When Games Stopped Being For The Players
After moving from SEGA consoles to PC, indie games were never my thing. SimCity had been what moved me to PC, especially SimCity 3000, and StarCraft and Quake 3 Arena had been what kept me there. From those came a wave of classic PC titles, such as Diablo 2, Warcraft 3, Unreal Tournament 2004, World of Warcraft, StarCraft 2, etc. But ever since 2010, the game industry has been making decisions that I’ve strongly contested. Digital pre-sales, DLC ramp-ups, loot boxes, and changing plans post-launch are some of those decisions I’ve never agreed with in a single game. In contrast, indie game titles have appeared that offer, maybe not the graphical quality of big studios, but far better game concepts with superb gameplay and even stories, pushing me toward those game titles while moving away from AAA studios.
Major Problems
Digital Pre-Orders
Let’s begin with what I think is probably the most harmless one, but also the most idiotic. Digital pre-orders serve what interests to consumers? A cleared queue on game launch? An easier entry into the game servers? Even if so, digital pre-sales could open like 15 days before game launch, not necessarily a full year.
From the business side, I understand the appeal of digital pre-ordering. It helps you validate the game model and get some early funding. Although it is kinda predatory toward players, pushing FOMO to the limit with unique bonuses and digital items you can only get with a pre-order, and it can be harmful post-launch.
I understood pre-ordering back in the boxed days. Heck, I had to pre-order my copies of StarCraft 2 and my first World of Warcraft expansions in order to be on the servers as quickly as possible. But nowadays they don’t make much sense from the player perspective. What are you pre-ordering for? Is the Internet going to run out of bits?
Also, digital pre-orders can become potentially worse if what you buy isn’t what you get in the end. Diablo 3 was one of the biggest disappointments I ever had as a gamer. First, not only was it lacking quality in the writing (I guess you really can’t beat Chris Metzen), but I actually bought Diablo 3 for two reasons: the real-money auction house and PvP arenas. The RMAH was eventually removed, and the arenas never came to fruition. Well, at least I bought some WoW subscriptions and Heart of the Swarm with it, I guess.
In the end, digital pre-orders serve no interests but those of the game developers. They remove accountability before reviews actually exist.
Early Accesses
Early access is also another predatory use of FOMO coupled with some type-A competitiveness abuse. Early access for influencers, journalists, opinion leaders in general, doesn’t make much difference to me at all. In single-player games, it’s good publicity, assuming the game is good, of course. In multiplayer games, especially RPGs, it can give a lead to a player just because they were willing to pay more, which makes no sense. Even for OLs, any progress made during early access should be reset when the game goes live.
Early access to live servers is just another way of pushing players into more expensive digital pre-orders just to avoid missing a few days of game time and missing out on any exclusive deals on in-game items. Again, it serves no purpose to the gamer, only to the game developer/publisher, namely by inflating sales.
Early access should only happen for reviewing purposes, which could help consumers get an idea of the product they are about to buy. In no way should it be a revenue source on its own.
Not to mention other debatable problems, such as fairness and how it’s a way of monetizing impatience.
DLC Ramp-Ups
As a former Blizzard fan, especially of the classics, I have nothing against expansions. New content and game changes are welcome and deserve to be priced. But there’s a difference between pushing significant changes and additions in a closed-box purchase, where you know what you’re getting, and selling an incomplete game and pushing multiple DLCs to your fan base. Especially if you need to keep buying the DLCs in order to keep access to the game or enjoy the same experience. For example, before relaunching Classic, if you were playing WoW, you either had to get the most recent expansion or you’d be playing in a deserted world.
A striking balance in this is what Paradox does with Cities: Skylines. Skylines has a ton of DLCs, but as a gamer, I’m totally free to choose those I want to add. I don’t have all of them. Just the few I find interesting enough to get. My experience is not ruined, and I don’t feel exploited. Ok, maybe just a little bit, but I’m willing to accept it for the continuous updates to the game. Especially after Cities: Skylines 2 is already out there.
DLCs should never be priced at the same amount as the original game. But it is totally fair for them to have a price, given the additions they bring to the game and the enjoyment of the player. But there’s a significant difference between expanding what should already be a complete game on its own and pushing incomplete software that requires extra purchases to make it complete. They should expand a complete game. Not complete an incomplete one.
Micro-Transactions On Paid Game Titles
I have nothing against micro-transactions in general if the game is free. Games like League of Legends, Dota 2, etc., if they are free-to-play, still need to make revenue to keep staff and servers alive. If that revenue comes from in-game traded items, especially items that are purely cosmetic and do not affect gameplay or give you any advantage, it sounds quite fair to me.
On the other hand, pushing micro-transactions on a boxed game seems like trying to squeeze two business models into one single product, which, in my opinion, is once again predatory. Let’s take World of Warcraft, for example. The subscription model it runs on makes total sense to me. Made more sense back in the day, but I still don’t contest it. Heck, I must have spent around €1k in subscriptions myself over the years when I was active in WoW. What I hated was when suddenly pets, mounts, and other in-game items had a shop of their own. Sure, these were purely aesthetic, but it made no sense. I’m already paying for a game subscription; why should I pay more for an additional item? The subscription itself should allow me access to the full game, not part of the game. Unlike LoL or Dota, this game isn’t free. At least make the items available in-game, even if at a high gold cost.
And WoW is a modest example. What FIFA does with player cards should be totally illegal, in my opinion.
In the end, micro-transactions on paid game titles feel like double monetization. Which, like double taxation, is just plain wrong. If you buy a product, you own it, and it should end there. With some possible exceptions for required subscriptions with very clear reasons, as long as they’re made very explicit before the game purchase.
Micro-Transactions on a Lock
Micro-transactions are acceptable to me on free-to-play game titles, as I just mentioned. But that doesn’t mean it’s okay to abuse them. Keeping items available only during specific time windows, or after spending a given amount, or behind any other lock, should also be prohibited. It’s only encouraging more FOMO from the player base, totally unnecessarily. At best, you could launch some new in-game items at a discount before keeping them at full price after a period of time. Sure, give the early shoppers some nice pricing advantage. But don’t remove them.
It’s kinda the same logic as digital pre-orders. What, are you going to run out of bits in the database?
Purchasable Loot Boxes
The last and the worst: loot boxes. Paid loot boxes have been treated as gambling or restricted under gambling laws in some jurisdictions, and rightly so. If all of the previous practices are abusive and ethically questionable, then loot boxes take the prize for peak exploitation and what’s wrong with the industry in general.
It’s not just selling digital items at absurd costs or with limited times and access. It’s not even knowing what you are purchasing. And no, making the odds known doesn’t help this.
If you’re spending real money for a chance of winning something, you’re gambling. Downright, pure gambling. And gambling has strict rules and age limits to respect.
Now, if the loot boxes are in-game bonuses or giveaways you can get for free, then I have nothing against that. If you’re playing and the game awards you a box with random loot, I think it’s okay. It’s on the borderline of what is acceptable, but there’s nothing to lose, only win, so I guess it’s okay. But spending money on a loot box? Totally not.
Let’s look at the Hextech Chests in League of Legends, for example. If you earn one through the free reward systems in the game, I think it’s totally fine. Congrats, maybe you get a new champion or a new skin. But purchasing the same type of random-reward chest using Riot Points that you had to get with real money should absolutely be illegal.
And if that should be illegal, purchasing FIFA packs for potential player cards to use in your matches should downright get you freakin’ jailed.
Indie Games
Doing More With Less
RimWorld was probably what changed my opinion on indie games. I tried it out of curiosity for the whole concept, and because I was stuck with Ubuntu as my only OS and I wanted to explore gaming options. I was hoping for something funny, and yet I found a game that totally blew away all my expectations. Even with DLCs that I never bothered to try because I didn’t find what they added that compelling, the original game mode provided enough for me to blow hundreds of hours on the game. Even if at times it was just running in the background.
It Takes Two, by Hazelight, was the game that cemented my opinion. I got it on Steam on sale after I set up Steam Big Picture in the living room. The amount of fun hours I had with Catarina playing IT2 was just priceless for what I paid for the game. Sure, it’s not the AAA pure graphical experience you might dream of, but it looks quite good, and the gameplay is great. The script is fun enough to keep you playing. But the game itself is great, and as a co-op, I couldn’t ask for more.
Respecting Gamers And Values
It’s not that indie developers are putting the best game titles out there per se, but it is that I feel they deliver the best value for gamers as consumers. It Takes Two was indubitably the best value I ever got when purchasing a game since getting StarCraft 2.
Although my experience with indie games is limited, I’m very inclined to expand on it as much as life allows. What I find is that their incentives are aligned with players. Instead of designing a game around predatory monetization mechanics and retention metrics, indie devs are focused on making something that brings you along and that you get to enjoy.
I don’t doubt that indie devs, too, have monetization needs and financial concerns. But at least they don’t crush their player base with them. Most seem to remember the core concepts that once made games great.
While AAA studios seem focused on making products that will generate great quarterly reports, indies seem bent on trying new concepts that players will just enjoy. Even if made on 2D engines, with 8-bit-lookalike pixelization, or just other old-school concepts.
Ethics
It’s sad to see that, despite the young audience of video games and their growth into one of the biggest entertainment industries in the world, there is little respect for the consumer, especially on an ethical level. Predatory, gambling-like, FOMO-inducing practices should not take place in an industry where such a significant part of the audience is still below 18.
Time-limited shops and event-unique items are elegant ways to describe what is just psychological manipulation and pressure to purchase. Using FOMO and simulating scarcity on a digital item is nothing more than that. Just like loot boxes are essentially the same concept as gambling, with the very debatable nuance that you’re not spending money for a chance at making money, but spending money for the chance of getting a digital item that costs money. Or time, which technically should equal money for an adult.
While the possibility of spending money to buy items in multiplayer games is debatable, let’s say in Diablo or World of Warcraft, personally, I don’t mind if any adult player wants to spend €10k boosting and gearing a character because they lack the personal time for a grind, even if I find it to be a very questionable choice. But younger players, whose access is via their parents’ finances, should be blocked. Of course, game developers will say that’s not how they develop their games, but access is so easily available that it won’t prevent this, and they will just shift the responsibility to the parents. And while I agree that responsibility on the topic should be shared, it should also be taken more seriously by game devs.
It’s not just bad design or a focus on boosting revenues. It’s ethically irresponsible design, tied to predatory money-grabbing mechanics. Somehow, somewhere along the gaming timeline, we’ve normalized monetization strategies in games that would be unacceptable in any other industry aimed at minors.
And that’s really the core issue. This isn’t just about bad design choices or aggressive monetization. It’s about design that is ethically irresponsible. These systems are not accidental. They are built to work. They rely on predictable human behavior, on urgency, on loss aversion, on the tendency to chase rewards. Players are not just interacting with a game anymore; they are being guided through systems designed to extract value from them over time.
At some point, players stopped being the purpose of the game and became the resource the game is built around. The experience is no longer the end goal, but the means to drive engagement and spending. These systems don’t force players to pay, but they are carefully structured to make not paying feel like missing out, falling behind, or playing a lesser version of the game.
From that perspective, the problem goes beyond preference or business models. It becomes a question of responsibility. If the same mechanics—simulated scarcity, randomized rewards for money, constant pressure to engage—were used in any other product aimed at minors, they would be heavily regulated or outright banned. Yet in games, they have been normalized.
And that normalization is perhaps the most concerning part. Because once these systems are accepted as standard, the line between entertainment and exploitation becomes increasingly difficult to see.
Final Thoughts
As well as anyone in the business, I understand the need to make revenue. That doesn’t mean we should ignore ethics completely, especially when the audience is so young.
The problem was never monetization itself. Players have always been willing to pay for games, expansions, and even subscriptions when the value is clear. The issue is how monetization started shaping the design of the games themselves instead of the experience. How revenues became the focus instead of building a player base. How that focus led from building a game and then pricing it to many studios now designing systems around extracting as much value as possible from the player over time. Progression gets slowed down to encourage spending, content gets segmented to be sold later, and entire mechanics are built to keep players engaged just enough to keep paying. At that point, the player is no longer the focus of the experience, but the target of it.
Games are being designed around extracting value from players, not delivering value to them. The industry lost sight of the player, while indie games won me over by respecting my time, money, and trust.
After so many years of disappointment in terrible products and horrible decisions by my favorite game studios, the studios I trust today aren’t the ones with the biggest budgets or most famous game titles. They’re the ones that still treat players with respect—for their money, time, and choice—and not just as customers to optimize and exploit.