this post was submitted on 28 Oct 2025
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'Valve does not get anywhere near enough criticism': DayZ creator Dean Hall says the 'gambling mechanics' of Valve's monetization strategy 'have absolutely no place' in videogames (www.pcgamer.com)
submitted 3 days ago by Agent_Karyo@piefed.world to c/games@lemmy.world
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[–] bdonvr@thelemmy.club 21 points 3 days ago (1 children)

If you take a look at all the loot box mechanics out there honestly theirs is the least bad. STILL BAD and shouldn't be a thing, but they're way less in-your-face and also you can sell the boxes that you get for free just by playing and use that to buy games.

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org -2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I think it's more bad because they were the first one to introduce all those predatory mechanics

[–] Goodeye8@piefed.social 8 points 2 days ago (1 children)

I'm not defending lootboxes but I will defend history. They weren't the first one. The physical implementation of the same concept has been around for decades (gatchapon in the east, baseball cards in the west), the first digital implementation was in Maplestory about half a decade before Valve and the first implementation in a western game was in FIFA (whichever it was that contained the ultimate team) about a year before Valve made their implementation.

There's plenty of blame to throw at Valve, but some of the lootbox blame, namely the one you've brought up, should be thrown at EA because EA was first in the western market and the industry would've gone down the lootbox route even if Valve hadn't done anything.

[–] Aatube@kbin.melroy.org 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

You're right.

In Western regions (North America and Europe) around 2009, the video game industry saw the success of Zynga and other large publishers of social-network games that offered the games for free on sites like Facebook but included microtransactions to accelerate one's progress in the game, providing that publishers could depend on revenue from post-sale transactions rather than initial sale.[23] One of the first games to introduce loot box-like mechanics was FIFA 09, made by Electronic Arts (EA), in March 2009 which allowed players to create a team of association football players from in-game card packs they opened using in-game currency earned through regular playing of the game or via microtransactions.[26] Another early game with loot box mechanics was Team Fortress 2 in September 2010, when Valve added the ability to earn random "crates" to be opened with purchased keys.[13] Valve's Robin Walker stated that the intent was to create "network effects" that would draw more players to the game, so that there would be more players to obtain revenue from the keys to unlock crates.[23] Valve later transitioned to a free-to-play model, reporting an increase in player count of over 12 times after the transition,[25] and hired Yanis Varoufakis to research virtual economies.[27] Over the next few years many MMOs and multiplayer online battle arena games (MOBAs) also transitioned to a free-to-play business model to help grow out their player base, many adding loot-box monetisation in the process,[25][28] with the first two being both Star Trek Online[29] and The Lord of the Rings Online[citation needed] in December 2011.

[–] Rai@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 1 day ago

Daaamn Ragnarok Online had OBBs and OPBs in like 2003… they just weren’t purchasable with cash unless you went through third parties. But they are loot boxes. Also my favorite game ever and I spent so many hours farming for loot boxes to sell.