How the industry’s greed for money is ruining our favorite franchises

You may have caught it: On May 10, 2022, news made the rounds on the web that. Electronic Arts and FIFA are parting ways after nearly 30 years of partnership. the first FIFA soccer game by EA (FIFA International Soccer) was released in 1993 for the Sega Mega Drive. I was accompanied by the series mainly on the first Playstation during my school days in the 90s. For years there was always a – Season running. I can’t even count how many times I led 1st FC Cologne to the championship and dominated the international competitions.

It’s always the dear money

The reason for the split? Apparently FIFA wants to set the price for the license about twice as high as before (there is talk of one billion US dollars per four-year World Cup cycle, via PC Games). At the same time, they probably wanted to limit EA’s rights in order to be able to pursue new business models themselves. Or to put it differently: FIFA executives are not very enthusiastic about how much money EA generates with the Ultimate Team game mode alone, while FIFA had to live with “pocket money” in the millions.

So this is the final death blow to a game series that was one of my favorites for many years. However, I have to admit that the EA soccer series (and its fans) already suffered a lot from the greed for money of the people in charge during the last two decades. The just mentioned lootbox paradise Ultimate Team became more and more important. At the same time, game improvements were all too often limited in a direct year-on-year comparison. Of course, EA still wanted us to pay full price. Soccer is so popular in many countries that there are enough buyers for the “squad upgrades”.

And this doesn’t just apply to soccer. Another sports series, which had a regular place on my hard drive for a long time, has also been simply unplayable for me for a few years now. I’m referring to 2K’s NBA 2K series, which has virtually celebrated gambling with lootboxes and casino-style mini-game machines since 2020. NBA 2K22 was also one microtransaction monster. But why should 2K also learn from the criticism and lousy Metacritic and Steam ratings, when the ruble still rolls and record sales beckon with the strategy of recent years? The same was true for FIFA.

This trend is not new, of course. Back in 2017, I got upset in a column about the fact that Developers and publishers are increasingly trying to implement their games-as-a-service strategies in full-price games. With Dead Space 3, Middle-earth: Shadow of War and especially Star Wars: Battlefront 2, there was fortunately a lot of headwind. Unfortunately, it didn’t help much. Nowadays, a Guardians of the Galaxy (with a strong story focus and without Games-as-a-Service) is the positive exception. and a Marvel’s Avengers (generic multiplayer endgame with Games-as-a-Service) the “normal disappointment”.

What has annoyed me the most here for many years: how criminally publishers and developers drive the enormous potential of their great brands against the wall. You just have to look at Blizzard’s development over the last decades. After Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2, the Californians’ sole focus was on bringing games to market in which they could successfully implement a “Games as a Service” strategy. Instead of awesome AAA story experiences in the Warcraft, Starcraft or Diablo universe, there was Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm and Overwatch, plus often disappointing remakes of old classics and sometimes very mediocre WoW expansions. Yes, I had my fun with Hearthstone and the like. But these aren’t the games we want to see from a studio that has developed one gaming milestone after another over many years?

More on this topic: Blizzard and the dear money: Stinginess is just not always cool

And what can we expect from Blizzard in the near future? A Diablo Immortal, which according to Blizzard should not be Pay2Win, but according to beta players is Pay2Win. With Warcraft Arclight Rumble another mobile game that is said to have lootboxes, according to the Google Play Store., but according to Blizzard will not have Lootboxes. And then we have an Overwatch 2, which is actually more of an Overwatch expansion, but for which Blizzard wants full price, an new survival game (“Games as a Service” genre!). and the only ray of hope for AAA enthusiasts: Diablo 4, where we still have to wait and see if the obviously mixed development will have an impact on the quality in the end (Anthem and other examples send their regards).

There is of course a reason for Blizzard’s mobile focus: the share of mobile games in the worldwide sales of the games industry is growing year by year. Especially in the strong Asian market, you can score with mobile games, and it’s exactly here that many publishers still see great growth potential. That’s why there’s EA will soon be releasing a “Lord of the Rings” game for mobile devices., and also the new avatar MMO is to be released for iOS and Android instead of PC, Xbox and Playstation.

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