Tag: MTX

Jagex Will Discuss RuneScape Monetization On November 5 Stream


RuneScape. Financially the game is in a fantastic position; back in May we discussed how Jagex had posted a 9.3% increase in overall revenue with subscription numbers at their highest ever in the game’s history thanks to the launch of Old School mobile.

But all has not been great on the western front. MMO Fallout has reported for several years on how RuneScape’s monetization efforts have been very successful, but also very polarizing in the community. Every couple of years, Jagex reaches out to try to pull on the brakes of the game’s heavy microtransactions and it looks like it’s time for another heart to heart. Community animosity has been high ever since a UK parliamentary report from September specifically called out the developer when discussing egregious microtransactions, pointing to one player who had spent more than $62,000 USD.

On November 5, several Jagex staff will host a stream discussing the future of microtransactions in RuneScape. Those of you placing bets should keep in mind that Jagex receives one third of its revenue from these microtransactions.

“Tune in at 5PM GMT on November 5th for a very important livestream. Mods Osborne, Warden and MIC will be on the couch discussing plans for the future of MTX in RuneScape.

Ask your questions in the Discord room, on the forums, or in the dedicated Reddit thread – or email Mod Warden directly at AskModWarden@jagex.com. Your opinion is important to us, especially when it comes to controversial topics like this one – so let us hear your thoughts!”

Source: RuneScape

Rant: The Industry Makes Its Contempt For Consumers Public Once Again


I have to be honest with you folks: The AAA gaming industry has become such a contemptuous ball of greasy slime that I frankly no longer find it believable when companies do shady things and chalk it all up to human error.

I’ve spent the better part of the last six years shouting to the high heavens about how the gaming industry, specifically the AAA sector, has been meticulously and in many ways purposely building an increasingly hostile and bitter relationship with consumers. We’re talking about an industry that brings psychologists on board so they can figure out better ways to subtly manipulate people into spending more money than ever, an industry that is building massive databases of information and artificial intelligence so they can low-key manipulate your behavior all in the name of selling microtransactions. One where companies deliberately introduce problems in order to sell you the solution, where they can use every dirty tactic to get you to pay exponentially more for exponentially less.

Let’s talk about how Respawn is the latest developer to acquire EA’s venom for the public.

All of this hubbub began when Apex Legends released its latest update introducing solo mode and the Iron Crown loot box. The Iron Crown box is special because it costs $7 as opposed to $1 for the normal box, and contains limited time items that will only be available until the event ends on August 27. There are 24 items in the box and you can obtain two boxes by completing challenges. Nothing in the boxes could be bought directly, and you are guaranteed no duplicates. So all in all, you’re looking at being required (as there is no other way to get these items) to spend $140 USD to get everything.

I say required because Respawn is using the tactic where they know fully well that they are pushing this for completionists in the hopes that many will buy the whole set, while giving themselves the plausible deniability of “it’s all optional.” It leads into the Bloodhound’s Raven’s Bite axe, an item that must be purchased directly but can only be purchased once you buy all 24 items, and it costs 3,500 coins. All in all, you’ll need to spend at least $170 in bulk if you want these items. There’s greedy and then there is Electronic Arts greedy.

Naturally the community went in an uproar over the update because consumers don’t like being fleeced, and Respawn’s apology didn’t do a whole lot to assuage criticism by taking the loot box items and placing the skins on the store for individual purchase at $18 a pop.

“With Apex Legends it is very important to us that we don’t sell a competitive advantage. Our goal has not been to squeeze every last dime out of our players, and we have structured the game so that all players benefit from those who choose to spend money – events like Legendary Hunt or Iron Crown exist so that we can continue to invest in creating more free content for all players. This week has been a huge learning experience for us and we’re taking the lessons forward to continue bringing the best possible experience to all of you.”

An EA subsidiary not trying to bleed its customers dry? Sorry, I don’t buy it.

The folks at Respawn aren’t that stupid that they built up this very obvious and blatantly greedy cash event and had absolutely no idea how egregious it would be. Because the overall corporate structure at Respawn doesn’t give a damn if you’re unhappy with the product, just shut your stupid peasant mouth and open up that wallet to give them more money. This is a free to play game, you ungrateful putz, that means that instead of giving $60 up front for a few years of entertainment, you agree to spend hundreds of dollars over the course of a couple of weeks while shutting your trap and not questioning any of the business decisions that are made for you.

But it wouldn’t quite be a rant if I didn’t show you the absolute contempt that some of the Respawn devs have for their players, such as Drew McCoy who took to Reddit to call gamers “dicks” and freeloaders. This is what happens when bullshysters are called out on their schemes, they immediately go on the attack in order to hopefully divert attention away from why people are angry in the first place.

“Hey everyone – found the dick I was talking about. Guess what, I didn’t even read your comment except for the first sentence and last. This kind of garbage doesn’t warrant a reply – but lucky for you I already made a comment about this earlier. Go find it.”

“I think technically I was calling gamers dicks? I dunno. I had a spicy lunch, feelin’ it.”

“There is a wealth of data available on how monetization works in free-to-play games, and we ourselves have run tests by putting skins on sale in the store. The amount of people who spend is crazy low, most of ya’ll are freeloaders (and we love that!) and a change in price doesn’t move the needle.”

Drew goes on to act like the changes are because Respawn is such a benevolent overlord and honestly you freeloaders should be happy that they put the game out for free and are so magnanimous and charitable. Sure, Apex Legends released for free because selling it at a box price would be a financial disaster since the competition is free, and the whole point of releasing free to play is to forego a consistent amount of money up front distributed among 100% of the community in favor of the 15-20% of the community fronting more money and those free players adding more traffic to the servers so those paying players stay more engaged and end up spending hundreds, if not thousands of dollars over its lifespan. As opposed to $60 plus maybe some small cosmetic purchases.

Stop asking questions and buy more product.

“Jeez, whats with the conspiracy theories? This event has been quite the success, and I can’t say that any clearer. We’re making changes that will most likely reduce revenue, but we’re doing it because its the right thing to do.”

Nobody tell Jayfresh that he can help avoid being called a liar by not being a liar.

But Respawn’s inability to handle criticism for its anti-consumer business practices is par for the course in the Electronic Arts family and follows in line from the “pride and accomplishment” statement regarding Battlefront II loot boxes to former CEO Patrick Soderlund telling customers that he doesn’t care if they don’t buy Battlefield. Apex Legends is stupidly successful right now, but I’m going to go back to what I said ten years ago: The model is only successful until it isn’t, and the gaming community turns on a dime with games going from overnight successes to overnight abandoned warehouses…overnight. The industry doesn’t turn that fast, and Respawn is

Sure, the developers at Respawn probably think they are invincible right now, but let’s keep one thing in mind: You work for Electronic Arts, a giant with a graveyard larger than a prepubescent Sims player who knows how to remove the pool ladder. Titanfall 2 sold below expectations and Mass Effect took only one game to go from massive success to studio-closing failure.

Game companies are not your friends, I can’t express that statement enough. They aren’t your buds, they don’t have your best interest in mind, and they will turn on you at a moment’s notice.

Otherwise I have no opinion on the matter. Oh, one more note:

“I’ve been in the industry long enough to remember when players weren’t complete ass-hats to developers and it was pretty neat,”

Dear Drew, that era was back when developers like yourself weren’t releasing $200 cosmetic events and formulating your game as cynical slot machines designed to get kids to spend as much of their parent’s money as humanly possible.

Old School RuneScape Cans Partnership Poll After Overwhelming Disapproval


Jagex has thrown out a poll after only two days after Old School RuneScape players overwhelmingly rejected the company’s proposal for partnership-integrated items.

The poll went up on July 3 and contained over 20 questions asking players if they would approve of various items from emotes to skin colors and teleport animations being added in as partnership perks (such as RuneScape’s Twitch Prime items) with the items being released afterward to the general public, and the community answered with an overwhelming no. Old School RuneScape polls the vast majority of its content updates to the community. Each poll runs for one week and requires at least 75% approval in order to be added into the game.

For this poll, Jagex decided to cancel it after two days as virtually all of the questions had at least 70% disapproval.

Source: RuneScape

Diaries From RuneScape: Let’s Talk About Rune Pass


Now for the record before we begin: I bought the Runepass with my own money, this is not a sponsored post nor was the thought ever proposed by Jagex.

My game time credentials in RuneScape are such; I have played RuneScape since 2004 pretty much nonstop, my account has more than 187 days of pure game time invested and I’m willing to be that I’ve easily put over a grand in real life dollarydoos through a combined cash shop purchases and the fact that my membership has literally not lapsed since March 2005 and still has me grandfathered in at the $5/month rate. Knowing this, it probably shouldn’t surprise you that I dropped the $10 on the Runepass almost immediately.

I would be lying if I didn’t say that RuneScape’s Runepass didn’t disappoint me in the slightest. There have been a lot of comparisons of this pass to ones sold in Fortnite, in PUBG more recently, and in games like Counter Strike: GO and Dota 2. If you compare Runepass to other games, it’s a terrible value proposition. Fortnite’s battle pass costs $10 and each season runs for about two months where as RuneScape’s first pass costs $10 and gives you approximately 15 days to complete 30 tiers. In Fortnite from my understanding you can generally accumulate enough v-bucks to essentially buy the next season pass, in RuneScape you get jack all in terms of existing content. In Counter Strike: GO, the items you obtain from passes can actually be sold on the market and used to buy more games on Steam. Here? Don’t even think about it.

On the subject of Dailyscape: Dailyscape is the lovingly applicable name given to RuneScape by players concerned that the game has become heavily reliant on daily tasks and while Runepass does contribute to Dailyscape, I’m willing to argue that it does so at a much lesser degree than previous events. This is RuneScape we’re talking about, so ultimately most stuff is going to come down to a grind. As someone who quit the previous three treasure hunter events because the gain of currency was stupidly slow.

This time around the point gain isn’t excruciating. The daily repeatable task has been gaining experience, starting at 10,000 then 100,000 and increasing from there. Daily pass tasks are simple things like cut 50 logs, mine 50 ore, etc. It’s the kind of stuff that you can complete in the matter of a few minutes by going for the low level and thus easy to mass-produce resources.

To put it into perspective, if you completed both weekly tasks: Complete 5 slayer tasks and harvest 50 times from farming patches which take no time at all, you’re five levels deep. There were 28 daily tasks that stacked (meaning you didn’t have to log in every day to complete them) and individually might take at most ten minutes to complete. That’s 140 points, or another 14 levels, and you’re up to 19 levels. This leaves 11 levels to be gained via experience which can likely be done by playing an average of an hour or so a day.

On the subject of MTX: On the subject of real money economy, Jagex has stated that the aim for this is that if Runepass is successful on the non-public level that they are aiming for, that it will lead to less Treasure Hunter promotions.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

Jagex has the same relationship with promises and timelines as, well as I do. Jagex makes a lot of promises, a lot of those go unfulfilled. When it comes to money, especially, Jagex has not followed up on a lot of promises in the past. Let’s not forget that most of RuneScape’s microtransactions go directly against some promise that Jagex has made in the past in one form or another regarding what players can and cannot buy.

On the subject of rewards: On the subject of rewards, for $10 the Runepass rewards are rather…crap. A small handful of untradeable cosmetics and a bunch of untradeable experience items. And if you’re a maxed player who doesn’t much care for the ocean theme? There’s nothing for you here. I’d like to see Jagex put better rewards in future Runepasses considering this is something they expect players to throw $10 in for on a semi regular basis.

Give something good as a reward, to at least give the impression that people are getting their dollar’s worth. Throw in some rare tokens, some runecoins, something.

In Conclusion: Again, it’s hard to pass final judgement since this is effectively a pilot program and a lot of it depends on how Jagex treats its other microtransaction promotions going forward. If Runepass proves successful and they ease up on the other promotions as a result, all the better. If they double down on both, then we have a problem. But Jagex does need to have some sort of perspective on price and quality. If they’re going to charge the same amount that other games do, they can’t offer a fraction of the duration and rewards.

Jagex Surveying Buyable Levels For RuneScape


runesfest

Jagex is polling users to determine interest in buyable levels, although denying that there are plans to introduce the feature in-game. The question popped up in an official survey, which quickly made the rounds on Reddit, prompting a response from Jagex Mod Balance. The purpose of the survey is apparently simply for data collection, with Mod Balance noting a heavily negative reaction to the idea of buying levels.

The benefit of running this survey is that we can now say “x% of players didn’t want this to happen”, instead of “players don’t want this to happen” if anyone was silly enough to seriously suggest this.

RuneScape, at least under current management, has no plans on introducing buyable levels.

(Source: Reddit)