UPDATED 14:18 EDT / NOVEMBER 13 2015

NEWS

Payday 2 community outraged by new “pay-to-win” items

Some devs are able to admit their mistakes and listen to what their fan community has to say about unpopular game features. Payday 2 studio Overkill Software is not one of those devs.

A large number of players were outraged last month when Overkill introduced microtransactions that effectively allowed (or rather required) users to pay real money to unlock special safes that can contain powerful items with improved stats.

Fans then tore the studio apart when it participated in an Ask Me Anything (AMA) thread on the Payday Reddit community, but the negative reaction does not seem to have deterred Overkill from adding even more pay-to-win mechanics to the game.

Overkill has announced the new Completely Overkill Pack (COP), a game update that now adds experience and cash upgrades in addition to the stat bonuses that were already present on the paid safe items. Fans are once again furious with the studio over the paid items, and several Payday 2 online communities are full of users claiming that they are done with the game, along with some other more colorful declarations about Overkill’s business practices.

Payday 2 Reddit threads

The new update is so unpopular that even the volunteer moderators of the Payday 2 Steam community have announced that they are on strike.

“A lot of people will be wondering why we didn’t do this earlier, due to the recent safe release,” community moderator Ashley wrote. “A lot of things happened and Overkill admitted it wasn’t managed very well. We were hoping Overkill would learn from its mistakes regarding the last update and we were hoping they took these into consideration with the COP. We have a lot of issues regarding the release of the COP that shows they have NOT listened to user feedback at all.”

Whether the greater Payday 2 community is actually upset with the update or if it is only a vocal minority remains to be seen, but the game’s user ratings have dropped significantly on Steam in the last month, and it could soon be downgraded to the “Mixed” review category if it drops much further.

Screenshots via OverkillSoftware.com and Reddit.com

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