Okay, there’s no need to talk about this. But there’s a different perspective when it comes to issues like this.
Everyone knows what is happening at the moment: Pixonic just removed gold rewards from the Battle Royale and as a result, everyone is having problems with their games right now to the point that they are planning to boycott the game.
Here is the worst part of it – the actual culprit behind this one big mess and the thing that the company should be blamed for: Pixonic did not create an alternative system for earning resources to replace this one, despite their previous announcements that they will do so.
Let’s be frank: Players will not be raising their pitchforks and get to this point if the “dynamic resource gathering” system that was promised by Pixonic was pushed out in time, ideally before this thing happened.
Which brings us back to the number one problem – content execution.
If this was any other game, Pixonic would have not just apologized – yes, they only did it after players made an outcry – but actually would have made “peace offerings” in the form of in-game rewards, as well as a concrete promise that they will deliver it, with a firm timeline and proper updates and transparency on the in-game content that they are going to make.
It seems that Pixonic aims to drive out people of the game, instead of keeping them inside it. Quite illogical, no? But then, there’s a reason to everything…
The only reason why the company is able to pull it off is that they know that they are the number one mobile mech game on Android. Alternatives like Robokrieg (no further marketing despite it being a wonderful game on its own), Battle of Titans (it is yet to be refined, still basically in public beta), Mech Wars (still in its infancy – if they only know that they are sitting on a gold mine of discontent, they would definitely push out WR from its top spot in time) and the rest of the games out there are lacking in one way or another – and as such, is unable to cut through Pixonic (and mail.ru’s) market share on Droid.
With that being said…
Will a boycott do much? Will the top clans of Android and iOS be able to pull off a symbolic gesture such as this one, let alone do the necessary “civil disobedience” measures in order to bring their displeasure at the state of the game?
Here are some of the things that would be done:
- No ads as much as possible, except for completing daily gold tasks
- No installs – preferably, uninstalling for a day
- No purchases (seriously? can people actually do this for once?)
- No playing of standard game modes – probably custom? Time to do six-pack?
Well, here are some further steps that can be done actually…
- Play the alternatives. Yes, these are all wonderful games (Mech Wars, Robokrieg, Battle of Titans, etc.) but they are underlooked simply because they do not have marketing. If you really want to speak their language (i.e. the numbers and statistics and data storytelling hooballoo, then man up and just do it).
- Actually do a petition on Change.org. No one ever thought of this?
- Actually promote the alternatives on one’s personal page. Shout out to friends, push it on Discord, push it elsewhere – word of mouth is an effective way to get one’s point.
The question is – will Pixonic listen?
History showed that they don’t really listen to the stakeholders of the game (quite a lot of times), except in their own way.
They do listen sometimes (thanks for good Skirmishes, Workshop 2.0, some other stuff, etc.) but that’s all I can think of.
Let’s see what’s going to happen in the next 24 hours.
I’ll be frank – this is probably the worst change (maybe except the Shocktrain mess and some other stuff) I’ve ever seen in my War Robots life – due to simple bungled-up content execution.
