The recent Take Two ban on modding brings to light an even worse and pervasive problem. GTAV players never got their single player content because "GTA Online is so profitable". Some developers will no longer do the hard work if they can simply release minor updates and players flock to them.

If you love GTA:O, great. But there is really no reason to purchase online currency. That is the problem, mobile has leaked all over the console/PC space and now developers can charge for Shark Cards, or crystals, whatever. They charge for them and people impulse buy them or hoard them, which sends the absolute wrong message to developers. The message being that the players are just stupid sheep, wood to be chopped, a resource to be exploited.

Stop buying in game currency. Stop today. Do not buy another source crystal or energy refill. If the game is designed around buying the stuff, then move on and play something else. Do not support this practice and you will get more content and better games.

It's not too late to turn the tide, but we need to come together and do this as a gaming community. I'm sure there will be plenty of people that will dismiss this as some internet asshole ranting. That's your prerogative, but just know that you're part of the problem if you do that. In this time of amazing titles being released monthly, all we ask is that you demand fair treatment.

Don't spend your money on a consumable digital coin. That's ridiculous. Spend it on robust and complete gaming experiences. Demand more or you will get much, much less.

1 unit in game = 1 unit IRL. So 649K studs = $649K

In an attempt to recuperate losses from overspending due to a deal with the now-bankrupt FTX, TSM announces that it will be attempting to sell its LCS spot to move resources into the popular MMO Action RPG.

The news came shortly after upper management got wind of EG content creator Danny's expenditure in Lost Ark after playing for at least 30 minutes:

Other League turned full time Lost Ark players include World Champions Showmaker and Beryl, who recently made quick exits in the LCK playoffs to complete their Lost Ark dailies.

A financial analyst in the scene was reached for comment. "Instead of paying players to win, players will pay to win for us. It's a no brainer."

TSM intends to create a competitive Lost Ark PVP league in the near future, the Lost Ark Championship Series (or LCS for short).

You may remember me from my previous .

On September 13th, I had currency. Today, after opening my loot boxes, I had currency.

I'd like to thank Blizzard from the bottom of my wallet heart for fixing this issue after being frustrated for so long.

played a HUGE part in getting this resolved. He was in constant contact during the entire process.

Lastly, Jesse from the Overwatch team deserves POTY for this. Once we reached a resolution, the solution was completed within 10 minutes!

The Issue

As it turns out, PayPal had silently issued a charge back, but then reversed the charge back immediately afterwards.

This was an issue on ALL the loot boxes I purchased throughout my time in Overwatch.

Microsoft servers detected a charge back, however, it did not detect the reversal. Microsoft CS couldn't see the charge backs because after the reversal, technically, there weren't any.

The solution?

I was credited . Yep.

and .

It took an hour and 45 minutes to open them all, but I got every single item I lost back from Summer Games. Which is everything from Summer Games.

I could finally buy stuff for !

All in all? A perfect 5/7 rating for the support I got from and Jesse from the Overwatch team.

EDIT: Looks like it was featured on !

Capcom just recently launched its first batch of new costumes for characters in Street Fighter 6. Each costume cost 300 "Fighter Coins", a premium in-game currency (on a $60 game) that can't be acquired via gameplay.

300 Coins equate to roughly 6 dollars. While it's debatable whether or not each individual costume is worth that much, what's not debatable is that fact that Capcom is using one of the most predatory systems to ever grace the face of gaming to sell them.

You can't buy 300 Coins directly via the in-game shop. You can only buy them in very specific amounts that leave you with no options, but to overpay if you only want to buy one.

We all know how this has been plaguing mobile games for years with their F2P models, but this is beyond frustrating to see on a full priced game. And we all know that no amount of trying to boycott the game or the costumes is ever going to stop them or other companies. This sort of system needs to be made illegal.

Well, my In-Game currency was . My current In-Game currency is .

During the Summer Games event, I had earned a lot of loot boxes. I bought a 300 loot boxes as well. With all the loot boxes I earned and bought, I managed to unlock every single Summer Games item.

Unfortunately, I didn't take a screenshot because who would think "This game has a possibility of re-locking cosmetics AND taking away currency" ? I sure didn't, that's for sure.

The Summer Games event ended and we all received the Eichenwalde update.

On , I logged in and was greeted with this screen. I found it a little strange because I didn't buy any more loot boxes but there were 100 loot boxes in my account. Not only did I have 100 loot boxes magically appear, I had my first issue with negative currency.

I didn't open the 100 loot boxes and didn't even play the game for a couple days due to the fact that the ~5k currency I had turned into -1,815 currency.

On , I logged in again, and after earning a single loot box, the 100 loot boxes I had disappeared and my currency dipped to -8,535.

At this point, I'm not even opening loot boxes I've earned for fear that the currency I get from duplicate items will disappear.

I contacted Blizzard Support and was left extremely frustrated because I was told they couldn't do anything about it. They told me to contact Microsoft, but I didn't feel like I should have had to, so I didn't.

On , I earned another loot box, but instead of a single loot box being deposited into my account, 101 loot boxes were deposited. Once again, 100 loot boxes magically appeared.

On September 7th, I contacted Blizzard Support. Here is the chat log with the important part in bold.

Yarusrion: Greetings! My name is Game Master Yarusrion, you can call me Ru! How are you doing today? :)

you: I'm doing pretty good. You?

Yarusrion: That's good to hear! I'm doing great, thank you for asking.

Yarusrion: So I'm reading over your ticket here and I see you're experiencing some trouble with your currency in Overwatch, correct?

you: That is correct. At this point, I just want my currency reset to 0.

Yarusrion: And I see this is for Xbox, correct?

you: That is correct.

Yarusrion: While I really do wish there was more I could do to help, sadly, we have no way to look into Xbox or PS accounts. We're very limited on what we can help with on console due to us not receiving much information on our end. I'm very sorry, but at this point the best I can suggest is to try submitting a bug report for our developers and bring it to their attention.

you: I've already submitted a post in the bug report and technical support section, but have received no responses.

Yarusrion: It can take some time for them to investigate the issue, plus there's no guarantee that they'll respond. But they do check the forums regularly and check into these sorts of issues.

you: It's just frustrating because items I've unlocked before are now locked and I can't even buy them with the currency.

Yarusrion: I absolutely understand. And that sounds like it may be some sort of payment issue on Microsoft's end. Have you tried speaking with their payment department?

you: I've tried everything. They said they're going to contact you and get the issue resolved even though I said that there isn't anything that you can do. The last response I got from Microsoft was asking me if I was still having the currency issue...

you: I've also gotten 100 free loot boxes for no reason?

Yarusrion: I'm very sorry, I absolutely get how frustrating these situations can be. That really is strange though and I have no way to check and see what could have possibly caused that on my end. I really am truly sorry. In this case, I would recommend responding back to them and letting them know the issue is still going on.

you: Okay, I'll try again. If nothing can be done, then what?

Yarusrion: They really should be able to find something. In that case, I'm honestly not sure then since this is an issue with their end

Yarusrion: I really am sorry,. I wish I could be more help.

Since they said that they had no way to look into Xbox or PlayStation accounts, I thought I should give Microsoft a shot.

Well, Microsoft stated that they have no control over servers that are not a part of Microsoft developed games.

I was reminded of when I have issues with my Crowns in Elder Scrolls Online, I'd contact Zenimax and they'd fix the issue.

is the day that shit went down. You'll notice in the previous screenshots that I'm using the Widowmaker Gymnastics player icon, but in this screenshot, I'm using the default player icon.

This is the point where items that I had bought/earned re-locked. Over half of the player icons from the event were locked and many skins and voice lines were locked.

Not only that, but my In-Game currency had dipped to a whopping -42,535.

I immediately contacted Blizzard, and they stated that it could be an issue with a charge back on my Microsoft account.

If it was a charge back on my account, wouldn't I have negative loot boxes instead of negative currency and re-locked cosmetics?

Too bad, I guess. Microsoft said there wasn't any charge backs on my account.

After being tossed back and forth between Blizzard Support and Microsoft CS, I had enough and just played the game.

Here's a screenshot from .

Yeah. I used loot boxes to get 11,570 currency so far. Still not even close to reaching 0.

In the end, I'm stuck with this account since neither Support party can help me.

I have OCD, so on the bright side of things, at least I'm no longer triggered by not having all cosmetics in the game. :(

EDIT: I meant $300 worth of loot boxes. Whoops.

EDIT 2:

I'd love to see someone continue to defend this predatory monetization.

It's like ever opportunity this company has to extend an olive branch to the fans is a slap in the face and a squeeze of the wallet.

What a joke.

Im getting sick of blizzard locking the best skins behind in game currency that has no reliable way to get. As of right now the biggest culprit is the new Grey skin. Its a skin I would GLADLY pay for. But if you wanna pay for it, you have to pay for an overpriced bundle that includes a whole bunch of other crap you dont necessarily want. I did a little test, and tried getting him via loot boxes. I opened 36 loot boxes, got a couple legendaries (i wanna say 4 or 5?) two of which were hero duplicates. After all that, I DIDNT get the skin, and ended with about 1650 shards. The skin costs 2400. Now MAYBE if I play a ton, only playing heros that are close to leveling, I MIGHT be able to get enough before the skin dissapears. But I dont have that kind of time. Now Im thinking about the people who dont drop money at all on hots. Unless they already had a build up of shards ready, I highly doubt they will be able to get the Grey skin unless they fork out the money for the bundle.

HoTS isnt the only culprit either, Overwatch was the originator of this garbage system. Id love to get the zenyatta skin, but since I just dropped way more money on HoTS trying to get one skin, theres no way I can justify dropping money on Overwatch too.

tl;dr JUST LET US BUY THE DAMN SKINS WITH REAL MONEY INSTEAD OF LOCKING THEM BEHIND BUNDLES/SHARDS.

Right now apex only has a measly 5 types of currency options. I feel like these are rookie numbers in this racket. We've only gotten one additional currency type in the last year. It's really hurting the enjoyment of the game. I'm hoping to see 2-3 additional currency options added in the next update. I think this will really bring the players back. Maybe they could add purchasable revive tokens so it's cost money for every revive. Or you could add a currency to upgrade your gun mid match. I think it's just what the game needs to see a nice reassurance of players. Let's hear your ideas.

A Python bot used to play the game 'City Island'

Gameplay:

Why?

I've been playing strategy + city building + simulation? games like TownsMen 6, Clash of the Clans, and SimCity for the last 10 years.

On trying out City Island 5 I found it mildly irritating that my collectables could not accumulate while I was outside the game. I might have had the best businesses, strategy, etc but I had to be in the game to ensure I collect the cash/keys/gold over time. For example, if my bakery makes €100 per minute I would only earn €100 after leaving the game and coming back 24 hours later.

This became especially tiresome while trying to accumulate €5,000,000 required to buy the island shown below. This would take me roughly two weeks of gameplay if I don't spend any money - it's not worth it.

This is a problem that can be solved using one of the greatest tools in my tool belt - programming.

I decided to create a Python bot used to play the game using computer vision and image processing techniques. The bot should be able to play the game without any human intervention.

---

Results after running overnight

I started the game with €316,415:

The following morning I had €6,463,870:

I made €6,147,455 overnight!

I then proceeded to buy the Island I wanted:

Source code & guide

A basic guide on how I achieved it -

Source code -

Yeah i paid for OW1, and in OW1 every skin were obtainable by playing the game, since i cant play OW1 anymore and i was forced to play OW2 why should i start paying for something that i already paid for?

With the exception of the battle pass the monetization of this game sucks.

Hi there! As the title says, my husband lost 50k gold last week. He has been saving up basically since he started playing, purchasing a skin or two once or twice in the two years that he's had the game, and before this last event, he had almost 100,000 gold.

We were playing on the last day of the event, and I got booted from the game because there was an update. Realizing that the event was ending, and this was his last chance to unlock everything he wanted, he quickly started purchasing skins. When he got booted, he still had more than 50k. (As someone who spends her gold as soon as she gets it, it boggles my mind, haha!)

He had to work for a few days, but that Sunday (I believe it was Sunday) he logged in to discover that he had 250 gold. All the rest of his gold was gone. He has submitted multiple tickets, and every time he does, the GM tells him to submit a bug report on the forums, but that there's nothing they can do for him, and he likely will never see that gold again.

So! I'm posting this to A) ask if anyone else has experienced it, and if so, did it get fixed? and B) Warn people, so the same thing doesn't happen to them.

Edit: Wow, thanks everyone for all your responses! No update on the gold yet, but I imagine this isn't an overnight fix. :)

For those of you that keep asking - He had all that gold because he literally never spent it. We've been playing for 2 years. For a while, we were separated long distance due to his work, so this game was literally the way we spent time together, so we racked up a LOT of hours. (Like, I've got a gold portrait LOTS). He's never really been interested in purchasing things, so he'd spend a bit every once in a while if a new skin came out that he LOVED, but back then, the skins were only 1000 gold or sometimes less, so it was never really a huge hit. We still play probably 20 hours a week, and we always make sure to do all our arcade games to get those boxes as well.

If I'm being honest, I'm probably more upset about all this than he is, and I just wanted to post here more as a warning to others than a complaint, and I'm sorry if it came off that way. Blizz has been amazingly kind and understanding with their responses, but there just wasn't anything they could do. I didn't think posting here would get me help, but I'm super glad it did, and I promise to update if he gets his gold back.