Microsoft hit the nail on the head in 2014. That year it bought Mojang, a small Swedish company that made it easy for him to fully enter the video game business. He paid 2.5 billion dollars (2.365 million euros at the current exchange rate), but the investment, with the numbers in hand, has been quite profitable. The American technology giant today has a turnover of 800 million dollars in this sector and largely owes it to Minecraft. This game, which allows users to create their own worlds and fight monsters, was launched by Mojang in 2009. In this industry, where new developments happen at a dizzying pace, it is very old, but it is still among the most popular products, according to the specialized consulting firm Newzoo.
Minecraft, like other successful releases, is having a great time thanks to the fact that users are spending more and more hours hooked and that causes the amount they spend in their digital stores to increase. Microtransactions are, for many young people who spend idle hours in front of the screen, their first contact with the world of digital payments. A clear example of this trend is Roblox, a free game launched in 2006 whose characters resemble Lego blocks. 90% of the 749 million that it invoiced in 2023 comes from the items that must be purchased to be able to pass the screen. For example, for 100 robux, the game's digital currency, a user can purchase a new avatar like Nick Bass, a blue fish who wears a Hawaiian shirt.
The cards to spend this digital money are strategically placed in the checkout lines of supermarkets or in the most popular toy stores. Most video game users are 16 years old or younger. In fact, 72% of American children usually ask for gifts related to video games at Christmas and 70% ask their relatives for gift cards so they can spend money in virtual stores, according to a survey conducted by the Entertainment Software Association.
Nathan Clemens has been designing digital games for 14 years and has his own studio, Simple Games. “There are many monetization options you can develop, but the most common are microtransactions in the games you create,” he says. Clemens has benefited from the trend called pay to win (pay to win), thanks to which games improve the user experience with more lives or tools in exchange for money.
Roblox, unlike Minecraft, which launched its marketplace or market in 2016, rode the wave of digital currencies and small purchases more than a decade ago, even before the cryptocurrency boom. In 2012, it set up its own stock market with the launch of the Trade Hangout game, a kind of exchange that allowed the exchange of objects in exchange for some of the two official currencies: the roboux and the now defunct tix.
The risk of widespread use of digital money among such young users is the proliferation of scams. The lack of regulation and protection of these virtual markets has meant, for example, that the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has begun to track possible fraud. “Video game companies have created digital marketplaces that facilitate the buying and selling of assets with limited protections for consumers. “This has given rise to potentially harmful practices for players, including financial losses linked to theft or scams,” this government agency warned in a recent report.
Despite these risks, the truth is that the forecasts for the video game industry are quite optimistic. By 2025, this business is expected to generate global revenues valued at $211 billion. Half of the managers who participated in a recent survey by the consulting firm EY point out that the path to growth involves improving virtual transactions and incorporating new digital currencies. In addition to promoting online purchases, video game companies are also betting on the metaverse and the use of artificial intelligence tools.
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