It’ll be interesting to see the effects of EA giving in re: IAP on Battlefront 2. I think they were in a rough spot here, kind of a hole they dug & stuck one foot in, and then attracted the internet hate machine. Nowhere to go from there.
But let’s say that the internet wins, here. Let’s say IAP is out. Woo hoo! Hey, *I* think that’s a perfectly fine thing. As someone who did IAP for a long time & justified it to myself, I’m much happier not having to think about it. But I like games. And games are $$$$$$ to make.
So what happens? The audience doesn’t instantly double in size. Yet some companies right now are making 50%+ of their revenue in IAP. So you cut out 50% of revenue. What happens next? The execs lose out on their huge-ass bonuses? Sure. That’s part of it. But then cut down the development budget of your future game, and make it a lot higher risk for a company to make a big bet.
What’s the result? Smaller and *more conservative* games. More things that riff on existing successes. Less willingness to take chances. Will it be a heyday for smaller devs? Of course not, don’t be stupid.
But it will make fulfilling the ever-increasing expectations and entitlement of the AAA-gamer crowd more and more difficult, more risky, etc. I think the internet thinks that this means that devs will be free to work on premium games without IAP. I think they’ve just traded one devil for another.
We’ll see.