sky: cotl — the good, the bad and the money

this is going to be a long rant about sky: children of the light, if you don't like to hear me complaining about the game or giving minor spoilers, please don't continue. this is a complaint from someone who is genuinely sad, but not angry. please don't take my words as anger, I still love the game and from time to time still hop on

onwards with the ranting 

so, i’ve been playing sky: children of the light, for the past 3-4 years. yeah, i’m a veteran, an ikimen, a crow, whatever you wanna call, someone who’s put in over a thousand hours into this. i’ve seen more than ten seasons come and go, unlocked every map, and spent way too much time and on this game. it used to be my escape, but man, it’s gotten frustrating over the years.

sky’s supposed to be a chill game where you collect candles, dress up your character, explore worlds, decorate your home, and hang out with friends. and for a while, it was. but now? it feels more like a second job than a relaxing hobby.

the game is beautiful, I love how much you connect with people through such simple means, the lack of chat prevents toxicity, the usage of emotes, the picking weather you meet people or not. but it makes you raise an eyebrow to know that this game has existed for 5 years and only recently they added the unfriend button...

candles are the main currency in sky, and if you want enough of them, you’ve got to grind... hard. to hit the daily cap of 20 candles, you have to run through six maps by hand. no automation, no shortcuts, just you grinding for 40-60 minutes per map. that’s 4+ hours a day just to max out your candles. and for what? most cosmetics cost 40-50 candles at least, and the ones from traveling spirits — which you have to wait to get — can come up to a total of 250 candles. that’s two weeks of grinding for a spirit that shows up every two weeks.

speaking of traveling spirits, they’re supposed to let free-to-play players grab cosmetics they missed during past seasons. great idea, right? except it’s not so great when the cheapest spirit costs 150 candles now, and the more expensive ones go for 250 or more. back in the day, 150 was the most you’d pay, and now it’s the starting point. how many days of grinding is that? 13 days for the expensive spirits, and that’s assuming you play 4 hours every single day. if you don’t have that kind of time, your only other option is to buy candle packs with actual money.

and let’s not forget hearts. they’re supposed to be this alternative currency for emotes and certain items, but they’re ridiculously hard to get. sure, you can collect light from your friend constellation, but if your friends don’t light your candles, you’re fucked. trading hearts is an option, but only with the same player once a day, and it costs three candles per trade. that’s a big chunk out of your 20-candle daily limit. buying hearts from spirits? that gets you one heart every two weeks. and even then, most traveling spirits need six or seven hearts for a single emote. it’s absurd.

don't even get me started about in-app purchases (iaps). back in the day, there were one or two iaps per event. manageable, sure. but now? every event has three or more iaps, ranging from $5 to $30. and don’t even get me started on how this pricing affects players in countries like brazil or india, where the costs aren’t localized. a $10 pass might be a small splurge in the u.s., but elsewhere, it’s a big deal. by big deal i mean two whole ass meals.

and seasons? they’re supposed to be the highlight of the game, but they’ve turned into a grindfest too. even if you drop $10 on the season pass, you’re not guaranteed the ultimate gift. you’ve got to unlock every single item to get it, and if you miss even one, guess what? you're also fucked. for $10, you’d think the ultimate gift would be included, but nope.

lately, tgc (that game company) has been running back-to-back seasons and events, and it’s exhausting. they’ve even added a furniture store so you can decorate your in-game home, which sounds fun until you see the prices. a single table costs 75 candles—that’s almost four days of grinding for one piece of furniture.

and don’t even get me started on eden candles. to earn them, you’ve got to do a full map run, sit through five long cutscenes, and deal with “the death,” all for a miserable 13 candles at max. sure, you can get eden candles from red shards, but those show up randomly. you need a bot on discord just to track them, and then clearing a shard can take 8-20 minutes depending on how many people help. and for all that effort? you get 2.5 eden candles.

the game’s also full of glitches, and instead of fixing them, tgc keeps adding new events and iaps. “days of feast” for christmas? fine. “days of halloween”? makes sense. but now we’ve got “days of daylight,” “days of moonlight,” and “days of style.” what even is “days of moonlight”? just another excuse to push more iaps, if you ask me.

at this point, sky has lost a lot of what made it special. it used to be a relaxing escape, but now it’s all grind and greed. i still love it—i really do—but it’s hard to ignore how much it’s changed, and not for the better. it alienates me how much it feels like they (tgc) don't care for their player base.

im fully convinced tgc is driven by money, weather it is for personal gain or for the sake for having money is a harder question. it's clear they focus on quantity and not quality, shown by what I just complained. daily tasks? season after season? manual grinding? it's to keep an online player base. what happens when you push the player base so much your game becomes a job? you loose their interest and don't gain revenue through those numbers, having to resort to more IAPs to fund your project like the sky series they've been promising for years.

it's truly saddening