Payday 2 introduced a really shady P2W lottery. Please reconsider the idle thumbs curation!

[hirn1appen]

I'm both a long time Idle Thumbs podcast reader and Payday 2 player. I spent hundreds of hours in that game, and it was great. However, they have now added microtransactions to the game that let you play a lottery for the best equipment.

Now, I can justify something like that in a new F2P release; somehow a developer has to earn money, and if it's transparent, I would never touch it, but I'm fine with it it existing. 
 

Unfortunately, it's not transparent at all: players have no way of knowing the drop chances or the properties of the prizes they could win.

And this is happening in a game that cost more than 150$/Euros if you bought it and all of its DLC (more than 25 packs so far) at release. Changing the core business model in such a way AND at the same time turning a product people paid a lot of money for into a slot machine without their consent seems really unethical to me.

What makes matters even worse is that at release, they publicly and explicitly promised on multiple occasions not to feature microtransactions, including on the steam store page. For instance, their producer said: "The Steam page for PAYDAY 2 has been updated based on your feedback. We've made it clear that PAYDAY 2 will have no micro-transactions whatsoever (shame on you if you thought otherwise!)"

Unsurprisingly, the community is in flames because of this. If you want to read more, you might want to read this steam forum thread about a lot of the misgivings the community has with the developer:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/218620/discussions/8/598199244886890714/?tscn=1445102935
Or read this writeup that's more focused on the current situation:
https://steamcommunity.com/app/218620/discussions/8/490123197949998159/

 

I believe that we as a gaming community and you as curators have a responsibility not to tolerate such behavior. That's why I would like you to remove the recommendation, at least until they change course.

 

Note: I already posted it on the Idle Thumbs steam forum discussion, but that seems to be a place few people actually read, so I'm re-posting it here. I also tried to contact a few of the steam group's administrators to inform them of this by adding them as friends on steam (otherwise, you can't send direct messages). I'm aware that that could be considered a little pushy and would like to apologize for that.

[JonCole]

I heard about this. However, I can't really make myself feel too bothered by it. Granted, I've not put in hundreds of hours into the game but I almost put in a hundred. But characterizing this as P2W in a game that is explicitly PvE is misleading and sensational. I also don't put much stock in the community being in flames, because communities are often in flames. Sure, Overkill could have done this a better way. I know that in Guild Wars 2, there is a somewhat similar system of locked chests dropping and you have to pay for keys. That game however offers a handful of in-game opportunities to get the keys without having to pay and it subverts some of the ill will that such a system could engender.

 

At worst, I think this is a consumer-unfriendly, hamfisted move. But I don't feel like it negatively affects the actual mechanics of the game all that much. Sure, stats are affected by the new equipment and such, but the main system for getting gear modifications is randomized anyways so I don't think that it had a particularly strong loot mechanic to begin with.

[Dewar]

It's disappointing that the fairly robust paid update schedule isn't making them enough money so that they also have to enter into the micro-transactions business. That being said, I haven't played as much as either of you, but the inability to get the attachments I want for the guns I want to use has certainly been frustrating in the past. I might be willing to pay to buy specific part rather than rely on the random lottery, but the fact that the items coming out of the locked safes are actually better than anything else in the game is not the way I want this to go.

 

At least the special drills drop randomly for players now, instead of being exclusively purchasable items.

 

Edit: Also, why does every change to try and earn more money always called greed?

[hirn1appen]

It's disappointing that the fairly robust paid update schedule isn't making them enough money so that they also have to enter into the micro-transactions business.

It looks a lot like what happened here is overambition. PD2 has been Overkill/Starbreeze's (the two companies have a large personal and financial overlap, and you could say that Overkill is Starbreeze's stage name if they are acting as game developers) only cash cow for the last two years, and they have started several new game projects, including a Walking Dead game, a SF game called Storm, a million dollar investment into a Payday game for the asian mobile market and even an expensive VR hardware project that wants to compete with the big boys, Facebook and Sony. And Payday players are the only ones paying the bills for all of this. Unsurprisingly, new things they produce get more and more expensive. For instance, a single spin on the item lottery costs 2,50$, and you only get a single gun texture with an unknown but small chance of a direct gameplay advantage.

That being said, I haven't played as much as either of you, but the inability to get the attachments I want for the guns I want to use has certainly been frustrating in the past. I might be willing to pay to buy specific part rather than rely on the random lottery, but the fact that the items coming out of the locked safes are actually better than anything else in the game is not the way I want this to go.

 

At least the special drills drop randomly for players now, instead of being exclusively purchasable items.

They do, but I'm not at all impressed by this. If what is said about the drill drops is true (it's totally intransparent), players get up to one drill drop a week, and there are dozens of items, each in different quality levels, of different rarity with different bonuses. So the chance to actually get the drop you want within a reasonable timeframe looks pretty low, which makes this a lot worse than their previous loot system, where you could force all drops eventually by just playing enough missions. Unfortunately, I can't back this up by numbers, because they don't release them.

But in any case, they will can never make the game drop drills with less tedium required than what people would pay 2,50$ to get around, because if they did, they couldn't sell a single drill.

Edit: Also, why does every change to try and earn more money always called greed?

So far, nobody in the entire thread used that term. ;-) By the way, I'm not opposed to game developers making money at all: I want this to be a worthwhile business. But that doesn't mean I'm fine with people going back on their marketing promises: that's at least a shady business practice, and in many legislations (for instance most of the EU), it's (for good reasons) prohibited by laws against false advertising.

[Dewar]

Sorry, the greed thing was not based on anything said in this thread, it was from the fake website and the various pictures of angry folks in the two Kotaku articles. It frustrates me that when people have legitimate complaints on the internet, however rare that may be, that they start using hyperbolic terms that just makes the argument seem dumb.

[hirn1appen]

But characterizing this as P2W in a game that is explicitly PvE is misleading and sensational.

I've read this argument a lot, but I could never really understand it. Why should only PvP games be able to have P2W elements? After all, the term is "pay to win" and not "pay to win against human players". (Or more accurately, pay to get gameplay advantages which make winning more probable, which is absolutely the case here). I agree that it's particularly bad when there are human losers, but there is indirect competition in the game (for instance about being able to play on the highest difficulty), and the psychological nudging towards making a purchase is exactly the same.

 

Edit: I personally have a strong dislike of being manipulated this way, and that makes a game I have spent a lot of money on a lot less enjoyable.

[Dewar]

I've read this argument a lot, but I could never really understand it. Why should only PvP games be able to have P2W elements? After all, the term is "pay to win" and not "pay to win against human players". (Or more accurately, pay to get gameplay advantages which make winning more probable, which is absolutely the case here). I agree that it's particularly bad when there are human losers, but there is indirect competition in the game (for instance about being able to play on the highest difficulty), and the psychological nudging towards making a purchase is exactly the same.

 

Edit: I personally have a strong dislike of being manipulated this way, and that makes a game I have spent a lot of money on a lot less enjoyable.

 

For PvP, "Pay to Win" is equivalent to "Someone else paid and I lost because of it" where in PvE it equates to "Someone else paid and we won, but I didn't get to do as much." Still inherently annoying, but not as bad I don't think. Where it gets bad is if the game is balanced such that it's significantly harder (or impossible) to win in PvE contet without paying, because then it starts to drift back to "I didn't pay, so I lost" territory. 

[hirn1appen]

For PvP, "Pay to Win" is equivalent to "Someone else paid and I lost because of it" where in PvE it equates to "Someone else paid and we won, but I didn't get to do as much." Still inherently annoying, but not as bad I don't think. Where it gets bad is if the game is balanced such that it's significantly harder (or impossible) to win in PvE contet without paying, because then it starts to drift back to "I didn't pay, so I lost" territory. 

The point is that as long as there are any paid gameplay advantages at all, they can sometimes mean "we lost because not enough of us paid". As soon as that can't happen anymore, by definition the advantage is gone.

So what we have is a continuum, with a paid ingame item that just looks as if it conferred any advantage to the player but doesn't (and why should something like this exist except to fool players and make them open their wallets?) on one end and a blatant paid win button on the other. If you avoid one problem, you automatically run into the other.

In my view, the only way to solve this is to make the items cosmetic and to let players know this is the case.

 

[JonCole]

Did they rebalance the game to make it harder in response to paid equipment being made available? Does paid equipment replace what was formerly the best equipment, or is it simply a tier above? I can only think of a handful of games that have been proven to function this way, namely Candy Crush. Essentially, it was found that once you make your first microtransaction in Candy Crush, the game is measurably harder and thus the powerups/boosts become that much more essential. If the exact same scenarios are available and they're just as completable as they were before except now there's just even more grease available to be placed between the wheels, I can't see that as being P2W.

 

I can see being frustrated with the open question that "maybe if I had paid, I would have won" but unless it's proven that you can't win unless you pay, I can't see that as being anything more than frustrating.

[hirn1appen]

Did they rebalance the game to make it harder in response to paid equipment being made available? Does paid equipment replace what was formerly the best equipment, or is it simply a tier above?

That's hard to answer, because at the same time they introduced a re-balance of all guns that's really strange, to put it diplomatically. Now we have pistols that have damage and accuracy in the sniper rifle range while some shotguns now deal damage in the range of a weak pistol before the update.

In any case, if you want to min/max your weapon, there is no way around a stat-boosted skin (which cost upwards of 10$ on the marketplace each), and some skins have been confirmed to make some weapons way more effective, for example by pushing the damage above the magic threshold of 40 - which means that instead of two shots, you need only one to kill the most common enemy.

I can see being frustrated with the open question that "maybe if I had paid, I would have won" but unless it's proven that you can't win unless you pay, I can't see that as being anything more than frustrating.

Isn't that bad enough? If a game people paid a lot of money for on the specific promise that this wouldn't happen ("shame on you if you thought otherwise!") suddenly becomes frustrating for purely economic reasons, that's a damn good reason to protest (and, in fact, demand your money back).

Edit: even if you couldn't win, what other than "frustrating" would that be?

[JonCole]

I dunno, maybe I'm just not the right audience for this type of complaint. Certainly I don't think it's meaningless that you and other fans are frustrated by this, but this game is years old at this point. You've certainly gotten your money's worth out of it. I know that they made a promise to never get into microtransactions, but then again I really don't think there's a substantive difference between buying small, low-cost expansions that unlock weapons that are definitively better than the core offerings and what is characterized as "microtransactions". I also don't know how reasonable it is to expect them to stick to that promise forever, it's kind of like in politics how someone can get slammed for either not changing their positions as time moves on or being characterized as unreliable because they choose to change their positions as time moves on.

 

Put another way, Payday 2 changed significantly within the span of a year or so via expansions and updates to the core systems. At that point, Overkill had the option of simply calling that new product Payday 3, or maybe calling it Payday 2: Remastered, or whatever. Had they chose to go with that option and then changed their position that they might consider microtransactions, would they be oathkeepers because Payday 3 is the one adding microtransactions and they're not breaking their promise on Payday 2? Are we effectively dinging them because they made a promise a long time ago, acted in the best interest of customers by not releasing their systems changes as an entirely new game, and now they're going back on that extremely old promise (by games industry terms, 2+ years is FOREVER)?

[hirn1appen]

I know that they made a promise to never get into microtransactions, but then again I really don't think there's a substantive difference between buying small, low-cost expansions that unlock weapons that are definitively better than the core offerings and what is characterized as "microtransactions".

I agree, if it had just been individual guns and skins for sale, I wouldn't have minded them going back on their promise that much. But the fact that they broke their promise in about the most anticustomer way imaginable a very anticustomer way (credits go to to Merus for reminding me of several worse things they could have done) is what makes me angry. In their system, we have this:

• gambling
• intransparency of the lottery (impossible to know what you'll get for what price or even what chances you have)
• the requirement to pay for a third time (for DLC, after paying for the base game and the lottery) to actually be able to use a prize you won
• high price
• definite in-game advantages AKA P2W
• (for at least half a year deliberate) inability for a customer to see what business model the product actually has (see the next paragraph for an explanation).
• unlike their vague claims that the money would be used to finance the further development of the title, presumably a large part of the revenueis going into their other projects
• in-game advertising (which had been present for some time)

So in fact, in comparison even the monetization schemes in most F2P games are more customer friendly.

I also don't know how reasonable it is to expect them to stick to that promise forever, it's kind of like in politics how someone can get slammed for either not changing their positions as time moves on or being characterized as unreliable because they choose to change their positions as time moves on.

In every other business, we expect companies to hold their advertising promises as well. I really don't see why this should be any different. If they're in such a volatile business that they can't keep long-time promises, maybe they are the unreasonable ones to make them in the first place? Or they should at least try to be as customer friendly as possible when breaking them?

For instance, half a year ago there was the "Hype Train" event. Back then, they sold a 20$ "completely overkill pack" containing just 4 masks and 1 out of 25 secret cosmetic items for a limited time "to support the company and the community" (I'm paraphrasing), basically on their customer's trust and goodwill (selling a pig in a poke for a limited time in and of itself is a pretty shady business practice, if you ask me, but that's not the main point I'm making). The details of that offer make it pretty clear that they had already planned going the microtransaction route when they were offering them, in other words that they would be breaking their promise.

What would a decent person have done if that had been an inevitability at that point? Talk to their customers, let them know what's coming and let them decide on a rational and informed basis if they wanted to support this. Maybe even engage in a discussion what forms exactly the new business model should take. Instead, Overkill decided to keep their customers, even their most loyal core audience that had paid 20$ specifically to support them, in the dark right until the time of release.

Put another way, Payday 2 changed significantly within the span of a year or so via expansions and updates to the core systems. At that point, Overkill had the option of simply calling that new product Payday 3, or maybe calling it Payday 2: Remastered, or whatever. Had they chose to go with that option and then changed their position that they might consider microtransactions, would they be oathkeepers because Payday 3 is the one adding microtransactions and they're not breaking their promise on Payday 2? Are we effectively dinging them because they made a promise a long time ago, acted in the best interest of customers by not releasing their systems changes as an entirely new game, and now they're going back on that extremely old promise (by games industry terms, 2+ years is FOREVER)?

My interests would have been served better if they had done that: in that case I would have a Payday 2 that would no longer be supported with more content, but that would be a game that I actually wanted to play, as opposed to a game I have very little interest playing because it shows me everywhere that its developers think it's okay to try and manipulate me psychologically in ways that are worse than in most F2P games (where something like that would be okay, because it's transparent and the accepted "price" of the product) after taking more money, in excess of 150$, from me than almost any other game on the market costs.

Then it would be their job to sell me their new "Payday 2: Remastered", and they would have to make a damn good offer if they wanted me to swallow the pill - probably F2P would have been too expensive for me. Instead, they took the easy route by removing my option to choose.

[Dinosaursssssss]

huh, I didn't think anyone gave a shit about Steam curation.

[hirn1appen]

huh, I didn't think anyone gave a shit about Steam curation.

In general, I don't either, but IT is one of the more thoughtful and trusted voices out there, so if I see their curation somewhere, I might give something a second look that I might otherwise have dismissed. Vice versa, there is also the question what products and business practices a curator wants to approve and be associated with.

[Smart Jason]

I agree with you in a lot of ways, hirn1appen, but coming to the forum seemingly just to ask the podcast to revoke its endorsement of the game on such an academic level strikes me as the sort of brigading-activism that's more about soothing the wounded egos of gamers than about affecting change in policy.

 

This has been discussed a bit in the de facto Payday thread in the multiplayer games section. Most people who've spoken up have already quit playing the game. I'm still playing (although not spending any money even on the DLC packs that I want), because even though I find the new business model unethical I don't think that it's so grossly different from what other publishers do in this industry to be worth quitting over. I've found the Payday community to be extremely unimpressive in the wake of this controversy (hard as it is to judge a congregation of people reacting against sudden changes).

 

The issue is close to my heart, and I kind of want to quote my post from the aforementioned Payday thread, but it would just descend into egotistical self-parody at that point as I'd be quoting myself in a post in which I already quote myself, but that's where the sum of my thoughts are.

[Merus]

I also don't think it changes the quality of the game enough, and I'm leery of someone claiming this is "the most anti-consumer thing imaginable" because they're clearly full of shit. It's like the phrase "slap in the face" - anyone who's using it is almost always overreacting.

 

For instance, I can think of a universe of worse options:

 

• Pay to reverse a called alarm
• Pay for limited invincibility
• Introducing new gameplay modes that are pay per play
• An energy system
• The DOTA2 Compendium

Like, I don't think it's a good change, but what the Payday 2 community is proving here is that they're shitty enough that Idle Thumbs should make sure its Steam curation page steers potential players away from them.

[hirn1appen]

I also don't think it changes the quality of the game enough, and I'm leery of someone claiming this is "the most anti-consumer thing imaginable" because they're clearly full of shit. It's like the phrase "slap in the face" - anyone who's using it is almost always overreacting.

 

For instance, I can think of a universe of worse options:

First of all, please quote me correctly. I called it "about the most customer-unfriendly way imaginable", so I did not claim an absolute.

But you do have a point: Calling it that was incorrect (or at least betraying my lack of imagination). I'll edit the post accordingly. The main point of the argument still stands however: in total, the monetization scheme is more anti-consumer than in most F2P games (at least those I know of).

Speaking of overreacting: calling out untrue statements is one thing, but maybe calling someone "full of shit" who is using hyperbole on a minor point is also something that's not ideal behavior - especially if this rests on misquoting the other person to a large extent.

Like, I don't think it's a good change, but what the Payday 2 community is proving here is that they're shitty enough that Idle Thumbs should make sure its Steam curation page steers potential players away from them.

I'll let that stand on its own.

[hirn1appen]

I agree with you in a lot of ways, hirn1appen, but coming to the forum seemingly just to ask the podcast to revoke its endorsement of the game on such an academic level strikes me as the sort of brigading-activism that's more about soothing the wounded egos of gamers than about affecting change in policy.

I'll readily admit that my coming here has a lot to do with my own emotional urge of not wanting to tolerate being taken advantage of, but going here has a lot do do with my affection for the podcast (and 3MA in fact, my favorite genre is strategy, especially stuff like the Paradox games they're now planning to devote a monthly special episode on) and the way they talk about games intelligently. So formulating my critique in a slightly academic way seemed reasonable to me. But of course, I'm new to the forums, and I don't really know the etiquette around here. So: sorry for not discussing this in the appropriate thread you linked to. (I did not find it because I looked in the wrong subforum, thinking that "Multiplayer networking" was more about finding other players for MP.)

Anyway, I don't know effective my actions are, and I can see that they look a lot like an impotent crusade from the outside. Are they? Or are they an example of an enlightened consumer who wants to harness free speech and market forces to make companies behave ethically, as I like to believe? I'm probably not the right person to judge.

This has been discussed a bit in the de facto Payday thread in the multiplayer games section. Most people who've spoken up have already quit playing the game. I'm still playing (although not spending any money even on the DLC packs that I want), because even though I find the new business model unethical I don't think that it's so grossly different from what other publishers do in this industry to be worth quitting over. I've found the Payday community to be extremely unimpressive in the wake of this controversy (hard as it is to judge a congregation of people reacting against sudden changes).

Some things people did (like kicking users of skins) actually do seem like an overreaction that is targetting the wrong people because the real objective is out of reach.

The issue is close to my heart, and I kind of want to quote my post from the aforementioned Payday thread, but it would just descend into egotistical self-parody at that point as I'd be quoting myself in a post in which I already quote myself, but that's where the sum of my thoughts are.

I gave it a read and I agree with what you said in the email to Overkill. In fact, I sent them a similar email.

[Merus]

The main point of the argument still stands however: in total, the monetization scheme is more anti-consumer than in most F2P games (at least those I know of).

 

I don't think it does, and that's part of why I made a list of actual mechanics used in games free and paid that I think are worse.

 

What I'm trying to highlight here is that word choice reveals something about the mindset that the argument comes from. Arguments aren't made in a vacuum, and it takes training to read and write arguments based purely on verifiable facts. Most of us humans don't argue this way. 'Anti-consumer', I've found, is a phrase used when someone's throwing a tantrum about the value proposition of a product, a close cousin to 'the customer is always right' and not that far off TotalBiscuit's fuckwittery. So it's a dog-whistle phrase that makes me far more suspicious of someone's arguments.

 

If it wasn't a fair deal, you'd lead with that. If it divided the playerbase into paid and unpaid, damaging the ability of the community to play together, you'd lead with that. It's introducing a real-money gambling component, but it doesn't seem to be the pernicious effects of gambling that's bothering you as much as changing the business model. The appeal of the gun seems very narrow, as Payday 2 is a somewhat unforgiving game as I'm led to believe - a great gun in the hands of someone who doesn't understand what they're doing will not save them.

 

I still refuse to argue in favour of lockboxes, though.

[Dewar]

Played a couple of games this weekend and was disappointed to see that the safes that drop take the place of one of the cards you win at the end of the match, meaning that you have effectively have a 33% less chance of getting a useful item in a system that already loves to give you shotgun parts when you've never actually equipped a shotgun.

[Smart Jason]

Played a couple of games this weekend and was disappointed to see that the safes that drop take the place of one of the cards you win at the end of the match, meaning that you have effectively have a 33% less chance of getting a useful item in a system that already loves to give you shotgun parts when you've never actually equipped a shotgun.

 

The last I read, the system is that you get either one crate or one key per week, with a massive percentage preference to the crate. The first time you play post-update, it definitely seems to be heavily favored to drop a crate for you just to introduce you to the new model. I got it in my first game, as did many others, anecdotally.

 

Should be pointed out that the drop at the end isn't random, no matter which card you pick (i.e., you'll always get the same drop, determined by the relative percentage chances of whatever small buffs you have on masks vs. mods, etc.). So it's not actually taking away your chances of getting something you want by a third (considering, as above, safe drops seem externally limited - and if they're not, they'd need to have a chance of dropping 33% of the time in any given payday to actually influence it as you said).

 

Final note: weapons mods stop dropping when you have two of them in stock; so the more you get, the fewer you'll see in the future, if you're not equipping them.

[Dewar]

Hmm, I must have played over a the week separator or something, I did two matches over the weekend and got safes.

 

As for weapon mods, very true, but I haven't put enough time into the game to really double-up on a lot of things. 

[Gormongous]

I've posted in the Payday 2 thread in the Multiplayer subforum about how I'm quitting, but my reasons for exhaustion and disillusionment are so personal that I wouldn't impose them on others. The Thumbs seem to have played very little Payday 2, and I think that the appearance of the game on their curation page is more an endorsement of game design than business model, so I feel uncomfortable asking them to take it down because the latter has changed, even if the change is substantial in my eyes.

 

Hmm, I must have played over a the week separator or something, I did two matches over the weekend and got safes.

 

As for weapon mods, very true, but I haven't put enough time into the game to really double-up on a lot of things. 

 

I know that someone took over Goonmod, so you might want to look into installing it for its Gage Shop feature. Basically, it lets completed courier packages become currency to buy weapon mods. Technically cheating, I guess, but we've now been told that unfair advantages are okay in co-op games because they benefit the whole team, and anything to reduce the game's grind, I say.

[hirn1appen]

I don't think it does, and that's part of why I made a list of actual mechanics used in games free and paid that I think are worse.

 

What I'm trying to highlight here is that word choice reveals something about the mindset that the argument comes from. Arguments aren't made in a vacuum, and it takes training to read and write arguments based purely on verifiable facts. Most of us humans don't argue this way. 'Anti-consumer', I've found, is a phrase used when someone's throwing a tantrum about the value proposition of a product, a close cousin to 'the customer is always right' and not that far off TotalBiscuit's fuckwittery. So it's a dog-whistle phrase that makes me far more suspicious of someone's arguments.

I'd argue that there is a difference between just bad value propositions and anticonsumer behavior. The basic idea of the marketplace presupposes an informed consumer who can evaluate his offers and choose those that offer him good value for his money. Bad value propositions are simply products that can be rejected because they don't meet this standard.

But we're in different territory if a company subverts this principle, for instance by going back on their advertised promises, which means that in effect customers are denied the possibility of making an informed decision. And I think it's completely justified to use the term "anticonsumer" in such cases.

 

To clarify this a bit: if PD2 had been released with the current business model, I wouldn't have railed against it. It would just have been a bad value proposition, and I wouldn't have bought it. But they turned a product I already paid a lot of money for into one that I would never have bought, and that's what I have a massive problem with.

f it wasn't a fair deal, you'd lead with that. If it divided the playerbase into paid and unpaid, damaging the ability of the community to play together, you'd lead with that. It's introducing a real-money gambling component, but it doesn't seem to be the pernicious effects of gambling that's bothering you as much as changing the business model. The appeal of the gun seems very narrow, as Payday 2 is a somewhat unforgiving game as I'm led to believe - a great gun in the hands of someone who doesn't understand what they're doing will not save them.

That's true for Death Wish, a difficulty level that's considerably more difficult than the next easier one. But at the same time, the unforgiving difficulty means that every little advantage counts, and hitting or missing that one shot can be the difference between success and failure for the whole team.

I still refuse to argue in favour of lockboxes, though.

Great that we're on the same side at least on this central issue.

[hirn1appen]

I've posted in the Payday 2 thread in the Multiplayer subforum about how I'm quitting, but my reasons for exhaustion and disillusionment are so personal that I wouldn't impose them on others. The Thumbs seem to have played very little Payday 2, and I think that the appearance of the game on their curation page is more an endorsement of game design than business model, so I feel uncomfortable asking them to take it down because the latter has changed, even if the change is substantial in my eyes.

In any case, asking someone who is responsible for the curation to take a look into this would not be a bad thing - in the end, it's up to them to decide if their endorsement should be influenced by such considerations as business models and their ethics or not.