The $50 ‘Green Fee’

Photo by Eduard Delputte on Unsplash

Back in the spring of 2011, I was a kid enjoying an experience as essential to childhood as youth itself. Playing hookie.

I coughed, spoke in a raspy voice, lumbered about lethargically through the house, and though in hindsight I believe my mom knew all along, she played along with me. Later that day I tagged along with her to the grocery store, and on the way out, she allowed me to rent a single dvd from Redbox. 

On a whim I chose NBA 2K11. By the time I went to bed that night, my eyes were red, my vision blurred with the multicolored grain of a tv screen, and my imagination was racing. 

My whole life I had been a basketball fan. I grew up playing the game. I lived in Michigan back when the Pistons won the championship in 2004, and still harbor fond memories of trips to the Palace at Auburn Hills, but this opened my eyes to so much more.

It breathed the mythos of the game. Echoed the iconography of the greats in everything down to the beautifully balanced and meticulously planned UI. I played every mode I could get my hands on. Franchise, the Jordan Challenge, some archaic form of what would later be called blacktop, but the crown jewel of the game and the apple of my bloodshot eyes, was the mycareer mode.

An experience that allowed you to create your own player, play on an NBA team, and steadily grow your legend by doing everything from scoring 30 points a night, to signing brand deals with the man adorning the games cover.

I was enthralled, maybe even a little bit obsessed. I now had a virtual playground to explore every intricate detail and hidden nuance of the game I loved. I learned the stories of the game's founding fathers through the game's announcers and their special “2K insider”. I studied the moves that were effective in the game, and then went to my local park to practice them myself.

I played the game until my console hummed like a jet engine. And when 2K12 came out I did the same. I kept up with the franchise until 2K17, when my love of video games was interrupted by everything the world of high school offers. 

Eventually, after I got my hands on a PS5 and finally succumbed to the good natured nagging of some of my closest friends, I gave the franchise another shot.

It was 2K23, and almost immediately, the game felt different, foreign even. It felt umistakavly modern, which may sound obvious and a bit detached. Like the sour grumbling of an old man on his porch. But the game that I wasn’t looking to cater to the current culture, it was aiming to be a reflection of the sport as a cumulative event. An homage to its past and an ode to its present.

So be it. Maybe I was just getting older and losing touch. But the next thing really caught my attention. 

As I went about constructing my player, I encountered the need to buy VC, or virtual currency. 

That was fine. I remembered VC from years ago. It had been around even back when I last played. Back then, a modest $20 could launch your player from a fringe rotation guy to an all-world superstar. It wasn’t free, sure, but it was manageable. You paid a little, leveled the field, and then the game itself took over.

But when I went to purchase VC this time, it quickly became clear things had changed.

That same $20 that once unlocked the playground now barely nudged the gate open. My player, fresh off a purchase, sat at an 80 overall, a respectable rating if your dream was to be a marginal role player. If I wanted to become the player 2K built its mythology on, the kind of player who could carry a team, who could belong among the giants, I would need to spend much more.

$50, to be exact.

At the time, I paid it with a resigned shrug. After all, everything costs more nowadays. I finished building my player, took to the online courts with my friends, and settled into the new reality.

It wasn’t until the weeks after Christmas that I truly understood what I had paid for.

The servers flooded with new players, many of them first-timers who had unwrapped the game just days before. Games that had once been pitched battles became easier, at first, a welcome change. But it didn’t take long for the cracks to show.

One night, we matched against a player with a 65 overall rating. It was clear they knew how to play. Their release timing was precise. Their instincts were sound. And yet, their shots refused to fall. Each one clanged off the rim, the feedback reading “slightly early” or “slightly late”, never “perfect,” never “green.”

Watching it unfold, I muttered, “He’s greening these. They’re just not going in.”

My friend replied, almost casually, “Yeah. Didn’t pay the green fee.”

The words hit me harder than I expected.

It wasn’t about paying to win anymore. It was about paying to participate. Paying not to dominate, but just to have a seat at the table.

Without that $50, that kid on the other end of the screen could have been Steph Curry himself and it wouldn’t have mattered.

The game wasn’t built to recognize skill. It was built to recognize payment.

And so the playground I had once wandered wide-eyed as a child had transformed. It was no longer a place of exploration or joy. It was a gated country club with a cashier at the door.

To be clear, microtransactions aren’t a uniquely 2K phenomenon. They’re the currency of modern gaming. But where many games sell cosmetics, skins, dances, aesthetic flourishes, 2K has done something subtler and more cynical.

They haven’t created a pay-to-win model. They’ve created a pay-to-play one.

Buying VC doesn’t give you an advantage. It simply ensures you aren’t hopelessly outclassed. Sure, you can grind VC by playing thousands of games, enduring endless hours of low-rated frustration. Technically, the ladder is there. Realistically, almost no one climbs it. The choice is stark: sacrifice your wallet, or sacrifice your time.

And when you step back, it feels especially cruel because 2K isn’t just any game. It’s a cultural ambassador. 2K22 sold over 10 million copies. For millions of kids, especially those in underprivileged communities, it’s not just a game; it’s a doorway into basketball’s rich history, its culture, its mythos. The same doorway I stepped through back in 2011.

Basketball has always been a game of accessibility.

All you needed was a ball, a hoop, and a little bit of room. The courts of Brooklyn gave us the Shammgod. The streets of Oakland gave us Dame Time. The concrete playgrounds of New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles birthed creativity, swagger, and grit, styles that eventually reshaped the NBA itself.

Basketball was beautiful because it was available.

Now, in its most popular digital form, it isn’t.

The irony is staggering. The very spirit that made basketball global, the ease, the freedom, the lack of barriers, is being eroded by a franchise that owes its existence to that spirit. Sure, you can still technically “play” 2K without buying VC.

But you’ll never play with it. Not the way it was meant to be played.

I understand business. I’m not blind to the reality that revenue drives the industry. 2K has become enormously profitable because of VC. But it’s hard to celebrate “financial genius” when it comes at the cost of accessibility, authenticity, and ultimately, the soul of the game.

There was a time when $60 bought you the whole experience. When you could pick up a controller, build your legend, and lose yourself in the endless possibilities. Now, $120 barely buys you a fighting chance.

Business is business, and what the shareholders request must be upheld. But it would be nice if every once in a while, in things as inconsequential and leisurely important as video games, we stopped and asked what are we doing, and who are we leaving behind?