Of late a trend has been plaguing the game industry especially along with the controversy accompanying the release of “Star Wars: Outlaws”. Video game companies have been using scummy ways to squeeze any extra money out of you.
Before the release of Star Wars: Outlaws people were excited to play their first open-world Star Wars game and prayed that Ubisoft, the studio making the game wouldn’t, fumble this for Star Wars fans. However, controversy arose when Ubisoft posted on X, formally Twitter details about the price and what comes with the different versions of the game. These different versions are the standard edition for the traditional $69.99, the gold edition for $109.99, the ultimate edition for $129.99, and the Ubisoft+ subscription for $15.99 a month.
It wasn’t the prices that made us Star Wars fans fume but rather what they included. If you were paying $109.99 or above you could get more game content that should already be in the game with the season pass.
When a single mission and a little extra story that should already be in the base game are locked behind an additional $40, it’s not a very good look. DLCs are very common with games, but if it’s a $40 price tag extra there has to be a good chunk of content that comes with it. This isn’t the first time Ubisoft used this tactic; Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora’s DLC, The Sky Breaker, is a whopping $74.99 which is more than the game itself. As well as Assassin’s Creed: Valhalla whose two expansion packs and an added quest costs another $160.
Star Wars: Outlaws isn’t the only game with a launch marred by greed. Star Wars: Battlefront 2 launched their game with loot boxes which is essentially online gambling presented to children. GamersYou could only get the characters they wanted like Darth Vader, Luke, or Leia through these loot boxes which cost real money. Lootboxes were randomized on which things one could receive, so that means a player would either not get the character wanted unless they paid $300 or possibly get multiple of the same character one didn’t want.
Another Star Wars title, Star Wars: Battlefront Classic Collection, also received a bad launch due to its $40 price tag despite it coming with 2 PS2 games that are currently only $15 each on Steam. It has better graphics, but at the same time, it was more buggy at the launch than the original games. Because of practices like these, people tend to say that Star Wars video games are cursed.
Egregiously large price tags and greedy business tactics lead to a bad reputation of the game at launch while the actual game appears to not be so bad. Even though I have not played Star Wars: Outlaws yet, I will say the game looks fine from the gameplay I saw. Sadly, the online gambling scandal in Battlefront 2 stained the reputation of my all-time favorite Star Wars multiplayer game.
Star Wars: Outlaws is currently receiving tons of negative reviews which is likely by biased due to its high price tag for the full game. Unfortunately, white collared, game industry plants use their greedy, low-business tactics to ruin the reputation of games that deserve praise for all that the developers put into them.
