I would blame call of duty advanced warfare or halo 5 before something like overwatch. AW and Halo 5 were literally pay to win, and honestly the first and only times I bought microtransactions (I do regret it and will not exploit the system ever again).

The thing is that they had a better 'lootbox' system in place already. In the card packs of Hearthstone, wich also happen to be...you know...free to play.

Also it actually allows you to disentchant anything you don't want or need, so you don't sit on a bunch of useless stuff. Figures that they would put a far worse economy into a game that people actually had to pay for.

Team Fortress 2 wasn't free to play for a looooooooooooooooooonnnnnnggg ass time

Op's campaign against the PC companies is the funniest shit in the world. 

If you're not satisfied the game you're buying has everything you want for your 60 bucks, don't buy it, or just don't pay full retail and wait for a sale. I personally thought the base game of Overwatch was more than worth what I paid, and the main reason I played was because it was simply a well designed shooter with satisfying, tight controls, with some optional unlockables that had zero effect on my gameplay experience. Never once felt the need to pay for anything else in-game.

What alternative do you think would make a better game? Buy a game like Overwatch, have all the skins in it unlocked on day one? take away the cosmetic bonus's which you earn while you play through ranked modes.

If the loot box/leveling system wouldn't be in overwatch they would need to invest a ton more effort into creating some form of other system such as a single player campaign to give people "progression" and yeah... that's not what Overwatch was designed to be, that wasn't what was required to make Overwatch the game of the year last year.

If you think it would be better that you got the skin you wanted on day one then it wouldn't be in any way special or cool to have it, since it would not have been a reward for doing anything.

This isn't a new thing though, if you go back to the Super Nintendo and you want the content from it all open, you need to sit down and play it for hours, it's all available in OW for free, just play the game and get the items. Or just play the game and don't get the items, either way, they're cosmetic items in a FPS title. for all the difference those make.

Someone would have come up with them sooner or later anyway since they work so well. Maybe it would have taken some more time, but in the end, the result would have been the same.

Now I'm thoroughly convinced Blizzard outright murdered your entire family.

Lootboxes are just cosmetics in competitive esport games like Overwatch, CSGO or LoL, they don't provide any kind of advantage. So what's the problem? And they were introduced waaayyyy before OW. LoL has it since 2009.

Yep.

And you can blame EA/DICE for putting weapons and abilities under a pay wall (and worst of all gambling, at that).

Vote with you wallets people. Don't buy into that bullshit.

Just a note here, if you want a specific skin, you can purchase it with the in-game currency thus removing the gambling aspect. The truly dickish move they did do however was making so the timed event skin weren't purchasable with that currency for the first event. Luckily, they listened to the negative feedback and since then event skins can be purchased with in game gold.