Shady Malpractices Within the AAA Industry

"In Civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics," Earl Warren

Hello, and Welcome to my blog, where I, Yashika Lama, Student of Lovely Professional University will accompany and educate you about the world economy and it's umbrella of ethics.

This blog is about how AAA(Video game industry) is doing business unethically. In the wake of increasing unethical practices from the industry such as microtransactions and tact on DLCs, mainstream gaming is becoming more and more corrupt by the day.

Industries in today's era have developed in a rapid environment where materialistic needs are prioritized over other fragile and important factors such as trust and ethics. An infamous example of this is in the field of Electronic Arts. EA Sports is a giant corp in the gaming industry that has been able to withstand the tests of time and competition. Their application of aggressive investment and product monetization has helped them thrive and prosper in their industry during the golden era of technological advancement in a graphical and technical field.

During recent years, the name has gained a somewhat infamous and deceitfulness image as the publishers continue to implement crippling game mechanics and microtransactions rewarding a pay to win model. This, while cultivating high revenue also deteriorates the trust and quality of the aimed audience and investors. Most recent scandals included gambling mechanics in applications with the aimed audience being kids, falsely advertised product, poor response to backlash for live services and infamous downgrading of marketed products preordered by customers. We will dwell upon the malpractices conducted by the tech giants in this industry and the current consequences they face alongside the new competition.

Currencies:

Dollars, pounds, rupees, and Yuan. They go by many names, but the base concept remains consistent; money. Currencies are no longer streamlined to physical, tangible resources. With the advancement in marketing and world economies, it goes without saying that LPG[Liberalization Privatization Globalization] has created a need for quick and credible transfer of credit and value. Enter stage; E-money. The introduction of networking transactions has allowed for easier deals through the network over mere seconds, disregard where the owner is across the globe. This has not stopped competition from emerging. The gaming market has introduced a middle pool of banks for the company, player, and application. They can be regular currencies earned by investing time and effort in the game or premium currency, procured only through spending real-life money. This has been considered to be a manipulative move by the community of E-sports. Industrial giants such as EA and Ubisoft defend themselves by sating "The player spends in-game currency for any entity, real-life money is only a means to boost that progress". The manipulative action of having the player believe that they are spending in-game currency and not real life money creates a sense of comfort when spending said currency. Values of some in-game currencies are outright absurd as the currency of "World Of Warcraft"( Game released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment) Is Now Worth 7 Times as Much as Venezuela's Cash.

Loot Boxes:

The introduction of gambling mechanics began as soon as the earlies loot boxes were introduced in the online multiplayer gaming economy. The terminology of 'Loot Box' is straightforward, a box containing loot. The implementation of this, however, is purely unethical and hated. The box can only be bought via premium currency, which as we covered prior to this topic, is only available through microtransaction with real-life money. The loot inside said box is undisclosed to the player, IAGR or GCB. The whole unboxing is animated with bright colors and sound effects to induce joy fluids within the player, tempting them to continue and open another one. To gamble for the rare loot. Results of this were extreme addictions and gambling market within the internet and between players.
Some documented cases show the introduction of loot boxes on kids' games. Having them empty their mother's debit card.

False Advertisement:

Annually, the gaming community gathers for presentations and conventions where tech giants and developers showcase upcoming projects and hardware. This is also the marketing ground where competitors reveal their latest titles for pre-orders and creating hype among the audience. The presented product, however, does not always meet the mark. As the final released product varies drastically from what is advertised. Some of the most infamous examples are 
"Fallout 76" by Bethesda
"Google Stadia" Google
"Stars Wars" EA
"Anthem" EA
"Mass Effect Andromeda" EA
The criteria were a graphical downgrade, blatant lying about microtransactions and quality of customer service.

It's unethical of these major publishers to be doing business in this way.