8 Reasons The Video Game Industry Is Headed For Disaster (Again)

2. Loot Boxes

Overwatch Loot Box
Blizzard Entertainment

The coup de grâce of detested industry trends, loot boxes have graduated from ignorable irritants to a detrimental plague on the triple-A industry in a dizzyingly short timeframe, and major publishers show no intention of slowing down with their inclusion, even in spite of certain territories mandating they be outlawed.

Even if the hotly-debated similarities between them and problem gambling is laid to rest for good, that doesn't solve the other glaring issue.

Additional costumes, colours, customisation options, miscellaneous rewards: all of this content, once available as in-game unlocks by performing various tasks, are being consciously removed, repackaged and resold at additional cost to bolster revenue, despite being present on the game you already paid cash-in-hand for.

It's the very same attempt at anti-consumerist practices that Capcom tried with Street Fighter X Tekken when it locked additional characters already present on the disc behind additional purchases, just with a different method of delivery. Loot boxes deserve to be received with the same level of hostility and vilified, especially so, in the case of full-price games.

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Joe is a freelance games journalist who, while not spending every waking minute selling himself to websites around the world, spends his free time writing. Most of it makes no sense, but when it does, he treats each article as if it were his Magnum Opus - with varying results.