Let me just start off by saying that Payday 2 was one of my favorite games. It has been the main game to play with my friends for the last two years on PC. We all love the game because, unlike other “co-op” games, this game actually requires you and your team to work together and try and execute your heist as smoothly as possible. The game allows you and your team to plan your entire heist beforehand. Do we want to use stealth or go in guns blazing? Should we storm the front or flank the building from all sides? Should we have a person for backup with all heavy weapons just in case something goes wrong? All of these are questions players ask themselves before they start each job. It makes the player and their team take time to look at each mission and decide what the best course of action is.
It’s because I like this game so much that it pains me to say that it’s really going down the tubes fast, and it doesn’t seem like OVERKILL is doing all they can to try and prevent it from happening. In the last three months or so, the game has gone from being loved by thousands to hated by thousands, and it all could have been prevented.
The first shot to the foot was this year’s Crimefest. Crimefest is something that’s supposed the best time of the year for Payday fans. It’s a week long event with new and exciting content every day and it’s a reward from OVERKILL for being fans of the game. This year, however, was a disaster. During the week long event, players were rewarded with one new job, two jobs from the first game that could now be played in the second (“First World Bank” and “Slaughter House”), 12 new masks, a new gun and the big one, the addition of microtransactions to the game.
This part in particular is what really made me disappointment in the game. Not only did they add in microtransactions after they said they never would, but it’s how they started off Crimefest. That’s what really bugs me. It’s like they thought “Hey thanks for supporting us and our company, please give us more of your money so we can keep doing this for you.”
A couple weeks later, OVERKILL announced the reward of the Completely OVERKILL pack, or as I have been calling it the Completely BS Pack. Earlier in the year OVERKILL held an event called the Hype Train. The idea was players give OVERKILL money and if they give them enough money they would unlock new content along the way to their “fuel” goal.
The biggest pack you could buy was called the Completely OVERKILL pack and it cost players $20. For twenty bucks players were given four new masks right away and the promise of something “special” later on in the year. Well, we finally got our something “special” after about six months. After all that waiting all we got was a single gun skin and seven DLC packs that have been out for the past year.
The worst part was the gun skin because it is part of the microtransactions that have been added to the game. It felt like they didn’t listen to what we had to say about the addition of them to the game. Also, don’t you think that if someone loves Payday 2 some much they are willing to blindly give OVERKILL twenty dollars, they are probably also buying all the DLC right when it come out as well? This for me is what made me decide that I was done with this game, at least for the rest of 2015.
As if that wasn’t bad enough Almir from OVERKILL Studios issued an apology about two weeks later where he stated:
“Players have been angry with us, media have written about us en masse and our volunteer moderators went on strike. For all the distress we’ve caused the past few weeks, I’d just like to take the time and say that we’re sorry. We’ve done a lot of things right in the past, but these past few weeks we screwed up.”
When I read it, I felt like it was too little too late. Would it have been so hard to say sorry a couple days after Crimefest or after the Complete BS pack was released? No, he took his sweet time and waited to say “Oops, sorry.”
It’s like all the people hating on the game, giving the game bad reviews on Steam and hating the company on Facebook just wasn’t enough for the team at OVERKILL. Last week OVERKILL told fans about a new DLC pack that would be made available on December third called the “Point Break Pack.” Along with the announcement came the statement that it could be yours for only $6.99. As if you didn’t have enough of our money as it is, OVERKILL.
Do the people at OVERKILL really have the guts to come out and ask for even more of it? With everyone boycotting, hating and just generally tearing the game apart they really think it’s a good idea to ask for more of our money. Didn’t they just say a little bit ago they were sorry and they knew they were making mistakes? Does this not seem like another huge mistake? What is going through their minds that would make them think this is an OK thing to do? Doing something like this is almost as bad as what happened with Banjo-Kazooie Nuts and Bolts. How could something like this ever seem like it was the right move at the time.
You may be thinking, ‘but Dennis they gave us a character pack for free it shows that they care.’ No, it really doesn’t do that at all. To me, it’s their way of trying to seem like they care about us while trying to get us to buy the pack the character goes with. “Here’s the character, but if you want his missions that’s going to be $6.99 please.”
To me it just seems like they really don’t care about what the fans have to say anymore and are just doing anything they can to get more money because they are apparently broke. If they are honestly so broke they need to start working of a new game. But they shouldn’t expect me to keep giving them money; trying to keep this game alive just because think think I will. I’m not giving them another dime of my money until I see some big changes in the way they handle things from now on.
Header image source
Money image source
Trust image source
Hate you image source
Published: Dec 4, 2015 11:33 am