I’ve seen a lot of confusion about Pokemon Unite over the past couple of weeks. The general consensus appears to be that the game itself is excellent – it’s a Pokemon MOBA that’s not really a Pokemon game or a MOBA, but it takes the best bits of both of those premises and streamlines them into something as approachable as it is competitive. One thing people have unanimously agreed on, however, is that its microtransactions are bad. I mean, obviously – anything with loot boxes should, almost always, just not have loot boxes. I agree with you.
This sentiment, however, has been wrenched into a totally different argument with no solid rationale behind it: that Pokemon Unite is pay-to-win. There are advantages to pumping money into Pokemon Unite, sure, but I don’t think there’s any reasonable way to argue that it’s essential. I’ve played well over 100 matches and haven’t spent a cent. I’m ranked relatively high and, if anything, I’m slowly but surely climbing higher. If I thought this game was pay-to-win, I’d lambast it on account of being pigeonholed into low ranks doomed to be riddled with unsatisfying, messy play. I’m climbing because Pokemon Unite isn’t pay-to-win – it’s competitive based on merit and skill. If you’re good, you will win.
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The crux of the argument isn’t tied to buying new Unite Licenses, which are what allow you to play as specific Pokemon in the first place. With around 30 hours played, I’ve earned enough to buy at least four of these licenses from completing challenges and earning daily rewards alone. The loot box system – known as the Energy Exchange in Unite – is mostly cosmetic, with the only reward capable of actionably improving your chances at winning being item enhancers. This is what people are referring to when they mention pay-to-win mechanics – that pumping money into the game allows you to max out your held items, netting you permanent buffs in every match you play.
This is a big deal, obviously. If I come up against a Lucario with +5 percent attack damage and I have zilch, they’re going to have an advantage. How prominent is it though? Is the player even good? Have you put more than a couple of hours in? Are you completing Battle Pass challenges to earn your own item enhancers? In my honest opinion, held items hardly even matter until you hit the upper echelon of ranked play. Nobody playing in Veteran or below is good enough to actually benefit from these buffs – if you’re playing Slowbro and an Absol deals higher damage than you, you can lure it into an unfavourable position and use Telekinesis to prime it for your team. You can bait Pursuit and use Amnesia to leave it vulnerable, you can play in your own zone, or you can – and probably should – just escape because this is not a fight you should be taking one on one regardless of how good you think you are.
And sure, maybe this Absol is a great player. Great players are going to climb, though – they’re not going to hang around in the Beginner, Great, or Expert divisions, and so you’re never going to come across anyone capable of exploiting their held item advantage unless you’re already good enough to be playing at a higher level than that. If you manage to hit Veteran or higher, sure, this becomes a real issue. But to do that, you’re going to have to put a lot of hours in – and by doing that, you’re going to earn item enhancers regardless of whether you spend any money. This problem is a complete non-issue in so many ways that it’s actively harmful to thoughtful discussion about the actual issue with Unite’s microtransactions: predation.
Pokemon Unite is a Pokemon game – obviously. But one thing Pokemon games all have in common is that they’re aimed at kids. While the Switch has parental controls capable of limiting or barring spending, not every parent out there is tech-savvy. There are multiple currencies in this game, which is a common tactic employed to make real-money valuation murky and difficult, even for adults. This is very consciously a system designed to entice kids into spending money on fancy Unite Licenses and clothing items and – you guessed it! – item enhancers. Except really, I don’t think five-year-olds are even going to buy item enhancers, which is ironic when you consider the full spectrum of Unite’s problematic microtransactions – kids are going to buy Charizard and Charizard clothing, they don’t care about upgrading their Muscle Band. It’s not that it’s pay-to-win. It’s that, for a lot of young people, it is intentionally made to be involuntarily pay-to-play. This aspect of Unite is dirty – it’s shameless and shameful in equal measure. By moaning about pay-to-win circumstances that don’t actually exist, you’re diverting attention away from the real problem and detracting from important discussions that need to be had.
If you’re playing at Master rank, sure, you can complain about held items all you want. I mean, I have somewhere around 30 hours played and have already half-maxed out four different items, so you must be spending pretty inefficiently if you’re at that level and don’t have a bunch of level 25+ items. But that’s not important – who cares if a Shell Bell is level eight or 18? The issue is that kids both eight and 18 can spend their parents’ hard-earned money on Greninja without even knowing what they’re doing, and that entire transaction is consciously designed to ensure that is emphatically the case: that the kid is not aware of the transaction itself.
Pokemon Unite has really bad microtransaction issues – that much is true. It’s not pay-to-win, though, and the more you say it is, the worse the situation gets.
Next: Pokemon Unite's First Patch Notes Are A Worrying Sign For The Future
