microtransactions

2019 has been an absolutely great year in the video game industry and it shows with some of the releases of Death Stranding, Mortal Kombat 11, Devil May Cry 5, Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice, Luigi’s Mansion 3, Apex Legends, and even the Goose Game. While those releases were great, the negative news that sprung through the industry has also been made to light and it has overshadowed the good gaming news. Just like last year,I will give my opinions on the worst of the video game industry in 2019.

WWE 2K20

Four years ago, I reviewed WWE 2K15 and that game was a disaster for the lack of content and modes and I thought at the time that this game was one of the worst WWE video games I have played. But 2K20 exceeded my expectations on how ridicilously bad it is. The game has been shipped with all of the glitch glory that was not properly patched no matter how many times they released patches. Also, the career mode has some of the worst dialouge you will ever see, but knowing WWE, I can bet that whoever wrote the game’s career mode also writes bad dialouge for the WWE Superstars on a weekly basis. There was a reason to why little information about the game was revealed up until the release date and the biggest reason why is the split between Yukes and 2K that happened midway through the development of the game. Also to note, many Superstars and Legends were removed including the 1998 version of Kane. This has gotten so bad that the hashtag #fixwwe2k20 was trending worldwide which is not a good look at all for 2K. With the current generation of consoles coming to an end within the next year, this game from the WWE 2K series will be remembered for all of the bad press it has gotten.

Everything With Anthem

This game was supposed to be BioWare’s attempt to erase everything about Mass Effect Andromeda, but that did not happen and after the release of the game, the problems came to light such as extremely loading times that can go for over five minutes, crashing on the PS$ version so bad that it bricked the consoles of many players. What is also noted is that BioWare announced that it was abandoning the post-launch content to address its issues due to the negative feedback of the game. With the sales being a disaster and the player count for multiplayer going downhill ever since the launch, it would safe to say that this game has been the biggest flop of 2019, but I am saving that for the best for last.

Mario Kart Tour

Playing Mario Kart on your mobile phone or tablet has been a dream for many people and Nintendo turned that into a harsh reality with this game. When it launched, you could not play with your friends and the CPU that you were racing against were made to make it seem like you are playing an online match. But that is not as worse as the paid microtransactions as the game is full of them from the start as you cannot enjoy the full game unless you take out your debit card and buy the microtransactions. Those include the parts, the cars, and leveling up characters and unlocking tracks. I think everyone should stick with Mario Kart 8 as you can experience everything without spending real world money.

NBA 2K20’s MyTEAM Advertisements

Only 2K can take something good and turn it bad and this advertisement of the MyTEAM mode explains it all. They did not learn from last year’s game with using real world money for lootboxes last year and they will continue to not learn at all. Not only did they showcase the monetization schemes right in our faces like thye slot machines, they showed “reactors” reacting to getting great results after they paid money to use that feature. What they were trying to tell us is that “if that person could win big, so could you! take a chance and you can be just like that guy” all throuought the ad and the dislike/like ratio should be a message that we are not falling for it. But we are not done with paid microtransactions just yet.

Gotta Catch em’ All (With Restrictions Applied)

For years, I (and millions of fans and players worldwide) wanted a full scale Pokemon video game on a console and this year when the announcements of Pokemon Sword and Pokemon Shield happened, I was very excited. That was until more information of the game came to light. The number of Pokemon has been reduced compared to the earlier games and there were so many restrictions added in Shield/Sword that I can list that would take up the entire article. The developers at GameFreak stated that the reason for this is due to them redoing the animations from scratch, but players found out that the animations from Sword/Shield were ported over from the 3DS Pokemon games. The fire of the negative feedback has not been put out yet and it will be a long time before it does.

No Sony at E3 2019

For the first time in E3 history, Sony decided that there will not be a presentation this year at the show. This has gained a mixed reception amogst the community as everyone had no clear idea on what their vision of the rest of the year into the new year would be. Of course, now Sony has their State of Play presentations similar to Nintendo Direct, but with the lack of news and due to the fact that XBOX Series X was announced at The Game Awards, Sony has to catch up next year and skipping another year of E3 is not an option.

Activision Blizzard Laying off 800 Employees

So what does Activision Blizzard do after they announced their quarter-earnings earlier this year? They lay off about 800 employees of their staff. How can this possibly happen days after they announced that they set a record net revenue of nearly $8 billion? That wass a terrible week and the conversaion of game unionization and executive pay followed this too. What made matters worse is that a few weeks later, they had a number of positions open for new potential employees which raised the question, why did this all happen in the first place?T

A Subscription Service for Fallout 76

The more bad news about Fallout 76 comes to light, the more my eyes will roll. After a disasterous launch just last year, Bethesda decided to launch a subscription service for Fallout 76 titled “Fallout 1st.” It will cost you either $12.99 a month, or $99.99 per year. After a bad launch, Bethesda wanted to monetize everyone for it and all that it features is allowing you to play Private Worlds with your friends, unlimited storage for crafting, recieving over 1500 atoms per month, and a survival tent. This all costs more than a streaming service and it is not even worth it.

EA Neglets Gambling Laws

I saved the absolute best for last and that is EA. Earlier this year, an investigation was launched in the UK and at the House of Commons committe hearing, Kerry Hopkins compared Lootboxes to things like chocolate as Kerry believed that “people liked surprises” in his statement. She also went aqnd said “We do think the way we’ve implemented these kinds of mechanics is quite ethical and quite fun. They aren’t gambling and we disagree that there’s evidence that shows they lead to gambling.” But the most notable thing that she also said is that they do not want lootboxes to be defined that way as she referred it to “suprise mechanics.” This was very laughable and it shows how tone-deaf EA is towards paid microtransactions as gamers do not want them regardless that it is optional. How can anyone go infront of a comittee to say this? Many countries have banned lootboxes and paid microtransactions and I hope that this comes to the United States very soon. YouTube personality YongYea broke this down in further detail in the video below.

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This year in the world of video gaming, we have had many widespread acclaim of great games such as Red Dead Redemption 2, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, Spider-Man for PS4, Monster Hunter World, God of War, and Dead Cells. When you think of the positive of gaming in 2018, Those games come to mind first on the top of my head. Even some of the major gaming headlines made the news around the net as we found out in reveal trailers that The Elder Scrolls VI is in development, along with Doom Eternal, and The Last of Us 2. And we were even shown gameplay of Cyberpunk 2077 and Death Stranding which has been anticipated for some time now which made the gaming community happy.

In between the great releases and great news that shocked the industry, there has been bad news and disappointing games that has been released to the public and the reception ranged from negative, to downright universally panned by not only the gaming community, but also by the major outlets that covered the news. The news did not sit well with the developers and studios that were producing the games and their damage control of these situations were met with an even bigger backlash than it originally started. Today, I give you the worst in gaming of 2018 and I shall begin with the handling of the Playstation Classic.

In 2016, Nintendo released the NES Classic Mini which featured the best games of that console at the time. I remember trying to buy one, but they were sold out everywhere and the lines to get one at various stores were endless. Nintendo also released the Super Nintendo Classic in 2017 and even though they produced more of the consoles, the same effect happened as they were sold out everywhere. I did eventually got one a few months later and I am satisfied. Trying to follow suit, Sony announced in the fall that they would release the Playstation Classic in December. I loved the Playstation and I was excited for this. This was until we found out that many games such as Crash, Spyro, and more would not be included in the game roster that was already lackluster. The bigger news is that many games that were included in the console were not the American versions of the games as they were the PAL versions of the games and the PAL versions were notorious for not running in full speed when you play them. Sony has had potential with this console, but it has flopped and the sales of the PlayStation Classic has been much lower than the Nintendo counterparts to the point that many retailers are putting it on sale now.

One of the biggest news stories in the fall is the major news of TellTale Games studious is shutting down. This news broke shortly after the release of the second episode of The Walking Dead: The Final Season as it came out of nowhere to the public as this studio has made great games from the IP’s of The Walking Dead, Batman, Game of Thrones, and much more. About 90% of the staff were let go without warning and only kept a number of them to finish a Netflix series. The rest of the former staff got picked up from different gaming developers since the public outcry and I have interviewed one of them about the situation a few days after the news. Skybound eventually announced that they plan to finish the final season of the game and although that is great news, the damage has been done already. There were more stories that came out about the company, but not to the level of how Konami treated their staff before Metal Gear Solid V was finished.

Bethesda could not escape bad news ever since the reveal of Fallout 76 has made it to light. A few months before its release, The developers stated in many interviews of what features would be in the game and what could players expect differently in this game than the last game and boy oh boy did almost none of it matched up to the final product. What we got, was a product that was a buggy, unplayable mess that angered the players and the fans of the series. It is so bad, that the guys at GiantBomb refused to finish the game to review it since it was frustrating for any of their staff members to play it all the way through. The fact that the developers has taken out NCP’s in this game which was needed in the first place can tell you how out of touch they are with their fans. But it does not end there.

The Pre-order bonuses included a high quality duffel bag if you bought the Power Armor edition of the game. The picture of what was ad is completely different from what the customers got when it arrived to them and it was not good at all. The closest that anyone has received great quality duffel bags was at a press gaming event where they were given out for free. Bethesda originally did not accept refunds at all, but they offered affected customers that bought the edition of the game an in-game currency that is worth only $5.00 and that did not sit well along with the data breach that happened a few days later. What a crappy year for Bethesda overall.

As i quote the former WCW Champion and current member of the WWE Hall of Fame Goldberg, “Who’s Next? Blizzard, You’re Next”. At BlizzCon, Blizzard held a showcase for their upcoming titles and many fans speculated that the fourth installment of Diablo would be announced. But that did not happen as we got an announcement of a mobile game Diablo Immortal. With the age of micro-transactions and lootcrates are here today in mobile and console gaming, the fans reacted negatively to this announcement because of those possible factors and due to the fact that this announcement was made at the near end of the conference. They even held a Q and A afterwards and one person asked them if this was an April Fool’s joke which gained a huge laughter from the audience. Another question that was asked is if the game would be released on PC and when the developer answered that there would be no plans for a PC release, the audience booed even louder. You would think that it is Roman Reigns out there during the height of his main event status in WWE talking on the microphone with the way the crowd responded. It was that bad.

And finally, I have saved the best for last and that is EA Games. That is right, EA all year has been in the gaming news for bad reasons and it was also ranked number five of the most hated companies in America this year. The year started off with them with the continued controversy of the way Star Wars Battlefront 2 was handled with their micro-transactions (which was eventually fixed, but the damage has been done). And it reached to a point where the federal government had to come in and investigate their practices. There were also rumors about Disney parting ways with EA to look for another developer to make their Star Wars games. In the early spring of the news of EA, the first trailer of Battlefield V was released and the reception to that trailer was mixed to negative due to EA and DICE changing too much historical content of World War II along with a long, dragged out press conference that did not showcase more than a few minutes of game play at all. The news got worse for them a few weeks later when they started to sell DLC’s for their DLC’s in The Sims 4. Pretty weird if you ask me why they did that, but the fans were not happy about that at all. The only good thing that came out of EA this year is A Way Out, but even that great game could not save what was going on with the slaughter of news out of EA because time and time again, they proved to have learned nothing from their mistakes and that was on full display at E3 this year when EA had their conference. They announced a streaming game cloud subscription along with a subscription to get some of their games on the PC. That did not stop at all as there was also an announcement of another Star Wars game. The way this was done was that Vince Zampella was sitting in the crowd as one of the correspondents talked to him and then and right there, he made the announcement just like that without any details and without a trailer, or even a logo or promotional art. That was one of the blandest video game announcements I have ever seen in my life and it was also funny to see the non-existing crowd reaction to the news as well. How is it that the CEO was out there saying that the conference was all about saying that the company has changed and then proceeded to talk about money and subscriptions with their out of touch agenda. How is it that years ago, EA used to be a great developer but just like Konami, they turned to the dark and greedy side. I wish I can finish what I am saying about the crappy year of EA, but I just come to find out that I cannot since the rest of my thoughts are locked away in a paid micro-transaction lootcrate.

In all seriousness, there is more gaming headlines and disappointments that made the news such as Metal Gear Survive, the lack of the news of the Final Fantasy 7 Remake, the introduction of the Event Pass of PUBG, and much more. But these headlines takes the cake for me since this is what I think about first in an awful year of headlines in the gaming industry.

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The Worst of Video Gaming in 2019

The Worst of Video Gaming in 2018