Pay to Win – How Pay to Win Destroys Gaming

Hi guys! Today I will talk about pay-to-win and how it is destroying gaming. First, I’ll say a few words to clarify my position.

I have no problem in paying money to buy a game, I have bought many games and as for MMORPG games I have bought Guild Wars 2 and all of its expansions.

I respect those companies that admit that they can’t afford a free to play business model and they make their games buy to play. Now that I clarified my position, let us talk about pay-to-win and why it destroys gaming.

What is Pay-to-win?

Let’s first clarify what pay-to-win is.

A game is considered pay-to-win if the players can buy in the game’s cash shop items that give them an unfair advantage over players that didn’t buy those items, meaning that those items give them more power than free to play players.

Cosmetics in the cash shop isn’t pay-to-win.

XP boosts are somewhat in a grey area. They can be considered fair because they don’t give more power, but some games have a grinding system that is designed in a way that it basically forces you to buy XP boosts, because if you don’t buy them it can take you hundreds upon hundreds of hours to reach the max level, those games for me are considered pay-to-win.

The reason I consider those games pay-to-win is because time is something that not everyone has, and making a game’s leveling system so broken that, in order to reach the max level you need to waste all your free time just grinding for months, is a scammy business tactic and should be treated as such.

Some players don’t like grinding at all so they might say that a game has broken grinding level when in reality it doesn’t.

I will give you an example of a game that isn’t multiplayer, has a leveling system and XP boosts and many consider that it forces you to pay to level up at a reasonable time. The game is Assassin’s Creed Odyssey.

I’ve played Assassin’s Creed Odyssey, for me doesn’t encourage you to pay for XP boosts.

I rarely needed to grind doing side missions and I beat the game at level 48. Mmorpgs that have a grinding system like that of Assassin’s Creed aren’t considered pay-to-win.

If some people don’t like to grind, they shouldn’t play MMORPGs. Pay-to-win is most used in MMORPG games, but there are some multiplayer games that aren’t MMORPGs that can be pay-to-win.

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Arguments that Pay-to-win Players Use

Let’s now talk about the arguments that pay-to-win players use to support their position.

They will say that they support the developer because they pay to buy things in the game.

That, for me, is one of the most ridiculous arguments they can make. If they wanted to support the developer they could just buy cosmetics or other products of the company that is outside the game.

Buying items that give them more power than free-to-play players shows precisely that they don’t care at all about the developers, they only want to be the strongest in the game and to beat free-to-play players over and over, because they probably live such miserable lives that this is the only getaway they have.

Another argument they will say is that those that don’t pay-to-win are poor and they just can’t pay. Another bad argument.

They think that just because they are miserable people themselves, that the only thing stopping the other players from doing the same is money.

I have to say, there are players that would pay-to-win if they had money, but not all of us are that way.

My reasoning for not paying is that beating another player just because I gave more money, means nothing, a win like this is no win at all for me.

Beating someone without having any advantage is the only true win for me. I never even considered paying for power in a game, because the moment that I buy something that gives me an advantage just because I have more money than other players, is the moment I become a pay-to-win player and for me, that is the same as cheating.

Why Paying-to-win is Destroying Gaming

Now let me tell you why pay-to-win destroys gaming.

By supporting pay-to-win practices, meaning by paying-to-win in games, you give a message to all the developers that you support those practices and more developers focus on how to make their games more pay-to-win just to make more money.

If nobody paid-to-win, no games would be pay-to-win. Now I understand that the developer of the game has to make money, but there are better ways to make money than focusing on how to make the game more pay-to-win.

You can focus on making the gameplay better, introducing new features and game modes, improving the balancing and generally improving the game.

Focusing on how to monetize the shit out of a game, doesn’t make the game better and it doesn’t make the game more popular, it just degrades the level of the game.

There are countless games that went the pay-to-win route and after a few months they died, because almost nobody wants to play a pay-to-win game so by focusing on improving the game, they will make more money than focusing on monetization.

Nowadays, unfortunately, most games that come out are pay-to-win, because we show them that we accept those practices because people still pay-to win.

Even if a game isn’t pay-to-win when it’s released, it becomes pay-to-win later most of the time.

Now, you can count the MMORPGs that aren’t pay-to-win in the fingers of one hand.

FYI, these MMORPGs are WoW, Guild Wars 2, MapleStory 2, Final Fantasy XIV and only one of them is free to play which is fine by me, as I said I respect those that can admit that they can’t support a free to play model, but that goes to show that free to play in most cases goes along with pay-to win.

If we want a brighter future for gaming, we have to stop supporting those practices, but it’s easier said than done.

I hope my article helped you understand the situation and why by paying-to-win you don’t help the gaming industry to improve, but instead, it helps them make worse games.

Now I want you to tell me in the comments below what you think about pay-to win and if you support it or not. See ya in the next article.

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