Having said that, a game like Devil May Cry 5 is fundamentally single-player in nature. And in this case, Capcom is offering players the ability to artificially speed through the game’s natural progression curve by spending real money.

When asked about this, game director Hideaki Itsuno said the following:

“With giving people the ability to purchase Red Orbs, it’s something we want to give people as an option. If they want to save time and just want to get all the stuff at once, those people can do that.” Hideaki Itsuno

As mentioned at the outset, the idea of providing players with an option to save time is a common defence whenever developers implement systems like this. On the surface, it’s easy to think that a developers are simply motivated by good intentions; unfortunately, even a cursory analysis should pretty quickly disabuse you of this notion.

Geared against gamers

Implementing the ability for players to spend real money to “make a game easier” or quicker is akin to a super villain poisoning a town only to sell the cure back to its citizens.

The point of good game design is surely to create a satisfying progression curve that doesn’t throw up artificial roadblocks for players, thus motivating them to pay money to push through.

Further examples come to mind. Many players have complained that the UFC and NBA franchises essentially start their characters out to be artificially weak in order to make microtransactions seem appealing; the idea being that the game itself feels unreasonably difficult or frustrating without purchasing specific bonuses with real money.

Games like For Honor, Battlefront 2, and Shadow of War are also examples of games that are intentionally “slowed down” (or feature severely limited progression) in order to incentivize the player to spend money in order to advance.

It’s worth noting that this conversation is happening in a difficult context; the use of loot boxes and microtransactions continue to be viewed negatively by gamers, especially “core gamers”. There are plenty of consumers who refuse to purchase games that include loot boxes and/or microtransactions no matter how balanced or reasonable they may seem.

Thanks to more tech-savvy consumers, it’s become much easier to data mine games to figure out just how much of the content is being steered by microtransactions.

Poisoning the well in the ways described above might seem like an easy way for developers to shoot themselves in their collective feet. That said, there is one specific exception that is worth mentioning here if only because it’s something that defenders of in-game cheats/skips may raise in response.

The Nintendo difference

For years now, Nintendo has been allowing players to skip through parts of their games. Many of their major franchises now include either a specific item (which might appear after the player dies a certain number of times), or a specific character that offers a kind of “easy mode” to soften any bumps the player may encounter.

It may be tempting to equate Nintendo’s design decisions here with the use of paid cheats/skips but there are a few big differences.

For one, these games are not explicitly designed around these skip options — that is, using these options isn’t necessarily mandatory in order to complete the game. Skilled players may never see these systems appear in a Mario game (I’ve only seen the option come up once in Super Mario Galaxy 2, for example).