Three days ago Marvel’s Avengers announced MCU-inspired skins for the game’s heroes, but now the official Twitter account has clarified these skins are not free after all. If you want to dress your heroes as their MCU versions, you’ll need to spend real money, even after paying the full price for the base game. This has led to a split of the player base, divided about how fair the microtransactions are in Marvel’s Avengers.
The initial announcement tweet teases a new game event, with a series of rewards. The tweet reads: “We'll be introducing the Red Room Takeover event this spring! Features rewards like animated nameplates, outfits inspired by the Marvel Cinematic Universe, a deadly HARM Room hacked by Yelena Belova, and more secrets to decrypt.” It’s easy to understand how fans thought the MCU costumes would also be “rewards” unlocked by gameplay, which is why clarification was needed.
In order to make things clear, the new tweet tells the MCU outfits “will be available exclusively in the Marketplace for purchase with credits.” This means players will need the game’s premium currency to acquire the new skins. By locking the MCU-inspired skins behind a paywall, Marvel’s Avengers takes a step back in their recent approach to keep their online community alive.
Marvel’s Avengers released in August 2020 and received mixed reviews as well as bad sales numbers — the reason being that, while the story campaign brings all the excitement of playing with your favorite heroes, the post-game is repetitive and revolves around a loot system put in place to induce players to expend even more money through microtransactions.
New expansion packs were released to try and fix this issue, giving the player’s access to new characters in their own story arcs, with the latest featuring Hawkeye. While still short, these expansions allow players to have more of what the game does best. Even better, these packs were added to the game at no extra cost, signaling that publisher Square Enix understood the reasons for the game’s initial lukewarm reception, and was willing to build a better future for Marvel’s Avengers.
The new tweet reopened the discussion about microtransactions among players. To some fans of the game, it’s better that Square Enix charges for cosmetic items if this means story expansions will keep coming for free. Other players complain that when a game costs the full-price of an AAA title, it shouldn’t lean so heavily into microtransactions. I would dare to say both sides are correct.
Extra content is ever more typical in big games, demanding players to keep spending in order to get full access to a game’s content. If we take this as an unstoppable direction for the industry, it’s better to lock only cosmetic items, instead of story expansions. Nevertheless, game companies tend to abuse microtransactions and loot boxes, a practice that harms players, especially in titles that are already expensive to buy. So, it also makes sense to take a stand against it.
We’ll see how Marvel’s Avengers keep players engaged with future expansions, with the next one taking place on Wakanda. For now, check out the tweet that inspired the debate.