imho, cosmetics are fine, as are sizeable expansion packs on games that were worth the money without them.

But generally, yes. In-game purchases usually suck.

The problem is what follows from microtransactions. When the managers see line go up because they released a paid element to the game, all the incentives push toward more paid elements. This means any dev hours that can be redirected away from work on the core game to the paid elements will be redirected.

I don't see these as a problem with what I'd said for two reasons:

• The people making cosmetic elements are generally different from the people coding actual features
• If an expansion pack is successful, what's the harm in putting future development hours towards more expansion packs?

Regarding the first point, if they can hire someone to make a feature happen, and maybe get an unpredictable increase in revenue, or hire someone to crank out cosmetics, which are much easier to make, and for which they often have metrics to show how much they expect to get, which do you think they'll pick?

As for the second, I'm not sure if I'm understanding you.

If game companies are firing their developers upon launching a game and not doing the same to their design team, there are probably bigger problems.

My point about expansion packs was related to my original comment -- I gave an example besides cosmetics of DLC I thought was ok

I'm not talking about firings, or even other specific examples. The talk of hiring A vs B is just an example, not the whole concept. I'm talking about the inputs that influence internal decisions. Microtransactions incentivise decisions that put the focus on generating microtransactions, often to the detriment of other objectives.

And, okay, I get you now. DLC is kind of a case by case thing, but still not great to me. Some devs put out incredible DLCs that actually add something to an already complete game. However, some companies put things into DLC that should just be in the base game. (playable characters, etc.) The practice of having paid DLCs incentivises that approach, so I'm not a huge fan, even if some of them are good. It's kind of like political donations. I can like the effect some of them have, but I recognize the problems that come from a system that uses them.

I have to say that the customer holds some of the blame. If people are obsessively buying cosmetics that do nothing and that's the only way the game is being sustained...either the game is that good already, or the players are the reason the game sucks.

When players need to spend money to be competitive, I think it's fair to place the blame jointly on both the devs/publisher and the players. When spending money doesn't change the game OR provides new content, it generally indicates that the player base is happy with what they're spending money on. I don't think that's a problem.

Enh... iffy hand wiggle
I tend to put blame more at the point of informed decision-making.

In the same way I wouldn't blame a person from the 1930s for their lung cancer after their doctor sold them cigarettes, I wouldn't blame gamers for the DLC. A huge percentage of gamers are kids, legally incapable of giving informed consent. Many others are people who have never had the chance to learn the implications of their buying habits. It's hard to blame people who aren't making an informed decision.

The people at dev companies on the other hand, are immersed in the gaming world. It's effectively a form of incompetence or negligence to not pay attention to the industry if that's your job. They are either knowingly engaging in the practice, or failing to pay attention to the effect they are having on the world.

Part of it is the question of where you assign fault in a bad system. These days, and I'd hope you can agree, slavery is bad. But where should the blame lie if you lived in ~1800s America? Should it be on the producers, who choose to use slave labour, on the providers, who capture the slaves, on the legislators, who make/keep it legal, or on the customers, who choose to buy the fruits of slave labour? They all could be said to play a part but I'm inclined to find the customers, who have the least power in the system, have the least blame as well.

I think you're making large reaches in your analogies. Are we supposed to have the government come in and bad cosmetic DLC, and then fight a war over it that splits the country (or world) in two? Lol

My point is that cosmetic DLC (and expansion packs) isn't the problem -- the problem is loot boxes and pay-to-win microtransactions.

I just wanted an unambiguous evil to serve as an example. You've gotten lost in taking the example as the point again. It's an analogy, not an exact replication of of a previous event. See the similarities between the two and not the particulars of either one. That's the point of an analogy.

The point is that the system of microtransactions incentivises the bad results (manipulative practices and distortion of decisions) without necessitating the good. (enjoyable content) As long as paid DLC exists, there are reasons for people to use paid DLC to manipulate people out of their money. However, nothing about paid DLC means there will necessarily be benefit to anything other than revenue, and things that exist within DLC could exist without it. I'd try to give another illustrative example but I don't know if it would help.