7 Times The Video Game Industry Gave In To Greed

5. Implementing Loot Boxes After Review Period

The relationship between a video game review outlet and the publisher is a tenuous one at best. It’s a symbiotic relationship that rarely sees either side saying truly positive things about the other. If your video game gets slated by a reviewer, you might be less inclined to keep them in the loop about future releases, and if the review is overtly positive on the side of the reviewer, fans might call into question whether this response has been bought and lose faith in the source.

Things get stranger when some companies, who for reasons known only to themselves decide to only offer review copies on the day of release or just a few days prior, often indicating they don’t want the public to know about the game's potentially damaging critical reception. Yet this somewhat shady practice is entirely blown out of the water when games decide to adapt their approach to microtransactions AFTER the review period has died down.

Games like Call of Duty and the Crash Team Racing remaster have both seen loot boxes added into their games post review window, and have operated in a manner that betrays the original scores given to these games. It’s unlikely that reviewers would have praised the game so highly if content and progression was as it came to be months after release, and it’s a ploy that is clearly motivated by greed.

After all, the publisher has what it wants - the acclaim of the public and a healthy set of review scores to plaster over boxes and ads - and now it can get down to the business of making money. It’s a move that causes rifts between reviewers and the community as it’s unlikely for the outlet to return to re-review the games in question, meaning that for all intents and purposes, the publishers get away with this scheme.