Latest/ October 9, 2021/

Marvel’s Avengers Adds Paid XP and Resource Boosts, Breaking Earlier Promises

Marvel’s Avengers has been a commercial success, but the game’s early promises to be free-to-play have been broken. Players are now forced to pay for in-game currency and resource boosts, making it less accessible to casual players.

Marvel’s Avengers has been released, and it adds a new currency that players can use to purchase XP boosts and resource packs. This is breaking earlier promises that the game would not have any microtransactions.

Image courtesy of Crystal Dynamics

Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics have introduced paid XP and resource boosts to Marvel’s Avengers, enabling players to spend real money to have their heroes advance faster. The move has already sparked considerable debate, since the creators had previously said that Marvel’s Avengers will not include any pay-to-win elements. Cosmetics were intended to be the only products to be monetized.

During a presentation for the game at E3 2019, senior community manager Meagan Marie remarked, “Our commitment to the community is that we won’t have random treasure boxes or pay-to-win scenarios.”

Scot Amos, the studio’s CEO, reiterated that sentiment in an interview with GamesIndustry.biz a week later. “From the start, we wanted you to be able to personalize your hero in terms of how they appear, how they play, the gear they have, and how they utilize it,” Amos said. “Depending on what you like and how you unlock things, your Black Widow may vary from mine — just a bit, or a lot.” Cosmetics will be one of the ways we monetize. There are no paywalls in the game.”

In a post detailing how Marvel’s Avengers’ gears and cosmetics system will function on September 27, 2020, Square Enix and Crystal Dynamics wrote:

We’ve also promised that all real-money content in Marvel’s Avengers will be cosmetic-only updates, ensuring that the game remains new for years to come. The battle against AIM is only getting started; there’s a lot more narrative and a lot more heroes on the way.

Square Enix’s new monetization strategy for Marvel’s Avengers seems to indicate that the company is still frantically attempting to recover losses on the game, which have allegedly totaled over $40 million so far. On September 30, the game was launched on Xbox Game Pass.

r/PlayAvengers is the source of this information.