Video games have existed for decades and have quickly become a source of entertainment for people of all ages across the globe. Unfortunately with popularity, comes an increased rise in commercialization. In the case of video games, this commercialization comes in the form of many things, but microtransactions are the most prevalent.

Microtransactions are small in-game purchases that give the player either cosmetics and/or other content like level up packages or, on rare occasions, loot. They cost actual money, and oftentimes use an in-game currency as a go between. (Note that I said small in-game purchases.)

Twenty years ago, the idea of microtransactions would’ve been brushed off as some kind of scam. Yet if you look at video games now, you can buy cosmetics for $70. Why? What exactly changed? Unfortunately, public opinion changed.

If a customer looks at some of the biggest offenders like Bungie, 343, Respawn, and Infinity Ward, they’ll see well-known entries with growing fanbases and dedicated fan content. However, when one looks closer, you’ll see the cracks.

For example, Bungie’s current project, Destiny 2, has been under fire since 2019 for adhering to a seasonal model and steadily increasing the costs of its microtransactions. Starting with Destiny 2’s fifth expansion, “Witch Queen”, on top of the entire DLC’s $40 price point, users also have the option to pay an additional $20 for what Bungie calls a “dungeon key”.

This allows players to have access to harder content known as dungeons. These tend to have older content that was removed from the game, locked behind them. For context, back in 2020, Bungie decided to remove some of the older content in the game to make space.

This was widely unpopular as not only was most of this content paid for, but it also severely reduced replayability as popular activities and locations were spirited away.

Focusing back on dungeons, they tend to have updated (or reprised as Bungie puts it) versions of the removed content that was previously paid for, locked behind a paywall. Imagine buying a shirt and wearing it for a few years, only for the store you bought it from to steal it randomly, clean it, repair any damage it may have, and demand you to pay for it with a price markup.

Another prime example of microtransactions suffocating both a game and its fanbase is “Respawn” and two of its games, “Titanfall 2” and “Apex Legends”. While “Titanfall 2” has microtransactions, they’re only cosmetic and aren’t particularly expensive, even for the time.

Regardless, those microtransactions only served to enable “Respawn” and EA’s predatory prices in their next hit game, “Apex Legends”. As “Apex Legends” is a hero shooter combined with a battle royale, cosmetics come naturally. Unfortunately, depending on the rarity of the cosmetic, the price can soon become outlandish.

These cosmetics can be bought with in-game currency, but one of those currencies has to be bought with real money, and the other is incredibly difficult to earn a decent amount of. For reference, let’s compare the prices of “Titanfall 2” and “Apex Legends” cosmetics. One character cosmetic bundle in “Titanfall 2” costs $2.99. In “Apex Legends”, it costs $20 or more.

One could justify the price markup by highlighting that “Apex Legends” is a free-to-play game, but considering the game pressures you into buying cosmetics, the benefit of the doubt doesn’t matter. Earning rewards in a game is an integral part of retaining player engagement, and Apex stumbles near the finish line.

When you finish a match in Apex, you would expect to get a decent amount of the game’s free in-game currency, right? In reality, you get pocket change regardless of whether or not you won the match. The game wants you to play as much as possible, but unless you fork over cash, success or failure feels the same because you gain nothing from either.

As bad as this all sounds, “Call of Duty” takes the cake. Starting in titles as far back as Ghosts and Advanced Warfare, “Call of Duty” has been littered with microtransactions. To call them microtransactions, is being generous as their ridiculous price points make them seem more like macro transactions.

“Call of Duty’s” cosmetics in terms of price aren’t much worse than “Apex Legends”, but what takes the cake is that they also provide an unfair advantage to players who buy them. In these cosmetic bundles, they often provide free weapon upgrades and attachments that boost the weapon’s performance.

More and more game studios have been practicing exploitative business practices, and as long as people buy them, nothing will change. Even if most people don’t indulge in these microtransactions, someone out there still is, and they’re easily dunking sometimes hundreds of dollars, which is enough for these companies to believe that the system they have is fair.

Even if that weren’t the case, it doesn’t change the fact that the very nature of these in-game purchases is predatory. These aren’t new content expansions that breathe new life into the game, they’re cosmetics with no justifiable benefit to buying them.

What’s funny about these cosmetics is that in some games they can be obtained for free using the in game currency. It’s completely unnecessary to buy them with real money considering they’re available for free, yet here we are.

Not only that, but games without them have proven to be incredibly successful, even in this age where they’ve become commonplace. Games like “Little Nightmares 2“, and “Baldur’s Gate 3”, which not only earned Game of the Year at 2023’s Game awards, but many others, have proven that these microtransactions are more than unnecessary, but weigh games down.

This is made even more poignant when you look back at the games that many consider the greatest of all time. Games like the “Half-Life” series, “Halo” (up until Halo 5 at least), and “Minecraft” (before Xbox One) were microtransaction free when they made their mark on the world.

Players wouldn’t be so averse to in-game purchases if they weren’t advertised everywhere they go in said game. Based on experience, nothing irritates a customer more than repetitive advertising. Players shouldn’t feel pressured to pay for something that won’t even benefit them.

As it stands now, microtransactions are becoming blemishes on games that only serve to alienate most of a series’ player base. With the quality of games being even more uncertain than it ever was and many game studios being exposed for having toxic workplaces and shady business practices, approval from players is only getting more difficult to earn and maintain.

More and more studios are releasing barely functional games rife with microtransactions, and the consequences are catching up to them. It’s clear that a storm is brewing in the video game industry, and if it’s going to be weathered there needs to be a substantial change, and soon.