It's Wild That, In 2024, Ubisoft Is Paywalling Missions In Star Wars Outlaws

168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Star Wars Outlaws is attracting controversy for reasons both sensible and nonsensical. I have zero interest in hearing the complaints about how Ubisoft made lead character Kay Vess "less hot" between the last year and the last week. A subset of gamers are trying really hard to make GamerGate 2.0 happen right now, and it reeks of desperation. It's been ten years since 2014, and most players aren't interested in a lega-sequel to one of the stupidest chapters in the medium's history.

But Ubisoft is a big corporation, and its desire to extract as much money from players as possible is much realer than the supposed nefarious influence of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives (which, these gamers claim, are really obsessed with making female characters slightly less conventionally attractive for some reason). Video game corporations, like all corporations, want to make more money this fiscal year than they did the last, and the decisions Ubisoft has made around Star Wars Outlaws' business model reflect that.

Ubisoft's Gambit With Star Wars Outlaws

In this case, Ubisoft has locked a mission featuring Jabba the Hutt behind Star Wars Outlaws' season pass. The game will already cost $70 at launch, but to get the Jabba's Gambit mission the only option currently available is to shell out for the $110 Gold Edition or the $130 Ultimate Edition. Ubisoft is weaponizing nostalgia in an attempt to extract 40 or 60 more dollars out of its audience. Players were already angry when they saw that the single-player game had a 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:season pass to begin with, and that it requir🍷ed an online connectionꦇ to install it, even from a disc. Adding an incomplete game that you need t🦩o pay significantl🐈y more to make whole is insult on top of injury.

All of that sucks and, given the precarious nature of the games industry right now, it feels like Ubisoft is taking risks that probably won't be worth the reward. Instead of attempting to deliver a worthwhile, finished product to the players who are already spending $10 more than they were four years ago, Ubisoft wants to nickel and dime them, locking content that sounds fairly important behind exorbitant fees.

I don't blame any of this on developer Massive Entertainment. The people who make games rarely want to pull moves like this. The people who sell games often do.

Live Service Games Have Been Dead On Arrival

It's especially wild to attempt this when players have increasingly made their disdain for this kind of business model clear. Star Wars Outlaws isn't a live service game, but this move is drawing from a live-service playbook that players seem increasingly fed up with. Few players want to hear that a new game they're excited for is actually a live service game, and that has been reflected in the sales of titles like 168澳洲幸运🦄5开奖网:Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League and 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Marvel's Avengers.

It seems unwise for Ubisoft to sully the goodwill that comes with making an open-galaxy Star Wars game with the stench of sleazy business practices. I'm still excited for Star Wars Outlaws. A focus on on the galaxy's criminal underbelly, pulling heists, and double-crossing sounds terrific. But Ubisoft should stop making everything around the actual game sound so bad.