10 WORST Cash Grab Attempts By Activision

activision is a huge company that well wants to make money sometimes it obviously goes a little bit too far hi folks it's falcon and today on game ranks the 10 worst cash crab attempts by activision starting off at number 10 it's the dawning gear with destiny 2. now destiny 2 has had its fair share of controversy about micro transactions and dlc over the years both from the activisioners and after the bungie split from activision in 2019 but for this one we're going to take the wayback machine a few years to 2017. this is the dawning event from destiny 2 kind of a christmas themed thing where they decorated the tower with some decorations and little snow sure some cosmetic changes in the maidenhub were cute but we all know the real reason for this particular season microtransactions there were 59 new pieces of gear for the event and you got boxes called engrams which is pretty standard for this kind of live service game but the thing that really pissed off players at the time was the fact that these dawning engrams could not be earned through standard progression you know how a lot of other games do these kind of events like they make it so the event specific loot boxes replaced the standard ones that was the common method at least at the time of the original dawning event it's a lot less common these days but let's not get too far off track with that so the actual process of unlocking gear was really complicated you could get some of it from completing daily quests but certain pieces of gear could only be obtained from special dawning engrams and there was a limit players could earn freely a week and remember this was a three week event so you can only really get nine of these donning and grants for free to make things more annoying the three engram weekly unit is for your account not for your character and there was more things that made players mad obviously remember the whole controversy over consumable shaders in destiny 2. well now there were limited time consumable shaders so a lot of players felt like these special dawning event shaders would disappear forever if they were used now there's been more than one dawning event in destiny 2 at this point so that's something that didn't really end up happening but still players were mad because the whole event was a mess at number nine is call of duty world war ii the nazi zombies torture path ask any hardcore call of duty zombies player what they think the worst zombies map is and pretty much all of them are going to tell you that it is this map the tortured path it is hard to describe how cheap lazy and just incredibly lame this map is like instead of the usual sprawling detailed and visually exciting zombies maps players we're used to at this point the tortured path is just three small barren and boring locations that play nothing like the other maps not even the ones in this game all the while looking like they were made from multiplayer map assets and that's about it everything about these mini-maps have an air of cheapness around them like the usual voice actors disappeared and were replaced by a bunch of nobodies the easter egg and objectives are painfully simple and uninteresting there's hardly anything new to find in the cgi cutscene that appeared before the previous maps is gone too either activision massively slashed a budget on this or the developers were out of time or something i i don't know the torture path just sucks the worst part is that players on steam at least not sure about other platforms had to buy the entire season pass if they wanted any of the dlc map packs basically with the tortured path activision knew it had your money already so it didn't matter if they half-assed the dlc of all the zombies maps in the call of duty franchise this is by far the worst cash grab at number eight the demo from tony hawk's pro skater 1-2 the remake of tony hawk's pro skater 102 is awesome and it's great that the game is relatively microtransaction free but activision somehow still found a way to be cash crabby didn't they we knew that was going to happen see if you wanted to play the demo of the game before release which included the classic warehouse stage you had to pre-order the game like most people think the demos are meant to give players on the fence about making a purchase a chance to try it out before buying it that makes sense to basically every other publisher on the planet but not to activision for activision demo equals like early access i guess it it's just a blatant way for them to squeeze some extra pre-orders from tony hawk fans and remember before release there was no knowing if this thing would be any good or not thankfully it turned out to be great so there wasn't much harm in pre-ordering but it also doesn't matter what amounts to making players pay for a demo is sleazy it doesn't really matter what angle you come at it from at number 7 is the summer games event from overwatch uh it seems like developers and publishers like to insert their worst microtransaction crimes into events in limited time modes and while the summer games event isn't the absolute worst it's still a great example of how predatory these sorts of events can be and there was a whole lot of anger about this one when you first look at it the whole event seems pretty standard uh you earn special event loot boxes which you level up but they're only around for as long as the event is going on blah blah blah nothing too bad in fact it doesn't seem as convoluted or predatory as the previously mentioned destiny event does it there was one little change however that made overwatch players very angry the fact that blizzard basically lied about credits credits are basically what you'd expect in overwatch you can buy cosmetics with them the problem for a lot of players is that you couldn't use them for the summer games event according this forbes article blizzard originally said credits are to be used for unlocking an item of your choice meaning that credits could be used for anything but when this new summer event came in that policy suddenly changed now credits are said to be used to acquire many customization options so blizzard changed their minds credits used to be used for everything and now it says that credits can be used for some things they blatantly shifted gears in a more player unfriendly way basically in the middle of an event and it sucked all around and number six is the toys to life model from skylanders and remember skylanders the whole toys to life thing oh it's a craze that feels like it happened like a thousand years ago at this point the whole thing was pretty much just a cash grab it's not like the games were awful or anything a lot of developers put a lot of hard work into this stuff but the amount of plastic crap they sold with these things was ridiculous in 2011 the first skylanders game came out to relatively modest success it was a kid-friendly game with a unique gimmick and it came packed with a portal this big plastic thing that you could put tie-in skylanders figures on and play them in the game a few figures would packed in with the game but most of them you had to buy for a few years these things were pretty much everywhere video game store aisles would be filled wall-to-wall with these skylanders toys amiibo and lego dimensions boxes all custom built to get kids to want to buy a ton of overpriced little figures so they could play them in game a review for the boston herald basically sums up how much you'd expect to pay for this in skylanders trap team it was 75 bucks for a starter kit 16 for the special trap masters ten dollars for regular skylanders and six dollars for extra traps there were 18 new trap master skylanders in the game along with 18 new regular skylanders and this was just one game of a yearly series you can see how this stuff would add up really fast the changing landscape of games basically killed the entire toys to life model it's basically just nintendo keeping the torch going right now with amiibos while the last major skylanders game came out was imaginators back in 2016. activision may not be responsible for killing the whole toys to life thing but it was definitely a monster they created and milked for all it was worth at number five was the simpsons wrestling the ultimate example of the activision cash grab license game there are two big things activision is known for shady business practices and licensed games there are so many terrible licensed games that have come out over the years and many of the absolute worst have come from activision the simpsons wrestling is perhaps the king of the terrible licensed game just saying its name feels wrong somehow the simpsons license has always had something of a video game wasteland thing going outside of the awesome simpsons hit and run and the really old arcade game but nothing good comes from combining wrestling with non-wrestling things created by big 8 productions and released on april 3rd 2001 this game was actually co-published activision published it in the us while electronic arts published it in the eu it's basically the mega powers of the cash grab joining forces to make one of the worst games of all time and that is not an exaggeration this game is widely considered to be one of the absolute worst games ever made for a major console and it's actually a game that lives up to the hype it is practically unplayable the graphics are absolutely terrible the controls manage to feel sluggish and slippery at the same time and you can barely even tell what's happening on screen it at least yielded some funny reviews though with quotes like i'm not sure why this game was even made by total video games and this absolutely devastating one from game pro a quote-unquote game that's awful in every respect and will ultimately be a textbook example of a wasted license and number four is modern warfare remastered slash call of duty infinite warfare before it was officially announced there's a lot of hype and rumors about a potential modern warfare remaster people were really excited but when news came out they would only get to play the remaster if they bought call of duty infinite warfare which was a game that well a lot of people were angry about that excitement it just evaporated turned right into anger there is no reason why infinite warfare and modern warfare weren't released as separate things other than money so instead of selling infinite warfare for the standard 60 bucks you could buy infinite warfare legacy edition and it cost more players that just wanted to play the remaster were completely out of luck and had to pay up if that wasn't annoying enough anytime you wanted to play the remaster you'd have to put in the infinite warfare disc this move basically ended up ruining the multiplayer for modern warfare as well by making it so expensive to get in many people who were originally interested in playing just didn't bother the online community for the game was pretty much dead on day one eventually activision made it so people could buy the remaster separately from infinite warfare but much of the damage was already done it is a great remaster and its release should have been the cause for celebration but instead activision ruined it for everyone at number three is the tony hawk ride skateboard now activision isn't the company that created the whole worthless peripheral craze in the 2000s but they created the ultimate expression of it with the absolutely terrible tony hawk ride skateboard now the actual make of the thing isn't bad from all reports it's fairly sturdy and feels solid but there is one little problem it didn't work maybe it's the fault of the controller maybe it's the fault of the game but at the end of the day it doesn't really matter when you try to do something with this peripheral it works maybe about half the time many reviewers seem to struggle performing basic moves up to and including simply turning left and right that is how useless this thing is people cannot even turn with it any game where people consistently seem to struggle getting through the tutorial might have control issues the whole thing it was just a bad idea from the start the fact activision even sold this thing in stores knowing how well it worked which was not well counts as one of the worst cash grabs in this publisher's history at number two is call of duty modern warfare's kd tracker we've mentioned before how activision tried to sell you a red dot in a previous video and while this isn't quite as ridiculous it is about as terrible kill death ratios are a very common statistic in pretty much every modern fps it's a simple number that divides how many kills you get on how many enemies by how many times you've died so basically the higher the number the better you're doing in pretty much every game checking this stat is incredibly simple the very idea of putting it behind a paywall is absolutely ridiculous but in one of activision's most shameless moves that's exactly what they did enter the time to die watch the only way to look at your kd ratio during a match is by purchasing dlc yes to get this watch you had to buy the mother russia bundle which cost 20 dollars now you could still check your kd outside a match for free which is nice i guess but it's still crazy they've felt the need to charge actual money for such a basic feature to use during a match and at number one the variety map pack from call of duty modern warfare remastered uh this is one of the most ridiculous cash crabs of all time on top of making players buy infinite warfare bundled with modern warfare remastered the remaster doesn't even come with all the original games dlc you have to buy it again yeah in a world where pretty much every re-release packs in all of the games dlc with the purchase activision decided that making you buy two games even if you only wanted one wasn't enough it's ridiculous enough they're selling a map pack for a game with such a small player base already making it so the player base will even be more fractured than it already was but there is more the dlc is more expensive back when this map pack was released for call of duty 4 cost 10 bucks and for the remaster it costs 15. they couldn't even keep the price the same they had to jack it up and this is all for some maps that should have been in the game from the start the whole call of duty remastered situation was just greedy as hell and activision what honestly could and should have been a pretty good thing a couple of bonuses for you crash team racing sneaking in microtransactions we mentioned this back in the things activision wants you to forget video uh they acted as though there would be no micro transactions waited a month and then slipped him into the game and while we have talked about it a lot it's worth at least mentioning warcraft 3 reforged basically just a ton of promises about making it into this more cinematic experience and then just not doing it and on top of that forcing you to play through the new launcher and screwing up a lot of things in the process that's all for today though which one was the most annoying cash grab for you leave us a comment let us know what you think if you like this video click like if you're not subscribed now's a great time to do so we upload brand new videos every day of the week best way to see them first is of course a subscription so click subscribe don't forget to enable all notifications and as always we thank you very much for watching this video i'm falcon you can follow me on twitter falcon hero we'll see you next time right here on game ranks

Channel: gameranx

Views: 517,380

Rating: 4.9194889 out of 5

Keywords: activision cash grabs, call of duty cash grabs, call of duty microtransactions, activision games, paid dlcs, paid season pass, pc microtransactions, ps4 microtransactions, xbox one microtransactions, black ops, modern warfare, gameranx, falcon, Activision fail, blizzard fail, overwatch problems, overwatch fail, gaming, gaming greed, video game industry, atvi, worst Activision games

Id: S89kh-BFcag

Length: 14min 43sec (883 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 23 2021