Darktide Devs Respond to Microtransaction Criticism, Players Memetize It
Although Warhammer 40,000: Darktide is apperas to be a successful game, on closer inspection problems emerge in it that players can't stand. One of them is the microtransaction system.
At first Warhammer 40,000: Darktide received quite decent reviews from the players. Surely the ratings would have been even better if it weren't for the fact that the title is still plagued by considerable technical problems. While one can turn a blind eye to these bugs - not resulting from the intentional actions of the developers - the microtransaction system was created deliberately and many cannot forgive it.
As we have already experienced, Darktide is riddled with aggressive monetization. Players are annoyed, first of all, by the valuation of items compared to the available packages of virtual currency known as Aquila. As a result, during the course of play we can purchase for real money, among other things, a package of 2100 coins. The problem is that in order to get, let's say, a pack of skins, we need 2400 virtual coins. And so the players who want to get the extras have to dig deeper into their wallets to pick up the extra pack.
Fan dissatisfaction has reached the game's developers, and community manager Hedge reported on Discord (via Rock Paper Shotgun) that Fatshark will try to implement an option that will allow for the purchase of exactly as many coins as needed to download the extras of interest. However, this feature is, as he stated, "extremely complicated," so it will not appear anytime soon.
As expected, the statement did not sit well with players, for whom the phrase "extremely complicated" has become a meme used to criticize the game on Reddit. Below you can see sample comments. I would like to point out, by the way, that taking these screenshots was not an "extremely complicated" activity.
Interestingly, co-founder of the studio, Martin Wahlund, in an interview with PC Gamer explained that the developers... forgot to add one of the currency packs to the game, which would have enabled us to purchase an interesting amount of virtual money.
"We forgot to add one of the packages. The idea was always to have a 1:1 conversion rate. We realized a little too late that one of the packages wasn't there. It takes some time to validate it and so on, but we definitely need to improve it. We hear our fans. We played it wrong and we need to fix it to make sure people don't have problems with it," said Wahlund.
So we can't help but hold Darktide developers to their word and hope that this "extremely complicated" process will be finished as soon as possible.
