“The dreaded micro-transactions cometh!” would be something that I might be shouting as I ran down the streets of London in Edwardian England while being chased by zombies who paid a few quid for a fancy hat, as EA announced at the end of last week that Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare will soon see the addition of micro-transactions to buy in-game coins.
From next week, people will be able to use real money to buy in-game coins and then purchase the sticker packs to unlock character variation parts, customisation items and other consumables.
In the grand scheme of things, this seems to be a fairly minor change to me. The core DLC content, which sees regularly releases maps, game modes and characters, the latest of which came out last week, is still free to anyone who bought the game, while the sticker packs have always been a quirky way of getting items and unlocking new characters. These packs use coins earned by playing the game to give you randomised packs of stickers, a little like FIFA’s Ultimate Team, with the most expensive packs getting you parts for a new characters variation.
Of course, the game actually launched without micro-transactions of any kind, but the door was always open and the possibility there. Then again, when we spoke to Gary Clay, Senior Franchise Marketing Manager at PopCap Games, around the time of the game’s release, he said, “We have no plans to allow you to purchase with real money. We’ll listen to the community, so if we got to a situation where people wanted to do that, we could turn it on, but we have no plans.”
Clearly something has changed since then, but this change also comes alongside balancing tweaks to boost the number of coins earned. The latest patch increases coin rewards in Gnome Bomb and Garden Ops modes, as well as having new coin rewards across the board. This should certainly help those that don’t want to dip into their pockets to keep buying sticker packs.
bunimomike
They lied, at a guess. They knew what they were going to do and played it safe to begin with. Now that people are enjoying the title, let’s bleed some more money out of folk. Makes perfect business sense.
Pity it’s not for cosmetic stuff only (if I’m reading the article correctly).
Stefan L
Whether they lied or not, it doesn’t change the progression of the game at all if you don’t want to pay. If anything, earning in game cash is easier and quicker as reawrds have been boosted.
What you get in sticker packs are consumable items like potted plants and zombies to call in and spawn during battle (think weak autonomous towers and the grunts from LOL, respectively), random cosmetic items like hats and glasses and, for the most expensive packs, parts for the class variations.
Putting money into the game just lets you buy more of those sticker packs, which effectively lets you skip playing a few hours of the game. The only problem is that you have no way to know what you’re going to get for your money, whether it’s real or in game, as everything’s randomised.
It’s a tough sell, if you ask me, because the game’s been tuned to drip feed new gubbins to you in a particular way which makes putting money in quite unattractive.
Pixel_nme
I’ve played quite a bit of PvZGW Rank 21 so far great fun game in fact I’m on it now as I type,this makes no difference to me at all its easy enough to earn coins in game,even before tweaks playing something like 3 maybe 4 games of Team Vanquish earned you roughly 10.000 coins easily enough and the most expensive pack being 40.000 its not exactly hard to get them.
Kennykazey
After the awful PvZ2, I’m not surprised. Thankfully it sounds like it’s not hurting the game too much, but it could just be the beginning.