University of York, York, United Kingdom.
Queen Mary University of London, London, United Kingdom.
PLoS One. 2020 May 7;15(5):e0232780. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0232780. eCollection 2020.
It is now common practice for video game companies to not just sell copies of games themselves, but to also sell in-game bonuses or items for a small real-world fee. These purchases may be purely aesthetic (cosmetic microtransactions) or confer in-game advantages (pay to win microtransactions), and may also contain these items as randomised contents of uncertain value (loot boxes). The growth of microtransactions has attracted substantial interest from both gamers, academics, and policymakers. However, it is not clear either how frequently exposed players are to these features in desktop games, or when any growth in exposure occurred. In order to address this, we analysed the play history of the 463 most-played Steam desktop games from 2010 to 2019. Results of exploratory joinpoint analyses suggested that cosmetic microtransactions and loot boxes experienced rapid growth during 2012-2014, leading to high levels of exposure by April 2019: 71.2% of the sample played games with loot boxes at this point, and 85.89% played games with cosmetic microtransactions. By contrast, pay to win microtransactions did not appear to experience similar growth in desktop games during the period, rising gradually to an exposure rate of 17.3% by November 2015, at which point growth decelerated significantly (p<0.001) to the point where it was not significantly different from zero (p = 0.32).
现在，视频游戏公司不仅销售游戏本身，还销售少量真实世界费用的游戏内奖金或物品，这已经是一种常见做法。这些购买可能纯粹是为了美观（美容微交易）或提供游戏内优势（付费获胜微交易），也可能包含这些物品作为不确定价值的随机内容（战利品箱）。微交易的增长引起了玩家、学者和政策制定者的极大兴趣。然而，目前尚不清楚在桌面游戏中玩家接触这些功能的频率有多高，或者何时开始出现任何增长。为了解决这个问题，我们分析了 2010 年至 2019 年期间最受欢迎的 463 款 Steam 桌面游戏的游戏历史。探索性联合点分析的结果表明，美容微交易和战利品箱在 2012-2014 年间迅速增长，导致 2019 年 4 月之前的曝光率很高：71.2%的样本在此时玩过有战利品箱的游戏，85.89%的样本玩过有美容微交易的游戏。相比之下，付费获胜微交易在桌面游戏中似乎没有经历类似的增长，其曝光率逐渐上升，到 2015 年 11 月达到 17.3%，此时增长明显放缓（p<0.001），以至于与零没有显著差异（p = 0.32）。
