The cosmetics shop. The battle pass. The lock box. Microtransactions are a part of our MMO, MMORPG, and multiplayer lives, not to mention many single-player games. When did this all start, and why is it so proliferous? Those are a couple of the questions that YouTuber Josh Strife Hayes tries to answer in his latest video.
The video looks back at early gaming’s monetization practices and their evolution to current models, all the while marking historic touch points like games that created daily habits, the introduction of loyalty rewards for subscribers, the FOMO of battle passes, and naturally the infamous EA lootbox kerfuffle. Hayes also considers the “parasitic” nature of MTX creation choices and how MTX items like cosmetics, item packs, and other things are easily built and easy on a studio’s budget while having a high potential of sales.
Hayes ultimately concedes that these models work: A given example is profit from box sales of Elden Ring falling just short of the money Genshin Impact’s gacha pulls and FIFA’s Ultimate Team have raked in through microtransactions. “The reality is, […] that big box of abusive monetization strategies – that Pandora’s box of terribleness – is so effective, they would be hurting their own profit to not put at least some of the techniques in,” the video closes.
