CD Projekt CFO does "not see a place for microtransactions in single-player games"

The time has come for macrotransactions instead

I’m all in for the return of actual game expansions.

Nah, only the transactions will be bigger. Amount of content won’t.

Just like bags of chips.

StarCraft Brood Wars Diablo 2 Lord of Destruction

People shit on Bethesda but they’ve consistently released banger expansions. Far Harbor was incredible.

Even the publicly acknowledged start of Micro Transactions “Horse Armour” was couched in decent medium sized DLC and The Shivering Isles

It is kinda funny how people have no issue paying for it all together as bundle, but separate it so people can pay for things individually is silly and everyone is suddenly offended?

I would rather have a story for $10 and $1 outfits I can ignore, than to spend $30 on a story and bunch of cosmetics that don’t add to the game.

This is just marketing, nothing more. They make more money forcing you to buy everything than letting you pick what you want.

Eh… It’s more than just paying, but that a lot of the stuff which is now a standard microtransaction used to be integrated into the total experience, so you’d unlock outfits and such for finding secrets or completing challenges. That sort of content was integral to the over all experience, not just an extra to tack on as an afterthought.

People did have issues paying for it all together, back when they were called “expansion packs.”

I don’t mind paying for more of the game. I do mind paying for fixes to a broken game. I don’t mind optional cosmetic upgrades, but I don’t like pay-to-win, even in single player (looking at you, Nintendo amiibos).

But regardless, people are going to complain, and many of their complaints will be valid.

You know, the way you phrase it I’d be fine. Only in your example, instead of 60 for it all, it is now 60 for 80% of the story, another 2x15 for the remainder, and 10 per Outfit.

You used to be able to unlock cosmetic content by playing instead of paying. They’re taking advantage.

I think some people like to know when it ends. Microtransactions can make it seem endless. Once you’ve done that a few times it makes you want to know about as much as you can upfront.

The thing is, you actually get 30$ story and 5$ per outfit instead of a 30$ Expansion.

And cosmetics do add to the game for a big part of the market.

I believe that was called phantom liberty.

Or if we’re talking Witcher 3, Hearts of Stone or Blood and Wine. Both of those had an amazing amount of content, well worth it.

Ill be getting the Elden ring dlc at 40 dollars day one. Yeah im expecting the game to almost double in size.

Yeah that’s what remaster are for

what really bugs me are fighting games with dlc characters. i know fighting games arent as profitable, but twenty years ago you could unlock every character by actually playing the game. locking content behind paywalls are a slap to poor gamers. that’s on top of a $60 price tag

Fighting games started in coin operated arcade cabinets that were intentionally designed to be such a pain in the ass to beat that people would dump heaps of money into them just to keep playing. Same deal with games that were released in the days that youd rent them for a week. The difficulty was set so high that it was very unlikely that you could beat the game in that week so you would end up renting them another week or two.

The gaming industry has been filled with greedy fuck policies from the beginning and the only thing that has changed is how they are greedy fucks.

Yeah, I noticed this with mortal Kombat on snes. Every time I played the single player campaign, I’d win one fairly easily, then I’d lose to the next guy. Then I’d use a continue and beat that guy fairly easily and lose to the next one. Repeat until I run out of continues, with the occasional upset of the pattern (extra win or loss).

Also true of timed arcade games like Gauntlet. Unless you were very good, you’d have to keep putting quarters in when the time ran out.

20 years ago, they sold every Street Fighter three times with more characters in each new iteration. Microtransactions suck, but simple DLC is a less shitty than what used to be normal.

What? You didn’t like buying SUPER Street Fighter II TURBO Championship Edition?

I actually did, because once I bought it they couldn’t shut down the dlc servers on me when they released the next one.

This was more a way for them to keep people putting in quarters at the arcades and selling machines to arcade ops.

It translated to some home games, but wasn’t the focus of putting out all these new versions. It made some sense at the time.

Yep

Street Fighter II: The World Warrior - (1991)

Street Fighter II’: Champion Edition - (1992)

Street Fighter II’: Hyper Fighting - (1992)

Super Street Fighter II: The New Challengers - (1993)

Super Street Fighter II Turbo - (1994)

All $40-60 games at the time.

You are mistaken about the price. Street Fighter II: The World Warrior had a retail price of $69.99 at launch.

They did milk the fuck out of that, I’ll grant you.

But at the same time you couldn’t take them online and end up playing somebody who’d got the latest one and have to fight new characters you’d have no access to.

$70 is the new $60 because fuck you that’s why

You’re going to be really unhappy when you discover the concept of inflation

Oh stop, games have been the same price for decades, it’s not surprising they’re seeing a small price increase after so long in stagnation.

In good companies this is passed along to the actual devs making our games, which is something we should all support

Yeah, not a penny of the extra $10 is being passed along

This has been disproven and was called out at the time of the increase. Games cost less to develop now than ever. Microtransactions and recurrent subscription transaction1s like battlepasses mean a shit game gets to live longer than it would deserve. People have careers in the field and languages common to the industry - this isn’t a “new and groundbreaking” industry - its one of the largest on the planet.

Studios are absolutely not passing any of that $10 to lower level staff. It was to see if the market would bear it, and no other reason - and corporate defenders came out of the woodwork to pretend BILLION dollar corporations need more money. If videogames were too expensive to make, they’d not be spending so much, now would they?

“Small” price increase? Are your toilet paper squares $10 bills or something?

Has the distribution gone up though? If the quantity of games being sold has increased the companies are making just as much even though games are “cheaper.”

Imo. That’s the big argument in this debate that doesn’t get discussed. The reach has increased so prices could come down as more units are sold and the company would get the same amount of money.

Hammering and saw noises.

Ah, there it is. CDPR is rebuilding their reputation after Cyberpunk’s launch. Nature is healing.

As it was with witcher 3, AKA “get off the roof, roach!”

“Spending a huge chunk of the budget on dishonest advertising and then releasing a significantly different, half-broken game is still cool though.”

but its okay, cause 4 years later we’ll release an expansion and what we are declaring the final patches to finally have the game in a state it should have been when it was fucking released.

Thanks for all the money, ~~suckers~~ customers!

The worst thing is that everyone seems to think that it IS where it should have been at release! Which I will admit that it is finally the polished bug-free game that any game should be at release. But anyone like me who was watching every last promo video they did teasing the game pre-release, knows it still isn’t and never will be the game they promised it would be.

Their insistence on releasing on previous gen hardware is surely as much to blame as the rush to get it out for that sweet sweet pandemic money. Still looking back it’s hard to say if it ever was going to live up to what they were teasing it would be.

I’m a simple man.

I don’t believe their bullshots and promises.

I’m just happy if a game arrives in good, playable condition, feature and story complete.

and Cyberpunk couldnt even live up to that. Perhaps it was story complete on release? I dont know, I was never able to beat the game until like 2 years after release due to encountering a mind-numbing amount of bugs and catastrophes and thus giving up and walking away from the game for a good long time.

I would have refunded it and never thought about it again if it wasnt a gift.

Yeah with initial disaster at release it’s easy to forget they originally promised multiplayer would be added in later and a robust functioning society where each NPC would have a job and routine they follow

Exactly. I hate that people are completely on CDPR side again, forgetting that they completely deceived their fans with a half baked game. Just because they eventually made it better (and still didn’t deliver on what they said) doesn’t mean they deserve to heralded again. Any trust I had in them is gone.