 2017
Massively OP’s Best of 2017 Awards: Best MMO Housing of 2017
Massively OP’s Best of 2017 Awards: Best Not-So-Massively Game of 2017
Massively OP’s Best of 2017 Awards: Biggest MMO Industry Blunder of 2017
Jukebox Heroes: The 2017 Online Video Game Music Awards
Massively OP’s Best of 2017 Awards: Best MMO Trend of 2017
Massively OP’s Best of 2017 Awards: Biggest MMO Industry Disappointment of 2017
Massively OP’s Best of 2017 Awards: Best Indie or Crowdfunded MMO of 2017
Massively OP’s Best of 2017 Awards: Most Likely to Flop in 2018 or Beyond
Massively OP’s Best of 2017 Awards: Best MMO Crafting of 2017
Massively OP’s Best of 2017 Awards: Best MMO Holiday of 2017
Massively OP’s Best of 2017 Awards: Best MMO Studio of 2017
Massively OP’s Best of 2017 Awards: Best MMO Expansion of 2017
Massively OP’s Best of 2017 Awards: Most Anticipated MMORPG of 2018 and Beyond
Massively OP’s Best of 2017 Awards: MMORPG of the Year
Couldn’t agree more about #ScamCitizen RSI and CIG deserve this award for this drawn out nonsense. Need a Refund? Go to this Sub-Reddit to learn how 1,000s have gotten theirs:
https://www.reddit.com/r/starcitizen_refunds/
From the perspective of a business, SC is the best model out there: get paid serious dough and deliver the bare minimum. Maximum profits all around!
But yeah, SC reminds me of a politician that will promise you the stars to get your vote (wallet) and then blow you off with PR talk, while doing fundrasing events to fund his re-election for the next term. Absolutely sleazy. At least with the various fleecing F2P models you know what to expect.
Still got to give it to SWTOR rather than SC.
Primarily because there’s nothing hidden to what SC is selling. Players can see what it is they’re getting and decide for themselves whether it’s worth the price to them.
Personally, the constant scope creep that keeps adding features that (seemingly) delay the game longer and longer is an issue for me – but that’s not a business model thing. Plus I’d like to think that the people who design ship models and such, have long since finished their “critical path” work and are just adding things to keep busy. If CIG continue to monetise that, so be it. I won’t be buying, but as long as it doesn’t affect the game I ultimately end up playing – I don’t mind too much.
Whether the stuff like land and ship ultimately end up being worth the early access investment, I guess time will tell. I hope CIG stick to their intention that early access sales are just a way for dedicated players to throw some money into the pot and won’t end up creating a split community of “those who benefited by paying before launch” and “those who didn’t”. If it turns into a BF2 type thing, where it’s effectively buying power – then I’ll have an issue.
SWTOR is delivering less year on year and charging the same for it. So if it was bad last year, it’s a few percent worse this year. Nothing in their business model has improved and so “actually bad” beats “potentially bad” for me.
SWTOR or AA. Maybe SOTA with the odd huge purchases and telethons. Star Citizen’s setup isn’t a business model, as far as I am concerned. It’s a pre-game issue, which is different. Such things can still drive me away from a game, but a business model, to my mind, requires access to an alpha/beta experience (usually called a beta, but sometimes at an alpha stage) at a minimum, with the monetary systems of a launch. That means a cash shop, things running under a subscription if one will be available, etc.
Several entries on this list thus don’t fit to me.
Star Citizen worst business model? Based on their earnings, it’s not only the *best* business model of any MMO in 2017, but arguably the best business model of any MMO ever. They’ve accrued almost 200 million dollars on a game that isn’t even out yet and earned the Guinness record for most crowd funded project of all time. I would say that’s a perfect example of a highly successful business model. One of the most successful of all time. Sooo…a fantastic business model, is what it is really. Because at this point, even if the game never comes out, it was already a success. A huge success.
I guess you guys would consider it a better business model if it were less ethically shady but made very little money? Well, I hope that works out well for you in a real-world business context. Meanwhile, just keep voting the highest crowd funded project of all time as a bad business model. Lol. Right.
Generally when MMO players refer to a game’s business model, they are referring not to how much profit the company is making but how the forward facing model affects players specifically, how much is being charged and for what and under what circumstances and in what context. Companies are free to brag about how they maximize their profits in their own financial reports.
Let me see if I understand your position correctly. So, it seems that you are saying that MMO players define a business model – or the metric by which they rate a business model – is how the developers’ PR makes the players feel, rather than how financially successful the company is. Is that correct? If that’s what you’re saying, that seems rather insulting and infantalizing to your readers, which, to do so, by your own definition, would be practicing a bad business model on your part (even if you’re making a great deal of money through ads on these articles), no?
At any rate, even if a bad business model could be accurately defined as one that alienates the player base through poor PR or marketing decisions, Star Citizen, with its now 2 million players – most of whom still excitedly await this project – does not seem a good fit for that definition of a bad business model, either. Though I would say that that’s an inaccurate way to define a business model to begin with.
SC doesn’t have 2 million players, it has 2 million accounts. Last year, the company claimed 500k paying accounts.
Yes, you are correct. My apologies. However, one of the reasons it doesn’t have 2 million players is that many of them are awaiting full release, or upgrading their computer rigs. I would imagine that many of those players will join in upon release of 3.0. Either way, though, 500k is not exactly small potatoes, and isn’t really small enough to detract from my original point. Watch someone streaming the game some time, and you’ll see that every server is packed full of players to max capacity at nearly all times. Star Citizen has a very, very active community, and they’re not going away any time soon.
500k customers over 4 years of constant weekly marketting free trials and multiple conventions a year is actually kind of poor in the scheme of things in this industry.
I think they should do your version of the poll as well. But they should include drug dealers and con artists, to give SC some decent competition.
Touche
we don’t know how many paid customers sc has. we can estimate that it may have recently reached a million paid customers if and only if it’s kept a steady pace of gaining new customers each month every month since the last and only disclosure over a year ago that pegged it at 500k~ paid accounts.
the citizens counter is just the number of registered accounts which you can register an account for free for any number of reasons.
Case in point. I have an account and played during a free weekend. I’m sure my account is in the 2 million players, but I haven’t paid a dime to them and only played once. I’m sure my account is a stat of many accounts glorifying some metric by SC.
No, that isn’t what I’m saying.
What you’re looking for is a list of game studios ranked by annual revenue, not a poll about how badly players believe they’re being fleeced.
The title is “WORST MMO BUSINESS MODEL OF 2017” not “which MMO developers gamers feel most fleeced by.” I mean, would you not agree that those can potentially be two very, very different things, strictly speaking?
Typically a business model is considered a successful one in any case in which said business model is financially successful. I would have titled the article, “worst MMO marketing practices,” or something similar, as their business model is quite successful, to put it very lightly. I think “marketing practice” is perhaps a little closer to what you’re trying to describe than “business model.” If SC had failed financially, well, then I could understand that phrasing.
“A business model describes the rationale of how an organization creates, delivers, and captures value, in economic, social, cultural or other contexts.” – Wikipedia.
I think they’ve captured quite a lot of value out of their backers and business model.
So salty.
I voted for SWTOR although I admit it was hard to choose. For me the difference is that Star Citizen has not released. Yes, the money grab is bad, sleezy even, but there is still a possibility when it releases they will be less sleezy. EA on the other hand is down right unethical. I am not a subscriber but I am ..what do they call it? preferred or something. Which means they take my money and tell me to go take a hike. My in-game credits are capped but at the same time I am not allowed to spend them on anything I want to buy. All of that must happen with Cartel Coins which I buy with real money, but at the same time if I buy coins and have a problem with the game or the purchase, I am not allowed to use in-game support. In fact I have to go to some player run forum to try and get an answer! Oh yes, I can email in a support ticket request, which is not acknowledged and takes a minimum of 7 days for EA to respond with a response that essentially says try reloading!. So yeah for me its SWTOR, cause EA will just straight out try and steal your real money.
At first I saw and thought the same thing you did. ‘Star Citizen isn’t released, that’s not fair to include it.” Then after a moment of pause, I felt that thought was wrong. They’re not released, but they’re still selling all sorts of different things all the time. They already have a business model, selling all sorts of pieces of what people are hoping actually gets made and delivered. They have a pretty bad business model because of it. I think the game will be released and won’t be vaporware in the end but it’s still pretty bad.
I avoided SC because, well, it’s not out. There’s at best crowdfunding shenanigans going on. Which remains something other than a business model.
So yeah, agreed.
I also had to go with Star Citizen. As much as I want to give this to SWOTR, Stat Citizen comes out ahead. No actual game is even out and instead of nickle and diming you every time you breathe, SWOTR, Star Citizen takes your whole wallet, or bank account, for the promise of a brighter future. Kind of remind me of a politician that way.
Yeah, they sure do take your whole wallet. With that 45 dollars it takes to buy the game.
Aaron, you are pretty hostile towards the folks that disapprove of the SC business model.
If every paying account was only asked for $45, this sucker would be bankrupt.
Bringing in good revenue doesn’t make a business successful.
How is stating fact without animosity, slurs, or insults equated with being hostile? I’m not even an active supporter of the game. I’m just trying to lay out the facts. The fact is, it costs $45 to buy the game. That gets you everything, every update. And all ships and items can be earned in- game. The people that have pledged more chose to do so, to help fund the project. Saying that CIG “takes your whole wallet, or bank account” is intellectually dishonest, at best. I could fully understand ridiculing or questioning those who have freely chosen to pledge thousands of dollars to the project, but to imply that CIG forces or requires this, is simply untrue.
just so you’re aware – you won’t even be remotely viable to do anything at all in game if you only spend $45 on it.
you’ll also have no way to get around on planets which has become a fairly big focus of the game with the latest still in ptu milestone 3.0.
Why would you have no viable way of getting around on planets with a $45 package? I watch streamers land on planets every day in $45 starter ships. All of my friends who own the game own $45 starter packages and land on planets (actually moons, as there are no full planets in yet) all the time. What, exactly, makes you think that you cannot land on planets with the ships that come bundled with a starter package? Also, these same friends regularly take rides in others’ larger ships, can currently spawn any and all ships and ground vehicles that have ever been developed for the game at vehicle retrieval stations – whether or not they own said ship – in the current version of the game, regularly steal others’ ships, and will be able to buy any and all ships and vehicles with in-game money, when the next phase of SC is rolled out (when players stop being able to spawn any and every ship at will, as it stands currently), so what in the world makes you think you can’t do everything for the $45 package? It’s very obvious that you are not following this project closely, or…at all.
sure you do m8. sure you do.
Okay, tell you what. I’ll purchase the game right now with a basic $45 dollar package, download it, and stream it to youtube, during which time I will use every ship, every ground vehicle, and land on every moon. Will you watch? If so, I’ll give you a link to go to in exactly one hour.
I mean, you could just watch any of the hundreds of other such videos already up on youtube, but it seems you haven’t done that yet, or are unwilling. So, allow me to show you?
idk why you were spamming me with this. i actually play the game. regularly.
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yeah i totally don’t have 20+ hours in PTU and hundreds over the past 4 years in every major patch of the game.
those videos are all make believe.
XD
btw mr i watch youtubers trying to sell the game for referall points so i know better, you won’t get access to 3.0 if you bought to day without spending extra money. so even if you did spend $45 this minute you wouldn’t be “flying every ship and driving every ground vehicle” anyway. which not all ships are even avialable for everyone to test with in PTU anyway, just a very specific set of ships.
i don’t think you realize you can’t do that by spending only $45.
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umm no you can’t.
you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about. so please stop spamming me lol.
Have you watched no one play this game?
i play the game regularly and am in ptu
Have you spoken to no one currently playing it?
i mean, i dont even care one way or another about SC or whether it ever comes out. But speaking as someone with no investment in the genre star citizen is for..it looks real damned shady when every other week you presell yet another shiny item or promise yet another innovative game system thats going to cost more time and money to build while continually pushing back your actual game builds.
I dunno about this one. CR wouldn’t wait till Tuesday to get paid for those burgers. Plus those burgers are ready to be eaten.
“I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today.”
Dude this is one of my Schlag all-time favorites! Nice work!
in the time of gamble-boxes, Robert’s failure was to deliver as hyped while throwing in everything like FOIP and land claims, but the actual business model is pretty fair considering you can get access to the game (in its current alpha state and when it finally releases) for less than the standard AAA price.
I know lots of folks who have put less than $50 into SC, and a dew who have spent more than a grand on it. They’re all mostly happy with that purchase/pledge/bet, but most want Chris to focus and pump out the game as promised.
Overall I’d have agreed with an award for slowest delivery or most unrequited hype, but there’s so much wrong with the monetization of so many MMOS that that I can’t agree with the consensus view.
I think it’s accurate in the fact that his money raising schemes get more hairbrained by the day – with hardly any content to show for the entire year. Even I couldn’t have imagined that they spent 2017 basically doing nothing – relative to normal software industry practices.
If you really think they’ve been doing nothing. Go to my channel and watch my videos playing star citizen in 2016, then watch my recent 2017 plays of Alpha 3.0. It’s like a completely different game.
yeah it’s even harder to find the gameplay now and when you do find it it tends to be bugged out.
if all you spend is $45 on SC you won’t be viable in any thing the game offers. and that will remain the status quo for the foreseeable future as their most recent statements on balance passes is that they are hostile to doing more of them during alpha.