New For Honor Emotes Spark Microtransaction Debate

Ah, microtransactions. A concept that can either make or break a game. Most sensible developers have steered away from microtransactions that effect gameplay, avoiding the dreaded pay-to-win model that is common with many free to play games. Although For Honor isn't a pay-to-win game, it's guilty of a pretty disappointing business practice that is becoming more and more common. They offer customization options including emotes for both in-game currency and real money. In essence, the concept seems fair right? Not necessarily. See in For Honor's case, they make the in-game currency hard to obtain, while making the in-game cost of items extremely high compared to the cost of just buying it with your hard earned money.

Charging excessive amounts of steel for these new emotes has gotten For Honor players quite upset, and some people are arguing that the in-game cost of these emotes are just about as much as a free to play game would charge. Free-to-play games charge a lot because their main income is obviously from in-game purchases, but AAA titles should not be charging similar rates. Reddit user bystander007 worked out the cost of unlocking everything for a specific character, and the results are not pretty. A whopping total of 91,500 steel is required to unlock everything for just one character. Earning that steel in-game is incredibly time extensive, and very tedious. 

[background=rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.8)]"The average hero requires around 91500 steel to unlock all base games (no DLC/Update content) unlocks. This includes Emotes, Executions, Effects, Outfits, and Ornaments. From there, you multiply by 12 (for each hero) and get 1,098,000. That is approximately 7.32 of the $100 steel packs. So Ubisoft has valued their in-game unlocks within the base game at a $732 over-charge of the original $60-100 spent on the game."[/background]

If you want to unlock everything for your favorite character, your in for weeks and weeks of non-stop grinding. Or if you don't feel like grinding, you can spend your money on steel packs just like Ubisoft is hoping you do. I mean the emotes are pretty awesome, but is it worth your hard-earned money? That's your business I guess, but it's the principle here that matters. We'll see if Ubisoft makes a comment on their pricing scheme, though I doubt they will.