Blizzard’s Overwatch Twitch Prime Perk Is Bad And It Should Feel Bad
This again? Yes, this again.
Today, Blizzard and Twitch announced a deal that they had signed a deal giving Twitch (presumably) exclusive broadcasting of multiple Blizzard eSports events over the course of the next two years. The deal will extend across games like Heroes of the Storm, Overwatch, and even StarCraft 2. If you’re a fan of these games and their competitive scenes; this probably comes off as a huge win to you. Deals like this feel like the kind of deal other sports have with networks like ESPN and appear to be one step further to the legitimization of eSports beyond their immediate communities. This is surely a boon to Blizzard and Twitch’s parent companies as well; since money clearly changed hands into Activision’s pocket and Amazon can maintain Twitch’s dominance of game streaming services. As a bonus, none of us will need to hear from physical sport fans angry about HotS showing up on ESPN.
To celebrate the deal, Blizzard has provided a special bonus to subscribers of Twitch Prime: Overwatch Loot Boxes. Twitch Prime subscribers will be able to redeem codes for a total of ten Loot Boxes over the course of the next couple of months. By itself, that’s not too painful and definitely not worth me taking time to write about at this point in Overwatch’s life. But this is Blizzard, so naturally they had to take this one step further to make things feel really out of this world-or at least out of their minds. Kicking this whole thing off is a brand new type of Loot Box: the Golden Loot Box. What separates the Golden Box from a normal box is that the this box has a guaranteed Legendary item, and it’s got a stick up my rear about the size of Mercy’s Caduceus Staff.
I’ve talked about the issue with Loot Boxes before, but if you somehow still don’t know how this works, a brief explainer is needed. All of Overwatch’s rewards center around the gaining of Loot Boxes. A single box is earned by leveling up or completing Arcade modes with a win (though there’s a cap there.) Naturally, boxes can still be purchased with cold hard cash. The boxes drop various items: player icons, voice lines, emotes, victory poses, highlight intros, FUCKING SPRAYS, and character skins. Those character skins are the most desired, since they are often just as well designed as the original character models and are also what other players can always immediately see, creating a sense of customization and envy. Skins also heavily play into the rarity of specific drops. I haven’t delved too deep into the actual breakdown of that before now; mostly because Blizzard has been keeping that info close to its chest and if that shocks you then you must be new to video games.
In spite of Blizzard’s efforts, the internet is relentless and we do have some numbers to work with. PCGamesN’s Ben Barrett has been doing a stellar job logging efforts to quantify the rate of loot drops out of boxes. It’s worth a look, especially as it sees updates for every event to date. For our purposes, the focus is on the detail that Legendary items drop (at least in China) 7.4% of the time; or about every 13.5 boxes. Putting that into practice, a player would need to get over 1500 boxes on average to get everything available in the game, not counting duplicates or items purchased with in game currency. That’s a maximum level than I believe is available, and Arcade rewards cap at 3 boxes a week. But, players could pay, and that’s where this whole thing highlights how much of a dick move the Golden Box is.
The maximum microtransaction available for Loot Box purchases is $39.99 (we’re going to skip tax for this exercise), which will net you 50 boxes. Using the Chinese ratios, that means that of those 50 boxes, a player could expect to see 3–4 Legendary items at all (50 boxes divided by a 13.5 rate comes to 3.07), with no promises one or more won’t be a duplicate. If you divided the purchase by the number of Legendary drops, that makes a Legendary item about $13.03. Now, let’s look at the pricing of Twitch Prime. A single month of Prime is $10.99, meaning taking the Golden Box guarantee is an automatic saving. Or it would be, if you discounted the reality that you can also buy two boxes at $1.99 that will technically have the same ratio as the 50, though the odds are much less in one’s favor. Those $1.99 and $4.99 for 5 boxes purchases are likely the bulk of the sales as well, since that’s kind of how microtransactions work.
Either way, this highlights how immediately breaking the Golden Box ends up becoming. It automatically circumvents the entire gatcha machine this system is. These likely sound great for players, except to get one, you not only have to be brought into Overwatch’s ecosystem but Twitch Prime as well. What we have is another paywall put up in the $40–60 game. Yes, there is a free trial you can take advantage of to get the box and run away; but if trials didn’t retain enough customers the following month, companies wouldn’t use them. Besides, if you’re not signed up through October, you won’t get those other Loot Boxes that don’t have guaranteed Legendary items, and you want those, don’t you?
All of this does not even cover what this shows about how Blizzard has handled and will continue to handle the game. For the first time, the wider audience has gotten a proper indication that not only is Blizzard capable of making specific changes to the Loot Box ratio without changing all Loot Boxes, they’ll do it-for money. It shows that Blizzard isn’t afraid to further divide the audience alongside a have and have nots line in the pursuit of money. After all, where was a special ratio like this to “thank” fans during Overwatch’s Anniversary event? The one that featured 11 brand new skins that were all Legendary? Hell, they couldn’t even be bothered to increase XP output for players until the near end of the event, even though that even would have skewed the ratio in the player’s favor.
As it stands, this isn’t a perk-this is a marketing move taking advantage of the loyal Overwatch audience. The arrogance on display to have an entirely different ratio requiring buying into Twitch Prime is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Now that might not bother you, you might not care that much about Overwatch or you are a fan of the “it’s just a cosmetic” excuse, keep in mind the repercussions this will likely take. In the year since the launch of Overwatch, Blizzard’s parent company Activision patched similar microtransactions into Call of Duty Modern Warfare Remastered; a game that was nine years old at the time. WB Games released Injustice 2 with its own mobile economy on top of microtransactions. This even devalues Twitch Prime itself, which is still incredibly new but at least was offering actual content to subscribers. There’s nothing to stop other publishers for deciding that it’s cheaper and easier to just give bonus boxes or crates or whatever instead of content, and no one would benefit from that.
I realize that I’m quickly losing the microtransaction fight. They’ve basically become mundane for many, to the point where I’m more often asked why I care so much. Yes, I’m basically beating a dead Winston at this point, but here’s the thing-I love Overwatch. I actually love a lot of these games that end up with these anti-consumer practices bolted on. These games deserve genuinely better than they’ve gotten, and I care enough about them to stand up for them. Players have forced publishers to change such behaviors before, and I hope they’ll do the same for this. That might be a pipe dream, but I’d rather have hope than another Auction House.
Go ahead and get the Golden Box-whether you’re a subscriber or you do the trial. But consider making some noise about it. Or maybe don’t play the slot this time. Maybe. It’s not like that box isn’t guaranteed to not be a duplicate.
