There's been a lot of news about early access game PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds today (which has hit six million sales), but bear with us, as we've got another one. Earlier today we reported that the game was getting new cosmetic items via crates, one of which is the limited time Gamescom Invitational Crate, costing $2.50 USD to open and containing exclusive items, with the money going towards charity, and funding the upcoming Gamescom PUBGInvitational, as well as its prize money. Well, it's safe to say the introduction of a paid crate has not gone down well with some members of the community.
A hugely popular post on the game's subreddit, for instance, is one that has the following message: "JUST SAY NO to real-money keys. Keys and Crates are an ANTI-CONSUMER means of distributing DLC content. This game is not even out of Early Access, is breaking a promise not to include cosmetic DLC until after Early Access, and doing so in the most ANTI-CONSUMER way possible! Don't fall for it!"
The post continues by expressing further outrage at the fact that there's only one item in each crate too, so in theory for a full set you'd need $10 at least. The user explains that their outrage comes from the fact the items are being sold in an "insulting and unfair" way, and it's not actually about these items and whether or not they give an in-game advantage.
When PlayerUnknown himself Brendan Greene posted on the game's official Discord (as shared by user mdcdesign on Reddit) to say that the full game would most likely not have any more free crates, this made things even worse, despite Greene emphasising that these are optional.
We should highlight here, though, that only the Gamescom crate so far requires the keys that cost $2.50, and the Wanderer and Survivor crates will be free, still allowing access to cosmetic items.
While many have been agreeing with the angry sentiments expressed against the paid keys, there are also many that are saying that games need money for development, defending the move at least in part. Greene himself actually recently talked about microtransactions for cosmetic items in an interview, where he voiced this viewpoint too, saying that ongoing support needs to be funded somehow.
"The current system as you play you get points, with the points you buy crates, so we will be adding in a key system," he explained. "Eventually you'll have to open these crates with keys. You'll be able to sell these crates as well on the Steam marketplace, if you don't want to open them. We have to enforce a rarity or a soft limit on how many crates you want to buy. There will be some people that want to buy a lot of crates, and that's fine, but until launch we are still going to have free crates."
"We will have to test out the monetisation system sometimes during Early Access, just to get drop levels right and see if anything has actually come out. We have a great data science team, they look at the steam marketplace, and we really want to create a system. It has to be a good economy, and that's not always going to be what everyone wants. Everyone wants free stuff. We think monetisation is something games kind of have - we want this game for five or 10 years. We're not going to be selling 5m copies every few months or whatever. There has to be a way to keep our servers running and keep the company going so we can add new content and this kind of stuff. Most people understand that with monetisation. It's one of the better ways to do it in games, they're cosmetic only so there's no interference in gameplay. It's sort of a voluntary system, we're not forcing people to do it."
So what's your take on the situation? Are you on the side that believes the paid keys are bad for the game and its community, or can you see where they're coming from by implementing them?