If there’s one thing that fires up gamers (in the bad way) it’s the notion of Loot Boxes that contain vital stuff that needs to be “earned” through multiple purchases, or, having games with stuff locked through paywalls. For a long time, Call of Duty Black Ops 4 hasn’t had that, their Loot Boxes were only cosmetic in form and the characters that you could get were unlockable, but not through pay. But with the unveil of Operation Grand Heist, that changed, and people are ticked.
But not just because of the action itself, but because design lead David Vonderhaar said that all Black Ops 4 characters would be unlocked via grind, and that was it. So Reddit was pretty ticked, but the dev fired back and explained what is going on:
“At the time this interview was conducted, which was previous to shipping the game, that’s precisely and exactly how it worked,” he mentioned in response to a fan saying that Activision shouldn’t make these sort of promises until they are set in stone. “If I went back in time and re-did this interview, I’d have to answer it the same way I did then.”
He went on to note that there were a couple of things that were planned one way, and then suddenly changed after the interview where he said that there wouldn’t be a paywall.
It’s a chicken and egg problem. I can tell you what we have done and what we plan on doing, but things change that I can not predict or I didn’t know about. Doubly true with the business side of things which have little insight into and even less control over.”
While this does explain the situation, it’s not likely to help smooth over things for fans. The paywall is still there, and many won’t be happy that they need to “pay-2-play” as these characters.
