The NBA 2K franchise's pay-to-win elements have attracted the attention of mainsteam media outlets such as the Washington Post. They've sparked a player protest this season. But there don't appear to any real signs of them slowing down. NBA 2K26's Halloween/Fall event, the Chills Festival, offered a reward that didn't even try to hide its desire to reach for your wallet.
The biggest and best card available was a Pink Diamond LeBron James, which required 3,000 pumpkins to unlock. The reward for winning an offline game during the event? A single pumpkin. Packs granted pumpkins of different rarities, but the reward available in most was a single gold pumpkin. Again, it took 3,000 of those to unlock James. A challenge granted a diamond pumpkin, but during the two weeks of the event players waited for more drops, more opportunities to earn the card through gameplay. None ever came.
The message was clear: only those willing to empty their wallets or play NBA 2K26 for unhealthy amounts of time would get this card. A bundle granting a pink diamond pumpkin (25 of which unlocked James) was available in the store for $100.
I would say this kind of greed isn't sustainable, but NBA 2K has been like this for years now. This year's Chills Festival was even greedier than last year's. Cards that cost thousands of dollars, and the right to buy them again next year, have become the norm.
NBA 2K has no competition in the space, and EA's inability to convince people it should make a college basketball game ensures it won't have any. This looks like a situation in which things will get worse for a long while before they get any better.