Recently, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 added microtransactions. And it went about as well as you would expect.
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Taking to Reddit, one player posted a very detailed and well-researched rant about the addition of microtransactions and their negative impact on the first-person shooter. According to the user and their calculations, the injection of microtransactions means that progression in the game has become incredibly grindy, which is always the fear of many whenever micortransactions are mentioned.
So, how bad is it? Well, apparently, since the microtransactions went live, players now either need to grind for over 200 hours or spend $200 to get everything in the game’s battle pass.
That’s right if you’re looking to own the Tier 200 Weapon Variant you will either need a lot of extra cash to burn or an incredible amount of time to dedicate to playing. What makes the latter even worse though, is that you have to grind for that amount of hours in a certain period of time.
And the Reddit poster isn’t alone in their frustrations. The post quickly shot to the top of game’s Reddit page, and currently has nearly 13,000 up-votes.
The post further notes that users have to put in roughly two in-game hours just to get to a new tier and get a single item, and that players have no control over what they get out of Reserves (Supply Drops).
Microtransactions are far from ever popular, but rarely does a game see this type of heat for them. And a lot of that comes down to implementation. Fortnite is a free-to-play game, with a friendly progression system, and cosmetic only items. And so no one really cares. And on the other hand, there’s Star Wars Battlefront II, which was hit so hard for its usage of loot boxes and microtransactions that it spawned mainstream media attention and spurred government legislation.
In other words, none of this is new. But players haven’t budged on their feelings of poor microtransaction policy and implementation, as Black Ops 4 players have made clear in the Reddit post and beyond.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 is available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC.
