Loot Boxes have existed for over a decade in games like ZT Online and Lord of the Rings: Online... The first AAA non-online, non-free game to have Loot Boxes was actually Mass Effect 3 in 2012 which was then followed up by Counter Strike Global Offensive.

Blizzard is NOT to blame for this, they just jumped on an already moving bandwagon.
Though, they do deserve the criticism they get considering it was a AAA game with no singleplayer, minimal amount of maps and game modes, so it wasn't exactly content rich to justify the price tag to begin with. (Heck, it still isn't content rich.)

With that... We could actually place the blame at Bethesda's feet with Oblivion thanks to Horse Armor, which proved to all developers that placing a price tag on even mundane pieces of digital content can turn allot of money, which in my opinion is when the beginning of the end started.

In short though... People keep paying for Microtransactions, DLC and Loot Boxes... Companies are out to turn a profit, if people keep buying them, then companies will keep providing them, it is the consumers onus to take responsibility and say "no" and vote with their wallets if they truly wish to put a stop to all this rubbish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMDGPSWWA18
totalbiscuit agrees with me that it is overwatch who started it

Yeah but why wasnt there an upset when overwatch was released from these so called gamers? I certaintly bitched about the price tag and no singleplayer and how it was overhyped by gamers. People literraly have this mentality that Blizzard cant do anything wrong unlike with EA.

i agree but so are Square, Capcom, KT and Bandai Namco

for now

Remember when Nintendo didn't charge for online? Nintendo doesn't really need loot boxes right now when they just found a brand new avenue to milk their fans. And with the Switch being quite successful right now the next shady shit they do is probably gonna take a while. Nintendo has a different business model. Instead of increasing revenue, they just decrease their costs while keeping their prices stable. The consumer still pays for it though, one way or another.

You're purposely leaving out all the advantages that paying for an online service has, for the sake of being misleading. What other service allows you to use an innovative integrated phone app? And if they do, I doubt it's free? 

I don't have to remember because it's still happening, and yes I realise that they are set to charge a fee in 2018 but the big difference between that and loot crates is that it doesn't change the fairness of the game. When the paid Nintendo online service starts the people on there will all have a subscription and when you get shot in the back of the head in Splatoon 2 you'll know you were beaten fair and square instead of being left to wonder whether the reason you're getting spanked is because someone spent real world money for the best gun.

Loot Boxes are Cancer, and We’re Letting it Kill Gaming.

I think I am partially to blame about this situation. Instead of reporting the problem when it first happened I decided to talk about other things. I briefly mentioned the Loot box problem when I made my post about Nintendo’s anti-consumer practice. And I got several amounts of backlash because “I was a Nintendo fanboy”, Completely missing the point I tried to get across.

Gamers, Loot Boxes are a huge problem that’s been allowed to happen by the gamers. From the very beginning, when Blizzard made this practice with Overwatch this shouldn’t have been allowed. Cosmetic or not, game-breaking or not, we allowed this cancer of gaming to devour us when it was a minor thing.

continiue reading here

https://geekreply.com/geek-culture/2017/10/11/loot-boxes-cancer-letting-kill-gaming

I think the deeper, more relevant question is: Why do people accept to pay for such questionable implementations? Why are the masses so stupid? No one should buy a game that contains those pay walls whether micro-transactions or loot boxes and as long as these are on games I have no interest in like COD, GTA, Shadow of War, Overwatch or the Star-Wars games, I am fine with it, let the dumb stuff to the games made for the masses. But my concern is that sooner or later it could spread to more quality, hardcore games, like the Dark Souls games, The Last of US, Nier Automata, Bioshocks and so on. How long until the cancer reaches the good games?

Loot boxes lock out game content from non paying customers.

Paid online locks out game content from non paying customers.

Find the difference.

All I'm saying is you shouldn't praise Nintendo too quickly for not using the most shady practice of the day. They're getting there and on the way there they're gonna find new ways to save money or squeeze more money out of customers. It's not gonna get better, it's not even gonna stay the same. And as I said, Nintendo right now doesn't need shady stuff to increas their revenue when they already do enough shady stuff to save costs on the back of consumers.