Nothing erks me more than when a company has to resort to creative marketing to increase profitability. Take for instance Bank of America’s “Keep the change” campaign. They tout it as the next best thing in savings. Yet when you read the fine print all they are doing is rounding your debit card purchase off to the next dollar and putting that extra money in your savings account. They don’t add to it. They don’t give you a better interest rate. All they are doing is trying to get you to use your debit card more so they can collect more fees. Where is the consumer value in that?

This is a similar tactic used with micropayments. Micropayments were initally marketed to the consumer as a small payment for extra content after the release of the game. In exchange the developer gets extended shelf life of their product. The reality doesn’t play out like this at all. What is happening is that some developers are removing hashed out features during development. Then, after release, selling those features as “extra content”. This isn’t the first time I’ve touched on this subject. It’s not even the second or third.

Last time around EA shipped NFS:Carbon with the “extra” content already on the disk. This time, with Battlefield: Bad Company they’re already planning on selling the “extra” content while the game is still in beta.

Many will say, “If you don’t like the content don’t pay for it.”, but I’m already paying for it. It’s either on the disk locked away or I’m getting reduced value for my purchasing dollars. Microtransactions are a pet peeve of mine. I have no problem buying expansion packs, I own every single one for WarHammer 40k: Dawn of War. Expansion packs ad value. Microtransactions, like the “Keep the change” campaign have no value to the consumer only to the company pushing it.