One of the biggest streamers in the world, Asmongold, recently did a segment on stream where he talked about the Overwatch 2 monetization controversy. Many folks are calling for the return of lootboxes to Overwatch 2, thanks to the game’s punishingly stingy free-to-play monetization system without lootboxes like you had in the first game.
During the segment on stream, as well as in an accompanying YouTube video, Asmon made some pretty strong statements about how he thinks monetization should be handled in Overwatch and games at large when it comes to lootbooxes. So, in this article, we’ll explain Asmongold’s take on lootboxes and why it has some issues.
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Asmongold’s Take on Lootboxes
For Asmon and many people out there like him, the reaction to lootboxes is pretty cut and dry: All forms of lootboxes where you can exchange real money for a random chance at getting something in game is unacceptable. For Asmon, whether or not you sell skins for hundreds a pop or whatever else isn’t predatory, while lootboxes really are.
The problem isn’t with the pricing or even the monetization itself but rather the fact that you can choose to gamble your real-life money within the bounds of a video game. Ultimately, this kind of monetization only works because of whales, or folks who’ll spend absurd amounts of money gambling that most people will never come close to spending, so by having a gambling system at all, you’re creating a predatory system that preys on those select few.
Most folks who spend tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars on video games aren’t usually simply rich folk with extra cash to spend, they’re often those who can’t really afford what they’re buying but do so because they struggle with gambling addiction. And to create a business model that profits almost entirely off these kinds of people, to Asmon and others, is just a bad, predatory practice, period.
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The Actual Problem With Lootboxes
When you were a kid, you probably bought at least one pack of Pokemon or Magic cards. Inside, you’d find a random selection of stuff that could either be extremely valuable or totally worthless. While packs of tradeable cards are real-life lootboxes, few think they’re actually predatory, really.
That’s because there isn’t a problem with being able to spend lots of money, and there isn’t even a problem with spending money on something that involves chance. The problem starts when you feel like you’re forced to spend tons of money and undue pressure is applied to either make or incentivize you to spend tons of money.
So, with a game like Path of Exile, there are some lootboxes in the game. They’re totally optional cosmetics, and you can buy cosmetics directly from the shop or get them within a supporter pack, and they even have safeties built in to make sure you don’t get duplicates. Ultimately, few in the PoE community really care that much about the lootboxes in the game, either way, because of how they work.
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In mobile games, on the other hand, you’ll often see lootbox systems without any kind of bad luck or duplicate protection where lootboxes literally directly influence player power. In a game like Diablo Immortal, you’ll have to keep spending your money on chances to randomly get the stuff you want if you want to be as powerful as you can possibly be. This kind of structure creates a lot of pressure on players, particularly whales, to spend big.
When you couple the above with the sunk cost fallacy you can fall victim to when you’ve played a game for a long time and are considering if you should spend money or not as well as the fact that many folks who spend all their time in games do so to avoid very real problems that may not leave them in the best state of mind, you’ve created an environment where a small group of gamers is going to be exploited by corporations for comical amounts of cash.
To some extent, personal responsibility is a factor. Gambling is a very normal part of life in most of the world just as much as alcohol is, and while neither is necessarily good for you, if you engage with them responsibly, you won’t have anything to worry about. If we don’t put lootboxes into games that obfuscate costs or gate power behind a roll of the dice for example, all for real money, lootboxes don’t actually have to be bad.
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In fact, there’s a lot to be said for lootboxes as a system. In Overwatch, for example, the primary way of getting cosmetics and skins was through lootboxes, which were handed out for free often and had protections against bad luck and duplicates as well as gave you currency to use to buy cosmetics directly. You could also spend real money on lootboxes.
In other games, oftentimes you’ll just see an in-game shop where you can buy skins and cosmetics for real money. If you want a skin, you pay for it, and that’s that. With this kind of system, a clear hierarchy emerges between skins you can unlock and what you can buy, and if you want all the coolest skins immediately, you can just pay for them. With lootboxes, you’re just pulling from a pool of cosmetics, and if you can earn boxes for free, there’s not really a difference between skins you pay real money for vs skins you can unlock.
In other words, you both won’t have to feel like the skins you can get for free are clearly worse or less interesting than the skins you pay for, and you don’t have to broadcast whether or not you’ve personally decided to spend money on something. It’s also a good way to make the process of acquiring cosmetics less boring, where you can be surprised and excited by an especially cool or rare random drop.
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Of course, there’s a near-infinite list of games with lootboxes that are predatory. The way of the industry is to maximize profits, after all. But lootboxes don’t have to be predatory, much like other controversial tech like cryptocurrency or NFTs: Don’t mistake the fact that because something is usually used for bad for it never being able to be used for good.
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