monetization
Players cry foul over Call of Duty Warzone cash shop skins that offer unfair advantages
More often than not, the term "pay-to-win" is used as a weapon against almost anything, but in the case of some discovered premium skins...
Fight or Kite: Starborne Frontiers is an autobattler with plentiful monetization schemes
When Starborne: Frontiers was first announced back in June of 2021 (which, wow, I can’t believe it was that long ago), I was extremely...
Korean Elyon fans have already created a rogue server of the shuttered MMORPG
Fans of Elyon in both Korea and the west were basically being kicked out of the MMORPG by Kakao Games, with a December sunset...
Class action law firm probes Diablo Immortal over false advertising claims
This is a story about a gem in Diablo Immortal known as the Blessing of the Worthy, an item that could only be found...
New video looks at the history of microtransactions and how they flooded all of video gaming
The cosmetics shop. The battle pass. The lock box. Microtransactions are a part of our MMO, MMORPG, and multiplayer lives, not to mention many...
Vitae Aeternum: The uncomfortable truth of New World’s lax monetization
I have a pretty laid back approach to monetization in online games. Bar mandatory subscriptions and a few egregious outliers, I am generally fine...
Roblox’s sketchy monetization attracts kids, parents, and hungry corporations alike
Would you pay your kids' allowance in virtual currency? That's the frame for a piece today on The Wall Street Journal, which offers an...
From the Depths: ‘Free-to-play’ World of Warships is an expensive journey
When I first started playing MMO’s back in 2012, the hot debate of the time was subscription vs. free-to-play business models. Over the last...
Danish Center for Gambling Addiction warns parents about Diablo Immortal’s monetization tricks
The monetization model for mobile ARPG Diablo Immortal made plenty of headlines leading up to and during its launch. The costs of capping out...
Massively on the Go: Pokemon Go Fest’s Finale was a blend of comfort content and bad bugs
Pokemon Go's yearly Go Fest was fairly rocky this year - so rocky that some of us old trainers had to remind people that we've...
Diablo Immortal made $100 million in revenue in two months
When Diablo Immortal launched, pretty much everyone was united in calling the game out for its absolutely atrocious and exploitative monetization model, which led...
Unity’s CEO says game devs who don’t include monetization in their design process are ‘f*cking idiots’
Not since Square-Enix president Yosuke Matsuda's notorious letter about pursuing NFTs has someone in the games industry so spectacularly lost the plot that we're...
Lost Ark is launching in the Netherlands next week after all
When Lost Ark launched in the west earlier this year, it didn't actually launch in all of the west, as European servers formally excluded...
Newly relaunched Kritika Online’s cash shop is just as gross as you’d assume
Normally around these parts we would be cheering on the resurrection of an MMORPG. But in the case of Kritika Online, which has returned...
Riders of Icarus, which topped a million players six years ago, is going play-to-earn with NFTs
Welp, Riders of Icarus had a nice run.
Readers will recall that the taming-centric MMO soft-launched almost six years ago under Nexon's banner with over...
Vague Patch Notes: The MMO term ‘pay-to-win’ is a red herring
It probably hasn't escaped anyone who has been reading my writing over the past several years that I have something of a vendetta against...
Roblox’s business model prompts fresh accusations of child labor exploitation
For the longest time, we always thought of Roblox as "that kids game with ridiculous numbers of active users." Yet as we reported last...
Marvel’s Avengers introduces XP boosts to its in-game store and sends its community into a tailspin
Back in August of 2020, a dev blog from Marvel's Avengers developer Crystal Dynamics outlined what would be in its cash shop, writing in...
Massively on the Go: Pokemon Unite mobile is a good port but better update
So Pokemon Unite is now mobile and cross-platform. Who'd have thought a traditionally Nintendo-only IP would do this? The update and dev team letter we mentioned is...
World of Warships finally issues apology for August debacles, addresses communication and monetization
World of Warships has really not had the best run over the last couple of weeks. As our own WoWS expert Ben has been...
