The CEO of Gearbox Software has some sound advice for players against grinding in games: If you don’t like grinding for the game’s content, stop playing the game.
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That advice may seem like a no-brainer, but with more games now including what’s being called “timesavers” that allow you to skip ahead at the expense of your wallet, complaints about these microtransactions are on the rise. But if grinding out the content without paying for it feels like a chore in your games, Gearbox’s Randy Pitchford says that it might be time to find a new game.
Pitchford began his discussion about microtransactions by taking to Twitter and establishing his perspective on monetization schemes both in free-to-play games as well as the premium, AAA titles that Gearbox and other companies are known for.
/1 I am generally very much against predatory monetization schemes in F2P games for consumable goods and even more so against them in premium games. I tend to oppose such techniques both as an artist and creator and also as a customer and a gamer.
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) November 10, 2017
Borderlands, for example, had Golden Keys, a system that only allotted the keys through special events. The keys weren’t buyable despite players’ requests to purchase them, so you either got the keys during the events or found your content through normal progression. But when arguments against grinding in games surface, Pitchford takes issue with the notion that players think they shouldn’t have to grind to avoid paying for these timesavers.
/7 In the case where “grinding” is, well, playing the game and in the case where the player does not want to, well, play the game but doesn’t want to pay cash to skip playing the game, I recommend considering another choice: don’t play the game.
— Randy Pitchford (@DuvalMagic) November 10, 2017
He continued to explain that if the game isn’t turning out to be fun and you’re more inclined to skip through parts of the game just to get the content that you want, maybe you should skip the game entirely. Pitchford closed his comments by stressing that, as a customer and a creator, he encourages gamers to vote with their attention by moving onto something else if they don’t like a game’s way of doing things.
