World of Warcraft: This mount from the Blizzard store costs as much as a PS5 game, that's going a little too far, right?

Game news World of Warcraft: This mount from the Blizzard store costs as much as a PS5 game, that's going a little too far, right?

The debate around microtransactions

The subject of microtransactions has come up regularly for some time, particularly in recent years with the arrival of several service games including the mechanics are getting dangerously close to pay-to-winas Star Wars : Battlefront II, Gran Turismo 7, EA Sports FC 24and more recently The First Descendant. Most of the time, the elements that will really tip the scales in your favor in this type of game are difficult to access during normal play, often requiring you to spend hours farming to get what you want, while offering the possibility of unlocking them with your bank card at the same time.

This practice is very often the subject of complaints from players (rightly), but it does not represent all microtransactions in the world of video games. Indeed, even if certain titles can push you to pay real money to advance faster, other games simply offer cosmetic content which simply serves to change a character's appearance and has no impact on the gameplay itself, aside from perhaps some additional visual effects.

This mount costs as much as a PS5 game

Purchasing cosmetics in video games goes back further than one might imagine. One of the first such deals took place in 2006, when horse armor was offered to players of The Elder Scrolls IV : Oblivion for the modest sum of 2,50 dollars. Nowadays, the “skins” and other cosmetics are sold by the shovel in games like Fortnite, Overwatch 2but also in most MMORPGs, like Final Fantasy XIV, Throne and Libertyet World of Warcraft. Moreover, the latter has caused a lot of ink to flow recently because of the addition of the mount “Golden Trading Brutosaurus” in the game store.

This mount, from the Auction House of Battle for Azerothis offered at the price of 78€the equivalent of a game PlayStation 5 or the Heroic edition of The War WithinFor example. A price which obviously did not please everyone, like the author of the tweet above, but which puts some players into perspective, and in particular fans of League of Legends.

In fact, the game of Riot Games regularly offers skins for equivalent amounts, but also cosmetics at exorbitant prices, such as the “IMMORTALIZED Legend Collection” available in store at 32430 RPor a little less than 300€. Prices that are difficult to justify for piles of pixels, but which, in the end, only concern optional elements and do no harm to anyone (apart from the bank accounts of the people who buy them).