Soon after release, the web was filled with articles detailing an exploit in Gran Turismo 6 that let players effectively unlock cars for free, bypassing the game’s hefty microtransactions.
When game historians of the far future look back on 2013, they will recall the grand reveals of the then-cutting edge next-gen consoles, now used exclusively as doorstops, conversation pieces in neo-hipster living rooms or as paperweights (if future historians use paper, which they won’t). They’ll read about the repeated 180-degree turns by Microsoft over the Xbox One, pore over the murders that didn’t happen in the wake of GTAV, and puzzle of the fate of some erstwhile hardware manufacturer called ‘Nintendo’ that kept its own console so exclusive that seemingly no-one was allowed to buy it.
Then the holoscreen will fade to black, and a little prompt will flash up to inform our historians that instead of reading about the rest of 2013, all the information can be digitally injected into their frontal lobes immediately for the low, low price of five Europian Space Credits. And our historians will smile in the gentle blue glow of the screen and obediently present their retinas for scanning, for that is the way of things in the glorious world of tomorrow.
Or maybe not.
2013 was the year when microtransactions finally stopped hiding sheepishly behind the skirts of their publishers and danced boldly into the mainstream. Where formerly they’d been associated with inexpensive mobile games and free-to-play titles on the PC, in 2013, certain publishers saw the opportunity to entice gamers into paying for their product twice: £50 for the game, and more thereafter to unlock ‘extra’ content for it. The size of the sums in question also strained, and then broke, and trampled over, the meaning of the word ‘micro’, with some games bold-facedly offering unlocks adding up to high double – even triple – figures.
Microtransactions were always unsavoury outside of their natural habitat of free or almost-free titles. They tarnished games even where they weren’t compulsory to progress, with reviewers and players unfailingly referring to them in a negative light. Even if you personally would never shell out for faster progression or new character skins, their inclusion in a game you had purchased – at least if the consumer reaction online was anything to go by – gave you a legitimate grievance.
Dead Space 3 kicked off the year’s storm over microtransactions, when an option to buy more in-game resources appeared on the screens of its crafting stations.
Maybe it was the implication that, as a player, your skills might be so lacking in the face of the challenges this game would present that you’d need a bit of a leg up. That you’d need the game to go easy on you, like you were an infant child and the game was an indulgent grandfather letting you win at Scrabble with your collection of four-letter, misspelled words. I remember the first time a game did this to me. There was a particular demon in Onimusha 2 which my 13-year-old self would lose to over and over – but every time my character would collapse to the ground, blades sticking out of him like a novelty ninja knife rack, the game would ask if I would like lower the difficulty, and I would stubbornly – proudly – press ‘no’.
I don’t think I ever finished that game, but that’s not the point. The point is that microtransactions, as they so controversially appeared in Dead Space 3 in February, were an extension of this idea. While the companies that crowbar them into the in-game store trot the line that they’re there as a convenience for players who want an easier or a quicker time of it, the other interpretation is that they’re for players who aren’t good enough or can’t be bothered to play the game properly. And to have a game suggest, however fleetingly, that might be us is an affront to the same pride that makes us chase after trophies and achievements.
Microtransactions also finally killed a staple of many people’s gaming childhoods: the cheat code. Forza 5 creative director Dan Greenawalt even went as far as to write out and sign its death warrant in a recent interview: “We were looking at it as basically giving people cheats,” he said. “But if you want to put cheats in you have to pay for them, which puts a barrier in and makes it exclusive to those who want to pay for them.”
In the ’90s, cheats were integral to a game’s experience. Kids swapped them in the corridors at school during break, scribbling new ones down on ratty bits of paper. Magazines came with little A5 cheat books printed in black and white on horrible cheap paper. Having a GameShark cheat cartridge was the 12-year-old equivalent of owning a motorcycle.
Developers Turn 10 first defended and then backpedaled on Forza 5′s pricing scheme, when fans complained their prices were too high.
With titles like Forza now openly aspiring to turn something as innocently silly as the cheat code into another column on a profitability spreadsheet, games have lost a little bit of their joy. Time-wasting unlockables like rocket-launching sports cars in Age of Empires or Goldeneye’s DK Mode have been replaced by paid transactions to do dull things. Hey kids! Unlock a new car early. Change your character skin. Add some in-game credits to your inventory. What drab, grey, accountant’s idea of ‘fun’ is this?
But more importantly, the ill-will toward microtransactions comes down to a question of trust. There are enough examples on mobile devices of games that claim to be free-to-play, while making progression without stumping up funds to all intents and purposes impossible. And this year, with Dead Space 3′s John Calhoun explaining that developers Visceral were actively designing the game’s microtransaction system to appeal to, quote, “players coming from mobile games who are accustomed to microtransactions [and who are] like, ‘I need this now, I want this now’ [and] need instant gratification”, the same accusation was naturally levelled at publishers. Would it really have taken as long for Dead Space 3′s resource-scavenging robots to bring back the requisite components for a weapon upgrade had the game not included microtransactions? Would a top-end car have taken as long to unlock in Forza or Gran Turismo 6 if the option hadn’t been there to buy it from Microsoft or Sony’s pushy virtual car salesman?
Publishers said no, of course: these were the same games you’d always enjoyed, but now with the added convenience for time-poor gamers of being able to skip out some of the grind. Sony’s Shuhei Yoshida personally defended the practice on Twitter, stating that “[Gran Turismo 6] is just offering an alternative path to busy people”. That may well be true (although if publishers were truly concerned about the plight of the time-poor gamer, you’d hope that concern would extend to the cash-poor, as well). But even if it is, it’s a change in the relationship that gamers were never consulted on. You don’t have a choice: if you want to play a game that includes microtransactions, you simply have to take the publisher’s word for it that everything they’re saying is on the level. You weren’t asked to trust them: you were told to.
But while adding microtransactions exploded as a practice in 2013, there was a silver lining to the dark, greedy thunder cloud: the reaction of the people actually playing the games.
Dead Space 3′s new crafting system was sullied by accusations from both public and press that it had been included as a mechanic for selling resource packs first and improving gameplay second. It was a game more targeted to extract money from players, but ultimately the least well-received instalment in the trilogy.
Forza 5 was initially heavy on the not-so-microtransactions, but quickly backpedaled on its pricing, with Dan Greenawalt (sort of) apologising for disappointing fans.
Even Ryse had a microtransaction system, for gamers so time-poor they couldn’t spare the five or six hours it would take to complete without them.
Ryse had bigger flaws than its microtransactions to hide them behind, but messageboard users and press alike were quick to point out the inherent ridiculousness of adding unlocks to speed players’ progress through what was only a linear, five-or-six-hour game in the first place.
And most recently, just look at the gleeful articles that popped up on outlets all over the web the week this article was published about the Gran Turismo 6 bug that gives players unlimited money – and by extension, cars – without having to go near in its real-world, £120-for-a-top-end-car payment system. No-one wants it fixed, which either means there are many more ‘busy’ people that Sony expected, or the people in question are slinging mud in the company’s eye.
2013 has offered the most egregious examples of publishers squeezing customers for money through in-game purchases. But it has also offered the best examples of gamers calling out microtransactions in triple-A games as the seedy, fleecing practice that they are. Games that try to get away with holding back content or offering expensive add-on packs were pointed at more and laughed at harder, and as with invasive DRM before it, releasing a game that doesn’t include microtransactions is now a badge of honour, an instant point in the plus column for a title about which customers might otherwise know nothing about.
Microtransactions aren’t dead. Like all things born of evil, they may never truly die. But with enough of backlash, they might start to wither; to decay and crumble and cower from the light. 2013 didn’t mark the end of the microtransaction, but it was at least a line of salt between the publishers who use them and the players demanding more and more loudly that they don’t.
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