"Microtransaction" has become something of a dirty word in the video game industry. Originally, the in-game purchases were limited to mobile games — you'd pay for an extra turn or faster crops or some such nonsense.
Then, microtransactions slowly began to sneak into mainstream, "hardcore" gaming: at first, it was just the free-to-play games, but soon enough, seemingly every triple-A title featured some way to pay for small chunks of in-game content.
There are plenty of arguments against microtransactions: they ruin the game's balance, they take away from launch-day content, they're just a cheap ploy to make extra money. Quite a few gamers have even started questioning why microtransactions exist in the first place — if no sensible gamer will spend money on them, why bother ruining a game by including them at all?
As it turns out, people are paying for microtransactions — and they're paying quite a bit. According to EA, downloadable content accounted for roughly $1.3 billion in sales over the last year — and half of that money comes from microtransactions.
We're not saying that microtransactions are actually a good thing and that gamers should just submit to them — quite the opposite, actually. Some games do manage to find the balance between in-game purchases and keeping the experience fun ... but most of the time, game balance and player experiences just fall apart. Microtransactions don't seem to be getting any better, either: it might not be long before players end up paying for modes that were once considered standard-issue.
However, any argument against microtransactions tends to fall apart when EA makes hundreds of millions of dollars on microtransactions alone. Millions of people are spending money on these sort of purchases every day — why would publishers stop implementing microtransactions when there are so many people willing to buy them?
If gamers want to be heard, they need to argue with their wallets — and judging by all the cash that EA is raking in, that's just not happening.
