...it's like TV Tropes, but LINKED DATA!
Revenue-Enhancing Devices
- 243 statements
- 44 feature instances
- 73 referencing feature instances
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We would like to believe that game companies exist solely to provide us with fun, exciting games. Unfortunately, in the real world like any other company, game companies also have to make money. It is for this reason that there so often seems to be design features in games, both computer games and board games, that seem solely designed to ensure increased profit for the manufacturer without technically, specifically, necessarily adding any gameplay value for the consumer. Hoo hoo hwa ha ha! Of course, most examples of this are controversial. For example, while many players may regret having to buy large quantities of booster packs in order to get the one card they want, others may consider the uncertainty of opening a booster pack just part of the excitement of the game. This is particularly common in "Free" MMOs, which can be either truly free, with all content available to all players; or only partially free, with limited free content available, making them Allegedly Free Games. For the former, there are usually game-enhancing (possibly even game-breaking) equips and boosts, as well as a variety of cosmetic-only (usually fanservice-enhancing) items, available for real money in some form of in-game cash shop. Several studies have discovered that the presence of Revenue Enhancing Devices in "free" online games, even those that are strictly cosmetic, typically increase the amount of revenue generated per player by up to double that of subscription-only games. During the late 2000s, Microtransactions became much more commonplace in video games, particularly in console and mobile games. With the ability to purchase non-physical goods becoming very convenient, companies and developers have created new ways to take more money from people than the game's price tag. One of the most popular methods of monetization are Loot Boxes, where players can open a mystery box that gives out a random assortment of items, while in many cases not providing a way to acquire a specific item directly. Video games that are focused around these mechanics as a means of progression are commonly referred to as Gacha Games, which are more prevalent in Asian markets. While players are still able to opt out of paying real money for these systems, they do not discourage players that are willing to spend hundreds of dollars to get what they want. In fact, these types of players, known as "whales", are the main source of income for these systems. The term comes from the Reagan Administration, where Ronald Reagan had more-or-less promised smaller government, and found they had to raise taxes. Well, rather than say they were raising taxes, they mentioned a new way to obtain money: Revenue Enhancement, which people immediately saw that 'Revenue' in this case meant 'tax' and enhancement meant 'increase'. Contrast Expansion Pack, where one man's Revenue Enhancement is another man's extra content. Compare Allegedly Free Game, Bribing Your Way to Victory, Freemium, Guide Dang It!, One Game for the Price of Two. May result in Crack is Cheaper. |
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Dropped link to AllegedlyFreeGame: Not an Item - FEATURE | |
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| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_13998e73 | type |
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| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_13998e73 | comment |
MapleStory, another Nexon game, is even more notorious for this; with many cash shop items being well into the Game-Breaker side of the trope. To the point where many players consider the game effectively unplayable without spending considerable amounts of real money, due to the exhorbitant amount of grinding needed otherwise. | |
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| MapleStory (Video Game) | hasFeature |
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| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_1fc3ec4d | type |
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| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_1fc3ec4d | comment |
Rock Band Rock Band has over 3,000 songs available for download at roughly $2 each. Of course, this attracts a fair share of criticism from certain nay-sayers, who would prefer Harmonix to sell them the music on-disc (at a more effective value) instead of selling it as overpriced DLC; however, several track packs and albums are offered at a discount compared to buying each song individually.note Also bear in mind this was Guitar Hero's MO and is widely regarded as the Genre-Killer because of it. This is particularly prevalent for The Beatles: Rock Band, whose tracklist included a minimal 45 songs for a full-priced game, with a selection of other songs from the band's catalogue (specifically the missing songs from Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road) sold separately. And that's not even getting to the instrument peripherals... A few achievements/trophies in Rock Band 3 flat out require you to buy certain DLC songs in order to get them: "Mercurial Vocalist", which requires the purchase of at least 3 DLC songs by Queen. "Dave Grohl Band", which requires at least 5 songs which Dave Grohl performed in (Although some non-DLC songs count towards the achievement, but not enough to unlock it without DLC).note This comes from an Ascended Meme about the large amounts of DLC songs he performed in. "The Perfect Drug", which requires you to have purchased the song of the same name. |
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| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_3209fad1 | type |
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| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_3209fad1 | comment |
Mabinogi, has an item shop that offers numerious game-enhancing items including 'gachapons' (items that turn into random gear), items which temporarily enhance or reduce stats, items which increase experience gain, extra characters (beyond your one free one of each race), and in-game pets. | |
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| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_3271b543 | comment |
In Burnout Paradise, after you buy Big Surf Island, anything that used to show the "Paradise City" logo now shows a "Paradise City: Big Surf Island" logo. Also, you get a new main menu so you can choose which expansion pack to start from, and a new car menu that lets you choose between different types of cars. Oh wait, it does all this even if you haven't bought the pack, so that most of the main menu selections lead you to a "Oh you haven't bought this yet? Well get out that credit card!" screen. There's also a new page to flip through on the pause screen that promotes the store, which means one more microload between you and the options menu. Big Surf Island itself also gets added, so your 10 quid just lets you access it. Otherwise, it's fully visible, and you can even start to drive across the bridge to it... only to be greeted with a pop-up menu saying to buy the Island to continue. If you refuse, the game will face you the other way and drive you back into Paradise City. Made worse when EA dropped the online store for the PC version completely. As well as making certain vehicles which were supposed to be free with the Ultimate Box unattainable, the game will confusingly show you a white screen where the ads used to be, with no explanation. |
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| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_33182de6 | type |
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| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_33182de6 | comment |
Earth Eternal does something similar, except that it also has a Credit Swap wherein players can buy the "credits" from each other with in-game gold. EE shop items include temporary and permanent versions of items which increase movement speed, increase experience gain, expand inventory capacity and supply bottomless spell reagents. | |
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| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_3504b88e | type |
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| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_3504b88e | comment |
Mortal Kombat II: There is an audit on a information screen called "Kano Transformations" as well as a random end game text message that says "Where is Kano/Sonya/Goro?" This is only there to con players into trying to find a secret that doesn't exist (selling guides to sucker kids was big business back when MK was huge and the Internet was not the infinite font of free information it is now; some of the sillier inclusions in Mortal Kombat 3 such as animalities and brutalities were made for the same reason). | |
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| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_398acbad | comment |
The main gimmick of Skylanders is that you select a character by putting a physical figure of it on a "Portal of Power" peripheral, and the figure itself stores all of the character's personal data like stats and experience. The game comes with three figures - dozens more are sold separately. Plus a bunch of special promotional variants. To Activision's "credit", they aren't being completely exploitative about this. The game is actually pretty good, even with just the three characters already included. At the very most, you only need one character from each of the eight elements to play this game to the very fullest; so that's five figures to buy on top of the three in the box. Not great, but not money-gouging. The second game can go either way. They're not forcing players to reinvest; as all the old figures can be used in the new game, and they even put together a cheaper package without the portal peripheral for those who already own one. However, old figures are treated as So Last Season compared to the updated ones so you may feel the need to buy them anyway. |
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| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_3a38519 | comment |
The use of loot boxes; see games such as Dungeon Keeper, Star Wars: Battlefront or NBA 2K are considered downright predatory in charging premium for the game itself and then gimping it that it cannot be played without massive amounts of grinding, if they can be played at all without paying for the chance to improve your gameplay, thereby turning them into gambling machines. In fact 2K had not only double downed on this practice, they went all in begging children to not only get their parents to pay for loot boxes but to lobby their government to allow catering gambling to children. Yes even in countries such as Belgium where it is illegal, 2K are trying to push children to say it's okay for the company to be above the law. | |
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| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_43f52aa9 | comment |
The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: | |
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| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_495aaf5e | comment |
Dragon Nest offers a wide variety of items in the Dragon Vault which make different aspects of the game easier (or practically doable) and more convenient. There's an additional convenience: Almost all of these special goods can be sold in the Trading House for gold, so paying players can effectively buy large amounts of gold with real money. Fortunately for non-paying players there's a steady enough supply of the common cash items that they are affordable at higher levels. | |
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| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_49a88435 | comment |
Some people accuse Square-Enix of doing this for Final Fantasy XII with the strategy guide by making a deal with Brady Games. First, most of the guides that were in the limited edition version came with various artworks, so naturally people will want to grab that by pre-ordering the game. Second, the Infinity +1 Sword and many other rare enemies and drops are impossible to get to on your own (especially the strongest weapon, which requires not touching 4 specific treasure chests/urns, with a vague warning about this offered only after you've come across two of them) without a strategy guide. Of course, the internet countered this plus the guide didn't even have complete information on everything, which is something Brady Games is infamously known for with other games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas and Parasite Eve 2. The Brady Games guide for Final Fantasy IX was also pretty much useless, since it told gamers to plug a code into Play Online.com for half its expected content. | |
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Revenue-Enhancing Devices | |
| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_49a88442 | comment |
Final Fantasy XIV, a subscription based MMORPG, has a cash shop where players can purchase vanity items with real money. Items range from cute little minions/pets, a new mount/ride, and gear that appeared from past events. Since Yoshida, lead director of the game, wanted to avoid a pay to win scenario, he wants the cash shop to be purely for cosmetic items. While most people can easily ignore the extra fluff, players who want to collect everything may be spending quite a bit of money to get all the items. In a later patch, the ability to skip chunks of the main scenario and bringing up a character's job level shy of the cap were introduced at steep prices. While many people did worry that people would buy their way to the post game content without knowing how to play their role properly, the high prices discouraged players from just buying the items on the spot and opted to just play the game normally, which is what the developers were aiming for. | |
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World of Warcraft: Has a ton of these, from the aforementioned Collectible Card Game to standard WoW-themed merchandise to a Pet Store where you can spend cash for in-game vanity pets and mounts. The upshot is that this is all purely cosmetic stuff and is in no way necessary to access or complete content...so far. The most egregious example thus far in World of Warcraft: the Celestial Steed, a mount which provides no concrete in-game benefit, aside from looking cool. The sheer number of orders resulted in a queue on the online store for days. Players realized too late that a mount like that is no longer cool if EVERYBODY gets it. TotalBiscuit parodied that by calling the item "That Retarded Horse," or TRH for short. While store-bought mounts no longer offer any benefits (all mounts adjust to your riding skill and can reach the fastest speed your current training allows nowadays), the indroduction of Pet Battles has brought another possible (though still very minor) advantage for buying from the Blizzard Store: pets bought from the store, while not any stronger than "ordinary" pets, are always Rare quality, meaning that you don't have to search for the perfect pet or the appropriate Battle Stone in-game, a process that can potentially take hours depending on your luck. World of Warcraft also sells "boosts", which you can use to take a character from level 1 to the beginning of whatever expansion pack is current. Prior to Shadowlands (which instituted a "level squish") this could advance your character up to 110 levels, allowing you to jump right into current content, rather than level up through older content. This continues into Blizzard's massive crossover game, Heroes of the Storm. A modest fee will unlock any number of snazzy-looking mounts which, of course, offer no gameplay benefit over the default mounts. |
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| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_49eee326 | comment |
Nintendo Power magazine offered all the top secret hints that one would be unlikely to solve on their own without knowing the solution beforehand, like finding the first warp whistle in Super Mario Bros. 3 (though this secret had already been revealed in The Wizard, which was basically a 90 minute commercial for the game disguised as a movie.) However, the magazine has also sometimes given you an overview and maps of the first couple areas of their then-new first party game, then told you to buy their Official Strategy Guide for the rest of the game. | |
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This continues into Blizzard's massive crossover game, Heroes of the Storm. A modest fee will unlock any number of snazzy-looking mounts which, of course, offer no gameplay benefit over the default mounts. | |
| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_5d020c4a | featureApplicability |
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| Revenue-Enhancing Devices / int_5e91c7e | comment |
Capcom did the same thing with Resident Evil 5. You have to pay 400 Microsoft Points (US $5.00) to play Versus Mode. | |
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An NPC follows you around in Dragon Age: Origins with a quest marker over his head.. Who tells you to go buy the DLC if you want to help him out. | |
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EVE Online, with its Summer 2011 expansion Incarna, has introduced the Noble Exchange, where you can buy "premium" clothing and accessories for your (new in this expansion) avatar, using a new currency called "Aurum" which is only available through Real Money Trade. Unfortunately, the prices in the Noble Exchange are set extremely high, often charging as much for avatar clothing as one might spend for real-life clothing. Furthermore, leaked information from CCP that they might sell ships, ammunition, and even faction standings on the Noble Exchange in the future left many players in an uproar...but the uproar was large enough (and mirrored in canceled subscriptions) that CCP backpedaled furiously (and many other consequences too lengthy to detail here). | |
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The 4E books for Dungeons & Dragons repeatedly encourage the reader to sign up for the online D&D Insider service. In fairness, there's general agreement that it's at least worth it for a DM for all the tools to simplify running a game. | |
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They're continuing the trend with Theatrhythm Final Fantasy, the first 3DS game to have paid DLC, with downloadable music tracks for $0.99 each. They have announced that there will be at least 50 purchasable songs in this format; buy them all and you'll have spent more on that than on the game itself! The iOS version takes this into Allegedly Free Game territory: just as much DLC, but comes with only two songs. The sequel, Curtain Call, includes all the songs from the first game + DLC, but also has its own DLC songs (and characters). | |
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Fallout 3 is an odd example. The DLC actually adds a fair bit of content into the game, but the only way to carry on playing after the storyline finishes is to buy the Broken Steel DLC. In most games, "playing after the story finishes" would be seen as a bonus, but Fallout 3 is ostensibly an open-world sandbox game (like Oblivion) and the original ending is incredibly contrived; at least one of your companions in Broken Steel actively lampshades how stupid the original ending was. Fallout 3 and Oblivion are also particularly odd as they were made with the expectation that they would gather a large mod community, meaning that any DLC released has to include a relatively significant amount of content in order to be worthwhile. After all, why buy horse armour DLC when the mod community can do an even better job for free? | |
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Fallout 4: The Creation Club system. | |
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The Sims franchise (both the original and The Sims 2) and its countless expansions. The Sims 3 took it to a truly ridiculous level with the Sims 3 Store. We're talking 2,000 Sim Points- that's $20- for a set of 47 items! And a lot of Store stuff was available on release day, raising suspicions that they held it out of the retail game on purpose. And then there is The Sims 4. Where can we even start with that? | |
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The 2015 revival, Guitar Hero Live, subverts this. There is no DLC anymore; any songs that aren't on-disc are streamed through MTV-style channels or on-demand through the GHTV mode. However, you can only play songs on-demand with "tokens"; along with levelling up and coins earned by playing songs, you can purchase play tokens (or a "party pass" that gives you unrestricted access for a period of time) with "Hero Cash". One can only infer how one obtains Hero Cash. | |
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Fallout: Fallout 3 is an odd example. The DLC actually adds a fair bit of content into the game, but the only way to carry on playing after the storyline finishes is to buy the Broken Steel DLC. In most games, "playing after the story finishes" would be seen as a bonus, but Fallout 3 is ostensibly an open-world sandbox game (like Oblivion) and the original ending is incredibly contrived; at least one of your companions in Broken Steel actively lampshades how stupid the original ending was. Fallout 3 and Oblivion are also particularly odd as they were made with the expectation that they would gather a large mod community, meaning that any DLC released has to include a relatively significant amount of content in order to be worthwhile. After all, why buy horse armour DLC when the mod community can do an even better job for free? Fallout 4: The Creation Club system. |
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RuneScape has a special flag that you get for buying a £75 ticket to the Runefest convention in real life. A lot of people bought a ticket just for the flag without actually going to the event. It's also come under accusation of this following the introduction of the "Squeal of Fortune" which among other things, allows players to every day spin a roulette wheel for expensive items or experience. More specifically, spins can also be bought using real money. Among other things, it's theoretically possible to gain the highest level of possible in many skills, or make hundreds of millions of coins, with a few hundred dollars worth of spins. |
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The American and European versions of the Pokémon Trading Card Game take the original Japanese version and increase the rarity of a lot of cards in each set in more ways than one: Not only are many cards bumped up a rarity level or two, especially if they are shown to be good to use in a deck, but the packs contain both fewer rare cards and fewer cards overall too. For instance, all Japanese booster packs contain a Rare-Holo card, but the non-Japanese packs restrict it to one every three packs. Generation V, however, has the most standout example: Pokémon Catcher is listed as Uncommon, but because this card was essential to any tournament-viable deck, it was printed in fewer quantities than the other Uncommon cards. | |
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Furcadia has Revenue Enhancing Devices called Digos, which let players walk around with winged characters or even play as dragons and whatnot. They make ALL their money this way. | |
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The Elder Scrolls: The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion: The "Trope Codifier" probably would be the "Horse Armor" DLC. This was an armor that you could equip on your horse. It was nearly-useless (usually doubling the low health a horse had, but capping it at 750 if it would be higher) and more or less just for looks. If anyone refers to excessive DLC, especially if it's just skins that don't have any effects, as horse armor, they are referring to this. Bethesda is credited as the first third-party publisher to implement DLC microtransactions. Bethesda took this one in stride. One year for April Fool's Day they announced a 50% sale on their Oblivion expansion pack Shivering Isles - but noted that due to the money lost from this sale they would have to double the price of horse armor. Bethesda pulled this off once again with Skyrim in the form of their Creation Club system. During its announcement, Bethesda insisted that the Creation Club's content was not going to be "paid mods", but "Mini DLC's". When the Creation Club beta was released, it indeed turned out that its content was composed of items and skins very similar to those that could easily be obtained as free mods, which in many cases, proved to be superior in quality to the "official" paid content that the Creation Club provided. To add insult to the injury, one of the items featured in the Creation Club was a Joke Item poking fun of Bethesda's earlier marketing mistakes with the Oblivion's Horse Armor DLC, that you had to pay real money for to obtain. |
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EverQuest 2 also has "station store" where you can spend real money to buy purely cosmetic outfits, mounts, and home furniture. You can also buy extra character slots for your account. (Back in the really old days, you could have up to 8 characters per server - now it's 7 per account). | |
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Age of Conan, an Allegedly Free Game, includes a lot of optional game-enhancing and cosmetic gear. Some of the former can be considered game-breaking, at least at lower levels; while the latter includes an item that does nothing but increases an already well-endowed female character's bustline to ridiculous size. | |
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DanceDanceRevolution A20 has a number of features and tracks that are exclusive to the golden 20th anniversary cabinet that was released alongside the game itself, i.e. not available if playing on a previous cabinet that was upgraded to A20. There doesn't appear to be any sort of technical reason why the exclusives require playing on the golden cabinet. | |
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World Tour averted this with the guitar duels versus Ted Nugent and Zakk Wylde, which appeared at first glance to be shameless money grabs. They must be "purchased" through the online music store to be played in quickplay, even though they are clearly on the disk as they appear in the career mode, however they are actually free and simply must be downloaded free of charge from the music store. Otherwise, the Guitar Hero series played this straight. | |
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The multiplayer modes of the GameCube games Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles and The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords Adventures require each player to use a Game Boy Advance connected with a GBA-GCN cable to play. While this did make things a bit more streamlined by not making players constantly pause to go through their menus, or clutter up the screen with windows, it did make non-handheld gamers upset at being asked to buy a handheld system to play a console game with their friends. | |
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The Mann Co. store in Team Fortress 2 allows players to buy in-game items with real money. It started off with hats that don't really do anything*Except for a period of time where item sets had a gameplay effect, and has since expanded to all other kinds cosmetics, taunts, and weapon skins. Most of them can be found for free if you play long enough, but prices can get a TAD ridiculous.◊ The "tad ridiculous"ness is why the game became free to play —- Valve is entirely confident that they can print money off that game just from its store! It's even lampshaded with the hat called Ze Goggles, where the "description" is simply "Nothing". It's supposed to be a Shout-Out to The Simpsons, but it's Hilarious in Hindsight as well. There's the crates too. As mentioned above you can get items by random drops, or by crafting them from other items. However, with the arrival of the Store, you would start getting crates as random drops. A crate is of no use at all on its own, and needs a key to open. Whilst crates are come across on a fairly regular basis, there's only one source of keys. Yes, you guessed it, the Mann Co. Store. When you open a crate with a key, you get... a random item. You're basically being asked to pay for extra random drops. Whilst some of the items you get from crates are unique and can't be gotten by any other means, most of the time all you'll get is a bog-standard item that you probably already have three of in your inventory as it is. Did I mention that keys are one use items and you need to buy one for every crate you find? You can't even recycle crates into scrap metal if you don't want to use them, your only option other than opening them is to junk them. (Thankfully, crates drop in addition to rather than instead of normal drops.) However, weapons obtained from later crates have been given the "Strange" quality prefix, Strange weapons are just like normal weapons, but they have counters like number of kills, making it less of a loss if you open a crate and find something you have already. The real draw for unlocking crates is to find an "Unusual" quality items, which gives it a special particle effect. There's only about a 1% chance of finding an Unusual, and they are highly coveted by collectors and whales. Many of them can be sold for hundreds of dollars, with Unusual hats from old, out-of-print crates going into several thousands. Note that Team Fortress 2 was not the first game to make players pay for keys to random drops, just the first to be popular in the West. In fact, ZT Online has a daily prize for the player who used the most keys that day! They sell "map stamps" too. All that gets you is a hat (one per customer, not one per stamp), a place on the stamp scoreboard for the corresponding map and a warm fuzzy feeling that you are paying the dude who made the corresponding map. With the Mann Vs. Machine game mode they introduced the idea of paying to play on official servers. The missions are harder that the default free-servers-only ones (but anyone can play the missions just by bothering to chose something different than the default) and you get an exclusive slightly modified copy of a weapon everyone gets for free already, and a small badge. The real draw is potentially better teammates and a much better connection to the dedicated server. There are three globally unique hats that goes to those who have spent the most in one of three categories each day: winning dueling minigames, buying stamps, and sending gifts. Dueling minigames can be traded and profits from stamps don't go directly to Valve, but you're still spending hundreds to afford the materials needed. Then there's the "Something Special for Someone Special" which is to say, a wedding ring! Pay $100 to announce to everyone who's playing the game at that moment that your special someone accepted your expensive gift. Valve still made a killing off of them. If playing dress-up with your favorite mercs wasn't enough, Valve expanded it to weapons. Unbox a pre-painted weapon or spray on paint on a weapon to add texture patterns onto them. They come with arbitrary Grades that show how rare it is by changing the text color of the weapon's description, and the textures can have wear and tear, from mint condition to worn out to hell from battles. You can also pay money for Contracts which have you complete in-game tasks to get items and weapon skins. One of the worst examples this game has done is the Robotic Boogaloo update, the first major community update. ~57 community hats that were only given for opening special crates bought with special keys and cannot be crafted, only found in those crates and later only bought second hand. |
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Hero Clix uses the booster pack model. A booster will have two commons, two uncommons, and one rare. One in (about) every four packs will instead have two commons, one uncommon, one rare, and one super-rare. Given that they encourage you to buy new sets in packs of 12 (you get a free figure if you do), not bad. So, of course, that's not the end of the story. Some sets have chase figures, which have varities varying from 1 in every 50 boosters to 1 in every 100. If you want one, you've got two choices: get extremely lucky, or get over to eBay. | |
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"Mercurial Vocalist", which requires the purchase of at least 3 DLC songs by Queen. | |
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SoulCalibur 4 and Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation are clearly making money via DLCs. The former lets you buy additional tracks, characters and character equipment (including weapons which can be unlocked in-game without the DLC, but it's specified in its description before you buy it, both on XBox Live or Play Station Network) while the latter offers special planes and custom paintjobs for them (including several Idolmaster-themed and Call Backs to earlier games). | |
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I=MGCM: Downplayed in the medal shop, in which you have to exchange weapon skins and additional costumes with character medals. However, character medals can be easily obtained through selling dresses. | |
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Angry Birds Star Wars II features "Telepods" — any Angry Birds Star Wars 2 Jenga sets you buy comes with figurines you can scan into the game to customize your setup of birds (or pigs, in certain level sets). However, there is a limitation to using Telepods in that you can only use one specific bird/pig per level. If you want, say, a lineup of nothing but Jedi Lukes or Episode III Anakins, you have to buy them from the in-game shop with in-game currency, and getting unlimited amounts of them with this method is more expensive than the limited amounts. | |
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PlanetSide 2 has revenue enhancers primarily in the form of cosmetics - camouflages (ranging from reasonable camos to silly chrome or iridescent neon camos), helmets and hats, and vehicle gear (cosmetic armor plating, underbody lighting, Tron Lines, etc). Many camos and helmets are now designed by the players, who make a profit off of them (similar to the Mannconomy in Team Fortress 2). Weapons can also be unlocked with real money - though the often absurd prices ($7 for the majority of guns) means that they are generally only bought during sales unless they're Nanite Systems (cross-faction) weapons. | |
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Rift: One advantage to the digital collectors edition (a $10 extra) is a free mount obtainable by all characters in your account at any level. It doesn't help that walking there is pretty damn slow. | |
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Vindictus started out with very few game-enhancing items available in their cash shop; but lots of high-priced cosmetic offerings, most of which existed to up the Fanservice levels. Many more of both have been added with subsequent expansions (with the cost of cosmetic items considerably reduced). While none of them make it to Game-Breaker status; many really ratchet up the fanservice levels. | |
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City of Heroes released $10 'Super Booster' packs which contain extra costume pieces (with no effect on gameplay), special emotes (with no effect on gameplay), and a bonus power of some sort (which range from Awesome, but Impractical to rather handy but little effect on actual combat). According to the developers, one of the first packs was so popular that the profits got the next free update out the door much faster. | |
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