I don’t want to excuse Valve’s involvement as they definitely shouldn’t have joined on the wagon, but Valve jumped on an already existing wagon, they didn’t create it. MapleStory did it like 6 years before Valve, and EA did it with FIFA almost a year before Valve with TF2.
The first FIFA game with lootboxes was 09 which came out in 2009. MapleStory’s apparently did predate TF2’s; but only by 3 years (2004 vs 2007), and it was only available in the Japanese version of the game.
I don’t want to excuse Valve’s involvement as they definitely shouldn’t have joined on the wagon, but Valve jumped on an already existing wagon, they didn’t create it. MapleStory did it like 6 years before Valve, and EA did it with FIFA almost a year before Valve with TF2.
The first FIFA game with lootboxes was 09 which came out in 2009. MapleStory’s apparently did predate TF2’s; but only by 3 years (2004 vs 2007), and it was only available in the Japanese version of the game.
TF2 didn’t originally have lootboxes though. They weren’t added until the Mann crates in 2010
Riiiiight… Man, was it really that far away? It didnt feel like it back then.