Exactly. If they'd announced this before launch, it would've been the only thing anyone talked about. There would have been a huge backlash and I'm sure a good percentage of the community would've dumped the series there and then.
If they place something behind MTs, then I completely agree. But, if they want to add more cosmetics that don't exist yet, and they finance it MTs, and at a fair price, it's less unethical.
Announcing it after reviews... Hm. Sketchy at best.
If you tried the customisation, it feels extremely bare bones in comparison to Tekken 7. So I wouldn't be surprised if stuff was removed to add to the Store.
Adding shit to a game with a patch, post purchase, doesn't require you to partake. While I hate MTX as much as anyone, you aren't required to buy anything. Sure, this is enshittification, but you can avoid that buy buying games that aren't "always online".
On the one hand I agree, it was obviously a calculated move to bait sales before microtransactions were added, which is incredibly scummy. But on the other hand, if a game reviewer gave it a certain score before microtransactions were added and nothing was altered/removed from the experience that was originally reviewed, I guess I don't see the problem with the score they assigned at the time (assuming it was reviewed in good faith).
You can install it out of the box and disable game updates and not see any microtransactions, which will let you play it exactly as it was when it was first reviewed. You won't get to do any online play, but I guess the bigger takeaway in that case is that any game which relies on online/live service elements for continued engagement needs to have a big fucking "CAVEAT EMPTOR" on every review.
I mean you've got people who are defending Bilzzard's newest horse armor bullshit so yeah.
ETA: Yup, got quite a few Hardcore Gamers^TM in the thread defending this BS already with 'it's just cosmetics', all fighting games do it, or won't someone think of the devs, like like they think the developers are getting a cut off the money.
Yeah, you can find vocal people who will play the apologist for just about anything, it‘s baffling to the degree that I wonder if there‘s paid actors on social media in this sense
Gaming "journalism" can't afford outright say "company deliberately tries to hide enshittification of their game" aloud. Might lose that access to selective early copies for review!
What do you mean "new shitty norm"? Companies have been doing that for years already. First time I saw it around 2017 I think. I not sure about the game, but I think it was Call of Duty.
From what i gather, they waited until after the reviews were in. They got a good score, which i guess would have been impacted by the inclusion of microtransactions, and released them after the reviews were in. Sounds like they were trying to avoid the bad press they would have gotten for including them (or perhaps purchases even, from people starkly against the practice)
It already was, activision and capcom both did that, and no, cheat DLCs aren't accessibility, cheats should be free like they were back in the ps2 days and earlier.
I wish more players would just ignore these cosmetic microtransactions and go with the default skin or at least limit themselves to ones that can be obtained by actually achieving something in the game. Using default skin while outplaying people in competitive games could probably induce some people to make quite salty comments.