Ubisoft recently released their annual financial report, in which they detail their key figures, forecasts and make statements about their current business performance and findings. It’s a lot of business-speak, but page 10 of this document has an interesting statement made by the company behind Assassin’s Creed and Far Cry. According to Ubisoft when discussing how they monetize through microtransactions in games, they say “our monetization offer within premium games makes the player experience more fun”. That’s certainly an interesting opinion!
To elaborate further on how they think that microtransactions make games more fun, they do specify that this is through “allowing them [the players] to personalize their avatars or progress more quickly”. Whilst it is true that spending money on cosmetics is very popular across the industry, the latter point about player progression is a controversial one when it comes from Ubisoft.
For those unaware, Ubisoft patched Assassin’s Creed Odyssey back in 2018 to make levelling up take longer, whilst at the same time offering XP booster purchases that could increase the rate at which players can level up. Whilst that likely would make the game more fun once purchasing it, perhaps there’s an argument to be made that Ubisoft intentionally made the experience less fun only to sell it back to the player.
What do you make of Ubisoft’s latest comments in their annual financial report? Do you think microtransactions make video games more fun? Let us know your thoughts in the comments down below, and keep your eyes on GameLuster for more breaking gaming news.
