There are a lot of problems with this. I’ll put them in a neat list, because I like those.
- Not everybody bought Conan Exiles at release nor bought the Battle Pass. Taken to the logical extreme, your response implies buying every game and Battle Pass in case I become interested later. It’s unreasonable, if not “screw you, I got mine.” It’s also real bad for newbies.
- You imply the exclusive Battle Pass business model is functional. The number of games that used this model and died can fill a graveyard, if not several. For every barely-functional game using this system, there are ten dead ones. It just does not work.
- The most popular games of the modern day don’t use it at all, use a modified version that lets you progress past Passes, or let you directly buy the rewards once the season ends. They do this for a reason. A lot of them are owned by Tencent too, so there’s no excuse.
- Oh right, as evidenced above: the work on the content is already done. It’s essentially cutting off a revenue stream that LoL has proven to be very popular because maybe it’ll make a bit of money in the short-term… and trash consumer goodwill and retention in return?
- Exclusive content is a misnomer. The files are on everyones’ computer, which is why you can show it off. The moment live support drops for the game, it’s not exclusive anymore - and it isn’t for cosmetic hackers right now anyway. If you have a problem with it, neither you nor Funcom would be taking it to court - you’ll get dumpstered by the fact you provide the files, don’t sell it, and so on.
- Finally, it’s just morally garbage. I want to pay the talented artists for their work, and can’t because some arbitrary system makes hacking it in the only alternative. This is money they don’t get that could be going to the people who made stuff I like. Same reason companies like SE now sell FF1 and so-on via Steam when, prior, they didn’t. They learned, why can’t Funcom?