Payday 2’s annual Crimefest has started, and the players are up in arms. Unlike before, however, their sight aren’t aimed at each other in-game, but towards Overkill Software, everywhere that the word is out; microtransactions are now part of the game.
As a review, since 2011, developer Overkill Software promised that there would be no microtransactions in the game at all. This was the arrangement their captive user base was happy with, and this presumably means most, if not all, of their players preferred to buy the game full price over a microtransactions based model.
Fast forward to today, and Crimefest has launched safes as announced earlier. What has scandalized players because they did not see it coming, however, is that the unique drills needed to open the safes would be sold on the Steam Market. These safes contain said weapon skins, which rounds up why fans are upset.
Skins are of course cosmetics, and if it ended at that players may have been satisfied, but it does not. These skins come with immediate stat boosts, enable mods to improve stats further, and even have rare stat boost modifiers. All in all, players are incentivized to buy as many drills to open as many safes as possible, and get the best skins.
It should be noted that the promise of no microtransactions also came from one David Goldfarb, and he happened to have left Overkill last year. He has chimed in briefly but very tellingly on Twitter:
There appears to be some microtransaction drama.
— David Goldfarb (@locust9) October 15, 2015
@itlimestime I couldn't, tbh. That was one reason why I left.
— David Goldfarb (@locust9) October 15, 2015
Beyond this, however, Overkill didn't make these changes clearer in their communications, and didn't give players fair warning earlier, and this exacerbated fan outrage more than it had to be. As for now, word is out that some fans are getting refunds when asked, so if you were affected by this, you do have an out.
I'm hearing that some people who bought Payday 2 at release have gotten refunds from Steam following the microtransactions being added.
— Lewd Proctologist (@LewieP) October 16, 2015
Update; there is at least one instance when a refund request for this specific issue has been rejected.
@LewieP fwiw my refund was rejected. I could go hard at them on Aus consumer law with this bullshit but eh i dunno
— Chocobo (@noreasonspec) October 16, 2015
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