Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics are facing intense backlash from Marvel’s Avengers players after the companies started selling progression boosts for real money. This contradicts pre-launch reassurances from the developer that Marvel’s Avengers‘ monetization will only extend to cosmetic items.
“In terms of how we monetize, we’ll have cosmetics – no gameplay walls,” head of studio Scott Amos told Games Industry back in 2019. This quote is now circulating everywhere.
“I’m sure many will want to get into a semantics argument regarding if throttling experience and manually creating a larger invisible wall to climb over before getting your hero to max level constitutes a gameplay paywall…let’s not lose sight of the meat of that quote: “We’ll have cosmetics,” complained Reddit user marcustwayne.
Others pointed out that Crystal Dynamics slowed down XP gain because it felt that players were leveling up too fast and becoming “overwhelmed.” Now, the studio is offering them a way to gain as much XP as they want by simply paying for it.
“The only thing I’m really confused about is…if the original rate of XP was putting players into a state of being ‘overwhelmed,’ isn’t it somewhat weird that Crystal Dynamics is now looking to encourage and profit off players being in that ‘overwhelmed’ state?” marcustwayne wrote in a follow-up comment. “Wouldn’t the boosters put players back in that position and they are selling users the method/means to being ‘overwhelmed?'”
Good question, and one that Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix have yet to answer.
We’ll update our readers if the companies respond.
