Lootboxes and microtransactions have been a massive part of the free-to-play gaming industry for years now, with players across the globe throwing their hard-earned cash at the potential for a different or rare cosmetic.
The games using this business model have made absurd amounts of cash, all while providing a free game. In Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, there are skins worth thousands of dollars, and alongside their own skin economy, players can trade skins and sell rare items. This paired with the fact that Steam gets a portion of the sale each time, means they are making almost unimaginable amounts of money.
One of the newest players in the microtransaction game is Overwatch 2. Blizzard, as a part of its microtransaction strategy, has been providing bundle prices in the hero-heavy FPS. This may be reasonable and innocent, but people on Reddit have pointed out there could be more to this than meets the eye.
According to the Overwatch 2 Reddit community, Blizzard has been allegedly discounting the prices of these bundles, before they were even shown at full price.
The reason people on Reddit think this is potentially an issue is due to the laws regarding “False or Misleading” advertising in countries like Australia and several others in Europe.
In Australia, according to the ACCC, promoting a product “at a ‘sale’ price which is not actually a temporary sale price” is illegal.
The Reddit post saw an astronomical amount of popularity with it receiving 30,000 likes within 10 hours of being on the forum.
We’ll have to wait and see what Blizzard’s response is to the matter.
