10 Times In Gaming You Got SCAMMED
1. EFootball 2022
You're probably wondering how the hell a free-to-play game can truly scam players, but it's important to consider Konami's business model here.
eFootball 2022 was the first F2P entry into eFootball, the rebranding of the Pro Evolution Soccer franchise, and though intrigue was high, the game was destroyed by critics and fans upon release last year.
Common complaints included the lack of launch content, laughable graphical representations of iconic players that quickly went viral, and poor basic gameplay compared to, say, FIFA.
It's a "free" game, so perhaps standards should be different to a premium £50 release, right?
Except that Konami's monetisation model included charging over £30 for a Premium Player Pack which contained in-game currency and items that allowed you to sign top players.
Worse still, the packs wouldn't even be usable until the game's 1.0 launch more than six weeks after it first went live.
It was blatantly obvious that Konami was trying to hook addiction-prone players with loot box-style mechanics, though this backfired spectacularly when the 1.0 update was delayed to Spring 2022, forcing the company to offer refunds for anyone who bought Premium Player Packs.
As it stands, eFootball 2022 is the 2nd worst-rated game on Steam, so it goes without saying that the well has very much been poisoned. Konami's only chance of saving the IP at this point is to re-brand it yet again.