Payday 2's Controversial Microtransactions Removed

[Steven Bogos]

Payday 2's Controversial Microtransactions Removed

Starbreeze Studios now fully owns the rights to the Payday franchise, and has confirmed that Payday 3 is in the works.

Some good news for controversial microtransactions [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/tag/view/payday%202?os=%20payday%202], as well as the confirmation of Payday 3.

"Payday is very close to my heart, and has laid the foundation for Starbreeze success in recent years. We're very excited to bring our heisters home to the safe house," said Bo Andersson Klint, Starbreeze CEO. "To start with, we believe in the continued success of Payday 2 and will support it for at least another 18 months continuing expanding the game."

Overkill Software's Almir Listo confirmed on the company's Steam page [http://steamcommunity.com/games/218620/announcements/detail/840298759384091908] that the Black Market, Payday 2's microtransaction hub, will now be completely free for everyone. For some more info on how that will work, check out the video above.

Listo also confirmed that Payday 3 is indeed a thing that exists, but didn't offer any additional details.

So, this is a great thing for the developer. Given the announcement, it really looks like the whole microtransactions thing was something that 505 Games pushed onto Starbreeze. Good on them for throwing that off, and hopefully it leads to a bit of community goodwill.

Source: Starbreeze [http://www.starbreeze.com/2016/05/starbreeze-acquires-full-rights-payday-franchise-installed-base-14-million-users/]

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[IamLEAM1983]

Awesome. Now I actually have a reason to download and play this thing!

 

[Headsprouter]

SO. MUCH. WIN.

I loved what I played of this game pre-microtransactions. But disgusted with the loss of integrity once P2W was introduced, I didn't touch it since. I can stomach DLC as long as the content is balanced and high quality, but I'm sensitive to people being able to buy an easier victory. That bullshit can stay in the mobile gaming market.

I'm assuming there was a great loss of players which made 505 willing to sell it off. I'm pleased the community feels the same way I do. I'm in the upper middle bracket of the "paying for cosmetics and commodities for a good game" crowd, but it's all based on whether you can justify the purchases based on how much the developer respects the consumer and cares about the base game.

Now, if only Tripwire hadn't added microtransactions to an incomplete game with low community morale...purely cosmetic or not, people do not appreciate how high that seemed to be on the priority list.

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

Too little too late from me. I started Payday 2 on launch, loved it (except for the fact that they didn't bother to program the AI teammates to be useful if playing solo) then later the microtransactions happened and totally bombed the game for me. Plus after saying "no microtransactions" and then putting them in anyway, all goodwill towards the developer/publisher has evaporated and may never come back. Thats my view anyway. You can't shit in my soup and expect me to let you near soup again.

 

[Redlin5_v1legacy]

If their sales soar after this, I hope it can be held up as an argument against microtransactions in the future.

 

[Aeshi]

Well I was already planning on coming back due to the upcoming skill system revamp, so this is just icing on the cake.

 

[Saelune]

Yay. Fuck microtransactions. All of them, even "harmless" cosmetic ones.

 

[Strazdas]

Well given the information we know it does seem like the developer wasnt at fault here, so i may end up playing their games after all.

 

[josemlopes]

Yay. Fuck microtransactions. All of them, even "harmless" cosmetic ones.

Those do have a proper place in the market in the way that if well used it can mean free meaningfull content that isnt harmless cosmetics.

GTA Online (although a bit of a different context) for example has a lot of free content because a lot of people buy "GTA dollars", even though it isnt needed to play the game at all (at the start when it launched there was plenty of grinding but that was fixed a few months after release, now playing normally lets you make money in a proper way)

Now, cosmetics can also mess up a game when they dont make any sense (TF2, plenty of skins for Counter Strike GO,...) or if its a game that kind of lives through them (any MMO, really, costumizing your character is a big part of it). But yeah, in a simple focused shooter, with skins that do make sense, it does support the game and only the people that are willing to pay for that content get it, supporting actual content like new maps or weapons to be released for free.

 

[Saelune]

Yay. Fuck microtransactions. All of them, even "harmless" cosmetic ones.

Those do have a proper place in the market in the way that if well used it can mean free meaningfull content that isnt harmless cosmetics.

GTA Online (although a bit of a different context) for example has a lot of free content because a lot of people buy "GTA dollars", even though it isnt needed to play the game at all (at the start when it launched there was plenty of grinding but that was fixed a few months after release, now playing normally lets you make money in a proper way)

Now, cosmetics can also mess up a game when they dont make any sense (TF2, plenty of skins for Counter Strike GO,...) or if its a game that kind of lives through them (any MMO, really, costumizing your character is a big part of it). But yeah, in a simple focused shooter, with skins that do make sense, it does support the game and only the people that are willing to pay for that content get it, supporting actual content like new maps or weapons to be released for free.

I'm against all of it. I like earning things. I see a cool skin and all I can think is that it just says I wasted money. When you earn it its more impressive and more worth it.

 

[laggyteabag]

PAYDAY 2 was a game that I was really happy for and excited about, but then came the crazy amount of DLC. I actually quite like the fact that Overkill are committed to supporting PAYDAY 2 with both free and paid DLC, but if there has ever been "too much" content, then PAYDAY 2 is all you need to look at. The game is currently sitting at ?104 worth of DLC, which is 7x more expensive than the base game, and that whole concept is just ridiculous. What really ticked me off, though, were the microtransactions. It baffled me that a game like PAYDAY 2, with such a substantial amount of paid DLC, even so much as dared to ask for more money via microtransactions, despite previously stating that there would never be any. I have never uninstalled a game so fast.

Im happy they're gone, but honestly, I think that my trust has been broken. Besides, there have been so many new heists and content updates since I stopped playing, I'd feel like even if I wanted to get back into PAYDAY 2, I couldn't, because I would have no idea where to even start with all of the new stuff.

 

[Shadefyre]

Remeber when they said they'd never do microtransactions? Remember when they said microtransactions were here to stay and would never be removed? Leaves Almir really sounding like a trustworthy guy. Really don't think 505 had to bend Overkill's arm too hard to include them, and here they just happened to find a good time to try to sound like it was completely the publishers fault while also reminding people that the game still exists.

 

[RJ 17]

My guess: they put the microtransactions in themselves and when people flipped their shit - as they were inevitably going to - it ended up blowing up in their face. So now they're using the fact that they just bought the rights from the publisher to cover their tracks as they remove the microtransactions to make it appear as though the publisher forced them - kicking and screaming, I'm sure - to put the microtransactions in.

To be fair, the industry has turned me into a bitter cynic when it comes to these sorts of things.

 

[Micah Weil]

...huh...interesting.
I'm curious to see how the community reacts now. I remember the tremendous amount of "WAAAAAAH!" that went on, justified or not.

 

[Aeshi]

Probably just an amusing coincidence, but does anyone else find it kind of funny (in both senses of the word) that we're getting this news just after this weeks Jimquisition? I bet Sterling's gonna have a fucking field day with this.

 

[KingsGambit_v1legacy]

I'm a PD2 vet of many hundreds of hours. I was as annoyed as the rest of the community by the microtransactions but have to add that they *removed* the P2W aspect of it. My, and most others', gripe with the safe/drill system was the fact that so-called "skins" had stats. These skins occupied their own upgrade slot on the weapons, thus people with the skin would have greater stats than those that did not, and since the skins were bought with real-money it was P2W (insofar as one can P2W in a PvE co-op game).

Now what they did was to add "Boosts" into the game into another new slot that all weapons had. Boosts were regular card drops in-game (thus free) and had the SAME stat bonus as the real-money skins, only without the skin obviously. So now there was an in-game, free way to get the same stat bonus as that of the skins. My issue with the microtransactions at that point evaporated since at this stage those paying were paying for cosmetics, not for power.

I just wanted to clarify that. While the addition of microtransactions itself was unwelcome (particularly when we were told they never would be added), and the shitstorm following was absolutely deserved, the devs in my eyes responded and by adding boosts to card drops fixed the problem I had with the system.

The skill rejig is really good too. I don't like that they combined it with sweeping weapon (re)balancing as well, but I expect they're doing everything at once and in tandem to get it all done in one go. It allows for a LOT more interesting builds and new capabilities. Saying that, I ragequit and haven't gone back in disgust since they nerfed my favourite weapons & builds in the revamp so make of that what you will. For everyone not as invested as I am, there are some great builds and playstyles to play with and some really great heists.

 

[irish286]

Payday isn't a genre I normally like but I may pick up a copy just to support this behavior.

 

[happyninja42]

Too little too late from me. I started Payday 2 on launch, loved it (except for the fact that they didn't bother to program the AI teammates to be useful if playing solo) then later the microtransactions happened and totally bombed the game for me. Plus after saying "no microtransactions" and then putting them in anyway, all goodwill towards the developer/publisher has evaporated and may never come back. Thats my view anyway. You can't shit in my soup and expect me to let you near soup again.

But the new person near your soup isn't the same person as the one who shit in it before. That's kind of the point of this article. A different group got the game, and they're making changes. The soup shitter is no longer in the kitchen. xD

OT: Cool, I stopped playing PD2 probably 6 months before the microtransactions went live, mostly because I just got burned out on it. Having them gone isn't going to get me back in the game right now, but I'll probably reinstall it eventually for some stealthy heisting fun.

 

[Starke]

Remeber when they said they'd never do microtransactions? Remember when they said microtransactions were here to stay and would never be removed? Leaves Almir really sounding like a trustworthy guy. Really don't think 505 had to bend Overkill's arm too hard to include them, and here they just happened to find a good time to try to sound like it was completely the publishers fault while also reminding people that the game still exists.

Remember when they actually mocked people for worrying about microtransactions being added to the game. :\

 

[The Enquirer]

Yay. Fuck microtransactions. All of them, even "harmless" cosmetic ones.

If being charged for something purely cosmetic means we get actual new content for free I'm all for it, especially in long term games.