Marvel Snap’s emote scandal takes the micro out of microtransaction
Second Dinner's Marvel Snap has been going strong for some time now, arguably standing out as one of the quicker mobile games to grab dedicated gamers' attention.
Card games have always flourished with fans, leading to the successes of Hearthstone and Gwent, but with its fresh approach to dominating territories and some interesting collectables, it has hooked fans of Marvel and strategy games everywhere.
Fans always knew Marvel Snap would have to sustain itself somehow as a free-to-play mobile game. Still, that doesn't excuse the recent microtransaction scandal over pricy emotes.
Marvel Snap introduces extortionate emotes
Marvel Snap has debuted some new emotes that players will be able to use in-game, and while it might seem like a perfectly logical step for the title to take, you certainly weren't expecting their huge cost.
The emotes, which are simple images of characters in silly poses, will run a player 2200 gold in-game. This amounts to around $30/£30 in real-world purchases.
It's a brutal revelation, and with fans furious about it, they're taking to Reddit to express their rage that the game has the nerve to ask so much for so little in return.
"I was expecting 500 gold or something when I read it and was happy that I could finally maybe get a bigger variety of emotes," says one user in a post. "I would never pay 2200 gold for this in my life, are they crazy?"
Others saw the huge fees coming, with someone else saying, "This is pretty dead on what you should've expected. A little less than a month ago, there were 2 bundles in the shop that were the same price: 1 was Baby Groot 'Don't push the button' emote and currency and the other was 2 Justyna Variants (which are pretty easily SR variants) and the exact same amount of currency."
A third concluded, "They are for whales. they are cosmetics and they can price them at whatever they want and they will still sell." If empty wallets weren't enough to contend with, there are fresh concerns about the emotes themselves and how they'll be used.
Fans worry that new Marvel Snap emotes will be hugely toxic
While some rage on about the extortionate pricing of the Marvel Snap emotes, others have wider concerns about what they'll do to the game - predominantly that they'll be used by toxic players to mock and taunt their foes. Still, seeing Beast pulling Leonardo DiCaprio's Django Unchained meme face is pretty epic.
After all, many of the emotes reflect real-world memes. With images of Drax in total confusion or even Jubilee pulling the Pogchamp face, some are concerned that players aren't actually going to be using them to encourage their enemies.
Overall it looks as though the emotes are causing a real stink, and even though some will shell out their real-world money for them, those who won't are positively furious. Free-to-play games are running their own currency strikes again.
