Activision Patented Matchmaking that Encourages Microtransactions

Here's a fun little gem uncovered by the cool cats over at Rolling Stone and reported by Kotaku: apparently, back in 2015, Activision trademarked an innovative matchmaking system that would have rather sneakily encouraged people to spend money on in-game items.

It's actually a fairly clever system. It would have monitored players who purchased certain weapons or items (like, say, a particular laser rifle), and then when they entered matchmaking, the game would try to put them in games or situations where that weapon or item is especially advantageous. The hope, of course, was to encourage people to go to the store and buy more items, because their first purchase worked out so well.

But wait, there's more! Not only did this system give little morale boosts to people who bought in-game items, it would try to push people who haven't bought anything yet into buying certain items by analyzing their behavior. The specific example listed in the patent was sniping: if the game detected you were trying to be a sniper, it would match you against highly-skilled snipers using a store-bought sniper rifle to encourage you to go out and buy a rifle as well.

Kind of gross, right? Well, it wasn't all bad. The matchmaking system also had more benign designs, which let the computer put players in situations or maps that would complement their playstyle. Not that it matters: not soon after the news of this patent was made public, Activision clarified that this was an exploratory patent and that the matchmaking system wasn't used in Destiny 2.

How much of that we can actually believe is up in the air. But for as stupid manipulative as it is, I mean, you can't fault it for not being clever, right? And if there is one good thing to take away from this, it means that if Activision has no plans to use the patent, it's unlikely anyone else will get the rights to use it either.

So who knows? Maybe this is a good thing. Only time will tell.