There is a term that’s getting thrown around more these days: Macrotransactions. How can we call any cosmetics microtransactions in Call of Duty when they are becoming more expensive than the retail version of the game itself? Regardless of the name, the prices are out of hand, and one of the latest crossover offerings has reached $80. That’s right: for the price of some decent monthly internet, you can have a gorilla glove that won’t last more than six months. Where does the pattern end?
Get Your Kong Fist For Just $80 in Warzone and MW3!
You read that right; it will require four separate purchases of at least $20 each to unlock the B.E.A.S.T. Glove skin for the Gladiator melee weapon. Four Godzilla X Kong Bundles were released in the store at 2,400 COD Points each, and you need to pick up each one to get the gorilla glove. If only it could scratch my head for me, too, so I could figure out how these prices continue to get hiked up.
Bundles like this started with the Dune crossover, where you needed at least two 2,400 COD Point bundles for another skin. The B.E.A.S.T. Glove isn’t new per se, but it’s double the price of anything else and completely ridiculous. Players are actively abusing the report system to shadow-ban players out in the open, but that’s not a problem as long as we have $80 weapon skins.
I can already see the responses to the price because it happens every time. “Just don’t buy the weapon; it doesn’t affect the game.” That’s not always true, and it certainly affects the pricing structure of Activision games going forward, whether it’s Call of Duty or a game like Diablo.
COD Continues to Get Worse and Worse With MTX
Over the past year, Activision has grown more bold with the microtransactions in Call of Duty. Premium Battle Pass offerings have become $30 for what would have been $10 just a year ago. Pay-To-Win bundles were added for modes like DMZ where you could purchase the free use of killstreaks at the start of every match. Now, we have entered a new territory where the fear of missing out and egregious prices are mixed together.
If DMZ showed us anything, it’s that Activision is absolutely willing to experiment with Pay-To-Win microtransactions, and they know fans will defend it. COD players love their MTX so much that the Black Cell Battle Pass shows up at the top of the sales charts every season. And then they’ll complain about the game being half-baked every single year.
Related: Can You Play Call of Duty: Warzone Mobile With Console Players?
Call of Duty does not need ridiculous store prices. Warzone might be free, but each yearly release of COD is not. They are full-priced games worth $70. Sure, they continue the live service and MW3 has had a great slew of content. However, the quality of content changes every year, there are still plenty of small MTX, and these skins won’t even cross over to Multiplayer six months from now. For any of you Multiplayer fans, that $80 glove has a super short life span before you spend another $70 in November. All microtransactions eventually become useless, but they are usually reserved for games that have a longer lifespan or that are free.
We’ll have to wait and see how well this Titan Collection Reward sells for Warzone or MW3. If we can’t even control ourselves enough to beat this MTX Titan, then get used to spending more and complaining enough to match it in the releases to come.
