Microtransactions are here to stay. And they are a good thing.

[Fyrebrand]

You assume that those minions and mount would be included in the game if they weren't in the cash shop. That's a tall assumption to make and that's not how development works. Everything is budgeted.

They have developers who have limited time in their day to create content. They can create content that is just put into the game, for everyone, or they can create content that gets divided away from the rest and charged extra for. Before the cash shop was introduced, 100% of the stuff they made went into the game I subscribed to. Now, a growing percentage is being removed from that work and put in the cash shop. That is not an assumption.

This kind of microtransactions are an *entirely positive* element for the health of a MMORPG. When a company makes more revenue, said revenue isn't just put in the bank or hidden under the mattress. It's reinvested in games, and in the case of MMORPGs, mostly in the game that generates it. Which means that the more profit Square Enix makes, the more content for us all to enjoy will be greenlighted and funded.

Those items have most probably been given a budget *because* they were made for microtransactions, not the other way around.

Uh... did you just defeat your own argument? So, you're telling me that cash shop revenue is being used to create new game content... but you're also saying there is no way to know whether anything is being made to be put in the game or to be put in the cash shop.

You can say I can't prove cash shop items were ever going to be put into the game. Well, I can never prove that, no, because there is no way to prove something like that. But the stuff that is in the cash shop now had to come from somewhere. Did that come from cash shop revenue, before there was even a cash shop in existence? I somehow don't think so. And if you think all cash shop items are being funded solely through cash shop revenue.... wow. Just, wow.

Meanwhile, can you prove to me that there is any single thing in the main game that was funded by cash shop revenue and not subscription money?