Comment on Top-selling video games ever (2025)
thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 1 day agothen replaced it with a f2p version, then added the ability to buy a bunch of the paid shit in a bundle?
The way it works or worked in Paladins and Overwatch 2 is, that the characters can be got for free by just playing the game. But you can buy the all (and future) characters lets say for 20 Euros / Dollars. It’s not really different from games you purchase for 20 Dollars, that do have free to play paid stuff in it too. So it’s not really that different from full priced games, after you purchased it.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 1 day ago
The difference is that I did buy the first game (at a AAA price even, iirc) but then they got rid of it when they released the second one and gave a big middle finger to anyone that gave them money for the first.
Doesn’t really affect me personally, since I’d already decided to stay away from anything they offered for other reasons, but just another thing on the pile, though I hadn’t realized they then added a “oh but you can purchase the full thing again option” and thought that it worked more like DOTA2 for monetization (where all characters are free all the time and they monetize it with cosmetics and the plus subscription that gives data on the meta in game) rather than the LoL model.
thingsiplay@lemmy.ml 1 day ago
This reply is actually just agreeing with you and repeating what you said. Just want to clarify this before sending the reply.
I agree with you, also purchased and played Overwatch (the first) on near launch day for thousands of hours. And is actually my favorite multiplayer gamer of the decade; not joking. I know exactly about the middle finger. My point was not defending that point, but the equivalency to full priced games. The disaster launch of the “successor” and so on is a different story for fans of the original game.
But there are better ways to handle this. Good examples are the Valve games as you pointed out with DOTA 2 (and Team Fortress 2). Or Marvel Rivals (which I play), where all characters are available by default. LOL of course is on the complete other end of the spectrum, where you pay for each character and they aren’t even cheap and there are so many of them.
Buddahriffic@lemmy.world 1 day ago
Yeah, I agree that, as far as f2p monetization models go, neither approach is bad on its own. I even liked the LoL one as I found it helped limit the choices right now so I didn’t have to pick out of like 100 characters, while still allowing for getting ones you liked, for free even if you were patient (and I was). HotS used the same model iirc.
But Blizzard displayed unbridled greed and contempt for their users for how they handled that. It really should have led to a landmark case regarding consumer rights when purchasing a license to play a video game and rules for clauses like “we can change this agreement whenever we want”.