First off, as a disclaimer: the game isn’t out yet and it seems that the developers are still in an experimentation phase. It’s really hard to guess what the team might be working on, and obviously the corporate decisions are going to be somewhat opaque.
So obviously this is just speculation. That said:
About a month ago, Hytale posted an announcement, declaring that Hytale was being acquired by Riot Games.
This has raised a lot of worries from a community; mainly, worries that the game will be influenced by decisions made by Riot Games’ parent company, Tencent. Tencent is a very large corporation, and has a history of pursuing aggressive monetization when it comes to its game-making subsidiaries.
(though I don’t want to demonize Tencent; a big part of it is that they mostly deal in free-to-play games, where there are strong incentives to use aggressive monetization)
The response from the official team (through Noxy’s posts) so far has been to downplay these worries.
They have pointed to their community origins, and their drive to do whatever is best for the community.
I get that some people are a little spooked, but you should know one thing – We’re pretty stubborn about who we are and how we operate – we wouldn’t have partnered with someone who didn’t share the same vision for empowering the community that we did, and heck – we had many opportunities to partner up with many different companies and I absolutely believe Riot was the 10/10 partner for us.
It sounds like dumb marketing shill but its really not for us. We were literally forged from the community – most of the team has come over from the Hypixel server where we relied on the community day in and day out for donations to exist.
Regarding monetization and their relationship with Riot/Tencent, their response so far has essentially been an informal “Don’t worry, it’s probably going to be fine”.
I have yet to actually meet anyone from Tencent or discuss Hytale with them. We’re two steps removed from them but I have heard good things from the Riot folks about their relationship, we asked a lot of questions about that.
Dictating the game’s monetization, or requiring it to make a certain amount of money as a precondition for not imposing other restrictions
Not trying to cop out of answering these but I’m almost always of the opinion that these sorts of hypothetical’s just can’t be answered until they actually happen, and like you say I suspect they never will.
I genuinely just can’t see these scenarios playing out as above. If I saw the above as things that were genuinely going to be serious day to day issues we absolutely would not have partnered up with Riot.
To me, this is not at all reassuring.
If you find these answers reassuring, you are not familiar with the way corporate management works. The fact is that Riot Games, and by extension Tencent, poured an undisclosed amount of money into Hytale. At some point, they’ll expect to make that money back.
This is not bad or evil; but it means Riot/Tencent has a stake in making sure Hytale is as profitable as possible. And as the Battlefront II fiasco demonstrated, giant corporations have a tendency to be very aggressive in that domain; they’ll often optimize for high short-term revenue (making sure everyone buys lots of thing), over long term community engagement.
Again, I don’t want to demonize anyone. Giant corporations aren’t automatically evil. But they have systemic flaws; they tend to underestimate the value of community trust, and to underestimate how much some monetization tactics can alienate the community.
Which is why, again, the reassurances above ring somewhat hollow. Riot/Tencent has an incentive to push Hytale to pursue aggressive monetization, even if doing so puts them at odds with Hytale’s employees. Saying “the Hytale devs have a great relationship with Riot” doesn’t really change that.
To the developers:
Here is what I would consider reassuring (though I can’t speak for the community):
Have a business model, and disclose it.
You’re a double-digit team working on a highly-anticipated team with the packing of a multinational corporation. You need to get a business model yesterday. How are you going to make money? Among the possible sources of revenue, which will you prioritize, what content will they require you to produce, and which sources will you commit to not using? (eg will loot boxes be allowed?)
Even if you don’t have a monetization scheme ready right now, at least lay out the basics. Some very basic questions people will have in mind:
Will the base game be free?
Will running a Hytale server be free?
Will there be cosmetic upgrades that can be bought with real money? (eg TF2 hats)
Will there be purchases that affect gameplay? (eg +2dmg sword)
Will there be lootboxes?
Will there be an ingame currency that can only be bought with real money?
Will there be minigames that need to be bought before being played?
Will there gameplay content that needs a one-time pass to be played? (like a special mission that can be accessed through a portal, and you need to pay real money every time to open the portal). If so, can these missions affect regular gameplay (eg the final boss drops a +4 sword that you can’t get otherwise)
Will private servers be allowed to use any/all of the above monetization tactics?
Will this be enforced? Eg, if lootboxes are forbidden, will servers selling lootboxes be shut down?
Will offline players have access to unlimited content? Eg will offline players be allowed to use whatever skin they want, including paywalled skins?
Will people be allowed to sell custom maps/skins/items/mods/minigames?
Will there be purchases that affect offline gameplay (eg singleplayer missions that go faster if you buy an XP boost)?
I’m not saying you need to answer these questions right now, but you need to be ready to answer them by the time the game comes out. If you really want to reassure people, you can’t just give informal answers like “we’ll do what’s best for the community”, you need to have thought-out principles, principles that will guide your answers.
Some general thoughts:
Assuming there are purchases that affect gameplay content, you need guidelines to avoid making them too predatory. In general, you want to avoid purchases that give you an “unfair” advantage over other players (though “unfair” is hard to define), and you want to avoid unlocks that center around removing grind times, because these incentivize bad game design. Unlocks that allow different-but-not-better gameplay are less unpopular (eg a sword that does +3 damage but hurts you if you miss a strike).
You need clear guidelines to regulate what servers can and can’t monetize. These guidelines should leave as little to interpretation as possible. Ideally, you should probably make it impossible for a server to make ingame purchases with Hytale’s API unless that server has run its business model by an approval process first.
You should avoid any form of offline monetization. People want to feel like the game they installed on their machine is theirs. Any DRM system that would enforce offline monetization would be intrusive and alienate players.
A big trade-off that needs to be addressed is the visibility of monetization options. Like, say you want to sell an XP-booster. How visible do you want it to be? If it’s not visible enough, you’re missing potential revenue. If there are pop-ups and icons everywhere, you might alienate players.
You should commit to not using some of the monetization options described above; notably lootboxes, ingame currencies (when they obfuscate the cost of a purchase), offline purchases, time-grinders, etc.
Commit is the operative word here.
If you want to reassure the community that you have its best interest at heart, you need to strongly, publicly list rules that you swear to abide by. Specific rules like “We will never allow lootboxes”, not informal statements like “We will do our best to avoid predatory monetization schemes”.
(I use lootboxes as an example of an unpopular monetization scheme, not because I think they’re inherently evil)
This level of commitment is important, because it leaves a public document you can point to if executives later come to ask you to implement XP grinders or whatever into your servers.
I know that monetization is a nuanced problem, and that things are a lot more complicated than I’m making them out to be. That said, if you want to keep the community’s trust, you need to put your money where your mouth is.
To the community:
Please, please, please be skeptical when the Hytale team talks about monetization and corporate structure.
The Hytale team has done something incredible, starting from very modest origins. The game they’re working on looks incredibly promising, and I don’t want to diminish the effort and love they’ve put into it.
That said, they remain a company, that needs money to live. We can’t forget that they have an incentive to make their game as profitable as possible, and a parent company that might push them do implement impopular mechanics even if they don’t like it.
Other game communities have been burned before, when they trusted the promises of small indie companies because they trusted the goodwill of their developers, even though the developers had no financial incentive to follow through on their promises.
If you want Hytale to be the best game it could be, you need to hold the Hytale team accountable to the kind of standards I described above.
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