NBA2K20 is a Gambling Casino & EA loot boxes!

Every single year 2K be doing this shit, it'd be hilarious if it wasn't so sad and repulsive. I don't want to catch another ban, that will be overturned because of how disgusting 2K actually is, so I'm just going to quote my old post from last year to describe how I really feel about it.

Didn't buy 2K18 won't be buying 2K19 and I fucking loooooooove basketball videogames. But VC completely killed it for me and 2K can go die in the fucking trashfire this franchise has become. It's funny because the way to get good at nba2K involves getting a real job and investing the funds you get from your real job into this virtual one. They literally value your hours played at cents if you convert your vc earnings back into dollars, you can pay 25$ to ball or you know grind for 250 fucking hours. This is not a game you can play casually, it either requires undying devotion or extra money that's the end of it.

The developers, ceo, and everyone involved in this shitfest of a franchise are the most tonedeaf assholes they can possible be too. They're disgusting, fetid, repulsive, and amoral leeches siphoning as much wealth as they can out of an increasingly limited playerbase. The only thing they patch with a swiftness are the VC glitches everything else will languish going unpatched for months or sometimes never. If people complain their moneygrubbing fuckery is becoming too pervasive they'll call you entitled. National governments are telling them to fucking stop and their response is to throw a shitfit on the internet and beg fans with stockholm syndrome to go lobby for them like they aren't astroturfing the shit out of this anyway.

They've got advertising on advertising and you have to pay to buy their advertising (with real money) because it gives you an advertising level of advantage on the court and it's insulting. 2k isn't a videogame it's a social experiment to see what it takes to grind souls into tiny nubs willing to drop dollars on virtual baller skills & outfits. I complained about this in 2014 http://thevgpress.com/forumtopics/next-gen-macrotransactions-the-biggest-threat-to-gaming_2616.html and it has only gotten exponentially worse since. I'm super annoyed (salty?) because I'd like to play some 2K basketball but I can't be buying videogames this morally reprehensible. So in summary eat a massive frozen turdcicle 2K.


I believe NBA2K’s microtransactions are predatory beyond what is now considered the norm in videogaming. Virtual currency has infected and grown its slimy tendrils into every part of nba2k like some sort of malignant virus or a cancerous tumor. You cannot engage with the game on any level without continually rebuffing attempts to get you to spend more money. It is psychological warfare, that preys on the weak, in basketball videogame form, and I honestly believe that the people that implement, maintain, optimize and otherwise strategize on methods for making this system of abuse “better” are people of questionable moral fiber.

I find it disingenuous to claim that these people are incapable of objectively evaluating how their systemized monetization of player desires is leading people into some bad places. I’m sure they have people with degrees in psychology or related fields that understand operant conditioning, variable ratio scheduling, and the other psychological phenomena they abuse to encourage spending far better than I do. These people are also capable of assessing the negative consequences of the systems they implement and any ignorance claimed on their part is undoubtedly feigned.

So if you’re armed with that knowledge and continue to implement and weaponize these predatory and abusive systems you’re not a good person. If you’re unable to muster any pushback from within your development structure to this systemized abuse you’re not a good developer. If you’re a publisher that requires this level of abuse to be implemented by your developers you’re not a good publisher. And if your CEO is out there on the internet calling your paying customers entitled that’s just a bad look. Everyone is complicit.

If your game has to launch with a head start pay to win special edition that isn’t actually special outside of the included virtual currency you’re already starting off questionably. If you continue on to lower the payouts and rewards after reviewers are done reviewing you’re entering sleazeball territory. But if you do all of the additional things 2k does beyond that it just becomes unquestionably repugnant on a multitude of levels.

2K will get you to invest real currency into an rpg style character-archetype system and then re-balance the game to the point where that character is no longer fun to play and you cannot respec or otherwise recoup VC. They sell perishable multiplayer enabled stat boosting items that require constant repurchasing. They will lower the payout on gameplay rewards and increase the cost of virtual items as the game gets further away from release. They include both in game and video based advertising and a lot of it is unskippable. They have a casino with a literal wheel of fortune but it’s not gambling… The list goes on…

And then the game actually includes real gambling with the ante up mode letting you wager on the outcome of games. Some kid could buy $99 worth of virtual currency and end up losing all of it over the course of a few games against some online basketball shark. Let that sink in for a second. They try to skirt rules and regulations and try to manipulate their fan base to ratify it, but ultimately it’s gambling. I mean, It’s an even worse and more predatory version of gambling because the house never has to pay out and incurs 0 risk.

And then they’ll still sell loot boxes, permanent & temporary stat increases, cosmetics, cards, and whatever else they can think of. But hey at least the hair is free now... smh…


As a game the entire thing is structured so you always feel like you’re missing something that you think you need to have fun. And that thing is always a massive grind or a cash transaction away. Nba2k is rarely fun though, at best it’s fun in a maybe this’ll actually be fun after 250 hours or $99 kind of way.

So when you add all of the above up it’s evident that large parts, if not the entirety of their corporate structure, from the uncaring disinterested community manager on up, have been completely corrupted in the chase of the almighty whale dollar. Furthermore If you look at some of the deceitful bad faith tactics 2K routinely engages in, like providing special edition review copies, pressuring reviewers to remove low scores, attempting to manipulate your fanbase into a lobbying force, and more it paints a picture of a pustulent, fetid, rotten, amoral, and greed driven corporate culture that only seeks to enrich itself. Smaug sitting on a mountain of gold...


I’m sorry if calling 2k out on their predatory nonsense is upsetting to some here but it needs to be done repeatedly and with increasing intensity. Corporations do not need to be afforded special protections and if they’re doing morally repugnant things I’m going to call that out using language appropriate for dealing with monolithic, morally bankrupt, vile, disgusting entities.

Worst part is I'm voting with my wallet like people say, I'm not buying these games, but it doesn't even matter because they keep getting worse and more manipulative ever year to cover lost sales revenue. I'd really like to play a basketball game but I literally can't give a company this disgusting my money.

I love how this trailer is only scratching the surface of 2K's entire microtransaction scheme and is already disgusting, it's just myteam which is honestly a disgusting mode but it's almost quaint compared to how manipulative some of their other modes, like MyPlayer, are. I've been complaining about this for so long and it's frustrating since there's 0% chance they'll change without government or regulatory intervention. At this point I'm sure they're selling way less copies than they used to but since they're selling a virtual casino for whales they're coming out ahead.

I mean this was in last year's game:

They got away with that with 0 repercussions and they will get away with this shit with 0 repercussions outside of one youtube video with a bad ratio and some pundit commentary from sterling, angry joe, yong yea and the like.