Why Shadow of War's Loot Crates are not okay

I was initially very excited for the new Middle-Earth: Shadow of War game coming out. I loved Shadow of Mordor, especially its Nemesis system and its fluid, Arkham Asylum-styled combat. I loved the idea that a sequel was going to come out and that it would iterate on the system in a way that delivered on the initial promise. I can’t wait to fully experience a fleshed out enemy system where I can manipulate an army’s loyalties for my own bidding.

But then I heard about the micro-transactions that will be soiling the game, and I decided that for a full-priced retail product, I’m just not going to buy it. This is because Micro-transactions overall sully the experience and are an anti-consumer practice that ultimately shows the flawed value of AAA videogames.

Firstly, there’s the issue that having micro-transactions, even ones as tiny as cosmetic upgrades or those not required to beat the game, imprint a psychological barrier into the mind of anyone that’s playing the game. Gamers aren’t getting the ‘full experience’, they’re getting something where content was taken out to be sold back to them. Even if they are there purely for cosmetic reasons, micro-transactions have a reputation for being linked with shadier practices. On some level, I will always associate micro-transactions with poor-quality mobile phone games, because this is where the practice was born.

The use of any kind of micro-transaction in a game came from a need for smaller developers to make money out of something where the initial outlay was nowhere near enough to recoup cost, and while this worked for many developers there is no denying that the use of the practice has become synonymous with a kind of ‘dirty’ experience. Any kind of in-game purchase carries with it the weight of Candy Crush.

Then there is the statement that companies are making when they use micro-transactions. When implementing such systems in Shadow of War, WB Games are ultimately saying that as a gamer, your £42 is not enough. That in some way you aren’t paying enough for the privilege of playing their game. They are saying that they value gamers so little that they will ask them to pay for something that should be free. This shows the kind of psyche behind these anti-consumer decisions; ultimately each customer is nothing but a collection of transactions to be exploited and mined through any means necessary, and even if it’s not, if the company tries to convince you that this is not the case because such items are only an added bonus, that they’re not needed, then why at all should you ever consider paying the outlay for a microtransaction if they’re not needed? If they were as small as an added bonus, surely it would be easy to implement cheat codes as a sign of goodwill toward gamers, but no, they’re selling it.

Such a practice may be justified by some by looking to other companies, such as Overwatch. But let me be clear here; just because another game did it does not make the practice okay. I hate that Overwatch, as a full-retail priced game, still has micro-transactions and loot crates. It never was okay in the first place, no matter how great the underlying game is.

All of this would be bad enough, if it was not for the nature of the micro-transactions themselves. When loot crates are implemented with randomised loot, you aren’t paying for an item. You’re paying for a chance at an item. This means that you may not even get what you want from the purchase at all. This means that as a practice it ultimately is no better than gambling. Don’t tell me that any kind of value mindset was considered when this was implemented in Shadow of War, because if it was, we’d have full-sized DLC, and not the shitty consumer practices implemented in the product as it is.

It is scant justification that Shadow of War is too expensive a project to be paid for by full retail price; if so, it is WB that should suffer the punishment for being overzealous on production value, not the consumer. Make better, more efficient decisions. Not only that, but are we really saying that such a massive, hyped and clearly in-demand product that benefits from the huge license power of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth and the gamer goodwill that came from Shadow of Mordor won’t generate enough revenue to meet cost? If not, then it is clearly a failing of the corporation’s production and not in the pricing.

As an aside, does this show that AAA gaming is quickly becoming unsustainable in the modern market? Clearly, the drive for bigger and bigger blockbuster games is top-heavy and expensive and if a company can’t make a profit on a AAA title with any kind of reasonable pricing system in place, then that is surely a problem with the typical practice used in developing AAA games. Perhaps this is a sign that the gaming industry at large, at least the blockbuster one, is showing some fatigue.

Ultimately, when any company makes the decision to engage with microtransactions in their product, they are making a judgement call on how much they value their audience, and how much they value the nature of their product. If they believe that their product is not good enough to stand on its own without a shady, anti-consumer practice powering the gears, then why should we, as gamers, believe that such a product is worth our full retail bucks? If the full RRP of a game isn’t enough, either raise the RRP or look at the costings before passing on shady practices to the customers.

Here, instead WB Games has decided to say that their customers aren’t good enough, and are sullying the name of their franchise to do so. Not only this, they are also lowering the perception of their product and creating a poor brand image. Saying that such transactions are optional only begs the question of why they are included at all, and why should consumers foot the bill by continuing to put up with the shitty practices of a top-heavy industry that is showing signs of bloat and fatigue?