Https://www.pcgamer.com/we-dont-want-to-be-predatorydarktide-devs-explain-why-they-switched-to-an-in-game-currency-to-sell-cosmetics/

Warhammer 40,000: Darktide General Discussion
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“You have to price everything differently in all regions, so whatever you release, and every time you release something, you have to go through pricing it in all the different regions and making sure it works. That’s something this helps with: we just have to price it once, and then we can sort that out in the game.”

So, you’ll give people more or less Aquillas if their local currency is strong or weak? What are sorting out exactly?

Or is the idea that everyone will have to purchase in dollar prices, thus disadvantaging regions with weaker economies with bad conversion rates (You know, the thing Steam regional pricing was supposed to address)?

Because it seem to me that you’d still have a fixed local price for each bundle regardless, right? So what’s the benefit for the end user, if any?

All I wanted from you was the exact system you had in Vermintide 2.

Set prices - All store inventory available at all times.

Why is this so difficult?

[I moved this from Gameplay Feedback to General Discussion]

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No mention of the game being released in a state with missing features which is what set this all off. No mention of fomo timer, no explanation on exorbitant pricing. It’s just whaling, the fact they went to print gaming media for this instead of releasing a statement on the site or here isn’t it.

kroot
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Also, Andy my man nobody cares if you want to give premium skins away as Twitch drops and lets be real, you aren’t going to be doing that and if you are what exactly are the Whales paying for? Nonsense answers from people caught with their pants down.

Is Anders the person in charge for the overarching vision for Darktide @Aqshy ?

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This release has been such a joke. What the hell were they even thinking?

There’s currently no way to buy exactly how many Aquilas you need for a one-off purchase, which some angry players have called “predatory bullsh*t.” According to Fatshark lead developers, that was the opposite of their intention.
“We want to be fair—it’s so disappointing to see [those posts],” Fatshark co-founder Martin Wahlund told me in an interview with PC Gamer on Thursday. “That’s the last thing we want to be. The whole thing is to get people, if they want to, to buy it.”

What kind of response is that supposed to be? ‘We don’t want to be predatory, we just want people to give us their money’? The hell?

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It’s Corpo-Jargin. Rhetoric for “We sold our souls, so now we need your money to appease our Chinese Overlords”. Worst damn decision I’ve seen a company make is even REMOTELY looking in Tencent’s direction. Getting into bed with them? lol I wonder how you sleep with a clean conscience after doing that…

Yes. FEED the CCP more money. That’s a GRAND friggin idea. rolls eyes

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PR department is wild for letting this one slip through.

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lmao no kidding.

“It’s so disappointing to see those posts calling us out for what we’re doing”

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Probably the worst response they could have made. The only way it could have been worse was by saying “we’re only sorry we didn’t charge you more for the bundles”.

If they’re not predatory, then why are FOMO timers there?
If “The idea was always to be 1:1”, then why is there premium cash at all? Using premium cash for a 1:1 relationship with the item is unnecessary and redundant.

Does Martin Wahlund think we’re all stupid? He definitely thinks some of us are with this response.
The absolute cherry was this line:

The whole thing is to get people, if they want to, to buy it."

Isn’t that just admitting that the entire idea was to get money out of people? Like…dude do you realize what you’re actually saying? Was this a live interview? Because that sounds like a panic response.

I’m not spending 1 f’ing dime more on this game until things improve. Hopefully they improve before the Steam ratings dip below 60%.

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Yeah, with all the love I have for Darktide and the guys at FatShark…

If you don’t have anything meaningful to say, it’s better to just say nothing. I’m specifically referring to this:

“We forgot to add one of the bundles. The idea was always to be 1:1. We realized a bit too late that one of the bundles wasn’t in. It takes a bit of time to get it approved and stuff like that. But we for sure need to improve that, and we hear people. We got that one wrong, and we need to rectify that to make sure people don’t have that friction at all.”

Game director Anders de Geer said that it was an “honest mistake on our part,” as the team focused on fixing bugs during the beta period, though he understands players will be skeptical of that answer.

That is absolute BS, and that guy knows it. Nobody, even the most well meaning, devoted fan will buy this.

“That thing you are upset about? Yeah no, total misunderstanding, we actually wanted to have a bundle that allows you to buy the exact amount required, but we totally forgot about implementing it until a shite storm happened, but its totally not a cheap excuse so we don’t have to admit we did try to get away with it, promise”

That’s your line? Really? Your community team is getting flak for making half arsed excuses for bad decisions that were made, and your response is to make half arsed excuses for the decision to make them do that, and lie in our faces as you do that?

I don’t get it - I’m not upset at the cash shop, and I’m happy with what I got for my money, especially now that a lot of fixes came in, and even I’m beginning to get a scummy vibe, just based off of that interview. I wouldn’t let that guy speak publicly on behalf of the company again…

Edit:

To prove a point, if that were the case, FatShark could have easily changed the cost of the current bundles to 2100 aquilas, both as a short term fix and as a way of quickly addressing the issue.

After all, that’s one of the upsides of the currency, right? When someone has Aquilas, he has that currency ingame to spend as he likes - like that guy with the 5$ from the example in the interview. They choose the aquila cost, they could have updated it with the hotfix, no “time to get things approved” that was used as an excuse after the fact.

But no, instead we get BS excuses and PR talk. That is what is upsetting people.

You have a dedicated fan base that will overlook a lot of problems, just because it’s a tide game, and it’s a 40k game - but if you then have us overlook those problems, start a cash grab with scummy f2p tactics and THEN not even admit that that was your mistake, but try to make it seem like it’s all a big misunderstanding, that’s what really feels like a slap in the face.

I really don’t get who thought giving that interview would be a good idea, but bravo…

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So they chose to not speak to the community, and instead speak through the media, AND lie to our faces AGAIN while doing so.

This hurts you more than not saying anything fatshark.

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Yes, this was clearly a mistake. /truth
Does anyone see where exactly in this interview he tells us how their premium currency somehow mandates having packages at different sizes than the cosmetics they are selling?
If theo whole thing was just about international markets and currency fluctuation, which I don’t believe for a second, how would that stop them from selling a 2400 package, and pricing that?
Of course, that wasn’t actually the idea, but when making up excuses, they could at least pick logically sound ones. He could have easily said “we plan to add more cosmetics, including ones for lower prices, with which you can spend the leftovers, but that wasn’t a priority on launch”, yet I guess that doesn’t occur to someone when they know that’s not actually what they were planning. :man_shrugging:

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If the purchases are only on dollar prices, it ill be hella expensive in my country, or already is because i don’t know if they will change the prices.

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Slightly camouflaged PREMIUM skins they gave for free.

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Isn’t Fatshark based in Stockholm? What are Swedes doing following the stale dinkleberry trail capitalist America left behind? Europeans talk so much about how much better they are than Americans :smile:

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What I find most disgraceful, distasteful and insulting is that they blurt out something like that and just expect people to roll with it. Like, yeah, sure buddy, that’s the reason why you did it. No other reason at all.

It’s like when you are alone with someone else on an elevator, they rip out a huge fart, then look you straight in the eye and say: “You can’t prove it was me! It might as well have been you!”

That’s what they are doing: Farting on you, then saying it wasn’t them. They are insulting our intelligence.

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That’s the thing that gets me about this entire affair. Thank Christ I refunded when I still had the chance.

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They get away with that because journalists don’t judge them and just report what they say as fact. Noone in the room actually cares, so they can just spout PR nonsense that the masses reads but us actually experiencing the issues can call out as BS the second we see it.

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Even though I shouldn’t answer this rancid “usa vs eu” trash post you just posted, fatshark is primarily owned by tencent, a chinese company.

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We all know selling out to them was a bad idea. Did they get funding? Yes. Did they get an overlord that also tells them to screw their playerbase for all their worth? Also yes.

I would have preferred an Epic deal over that nonsense… and I friggin DESPISE Tim Sweeny and his garbage practices.

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What I find really astonishing is: If they “did not intend to be predatory”, as they claim, even if we were to ignore the obvious lie of an excuse for the ingame currency, why the artificial timer on the cosmetics?

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40% of Epic got bought by Tencent, and at that time people already theorized that there’s a deal going on that they’ll acquire the rest of it over some years. Currently it’s sitting at 48%, so I have no doubt that next year it’ll be majority Tencent as well.