Cliffy B Defends Microtransactions

Despite retiring from video game production, gaming’s favourite son Cliffy B, developer of the totally not generic Gears of War and winner of the award for world’s worst tweet, finds time to blog about things he’s thinking about. Occasionally it’s pictures of women getting out of cars. Sometimes it’s commentary on the culture of video gaming.

In a recent post he weighed in on the recent microtransaction conversation that’s been ablaze in all schools, office buildings and shopping malls worldwide. You can’t walk into a Costa Coffee without the barista asking you if you think paying for an add-on to a gun in a $60 game is acceptable. God forbid you pick up your kids from daycare and have to have a long discussion with their teachers about how EA are confirming that they’ll include invasive extra revenue sources in all of their releases from now on.

Cliff’s input on this whole deal is a very “companies exist to make money” approach. To quote directly:

“Those companies that put these products out? They’re for profit businesses. They exist to produce, market, and ship great games ultimately for one purpose. First, for money, then, for acclaim.”

He then goes on to liken EA’s addition of extra optional costs in premium games with Valve’s addition of extra optional costs in free ones, seemingly thinking the two are comparable.

Then he follows with an “if you don’t like them, don’t buy them” which ignores the large problem of microtransactions even existing directly affecting gameplay design due to poor implementation. 

It’s always good to hear Cliff’s input on matters regarding gaming because they’re consistently worthwhile, astute and necessary.