Overwatch shares the blame in the current loot box controversy

Amidst all the noise over the past few weeks surrounding Star Wars Battlefront II’s pay-to-win progression system, many Overwatch fans have applauded Blizzard and the Overwatch team for ‘doing microtransactions right,’ citing how Overwatch’s loot boxes don’t effect gameplay balance and only add a positive experience to the game.

Those reddit threads and forum posts seem like nice gestures, but they are only making the situation we’re currently in worse. Overwatch’s loot boxes are a huge part of the growing presence of gambling in AAA games. This is a problem that Blizzard has helped normalize by avoiding any accountability for how they implement and advertise microtransactions.

At their core, Overwatch loot boxes feel like harmless fun; they reward players who put in extra play time or money with the opportunity to roll the dice and win some nifty cosmetic items. But for some players, that gamble can become an addiction and can lead to hundreds of dollars getting poured into a pointless game of chance. That’s the exact reason loot boxes exist in the first place, to give players a chance to waste money on the possibility to get something valuable, instead of actually letting them buy it.

Blizzard Entertainment

While Overwatch’s use of loot boxes is nothing new in the industry, it’s success with them is encouraging other studios to use the same model. PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds and Call of Duty: World War 2 are a couple of major titles that have plans that include virtual gambling.

Just to be clear, loot boxes are gambling. Even if they don’t fit the exact definition of the word, you’re putting tokens into a virtual slot machine and hoping something worthwhile comes out. And loot boxes, like gambling, prey on people with addictive behaviors, using them as cash a vehicle to inflate post release profits. Even if they don’t effect the majority of the player base, the only good loot boxes are no loot boxes.

To be fair, there is a big difference in the content of the loot boxes between Star Wars Battlefront II and Overwatch. The microtransactions in Star Wars are tied to your progression online, so you could literally pay to boost your character's stats instead of playing normally (although EA and DICE have temporarily removed the ability to do so). Meanwhile Overwatch’s loot boxes only contain cosmetic items, and nothing about Overwatch’s microtransactions affect how you play online.

That’s been the justification for how Blizzard’s loot boxes are done the ‘correct way’ because they don’t make the game pay-to-win or lock any substantial content behind a paywall. “It’s just cosmetic” is an argument that keeps coming back, assuming that cosmetics don’t affect player experience whatsoever and don’t really matter while playing. This just isn’t true.

If cosmetics didn’t matter, then no one would buy them and loot boxes wouldn’t work. The ability to customize your character online showcases your personality and your time committed to the game. So, if unlocking skins becomes incredibly repetitive and difficult through normal gameplay, some people will turn to paying for loot boxes in order to get what they want.

I’m not saying that all additional content, including cosmetics, should be free after release. I’d happily buy skins for Reaper, Pharah, and Zenyatta if I could pay for them directly. If Blizzard doesn’t sell them directly, they won’t make as much money since players won’t have to sift through duds to get what they actually want.

Blizzard Entertainment

Overwatch has been able to skirt the debate around loot boxes for some time, Blizzard has quietly improved how they’ve been implemented whenever any complaints gain momentum. They’ve decreased the amount of duplicate items players get and increased the amount of credits you get, gaining enough goodwill from their player base not to be considered a part of the problem. That has to stop.

Blizzard could have easily created an Overwatch marketplace to sell cosmetic items to people directly and still made a lot of money. But they didn’t--they chose a toxic system that is designed to take advantage of players.

I’m not telling you to stop playing Overwatch, you can still enjoy the game for what it is and call out it’s creators for implementing an unethical process. We know that the game industry is coasting on fumes right now with studios getting closed every other week, so it’s easy to justify these practices by saying that it’s a good way to fund the game making process.

We can’t let gambling be the means in which we try to stabilize game development and we can’t let the loot boxes we see in Overwatch become the norm because other developers and publishers are doing something worse. Do not give Blizzard praise for practices that deserve criticism, there are ways that we can make this work, and loot boxes are not one of them.