Earlier this week Overkill, the company responsible for the interactive “robbery simulator” Payday 2, announced its annual Crimefest: a week long challenge that provides and opportunity for players to earn free content. In the past, Crimefest has been fairly successful drawing in new blood as well as providing new content to the Payday 2 player-base. However, this is one Crimefest that has fans in an uproar.
Beginning on October 2nd, Crimefest started off with a bang and by the end of the 2 week period of challenges not a single one was left standing. Challenges included things like: Stealing 100,000 nuclear warheads — which requires a single heist to be played 100,000 times by the player base, and “Break Crimenet” — which required 30,000 players to be online at a single time. All of these challenges were successfully completed by the community working together, and in return the community sat waiting for their promised rewards. But little did anyone expect the uproar that would follow.
On October 15th the first reward was released; The Black Market. According to Overkill’s Black Market webpage,” [The] Weapons Deal opens up a brand new way of allowing you to personalize your weapons with skins, mods and more!” Normally that would sound pretty good especially considering this is a free event, but its not. The Black Market update adds cosmetic skins – found in “safes” that can only be opened with a “drill,” with the “drill” only being found on the Steam Community Market, for a price. Many long time fans of Payday 2 are upset at this move towards the largely-hated practice of micro-transactions, with this post on Reddit titled “Fuck you Overkill” gathering over 4,000 up-votes in less that 24 hours. Many of the Reddit users found in this thread draw attention to Overkill’s previous promise and dedication of leaving the game free of micro-transactions. At the top of the comments in the thread, a Reddit user linked an article from Gamespot boldly titled : “Payday 2 won’t have microtransactions,” with the subheading being a quote from David Goldfarb, who left Overkill in 2014, that reads “No. No. God, I hope not. Never. No.”
Many Payday 2 players compare the”safe-drill-reward” process to gambling. A user purchases a safe and a drill in hopes of winning a item that is valued higher than their initial investment, and with each skin having the possibility to give stat boosts, the prices of items are relatively high. A single particular skin for an AK Rifle lists as high as $88, all while providing stat boosts that are rumored to be higher than what a normal player could achieve without the skin. As seen on Overkill’s Black Market Webpage: “Skins can improve the stats of the weapon … Some skins come with associated mods, capable of further improving the stats. Finally, a rare Stat Boost modifier might come with the skin, giving you that extra edge.” This leads some players to believe that Payday 2 is becoming increasingly “Pay to win,” with players who spend real world money on items being favoured more than those who do not. And with Payday 2 having quite a large catalogue of DLC, a total non-sale cost of $108.75, with various weapons and attachments leading to higher damage and more firepower, some players claim that Overkill is creating an unfair gaming environment to make more corporate profit.
Lately the business model of cosmetics has become popular in gaming, with Counterstrike: Global Offensive being the most famous. This reputed to be where Overkill got the idea. With various clues such as the Crimefest goal titled “SEVENTHREEFIVEFIVESIXZEROEIGHT,” which is the famous disarming code in Counterstrike games, it begins to become clear that Overkill is a fan of Global Offensives case-key model. Other clues are found on Overkill’s page and are hardly subtle. Apart from the whole idea of opening things with a device in order to receive a painted weapon, the onscreen presentation appears to borrow from GO’s successful business model. With a sliding counter moving across possible weapon skin outcomes, and a weapon condition grading system, it is no secret that this is meant to resemble CS:GO’s unboxing system. But where many feel that Overkill has fallen is on the topic of stat increases only obtainable by paying into the system.
All in all, many players are upset at Overkill’s movement toward micro-transactions and it seems the sentiment is only growing larger. With such an uproar in such a small community it will be interesting to see how Overkill responds to the situation.
At of time of publishing there is no comment or response by Overkill or any Overkill employees on the topic, but it is anticipated that there may be one soon.
A video posted on Overkill’s Black Market Webpage displaying the opening animation that strongly resembles Counterstrike: Global Offensive’s
