The Ethics of Optional Item Sales

[Kalandros]

Drop the topic already

Blizzard makes 10 to 20 times more than Square-enix with WoW alone. They have a cash shop. There's nothing else to say. Cash Shops are there to stay but we definitely don't want Pay2Win model that 'free'2play mmos have.

[Catwho]

In the case of the metallic colors, you even get a "try before you buy" feature. You can test how each dye will potentially look on a piece without even owning the dye. I said I was never going to spend a dollar on the paid metallic dyes, until I saw that the metallic blue turned the Ironworks Coat of Healing a lovely iridescent purple. SE got my dollar that time...

As long as the cash shop stays the way it is, I'm fine with it. My inability to get past Turn 9 has absolutely nothing to do with my lack of the cherry blossom earrings.

[Airget]

How is it unethical to subscribers?

Do the math, 38 seasonal items, 7 for 5 and 31 for 3. bout 168.

30 day sub 14.99 x 12= 179
90 day sub 13.99= 167.88 (12 months)
180 day sub 12.99= 155.88 ( 12 months)

Those who pay the sub they have an opportunity to do the seasonal event and not miss out on x item.

However sometimes a person doesn't play for a a month of a few months.

Let's look at it like this, person x decides they don't want to play for 3 month so they wait and resub later on but realize they wanted an item in those three months that they missed on.

So they saved 38.97-44.97 dollars during those 3 months by not being subbed and in exchange they can spend 3 dollars to get an item they missed.

I honestly don't see an issue with that, don't you think it be more robbery to not allow for a means to get a one time item again or forcing a person to sub at 12.99-14.99 a month just so they don't miss out on an item they may only price at 3 or 5 dollars? Because in the end it's not like everyone wants those items, yes there are some collectors and some who may want it for glamour but at the end of the day it just offers an option (that's cheaper than being subbed to an extent) for items a player may have missed on the first time around while offering them for "free" for players who were subbed during that time and did the event.

[Gyson]

Buy it if you like it.

Don't buy it if you don't.

It's optional and has no impact on gameplay. Nothing unethical, given how they've been 100% transparent about what they're for.

Ain't rocket science.

Apparently it is, because it's not as cut and dry as you seem to think.

The idea is that you're paying a company for a game service. Part of that service includes the idea that the developers will continue to work on new assets to add to the game you're paying a monthly payment for. Turning around and charging you for those same new assets you've already helped pay to create is, well, not right (no matter how you want to dress it up). Now, you can say "don't buy it if you don't like it", but that doesn't change any of what I just said.

Whether you acknowledge that or not doesn't matter, as even game developers themselves understand this. That is why they often argue that a cash shop allows them to hire additional help in the form of employees who work solely on cash shop assets. In saying that, they are trying to make it clear that cash shop content is funded entirely (and solely) through cash shop purchases. And with that, everyone should be happy, right?

Unfortunately, it depends on how honest the developer is being with that statement. Usually the answer seems to be "not entirely" or "not at all". And that is the meat of the problem.

[DreadRabbit]

I don't usually play f2p games (GW2 excluding), but I have played few games with the model I described, and RMT simply cannot compete against the user created economy of gold<->$ trading.. They simply cannot sustain it and RMT is almost non-existent in these games.

Specifically, I'm talking about Guild Wars 2 and Wildstar. Neither of those games had heavy RMT presence when I was playing it, it did have quite a bit of advertisement for powerleveling, but that was upon release, I assume the popularity for such services have dwindled by now.

You also forget that both of those games pay far more attention to handling RMT than the NA servers of this game. There's chat filters and a much easier to use report system so that RMT bots can be found and deleted sooner. Not to mention there's harsher consequences for purchasing in game money through RMT in those games.

Also, this:

I don't have a problem with past event items being in the shop.

Items, even vanity items, created for the sole purpose of being exclusively on the shop can open the floodgates to a plethora of problems though. I can name plenty of MMOs that had cool in game obtainable vanity items, then cash shop ones were introduced, followed by the future in game ones being made at a much slower rate and at a much lower level of quality compared to cash shop ones.

What this quote says happens to every single game that starts embellishing the cash shop, both P2P and F2P. This is why I have no problems with there being vanity in our cash shop so long as it was past event-only items. Once you start designing items specifically for a cash shop it begins to snowball and an additional paywall to the subscription fee rises.

Cash shop items being tradeable has merits, yes. In theory this makes it so that players who can't spend more money on this game, but want said items can just buy them off another player. That is nice. But: this can drive players who have neither the time to make money in game and can't spend money revert to RMT more than before if the RMT shop's prices for in game currency are a bargain to what players are selling cash shop items for. Which RMT pays attention to and does. This does eventually cause massive inflation of certain types of items across the board and QoL of players goes down because they can't afford anything as easily as they once could.

It's a slow change, yes. But it does happen.

[Gardes]

This is what I have a big problem with when it comes to cash shops. I don't care if it's just for "vanity purposes." This is a significant part of the game for many players and forcing a pay-wall on those exclusive glamours will alienate certain players for sure.

I'd say the quality of seasonal events and the rewards from it have gone steadily downhill. Them working on expansion is really no excuse. They already got money from the cash shop, but where's the evidence that it has gone back into the game? EU servers have no solid date and every other detail is vague, RMT problem is just getting worse, server stability apparently has also gotten worse (some of my NA fc members that didnt need a game vpn are complaining about chronic lag lately. personally cant really tell since i'm already playing on 300 ping). As far as I'm concerned, cash shop is way overpriced but hasn't justified those prices at all.

[Cutie_McSnuggles]

I 100% agree that a cash shop in a P2P game is unethical.

[GenJoe]

You also forget that both of those games pay far more attention to handling RMT than the NA servers of this game. There's chat filters and a much easier to use report system so that RMT bots can be found and deleted sooner. Not to mention there's harsher consequences for purchasing in game money through RMT in those games.

Well when game-time items are up for sale and traded for game-money. That's one commodity that every player needs, and not just for vanity purposes. So there's almost endless demand for it as long as people are playing.. So that dramatically decreases the need for RMT sites as the middle man.

[Ashkendor]

but they have put a gate on content.. i hate EA more that anything but they will not make a game without a multi player aspect part with a micro transaction component included BUT if i want a skin or something i pay my micro transaction cost and i get it when do i ever pay a subscription then have content be it old content no longer in game new content ..content that cannot be accessed without paying first e.g. dyes extra retainers the best weddings..like we have here .. sure i can dig at world of war craft but a few mounts and minions in WOW before there slow decline in to pay 2 win etc..to what nearly all the old content that is no longer available in game stuff that was once event stuff thrown in there just to make a buck!! retainers for more space claiming server space blah blah instead of giving us bigger invents .. ask your self where does it stop!!

This is the kind of alarmist rant that does nothing but discredit anti-cash shop arguments. SE has put absolutely nothing in the cash shop so far that would even remotely indicate that there's going to be more than vanity items there. The vanity items in this game don't even give stats (which is a true hallmark of P2W cash shops); they just make your character look pretty. No matter how much people try to argue things like 'glamour is my endgame,' the fact of the matter is that paying $5 for a costume doesn't mean you paid to win. You paid to make your character look spiffy, not to progress in a normal manner in the provided content. Even if you get into the issue of "no space" for the retainers and such, that's not so much an issue of server space as it is an issue of character space. Each character is alotted a certain amount of data, and increasing that amount of data can be problematic at best. They may have to completely recode sections of the character data storage just to allow for it, something that's very labor and time intensive.

[reality_check]

When I hear the word ethics I tend to think of justice, morality, crime, social issues, abuse of power etc...

Ethics in selling people 1-20 dollar items for perks in an online video game?