14 DAY TRIAL // After a pretty big debate at the beginning of the month microtransactions and DLC are continuing to dominate the gaming industry despite the fact that lots of gamers still strongly oppose these two mechanics.
EA caused a serious backlash when it confirmed that microtransactions will be added to all of its future games. Its subsequent clarification, through which it mentioned that only mobile games would get microtransactions, didn't exactly quell the negative reaction.
Even so, gamers should certainly get used to seeing microtransactions in more and more games.
The latest game to join this trend is Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, the latest installment in Activision's massively successful first-person shooter series.
The title got an update this week that added, besides bug fixes and balance changes, a set of microtransactions to the in-game store.
As such, at least on the Xbox 360 for now, Black Ops 2 owners can score new customization items for weapons, extra slots, as well as bonus country flags, not to mention the special Nuketown Zombies map. While all those items will cost a certain amount of money, the Nuketown 2025 level is being offered for free.
According to Activision, all these bonus customization items have been demanded by the community and in no way do they actually impact a player's performance in the multiplayer mode.
Besides these new microtransactions, quite a lot of DLC packs have either been released or at least announced by their developers in the last few weeks.
From Battlefield 3's End Game expansion, to the confirmation of the sixth playable character for Borderlands 2, many older titles are stepping back into the spotlight thanks to the different add-ons they've received or will receive in the near future.
As such, while some gamers may still oppose microtransactions and DLC, both these practices are here to stay for as long they're profitable for the developer and publisher of a game.