The Main Lesson From ‘Baldur’s Gate 3’ Should Be ‘People Hate Microtransactions’

That article completely misses the forrest for the trees.

It’s a complete game. It was created with vision, passion, love, and complete creative freedom. It has a great story and interesting characters. It provides lots of player agency. It is unflinchingly candid, mature, and uncensored. Your choices, actions, and inaction ACTUALLY MATTERS. There is no DRM. There are no live service strings. You can play alone and/or with friends. There are no strangers or PvP to ruin your game. And yes, there are also no micro-transactions.

The lesson that BG3 offers isn’t just one thing… it’s a LOT of things. But the best way to sum it up is: it’s a great game and it treats players/customers with respect.

The job of the AAA gaming company is to make money, not good games.

For the same reason McDonalds is never going to serve filet mignon, big gaming companies are never going to release feature-compete passion projects.

How could you learn anything about what people think of microtransactions from the success of a game that doesn't have them? If a beloved franchise added a sequel with microtransactions in it and that sequel tanked, then maybe you'd have a case. From the success of Baldur's Gate 3 the most you could conclude is "people will still buy a game that doesn't have microtransactions," which is not particularly revelatory.

A bunch of AAA games that heavily feature microtransactions are smash hits and made millions of dollars. Sure, people complain about it, but they also purchase tons of them (may not be the same people, mind you). I'm pretty sure we can conclude that not all people hate microtransactions. Hell, publishers will look at Baldur's Gate 3 and probably go "man, this game is good but if they put some paid cosmetics in there they could have made even more money."

And it's probably true.

People hate them so much that it became the most lucrative way of monetizing games ever.

Didn't we also learn this from Tears of the Kingdom, or God of War, or Horizon Zero Dawn, or Dark Souls, or indeed hundreds of great selling AAA single player games?

But we also learn from the repeated success of Call of Duty, FIFA, Fortnite or any successful multiplayer games that people fucking love microtransactions.

Different players? Maybe, but I'd suggest there's also a lot of overlap. I know lots of people that play both. People consume. Some games support the microtransaction model better than others, and those are typically the ones designed to be played in fits and starts all year, rather than completed and shelved.

The industry can't learn this lesson from their customers, because they didn't get the bad idea from their market. It's a society-wide trend, a symptom of a whole economy under the control of a narrow coproate elite that knows little to nothing about the industries they control or the products they produce. They contribute nothing to the productive process. They only work to streamline the parasitism that infests our society.

I have experienced this on the production end, as well. I used to work in pest control. For a brief period of my career, I was lucky enough to work for a midsized regional company, grown from a small family business, that was focused on solving actual customer problems. We did tons of one shot work. We did do quarterly and bimonthly service, but there was no particular pressure to subscribe, or to cajole customers who wanted to cancel service (because we'd successfully dealt with the problem) into continuing service.

Then the elderly couple that owned the company sold us to a global megaconglomerate (one of the "Big Three"). Over the course of a year, our focus changed. "Recurring revenue" was now the watchword, which is a tough fit in an inherently seasonal industry. And the reason they do this, in pest control, in game development, in every industry that can potentially produce any kind of surplus wealth, is because the owners ("investors") neither know nor care about any of the details of the industries they control. All they want is regular and ever-increasing revenues, in exchange for nothing at all. You can't even say it's in exchange for access to their savings, because though there is a little actual savings in the system, that's chump change compared to the ever growing wealthy elite that controls our society and devours our productivity.

Baldur’s Gate 3 is certainly the latest and most prominent example, but Elden Ring, both Breath of the Wild and Tears of the Kingdom. The Witcher 3. The Last of Us Part 1 and 2. No cash shops, substantive DLC, if there is any.

And what do all those games have in common?

They're solo games.

It's PvP and MMOs where you can purchase an advantage, show off your bling, or purchase expansions to get a head start on the competition. That is where the microtransaction infestation occurs.

I think the point is that people love good games.

Hogwarts Legacy also sold a shit tonne, in part because you got the whole game, not half a game with a "season pass" or pay to win DLC.

This is like saying, "people need air to breathe." The fact this is a revelation to gaming studios is deeply concerning.

I played some when it was in early access, and I've been absolutely loving BG3 now that it's officially released. I haven't felt like this about a game in a long time, and it's probably because Larian studios treated this like Divinity Original Sin - a complete game with loving care. As I saw in another review, they didn't make a D&D game, they just made D&D.

I feel like microtransactions are "ok" for people on general as long as the game is good. If the game is well made, has a soul, and not a cash grab, people tend to not care about microtransactions. Except the occasional "fuck, this is 10e?". Like path of exile for instance.

But if the game is half baked, released waaaay too early because of higher ups said that the need money now and not 6 months from now, THEN they become an issue. Games belong to this category soooo of then these days that it's just what happens. But the microtransactions are not the reason, they just exasperate the issue.

If a great game like Elden ring would've had cosmetic sets you could buy, would it have undermined the "greatness" of the game? I really don't see it happening. Unless they're like super aggressive or meant to trivialise the game, like, continue fighting the boss only for 2e! Here's a popup mentioning this each time you die.

A lesson that isnt needed Mtx are as prevelant as they are cause they sadly work

"Everybody".shits on d immortal and overwatch 2 Yet they still bring in huge profits

Microtransactions are fine as long as they're not required to proceed in the game, tbh.

It always felt like it wasn't that they didn't know this, its just that they don't care. I'm sure they've done extensive research on exactly how many people they can discourage from the game without harming the income from their whales.

Exploiting vulnerable people with predatory practices in an underregulated market is almost always going to be a gold mine.

The modern model of buying AAA games is that of hostility between buyer and seller. You always feel like you're either being scammed or complicit in something immoral.

Nah, the lesson AAA devs will take from this is “gamers want more boobies”, and we’ll start seeing nudity DLC, romance season pass, plastic surgery loot boxes, etc. I bet even Link will show some ass cheeks in the next game.

the question developers and publishers should ask themselves is this: are we trying to make a video game to sell, or are we trying to make an onlyfans with more button clicking ?

Larian makes video games.

I’m pretty excited for this game. Luckily, I haven’t played divinity original sin 2 and it’s available on the switch. After I finish Disco Elysium and Divinity Original Sin 2 I’ll pickup a steam deck and this game.

Do they, though? Companies have been raking billions out of microtransactions, so clearly not everyone hates them.

I will continue to play the good F2P games (without paying a cent myself) and the great AAA games that I will gladly pay full price for.
I figure if the F2P are going to be funded by others anyway, I might as well benefit from it.
I’ll also signal to the devs that make great full featured games that this is what I want.