(ORIGINAL REDDIT POST : https://www.reddit.com/r/blackops3/comments/45d2zz/treyarch_friendconsulteeemployee_revealing_what_i/)

Treyarch Friend/Consultee/Employee revealing what I know on the current Microtransaction Controversy. (self.blackops3)

submitted 1 month ago by Dankdaddy007

Alright. I'm going to make this clear up front. My title may or may not be 100% accurate. I am in a position to know exactly what the current situation is at Treyarch/Activision. And what is coming up down the pipeline.

You can choose to believe me or not. But when you start to see this come true you can look back (though plans are tentative).

I've seen constant hate being thrown towards friends/coworkers in the past few days for the current Supply Drop situation. Chances sre, if you can directly tweet them and potentially get a non-PR response. They didn't support or make this decision.

To explain this, we need to go back to Advanced Warfare.

Given my connections, I'm not as keen on what the situation was over at Sledgehammer. But here is what I can gather.

    The number one priority Advanced Warfare had was to keep player retention levels high. This began when CoD Ghost had an extremely poor performance after the 2nd DLC content pack was released.

    The studio came up with the idea of Supply Drops. A way to keep players coming back, since they likely would not unlock all the items they wanted very quickly. THIS DID NOT START OUT AS A MICROTRANSACTIONS CONCEPT.

    December 2014 comes where Activision discusses the game's performance/DLC content development with the studio (This isn't a very formal thing. A lot of this is just emails). Activision cites CS:GO cases, and compares them to Supply Drops. Asking Sledgehammer to do what they can to make that happen, the rest is history.

I have no clue why the supposed Supply Credits were never implemented. I have no idea why the system became more unfair. As I said, more connections at Treyarch than Sledgehammer.

Black Ops 3 did not have Supply Drops until July of last year. At that point, the game was very much complete. They get a direct order to put a concept that could be made into Microtransactions in place, and it's done.

The team didn't want to do this as their content plan was already well in place at that point. But it had to be done. It's not as simple as standing up for yourself and saying "No" in a Multi-Billion dollar industry with a massive publisher breathing down your spine.

Somewhere along the line the Zombies team has to convert an already existing mechanic into one that could be turned into a Microtransaction model. (I guess these are those Mini-Perks you can get in Zombies. I don't play the mode, excuse me for my ignorance.)

The team somewhat negotiates to allow ONLY cosmetic items in supply drops. Activision/Certain figures at Treyarch agree, with a condition that once a Microtransaction system is put into place, it must match the revenue gained from Advanced Supply Drops in the first month.

People on the team who don't want to see that happen quickly create some Knife variants. This is done in about 2 weeks. This is why animations were not consistent for the new knives during their launch. This is done to get Youtuber to have a reason to purchase CoD Points, so their fans will feel the need to do so as well.

3 weeks pass and CoD Points don't sell nearly enough as Advanced Supply Drops. Not by a longshot. I don't have the metrics. But it was at least 5x less than what Advanced Supply Drops sold. In the eyes of those making the decisions, the outlier is easily seen. Gameplay changing items are what people pay for.

At this point, Awakening was practically finished (right before Christmas). There were 2 DLC weapons. The MX Garand, a Pistol, and the MP40 planned to be included with the DLC. This is scrapped entirely.

The MX Garand and a weak pistol (purposefully made a bad weapon, by the way), are finished and put on hold. The MP40 is still on the way. Likely put on hold to make sure the fans don't get too pissed. The weapon may not even be finished at all. (I'll get back to that later).

That's a quick version of what went down, as far as I know.

Why am I letting this be known? Because, contrary to popular belief, the people making these games aren't some rich assholes prying off your pretty penny. These people aren't bringing home anything special from work. A good solid salary? Yes. But nothing off the charts.

People work at these companies. Not these terrible people this somewhat toxic community thinks they are. No one likes being blamed for something they had no control over.

None of this Supply Drop Money is going into the employees pockets. At all. It's all going back into Activision's bank, as far as I'm aware. Potentially higher ups at Treyarch making some money off of these, but those are the ones supporting the ideas anyway.

The reason you haven't seen Vonderhaar talk about this? He is fucking pissed about it. He's discussed with people about leaving his current role after this title due to the backlash he predicted he will receive, when yet he was the one fought against the idea.

He took a vacation this week. He knew exactly what was going down this week and he didn't want any part of it.

I can only imagine the stress on the guy. Fuck. He fought against it the hardest. And now gets all the hate thrown directly at him on twitter. And he is not allowed to say he agrees.

The Future:

As you can imagine, the earnings on CoD Points blew up this past week. The plan worked. I imagine Treyarch will attempt to find ways to help the players receive these items, as they do care about the playerbase. I've heard mentions of Wager Matches returning for Cryptokeys. But CoD points cannot be Wagered due to gambling lawsuit concerns.

What's coming up in Supply Drops?

    More Weapons: I imagine the completely finished MP40 will come out someday.

    New Specialists: They only are planning 2 right now. Maybe even just the one that is finished if they decide they'd rather not make anymore. The plan is to allow this specialist to be purchased seperately as well. They want to do this for weapons as well but there's no chance that will get approved.

    Weapons Skins: Kuda with an MP5 skin. KN-44 with a AK47 skin. The plan was to have these as variants accessible through the Gunsmith system. But with the success of CoD Points, don't be shocked when these inevitably become seperate weapons entirely.

    HUD Skins, Calling Cards, Camoes, Emblem textures, Announcer Packs, and more are all on the table for supply drops.

    More Content behind a Microtransaction paywall is likely to come.

I am not responding to anything. Take everything, as always with a grain of salt. I'm not making promised on the future. Just clearing up the past.