OpenCritic Is Taking A Stand Against Loot Boxes

Loot boxes have become the scourge of modern AAA gaming, taking the worst kinds of microtransaction models from mobile games and adding them to our console games. But here’s the thing- while RNG governed drops that you have to pay for might make sense for free to play mobile games, they are excessively egregious in full priced AAA games- egregious enough that they almost make piecemeal microtransactions that we used to think were bad until just a year or so ago look good.

As more and more AAA games seem to incorporate them – this year alone, we have Destiny 2, Forza Motorsport 7, Shadow of War, and Star Wars Battlefront 2, among others – the discourse around them, and their implementation, is growing more and more intense. And now, it sounds like review aggregator OpenCritic wants to help consumers figure out what games they might want to avoid if they have lootboxes.

Posting a series of tweets, the review aggregator, that made a name for itself thanks to its broader selection of critics, its consideration of outlets that do not score games, the tools it provides customers to let them tailor the critics they follow, and because it does not weight scores unlike Metacritic, noted that lootboxes have become a problem, and that OpenCritic would like to have some sort of system in place where it can tell customers whether a game has them or not.

I love the fact that they are doing this- but I lament that they need to do this at all, or that it comes down to a review aggregator to do it. Sadly, that is the state of the industry as it is today.

We're going to take a stand against loot boxes. We're looking into ways to add business model information to OpenCritic.

— OpenCritic (@Open_Critic) October 9, 2017

Let us know your thoughts on how we can categorize and display "business model intrusiveness" on game pages in a fair and scalable way.

— OpenCritic (@Open_Critic) October 9, 2017

– Exclusively paid vs can be acquired in game
 – Prompts during gameplay vs dedicated store
 – 100% unlock completion time with no payment

— OpenCritic (@Open_Critic) October 9, 2017