@Meanlucario
@AaronMk
I’m not defending Valve using lootboxes, just that they aren’t a big cause of the craze considering how much time past between TF2 and the lootbox craze.
What? You’re wildin’. Here, because you are not let me do the homework for you and just dump the history section from 2009 for you
In Western regions (North America and Europe) around 2009, the video game industry saw the success of Zynga and other large publishers of social-network games that offered the games for free on sites like Facebook but included microtransactions to accelerate one’s progress in the game, providing that publishers could depend on revenue from post-sale transactions rather than initial sale.[23] One of the first games to introduce loot box-like mechanics was FIFA 09, made by Electronic Arts (EA), in March 2009 which allowed players to create a team of association football players from in-game card packs they opened using in-game currency earned through regular playing of the game or via microtransactions.[26] Another early game with loot box mechanics was Team Fortress 2 in September 2010, when Valve added the ability to earn random “crates” to be opened with purchased keys.[13] Valve’s Robin Walker stated that the intent was to create “network effects” that would draw more players to the game, so that there would be more players to obtain revenue from the keys to unlock crates.[23] Valve later transitioned to a free-to-play model, reporting an increase in player count of over 12 times after the transition,[25] and hired Yanis Varoufakis to research virtual economies.[27] Over the next few years many MMOs and multiplayer online battle arena games (MOBAs) also transitioned to a free-to-play business model to help grow out their player base, many adding loot-box monetisation in the process,[25][28] with the first two being both Star Trek Online[29] and The Lord of the Rings Online[citation needed] in December 2011.
Separately, the FIFA series included a “FIFA Ultimate Team Mode” that allowed players to use virtual trading cards to build a team. Initially released as downloadable content (DLC), the “FIFA Ultimate Team Mode” transitioned to a free add-on to the base game with the 2010 release, with the ability to buy card packs as a means to generate revenue for the game.[23] EA took the success of this transition for Mass Effect 3 in March 2012. Mass Effect 3 offered “packs” that would offer uncommon gear, otherwise obtainable only by “grinding” through online gameplay. According to the game’s producer Jesse Houston, these were used as a means to offset the development cost of the game’s multiplayer mode. The Mass Effect 3 team worked closely with the FIFA team to get the rollout of these packs right, which Houston compared to opening a Magic: The Gathering booster card pack to make a player feel like they were always getting value from the pack.[23][30]
Other early examples of packaged games with loot boxes included Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in August 2013, adding “weapon cases” in an update,[31] and Battlefield 4 in October 2013, adding “battlepacks”, though they did not become purchasable until May 2014 and never granted duplicate items.[32][4] Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, released in November 2014, included “supply drops” that contained randomised items including different variants of the game’s weapons, character gear, and experience points that could be used to customise one’s character.[33]
It’s not stated in the article, but RuneScape - one of the largest western MMOs - added a chance-based system in 2012 called the Squeal of Fortune which in 2014 was moved to a crate/loot box system. Players could get one daily spin on the Squeal if F2P and members got two spins and now get two keys for the crates per day but can pay for more.
With the financial success of Overwatch and its loot-box systems, several games—particularly from popular franchises—in 2016 and 2017 included the mechanic as part of its meta-game. This included Call of Duty: WWII, Halo Wars 2, Gears of War 4, Assassin’s Creed Origins, Middle-earth: Shadow of War, and Forza Motorsport 7.[34][35][36] By October 2017, this had led to critical review of the practice. In particular, the highly-visible Star Wars Battlefront II, released amid criticism of its loot-box systems in November 2017, led to renewed discussions at various government levels related to the legality of these systems.[37][38] The review aggregator OpenCritic announced plans to include a “business model intrusiveness” for games that provide a metric on how much a game’s loot and DLC system can impact the game.[39] The reaction to loot boxes in the last half of 2017 was considered one of the major trends in the video game industry in 2017.
By this record of events, Overwatch isn’t the beginning but the end, because it was followed in the year by public criticism and even legal responses, thus creating your “loot box craze” phenomenon. It was already a long established industry trend. It just didn’t catch on until nearly a decade after
