ActivisionCall of Duty: Black Ops 4 now has loot boxes, a little over four months after launch. The general consensus seems to be that they’re… not very good.
In a move drenched in irony, the loot boxes – here known as “Reserve Crates” presumably because the term “loot box” has become a dirty one – were added to the game in an update called The Grand Heist. You really can’t make this stuff up.
ActivisionA single Reserve Crate costs cost 200 COD Points, which amounts to £1.79 a pop. A Reserve Crate contains three different cosmetic items; outfits, weapon skins, warpaint, and the like.
Unfortunately it can go beyond merely cosmetic, as Reserve Crates can (and do) contain new signature weapons. Eurogamer, for example, reported finding a “MKII” version of a gun that actually offers a 25 percent exp boost per kill.
It’s 2019. How in the name of Jeff have we not moved on from loot boxes in premium games that offer distinct gameplay advantages?
As if that wasn’t bad enough, the Reserve Crates don’t show you the probability of duplicates and rare items, which is at least something EA does with its FIFA Ultimate Team packs and new Apex Legends loot boxes.
Activision Needless to say, people really aren’t thrilled with Activision dumping loot boxes on a game four months after launch with all the grace and subtlety of a drowning horse.
Just take a look at some unhappy customers on that there Twitter:
Bro, so you're telling me Black Ops 4 now has:
– season pass for maps & Blackout characters
-"Battle pass" tiers that are purchasable
-Select cosmetics on sale that rotate daily/weekly
-AND loot boxes?
In a $60 game?Well, anyway, see y'all in Apex.
— Emmett Watkins Jr. (@Ejsponge61) February 20, 2019
Activision has added Loot Boxes to Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 post-launch. Just a reminder that this is a company who made a remaster of a fan-favorite game, add microtransactions to it that weren't there before, and sold the DLC separately at a higher price. #FireBobbyKotick
— Wolf King (@MLDKFpro) February 19, 2019
oh so all the actual content added to black ops 4 is delayed a week on xbox, but the loot boxes? nah we get those the same time as ps4. sounds about right.
— HRG | Ashley (@HRG_Ashley) February 20, 2019
Activision Blizzard, the company who sacked 800 people after record revenue, have now added loot boxes into Black Ops 4.
Fuck Activision Blizzard.
— 🦄NoodleHouse (@NoodleHouseAlex) February 19, 2019
Obviously this isn’t a great look for a company that is currently being accused of intense greed after it fired 800 people the same day it boasted of record earnings in 2018.
I’d usually follow something like that up with a joke or sarcastic comment to close the article, but it’s just not really funny at this point, is it?
Ewan Moore is a journalist at UNILAD Gaming who still quite hasn’t gotten out of his mid 00’s emo phase. After graduating from the University of Portsmouth in 2015 with a BA in Journalism & Media Studies (thanks for asking), he went on to do some freelance words for various places, including Kotaku, Den of Geek, and TheSixthAxis, before landing a full time gig at UNILAD in 2016.