Dying Light 2 has yet to become the game I hoped it would be. When I reviewed it last February, I lamented that so much of what made the original Dying Light great was missing from the sequel, like crafting, realistic parkour,ไ and genuine terror, and in their place were multiple layers of half-baked RPG systems no one asked for.
Despite these misgivings, I never wrote the game off. Dying Light changed considerably in the seven years Techland supported it, and the studio promised that the sequel would be given the same amount of support. We’ve seen huge improvements to parkour and combat, as well as 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:scarier encounters, and even the knife-slide technique featured in the E3 presentation. Unfortunately, all the 🐼goodwill Techland has been building over the last year and a half has been almost entirely negated by the ill-timed introduction of its nꦅew premium cash shop.
Our own Joshua Robertson does a great jo🍬b breaking down t꧒he details of the new item store here, but in short, Dying Light 2 players will no longer be able to buy cosmetic items from the store front of their chosen platform, and instead will need to purchase in-game currency called DL Points first, which can be traded for cosmetic bundles. This was framed as a positive for players, since they’ll no longe🎶r need to leave the game to make purchases, but more importantly, it benefits Techland, who will no longer need to pay a percentage to Steam, Sony, and Microsoft every time it makes a sale.
Players are understandably upset. Having t🎃o buy a pile of zombie bucks so you can download a chicken mask is frustrating enough, but what really pushed people over the edge is the fact that you can’t just buy the exact number of points you need to make a purchase. DL Points are sold in packs of 500, 1100, 2300, 3600, and 6500, but cosmetic bundles cost 300, 450, 550, 600, and 750. No matter what amount of points you buy, you’ll have some left over after making your purchase. This wasn’t the case when you could just buy bundles directly through Steam, so players feel scammed by the ne🐬w store.
Dying Light 2 is currently getting review bombed into the ground, and the community is in full revolt on , , , and Steam, where recent reviews currently sit at ju﷽st 47 percent positive. There, an endless stream of reviews bash Techland (and Tenc🧸ent, which recently acquired the developer) for adding microtransactions, despite the fact that the game always had them - they’re just being offered in a new, slightly worse way now.
It’s hard to imagine Dying Light 2 getting this kind of backlash had the premium shop been implemented at launch. For better or worse, cosmetic microtransactions have been part of games for the better part of a decade and are broadly considered to be the only acceptable kind of DLC, other than actual expansions, a game can have. As long as you can’t pay to win, most people are okay with games having cosmetic microtransactions, and they’re okay with buying them in in-ga🌊me shops.
Fortnite V-Bucks, Grand Theft Auto Online Shark Cards, Apex Legends Apex Coins, and Leaღgue of Legends Riot Points are all used to buy cosmetics, an🍰d players just accept it. Even when Destiny 2 players criticize the Eververse, they aren’t complaining about the in-game shop itself, just the price of cosmetics.
And while premium shops are more common in multiplayer games and games with online components like Forza, Metal Gear Solid 5, and Marvel’s Avengers, lots of single-player games have included in-game stores too. Far Cry 5 silver bars, Assassin’s Creed Helix Credits, and Creation Club credits for Fallout 4 and Skyrim are just a few examples. Some players wouldn&rsqu💮o;t have been happy about Dying Light 2’s premium shop, considering the f🐷irst Dying Light didn’t use one, but there wouldn’t have been this much backlash had Techland not waited 18 months to add one while simultaneously removing the ability to simply buy cosmetic items through Steam.
The company has that, unfortunately, misses the point entirely. They’ve promised to add the option to buy specific items from bundles with your leftover currency from buying the thing you actually wanted. What it’s not going to do is give players the option to buy exactly 🐈as many DL Points as they need, which would all but solve the problem for its angry community. Even that solution, Techland says, will take time to implement.
Personally, I’m happy to pay for V-Bucks or Apex Coins if it means the developer of the game I love is getting to keep the profits. Letting Valve or Sony scrape a percentage off the top doesn’t benefit me, and I don’t consider premium currencies to be inherently predatory the way some do. At the same time, it’s clear that the gap between the amount of DL coins you can buy and the price of bundles in intentionally designed to get you to overspend on coins that will just sit in your account, or worse, motivate you to spend even more than you otherwise would have in order to spend all your coins. It’s a lousy implementation of a monetization system, but Techlan🎃d probably would have gotten away with it had it not waited so long to add it.