In this day and age, microtransactions are often looked as the evil in video games. What started as a simple method of helping players progress faster became a system that many developers abused in order to gain more money. Games that were made specifically to be pay to win started releasing with microtransactions, urging players to buy this pack or that bundle if you want to progress faster into the game.
Then when EA saw that microtransactions were making bank, they took the system and turned it up a notch. Dead Space 3, a game with single player and co-op features for some reason had microtransactions in the worst way possible. Then when EA made their own Star Wars: Battlefront games, they included so much microtransactions, it was practically impossible to progress without having to cough up some cash.
It wasn’t until Battlefront II when EA came under fire for their abuse of the microtransaction system, causing many people to be up in arms that the game was basically unplayable from both the microtransaction and the loot boxes in the game. Thankfully, Battlefront II is in a better state where players can just jump in and start playing, but it’s such a shame that wasn’t in that state when it originally released.
Since then, players are wary of microtransactions and how they are handled, and while games like Helldivers 2 and Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League handle it really well (i.e. only for cosmetics), gamers are still wary that one day, developers will flip the switch again and make their games pay to win and encourage microtransactions.
One such game is currently under fire for their decision to add microtransactions to the game: Tekken 8. The thing here is that the game only added microtransactions for cosmetics only. But even then, gamers are still not happy about it. That’s why the developers themselves have come out to explain why.
The Reason Why Microtransactions are Now in the Game
In the last Tekken Talk Live, the developers of showed gameplay of Eddy Gordo and the Tekken Shop, which is what most fans focused. The shop only contains cosmetics like legacy costumes for Jin Kazama, but many see it as a way for the developers to “rip them off their money”. Many argued that these costumes should be earned like other games, but Katsuhiro Harada had this to say about the inclusion of the Tekken Shop.
“We would like to ask a favor of everyone that they update their thinking to the current environment of game development and how games are consumed, etc. Games to create now are just so much more expensive than even Tekken 7 was, so it’s several times of that when we’re thinking about the current platform of games.”
In a way, Harada is right. Games are so much more expensive to create nowadays that it’s almost impossible to support them unless there are other ways to get revenue to help fund the support for the game. While microtransactions are bad, there’s a good way to handle it, and doing cosmetic only is the best way to do it.
Right now, the Tekken Shop isn’t in the game as it will soon be included on the second update, which is scheduled to drop sometime between now and early March.
