PAYDAY 2 Going Free To Play?

[Borble Jonklet]

Before I start, I'd like to clarify that this article is only speculation. I appreciate any feedback, but try to keep it clean. Here are my thoughts:

Firstly, the silly skins drilling system was introduced, and obviously it's heavily inspired by CS:GO. You receives safes from playing missions, and you need to buy a drill to unlock it. $2.49 is a bit heavy but hey, some people pay that much. Anyways, the game is free to play for 10 days, and even though they claim it is to celebrate their birthday, I think I know why they did it. This is to test if they can make a reasonable profit from the game if it is free to play. Honestly I don't mind it going free to play, but those that bought the game should get some sort of reward if it does become free. Otherwise I'll feel cheated. Let me know what you think!

[Mr Pyro]

I'm pretty sure it goes free every crimefest. And pretty much every other event like this. If the game got some decent anti-cheat, I wouldn't have too much of a problem with F2P, As someone with over 500 hours I think I've gotten my $20 dollars worth. The DLCs should not be free though.

[I'm Error (Alt)]

Well this would be a bloody joke. This game has +100 € worth of dlc if they honestly think that this is how a good f2p game works then they must be living in a parallel dimension.
Also in case you didn't know the game is f2p after every crimefest, this wasn't the first.

[Inny【🐭】Nazrin]

I'd love to say that you were wrong but..

You're not wrong.

Free 2 play will be the death of Payday 2 as we know it now. Long before the shenanigans of this crimefest, many older players simply refused to play during free weekends unless it was with their friends because of the large amount of inexperienced players getting dropped into their lobbies, trying to be "an hero" and messing up a heist.

"Inside men" (aka anonymous message boards, take with a pinch of salt) have already predicted it, and a lot of armchair analyts have seen similar patterns in the way TF2's F2P transition was made.

Payday 2 wont work as a free to play game. At least, not in the same sense as it has done in the past. Stealth heists will be non-existant due to the unreliability of randoms, multiday heists will be extremely risky because you could end up with some idiot that decides to kick everyone at the end of the heist once the loot is secured.

Sadly, the push of microtransactions as you say are heavily leaning towards a F2P market, and with them doing market research into Mobile gaming for their own future mobile game, Free to play "Whales" are a very profitable market to exploit.

[Rain]

Not likely

[Komonyi]

Probably.

After all, they will stop supporting the game after a year and a half, so they try to milk as money as they can until then.

[Borble Jonklet]

Thanks to all the feedback so far. Keep in mind that after a few years, PAYDAY 2 has reached just about every potential customer. Their income from the game is obviously not as good as it was, so going free to play seems like a profitable option to me. We'll see what happens in the future.

[Varenvel The Festive Dinosaur]

Seeing what happens at crimefest i wont be surprised:/

after what they did to http://www.pd2stats.com/ and treated them like literal garbage i expect everything they do for profit
http://steamcommunity.com/app/218620/discussions/8/490123197949998159/