I agree with absolutely everything that you said except... Overwatch.

While I have a huge distaste for lootboxes, especially in AAA titles, Overwatch is probably the "least bad" system for it that I've run into.

Call of Duty for example, specifically Black Ops 3. I played at least 1,000 hours of that game, and boy oh boy did they go all in on lootbox shit.

So... before it releases they claim "ONLY COSMETICS IN BOXES"

Which was true... for maybe two weeks.

Then they put in Melee weapons. They "claim" that the intention was to have different "melee skins" but 2-3 of the melee weapons were outright better than others. They could swing faster (the animation to "stab" someone was quicker) and they had a larger "range" (the weapons used a cone hitbox, and any enemy in the hitbox would be "lunged at" and would count as a kill)

So... they eventually "fix" that. And then they start putting weapons into the boxes. And yes, almost every single weapon was META FOTM until it got nerfed (usually 1-3 months after release) which meant people would just DUMP cash into boxes to get "the good weapon" for the month.

And best part? YOU CAN GET DUPLICATES!

YOU. CAN. GET. DUPLICATES.

You CANT get duplicates in Overwatch. You CANT get "better heroes" in Overwatch. You CANT get better weapons in Overwatch.

The only things you can get from lootboxes in Overwatch are:

• Skins

• "Coins" to buy pretty much any skin (not limited edition ones or ones released during esports events)

Note: I'd much rather there be NO boxes at all in Overwatch, especially since its a priced game and not F2P. But its a pretty "poor" example of predatory lootboxes.

I even tried to see how many boxes I got for free by not opening them. In a week I got around 30 free boxes, granted I had come back from the game after a while so my count might be off by 5 or so. In a game like Apex Legends for example? I played for a week and got 0 free boxes.