Payday 2 players aren’t exactly happy with recent revelations for the game, as a new community event called Crimefest has introduced microtransactions into the cooperative shooter. The controversy comes from the nature of these new additions, which includes in-game items drops contained within safes that players must purchase a special drill to unlock. The drill costs $2.49.
This type of microtransaction is pretty common in games today, but most games that use something like this to monetize their product give their base game away for free. This is not the case with Payday 2 as it’s a full-priced title. As expected, both the Steam forums and Reddit have lengthy threads of disgruntled players.
However, it sounds like this could have been in the works for a while as ex-Overkill developer David Goldfarb reveals that this is one of the reasons he left the company. Players wondering why this type of microtransaction was added to the game asked Goldfarb why he didn’t stop this to which he responded: “I couldn’t, tbh. That was one reason why I left.”
A lot of the anger comes from those who have been following the statements from the developers during the course of the game’s development. In which, unfortunately, Overkill told players that they had no plans to introduce microtransactions into the game. They also told players that “Every feature that is unlocked during Crimefest is released for free for the entire community of PAYDAY 2,” which many players are saying is not the case with these optional drills as the only way to get the content inside is to pay.
Crimefest runs between the 15th and 24th of October, and it’s unclear whether we’ll see Overkill change the strategy behind this event during the homestretch. As for now, there is a growing swell of players that are unhappy about this and they’ve yet to make a statement on the subject.
Published: Oct 19, 2015 11:31 am