Abstract
This dissertation examines how player communities in live-service PC games construct and contest the fairness of microtransaction models, drawing on a comparative analysis of three structurally distinct cases: Diablo IV (cosmetic store and battle pass), Destiny 2 (expansion and seasonal pass), and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (loot box and marketplace). Working within a Critical Discourse Analysis framework adapted from Fairclough, the study analyses publicly accessible player-generated texts, principally Steam reviews supplemented by Reddit and official forum discussion, to identify the linguistic and rhetorical strategies through which fairness and exploitation become communally legible. Engagement metrics are used contextually rather than causally, resulting in situating discourse within identifiable moments of community contestation rather than positing direct relationships between sentiment and retention. The analysis demonstrates that fairness is not a fixed property of monetisation systems, but a discursive construct produced through community interpretation, that distinct monetisation architectures generate distinct framing strategies, and that exploitation framings encompass not only economic extraction but also developer-community communication, temporal pressure, and perceived violations of franchise legacy.
The findings contribute to game studies scholarship by foregrounding player communities as sites of critical discourse where the ethics of platform-mediated commerce are actively negotiated.