Payday 2 producer Almir Listo insists that the recently added microtransactions are not so bad, and are here to stay.
Payday 2 fans have been in somewhat of an uproar as of late, after the recent Black Market update added microtransactions to the game – something Overkill explicitly stated that it would never do. In an attempt to placate the fans, game producer Almir Listo took to reddit for an AMA, which… didn’t go over too well. In addition to claiming that the microtransaction are not so bad, necessary for the game’s survival, and are here to stay, he straight up blamed media outlets for writing uninformed, “clickbait” articles that didn’t accurately represent the new update. So, sorry for that, I guess.
“We understand that there is a lot of fury, anger and disappointment with us adding this. From an economical standpoint however, completely based on statistics, we can already see that the Black Market update is working as we intended,” said Listo.
He deflected a lot of questions from the community with “PR” speak, particularly the one about why he is essentially going back on his “no microtransactions” promise. “We want to do everything we can to make Payday 2 as awesome as possible. In order to do that, we made the decision to triple the size of the crew. To ensure that we can keep the size of the team, we decided that the best approach was to introduce the Black Market update to the game.”
The biggest problem players have with the update is that it essentially gives players willing to fork over extra cash for drills a statistical advantage (IE: “pay2win”) to which Listo said:
“There are several arguments as to why we think stat boosts are OK to have in Payday 2, and here are three; – The game is balanced around the vanilla experience, that is, the game without any DLC. When we add any new difficulties, enemies, features, heists or otherwise, we balance this in relation to the base game. – Payday 2 is a player-versus-environment game. You and your three friends play together against the AI; you lose together and you win together. Any advantage your friends have will only benefit the success of the group. – Making sure that the boosts are balanced in such a way that it doesn’t impare on the player’s experience. This is an ongoing effort on our side.”
You can read the full AMA here. What are your thoughts on the Black Market update and more importantly, how Listo and Overkill handled the blowback surrounding it?
Source: reddit
