Microtransaction garbage has the community pissed.
I think it’s fair to say that when Jagex says they support mental health that it’s all done very tongue in cheek. A form of dark satire. Like a guy who says he hates animal cruelty just before digging into a steak from a cow he personally tortured to death.
The Halloween update is out, and it shouldn’t be a surprise to learn that Jagex lied yet again. The same way they’ve been lying about their plans for monetization for the last ten years. This year’s Halloween event involves smashing pumpkins at communal pumpkin smashing events, and it sucks.
Not because of the pumpkin smashing itself, well not 100% because of that. But because as with every event surrounding RuneScape 3 it is a lazy, shoddy event deliberately designed to not be fun. Why? So players gravitate toward the cash shop of course. And by cash shop I mean the game’s loot boxes.
It’s kind of incredible that in a world where games are increasingly moving away from loot boxes, because people hate them, Jagex only continues to double down. And it will work, until one day it doesn’t. And Jagex is a company that can’t develop or publish a secondary game if their life depended on it meaning once the goodwill among RuneScape players is gone, or once the company stops getting sold to itself by shady Chinese investors, the game is over.
The update promises players can get the good rewards through pure gameplay, and that is true. Provided you have thousands upon thousands of hours to invest into the game over the next couple of weeks and get really, really, really, really lucky. I’d like to point out once again that when a Jagex executive says they value player mental health they don’t do it verbally because it’s hard to stifle the laughter. It’s less that they don’t care and more that they have active contempt for the concept of a customer who isn’t a gambling addict.
The best items have a roughly one in never-going-to-happen chance of dropping from the event without paying real money to get a one in still-probably-never-happening chance. Yeah you can trade them in the auction house. That’s not the point. Many players remember when holiday events in RuneScape were just fun little distractions you played with for 30 minutes and then went back to the game. Now it tends to be RuneScape at its shittiest in predatory behavior.
In fact those events still exist in Old School RuneScape, so we know Jagex is aware of this.
And it’s a little more insulting given Jagex was just groveling at players’ feet a few weeks ago over the Hero Pass and promising they’d do better. After just groveling at players’ feet a few weeks prior for another MtX issue and promising they’d never do it again.
So I’m not asking Jagex to stop with the microtransaction events. I’m simply asking them to stop doing mental health charity events and having your new executives talk about how the company loves promoting good mental health, before they jump ship in less than a year to work at a company that doesn’t lie about its reliance on addiction. Like Marlboro. It’s an insult to the player base, and more importantly it’s an insult to the mental health charities to be associated with the likes of you.
And for RuneScape players? Stop playing the game. Trust me, in ten years from now when Jagex doesn’t get the point and the company starts downsizing because they pissed off all the players, you really won’t care that you got that exclusive cosmetic ten years ago. In fact you probably won’t even remember that you spent all that time and money to obtain it.
Quit RuneScape. Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter.
MMO Fallout 