Activision has trumpeted Call of Duty: Black Ops 4’s microtransactions at a time when the game’s community has declared them the worst the series has ever seen.
In a financial call overnight, Activision chief Coddy Johnson bigged up the financial performance of Treyarch’s first-person shooter, declaring Black Ops 4 monthly active users grew year-over-year throughout the financial quarter versus 2017’s title, Sledgehammer’s Call of Duty: WW2.
“We think this is the result of the increased frequency and quality and live operations including seasonal events, new game play and immersive new in-game experiences across the Black Ops environment,” Johnson said, highlighting the new Alcatraz Blackout map that launched in April as a key driver of engagement.
“Engagement was high with hours played in Q2 growing over 50 per cent year-over-year versus the last title and we plan to continue our investment in development of talent, tools, and analytics as we look to build on this momentum in Q3 and beyond.”
Then it was on to the microtransactions revenue, or, as Activision’s money people call it, net bookings. The amount of money made from this was ahead of WW2 on a comparable basis, Johnson said.
Activision didn’t reveal exactly how much money came in from Black Ops 4 microtransactions during the quarter, but it did say Activision Blizzard pulled in around $800m of in-game net bookings overall. King, which operates Candy Crush, was the biggest contributor.
All this comes at a time when the Call of Duty community – at least the community that cares to post online about the game – has declared Black Ops 4’s microtransactions the worst in the series. This is a game that launched without loot boxes or any egregious microtransactions, but over the course of the last 10 months has slowly but surely added more and more microtransactions to the full-price game – to the point now where many consider it pay-to-win.