The videogames industry is talking only about this in these last months. More and more software houses (the last one in chronological order was Warner Bros Interactive Entertainment to declare it openly) seem to be approaching a new way of conceiving the videogame. No longer an interactive and fun experience with a beginning or an end, but an experience carried on with continuous updates including live events, streaming, social interaction, additional contents both free and paid.
Everything has a very precise definition that is games as a service (abbreviated GaaS) and we can say that the incipit of this new philosophy started from the free-to-play titles of the mobile market. In this way players are attracted by having nothing to pay for the initial gaming experience but then payments are asked or, with a more technical term, microtransactions, to unlock further contents, aesthetic customizations, improve the characteristics of their avatars and much more.
A formula that is proving decisively to be successful. Impossible from this point of view not to mention the most recent case represented by Fortnite. The videogame of Epic Games, proposing the battle royale mode for free on mobile, PC and console (for a few weeks Fortnite is also available on Nintendo Switch) has achieved quantifiable revenues in hundreds of millions of dollars with purchases made by players.
Purchases that can range from a few cents of dollars to players who cannot withstand the limit cases represented by users, sometimes even minors, who charge their parents’ credit card thousands of dollars for their purchases in their favorite video game.
And then throughout 2018 there was the loot box case with some commentators who equalized them to gambling: Learn more about online casino here.
For those who do not know what we are talking about, loot boxes are a varied mechanism that allows players to buy the ability to make an extraction of objects used in the game: weapons, skins, maps and much more.
According to various government organizations among the Netherlands Gaming Authority this violates the laws on gambling in the Netherlands because the randomness of loot boxes and other aspects of the mechanism can be equalised to gambling, prohibited by law in almost all the countries in the world at all users who have not become of age.
It is obvious that with the technological development, even the electronic entertainment world is changing rapidly. Still on the subject of betting, who could have ever imagined that you could have bet on pro players or teams of professional players who compete in eSports tournaments that sometimes have multi-million dollar jackpots?
This is also the reason why professional gaming is spreading all over the world: no longer a hobby, but a real work activity that is for a racing game and therefore like a virtual Formula 1 driver or for a football videogame, with more and more teams that have decided to have their own official team able to face the most prestigious tournaments in the world.
