After launching a new real-money payment system, the developers of Dying Light 2 face criticism: Fans smell a rip-off
Techland has not exactly made friends recently. The developer of Dying Light 2: Stay Human recently introduced a new real money currency called DL Points
. These can be purchased separately and then used to buy bundles of cosmetic in-game items.
The community reacted with disappointment. This is expressed (on Steam) where the game received only 49 percent positive reviews in the last few days, and many players expressed their displeasure:
What is the problem with the DL Points
?
Basically Techland is not really doing anything new here, they are following a trend. Ingameshops and the associated currencies are well-known, and unfortunately so are the hidden scams that are pulled off with them, keyword Overpay
A fictitious example: You want Bundle A, which costs 6999 DL Points, but you can only buy points in bundles 1500, 3000, 6500 and 10500. No matter how you go about it, if you only want the one bundle, you will top up your account with at least 1000 in this case unnecessary DL Points
. `
These points that are left there are supposed to encourage you to buy another package and to order an extra supply of currency for it. After all, you don’t want to leave 1000 points just rotting there, do you?
What also upsets the community: Techland is leading the players around by the nose in a way, because those who buy ingame get worse deals than outside. At least at the moment, skin packs that have been released to date can still be purchased in stores, such as Steam, at the same prices as before digitally. But new ones are unlikely to be added, because….
Are the skin packs disappearing from external shops? Yes, Techland has announced that they will gradually move all packs into the game. You can find this and more information about DL Points and the future of Dying Light 2: Stay Human (in this detailed post from the team).
What does the new payment system bring? Money, that is, not to you, but to the people behind Dying Light 2, which ultimately means the shareholders. It has no benefits for the players, but probably increases sales with microtransactions.
Reaction from Techland
Meanwhile, developer Techland has spoken out and released the following statement in English on Platform X, formerly known as Twitter.
Pilgrims!
As always, we are gathering your feedback and hear your concerns. As far as we understand, a big part of the frustration stems from the pricing of the bundles and the resulting leftover DL Points.To figure out this issue, we’ve already started working on a couple of…
– Dying Light (@DyingLightGame) September 8, 2023
In summary, it says that they are aware of the situation with the remaining DL Points
and have heard the complaints. Internally, solutions were already being worked on.
Moreover, they insist, there are also bundles that can be purchased with less than 500 points.
But: According to gaming website gamepressure these only include old items that have been available at free events in the past.
Where to go from here?
The DL Points will stay. Anyone hoping otherwise will be disappointed. But maybe Techland will manage to soften the disadvantage of the customers built into the system. However, this should not silence the criticism as such.
Nevertheless, anyone who plays Dying Light 2 in the future will have to accept the system for buying cosmetic in-game items or simply ignore it.
What do you guys think about this story? Did Techland make a hard-to-forgive mistake here, the result of which was predictable? Or are such developments, even if the communities revolt as expected, hardly avoidable in the modern gaming age?
What would you change about the system, if it has to stay? Feel free to write your thoughts on this in the comments, but one request: Stay respectful, no matter how vehemently you dislike Techland’s action.
