These days, game companies and developers are monetizing their games to their full potential. It's not enough to sell a game just once: If you don't sell extra content, you could be leaving millions of dollars on the table.

We're seeing this kind of upsell everywhere, including big name titles like "grand Theft auto 5", "Assassin's Creed" and most recently "Battlefront 2"

So, why is this happening? Because it works.

It's super effective
More likely than not, you've paid for an add-on in a video game. People do it all the time, for mobile games like "Candy Crush" and "Clash of Clans," two of the top grossing apps in the App Store. People love spending money on downloadable content because they want more from it, or want to be the best. But in some cases, it's a purchase to allow you to continue a game after losing lives or being stuck.

In some cases, game companies create and sell extra downloadable content out of necessity: To keep the business running, and to give customers more content for the games they like to play. But in many cases, selling extra content has been twisted.

 

Today's video games have Hollywood-esque budgets - some of them, including "Grand Theft Auto 5" and "Destiny," have hundred million-dollar budgets. But once these companies recoup their costs for making and marketing these games, they want to make a nice profit, too. But that's all they want, profit. There is no care for the satisfaction of the customer, for example, millions of people purchased Grand Theft Auto V and of those millions of people, most of them have been waiting for content to be available in single player campaign. This content never made its way to single player campaign because of Rockstar focusing solely on online content which requires a heavy grind to earn or subsequently you can purchase Shark cards with real currency for in-game currency.

"Grand Theft Auto 5" was estimated to cost around $137 million all the way up to $265 million.

But game publishers face a few constraints: Console game prices have been locked at $60 for awhile - it's been a longstanding fear that consumers won't be willing to pay more than $60 up front for a video game. And even if you sell millions of copies of your $60 game, not all of that money goes to the game company. These companies get even less money when the game is eventually retailed at a discount. And it certainly doesn't help that the world's largest game retailer, GameStop, makes more than half its profits on used game sales - sales that publishers see no money from.

So, to be profitable, game companies need to milk their games for more money - but they can't raise the price of the game itself without risking backlash from consumers. That's where microtransactions and downloadable content come into play.

Good for business, bad for customers
In recent years, we've seen companies take content they've already developed for their games and put it behind a paywall, asking for $20-$30 to access the "season pass." This is even happening with the newest "Star Wars" game coming later this year, "Star Wars: Battlefront 2." People are criticizing Electronic Arts for removing content from the original game only to sell it back later as downloadable content you have to pay for.

The problem with microtransactions and DLCs is that it makes the initial standalone game feel incomplete by default. It forces people to constantly shell out money just to play the full game they wanted to play. So while these practices work, they also hurt consumer confidence, and games in general.

BIg game makers NEED TO STOP microtransactions now! Or people will vote with their wallets and stop paying for them entirely.