Ah, good old Tencent.
I remember how I played Crossfire, back when it was just starting. Truth be told, I don't know if it was always owned by Tencent, but the game turned beyond garbage.
When I logged in for the first time most of the content was f2p, quite literally there was only one entirely cosmetic character model you had to pay to get it.
The rest was like IP/RP system we have in LoL, with a twist; you can rent a weapon for a day, a week, a month or perm for either in-game currency or $$$.
Now, 3 years after I stopped playing and about 5 since I started, 90%+ of the content is Pay 2 Win.
Like, they added a chest system, which you could buy for Crossfire's IP or RP. At first it was 50/50, like 2 f2p chests and 2 premium ones.
When I checked it half a year ago the number of $$-exclusive chests is about 5-7 times as high as f2p ones.
Same for buyable content.
How does it fare for Riot Games and League?
So far we had skins price adjustment and since then most of newly released once were, in fact, more expensive. Hell, when was the last time a new champion had their launch skin priced at 975 RP?
"But muh new spell sounds", said Katey explaining why Fire Diana is 40% more expensive than L.Goddess Diana.
Then we have Hextech System in which it's pretty much impossible to get enough key fragments to open all chests, basically saying, "Go to the shop and spend $$$ to unlock me!".
Of course then there's also Dynamic Queue which caters to casuals and fucks up matchmaking balance by allowing any number of people make premade lobbies and play aganist unorganized parties of any size or solo players.
Not to mention back in the day, when they introduced Ladder Overlay to ranked queue, so people wouldn't feel bad about their rank, or so they'd feel like they're making progress.
Or when they made it impossible to get demoted from Gold for inactivity, so casual players can get all rewards despite not actually playing ranked.
