And People Wonder Why MicroTransactions are a Thing

In Polygon's article on the 9th about Activision Blizzard's record breaking annual profits from 2016, three things stood out:

• Overwatch has an installed player base of 25 million, becoming the largest intellectual property by Blizzard (yes, that includes WoW).
• The profits by Activision Blizzard (4.87 billion dollars) were the largest in their company's history.
• $3.6 billion of the overall revenue from Activision Blizzard came from in-game content, such as lootboxes and WoW pets.

Activision Blizzard pretty much confirmed that Overwatch is now Blizzard's cash cow, and will likely get the lion's share of development going forward.

However, these lines from the Polygon article really caught my attention:

Games like Overwatch and World of Warcraft, along with the Call of Duty franchise, played a big part in raising Activision Blizzard’s digital revenue for the year. The company said that it pulled in a record $3.6 billion of revenue from in-game content, up 125 percent year-over-year (excluding King, the figure was still up 30 percent). That includes sales of items such as Overwatch loot boxes, Call of Duty supply drops and World of Warcraft pets.

Think about it. Activision Blizzard pulled down $3.6 BILLION from the "despised" in-game content such as loot boxes.

Is there really any surprise that everybody else is doing it?

Sure, legislatures are trying to restrict these loot boxes*, but Activision Blizzard isn't about to let that sort of pure profit vanish without a fight. And neither will EA or a lot of other, smaller companies that rely upon look boxes and cash stores to prop up their bottom lines. (Such as a TON of MMOs, not to mention social media centric games.)

Right now, if I were a betting man, I'd say that there will be a big kerfuffle by legislatures, but in the end nothing will get done. There's too much money on the side of the game companies (and investors) for any potential restrictions to last without immense political will. I wish that weren't the case, but I think loot boxes are here to stay until people stop buying them. And good luck with that, I suppose.

*Thanks to Syl for the article from the state of Hawaii's own attempts at the same.