Starbreeze Brings The Heisters Home In Surprising Deal
In a downright surprising move, parent company of Overkill, Starbreeze, has acquired the IP for Payday 2 from 505 games. In a noted bit of controversy, 505 had introduced a crate system similar to games like Dota 2 and Counter Strike: GO, where players could unlock items in what was known as “The Black Market”. The idea of microtransactions in a game that was already rather flush with DLC was met with a surprising amount of controversy, with moderators on the steam forums voluntarily going on boycott. That’s not all, however.
The update was widely maligned not for including new ways to customize their heisters, but for the fact that it was literally a case of “pay to win”, with weapons have stat modifiers. Â It spiraled to such a point that even Almir Listo, the community manager, publicly apologized to fans, saying “We’ve done a lot of things right in the past, but these past few weeks we screwed up.”
The extent of the deal has it set so that retroactively as of May 1st, 2016, all revenue from Payday 2 will go directly to Starbreeze. Money earned from sales of the console version of the game will be split between Starbreeze and 505 Games going forward. Starbreeze acquired the rights for the sum of 10.9 million shares of the company, equating to about 249 million Swedish Krona or $30 million USD. Starbreeze expects the continued success of the title to make up this amount, until the inevitable release of Payday 3 (stealth announcements/confirmations for the win.)
Almir Listo had another surprising bit of news regarding this big change. Listo confirmed that “Starting with the next update for Payday 2, any old generation safe will [stop dropping]. Any new generation safe will drop completely for free. The only difference is, now you open them for free. You will still be able to trade all the old and new generation safes and items using the Steam Marketplace.” It’s a huge show of apology from the community, regardless of the taste the black market update left in your mouth. For a company that initially seemed so intent on going against the inclusion of this, only to later include them, it’s nice to see them stick to their initial thought process.
For all the gritty details, you can read Starbreeze’s full announcement right here.
Source: Press Release