monetization
World of Warcraft is selling a $90 dino mount to ‘celebrate’ its 20th birthday
The Warcraft franchise has been around for 30 years, and so maybe you feel like you have just ridden on as many bats, gryphons,...
Prices and probabilities for Once Human’s latest lockbox ‘event’ prompt calls for a player boycott
Last week saw survival shooter Once Human put forth its latest update, which Starry Studio said was chiefly focused on the addition of a...
PSA: Embers Adrift’s sale price will remain in effect ‘for the foreseeable future’
With the July and August summer celebration events now in the rearview mirror, one would assume that the $20 sale price to buy the...
Apex Legends slightly reels back battle pass changes after players revolt on Steam
Respawn Entertainment can now add its name to the dubious list of companies that screwed around and found out in very short order. At...
Fight or Kite: Hey now, you’re Brawl Stars, get your game on, go play
A couple of weeks ago, I was at a birthday party when my nephew tugged on my sleeve and asked me if I still...
Game devs are concerned about the sustainability of live-service titles
It certainly feels like live service is being tacked on to many recent game releases (whether it makes sense or not), which of course...
Global MapleStory resolves to ‘follow its own direction’ away from Korean version parity
Western fans of MapleStory have some understandable concerns about the future of their favorite cutesy MMO following news from the Korean version, specifically Nexon's...
Co-op third-person shooter Helldivers 2 promises a focus on ‘earning the right to monetize’ its players
Last week was a pretty big deal for fans of co-op action shooters, as Helldivers 2 made what looks to be a pretty triumphant...
Pax Dei ponders a box price with sub monetization balanced with a free trial and possible game time tokens
Where does the developing sandbox MMO Pax Dei stand on monetization? "Well, we’re sorry to say we haven’t figured it all out —...
Fight or Kite: Love anime, mechs, and battle royale? Super Mecha Champions is probably for you
If you’re anything like me, you love a good, dumb battle against other players. You also love all kinds of action anime. Maybe even...
The Daily Grind: Are you inured to MMO whaling and exploitative monetization?
Back in July, MOP reader Neowolf made an insightful comment about excessive monetization exploitation and MMO whaling - that is, MMOs targeting big-spenders with...
RuneScape’s Jagex on the much-derided battlepass: ‘We messed up’
All week, we've been covering the chaos brewing over in the RuneScape community as players have put up a strong protest against Jagex's new...
Player feedback (and a blast of review bombing) forces World of Warships to overhaul event rewards
World of Warships players have apparently joined the throngs of gaming review bombers and are taking to Steam reviews to voice their displeasure with...
EVE Online removes a contentious item from a cash shop bundle after player backlash
CCP Games decided to once again test the patience of the EVE Online playerbase this week after the studio offered - and then removed...
Blizzard promises a fix for Diablo IV’s season battle pass ‘dark pattern’ after widespread player complaints
Among the many complaints that players are leveraging against Diablo IV, one of them is arguably far more serious than class nerfs: a bit...
Discord announces additional monetization via new subscription gating tools for server creators
For regular users of the chat program Discord, monetization of the platform began a potentially worrying trend when the company announced the server subscriptions...
Valve is eliminating Dota 2 battle passes because almost nobody was buying them
A common refrain that's used to fight against unwanted monetization is "speak with your wallet" - ie don't buy a thing you dislike. That...
Massively on the Go: Five features location-based MMOs keep using – but shouldn’t
I was hoping to cover a couple of other location-based games besides Jurassic World Alive this month, but as I played them, there were a...
Massively on the Go: Jurassic World Alive plods on five years later, encumbered by over-monetization
Ludia's Jurassic World Alive is still stomping along. It's gotten some features over the years that seem, well, "borrowed" from that Pokemon GPS game, but yeesh,...
Embers Adrift defends its subscription monetization model in latest dev video
The most recent developer livestream from Embers Adrift began as most others, with the game's community manager Elloa reading patch notes for March's update...
