The tactical MMO World of Warships by Wargaming is currently facing serious trouble. It’s about the persistent issue of loot box gambling and Free2Play monetization. Read here on MeinMMO what is currently wrong and how Wargaming has responded so far.
What is the situation in World of Warships? Currently, there is significant discontent among the World of Warships community. This has gone so far that 22 out of 74 Community Contributors have left the lucrative program.
Update from August 18: We have updated the article with a statement from Wargaming. You can find it at the end of the article.
A Community Contributor is a content creator who is treated preferentially by Wargaming. They receive new ships to test, free goodies for giveaways, and sometimes even invitations to exclusive events. It is a coveted position that only a few content creators will ever have access to.
Even the streamer and contributor TheMightyJingles, who has been immortalized as a captain in the game, has had enough and has resigned from his Contributor status (via Twitter). But what is the reason for all the trouble?
Loot boxes and lack of communication alienate community contributors
What are the reasons for the trouble? Two situations are primarily responsible for all the stress right now. A lack of communication from Wargaming and aggressive monetization in World of Warships.
This is what happened with LittleWhiteMouse: First of all, there was an unpleasant incident regarding the content creator LittleWhiteMouse. She was popular in the community for her profound, detailed, and humorous ship reviews and was even supposed to officially design a Canadian ship for Wargaming for Canada Day 2020.
However, after she had put months of work into the project, Wargaming apparently suddenly knew nothing about it due to miscommunication, and the Canadian ship that eventually came to the shop officially had very little in common with the idea of LittleWhiteMouse. Her inquiry regarding this matter to Wargaming was reportedly answered rather curtly.
And although eventually an official apology (via Warships Forum) was made, LittleWhiteMouse had had enough and subsequently left the Community Contributor Program. This caused discontent among the other contributors, which stemmed from another problem.
This is what the loot boxes are about: Another annoyance that is currently upsetting fans and content creators is the increasingly aggressive monetization in World of Warships. The game is Free2Play, and Wargaming makes money through premium subscriptions, cosmetic goodies for the ships, and special premium ships.
While you can unlock most ships in the game in-game, there are special ships that are only available in the shop for real money. These ships come fully equipped and have a kind of booster for more experience points and currency. However, they are (mostly) not better than the regular ships in the game, but often represent coveted collectibles.
Previously, premium ships could be acquired simply for real money. While you would often spend 100 or more euros on such an end-game premium package, you knew exactly what you were getting. Nowadays, coveted premium ships, like the USS Missouri, are increasingly found in special loot boxes that you can purchase with the real money currency doubloons.
So to get the premium ship of your choice, you may need to buy several boxes and thus participate in a kind of gambling. Since the boxes are only available for doubloons, which are an abstract in-game currency, it is easy to lose track of how much money you have already spent on the boxes. Additionally, players are encouraged to buy a few more boxes if the coveted ship is not immediately found in the first boxes.
All of this reminds one of the great loot box debate surrounding Star Wars Battlefront 2, which caused a lot of trouble for EA in 2017 and led to widespread societal discontent regarding loot boxes and gambling.
This – for many an unpleasant development – as well as the miscommunication with LittleWhiteMouse and other content creators has now led to a situation where many influencers are turning away from World of Warships.
Player numbers for World of Warships remain stable – At least on Steam
Does this affect player numbers? No, not at the moment. The visible numbers on Steam Charts for World of Warships show no significant fluctuation and appear stable in recent days (via steamcharts). However, this is not a complete picture – should the content creators stay away from the game in the long run, it could lead to a loss of player numbers in the long term.
Furthermore, this only refers to the numbers on Steam; part of the players plays Warships in the Wargaming launcher, and there are no known numbers for that player volume.
Statement from Wargaming
What does Wargaming say? The shitstorm surrounding the game has not gone unnoticed by the developers, and there have already been initial reactions. In the World of Warships forum, community manager YabbaCoe wrote the following statement on behalf of the World of Warships team:
Hello everyone,
We are very sorry that AprilWhiteMouse and other CCs are no longer part of our Community Contributor Program, and we want them to know that we will miss them. We respect their decision and want to thank them for their contributions, dedication, and passion for the game and the program over the years. We wish them all the best and hope they will still stay in contact with us; we will always be there for them.
We are aware that there are several reasons that have brought us to this situation and that we have upset and disappointed many of our CCs and players. While some of these reasons are self-explanatory and we are continuing to work hard to resolve them, there are some specific points that we would like to address:
– We value community feedback on the point that Missouri is only available through random bundles in 0.10.7. We have discussed this since last week and decided to add an alternative way to acquire the ship. Details will be released shortly in our dev blog.
– Regarding the Missouri, we understand that there is an open question as to whether its earnings match those of the pre-update version, especially considering the bonuses for signal flags and camouflage. We are carefully analyzing its adjusted earnings post-update and will communicate our decision about whether any adjustments to the mission need to be made.
– Regardless of AprilWhiteMouse’s CC membership status, we remain committed to releasing HMCS Huron in 2022. She has been included in our production plans and is expected to release in late summer 2022.
Best regards,
The WoWS Team
Statement from the WoWS Team on forum.worldofwarships.com
The community reacted negatively to the statement in the forum. They asked if that was “all” and if the remaining points concerning the community’s current concerns would simply be ignored.
How do you like the team’s statement? Please share your opinion here on MeinMMO in the comments.
There has been trouble with monetization in Warships before. The otherwise cool monster ships of Godzilla and King Kong were criticized for their high prices.
