Starbreeze rolled out a new subscription service for Payday 2 DLC yesterday, which struck me as a pretty good deal: $5 per month for every piece of DLC currently available, and you can subscribe and cancel as you see fit. But the launch turned a less-than-flattering spotlight on another recent Payday 2 development: A significant increase in the price of the Infamous Collection, a bundle of all current Payday 2 DLC that players can buy outright.
A few weeks before the launch of the subscription service, the Infamous Collection jumped from $118 to $170, a steep increase that many players assumed was meant to funnel them toward the subscription service. Gustav Nisser, Starbreeze’s head of commercial, said there was no connection—that the timing was simply “unfortunate,” and the studio had “dropped the ball” on keeping fans in the loop.
Maybe an unpopular opinion, but I actually like these “DLC Subscription” type things, particularly for older games with tons of DLC. There’s a huge barrier to entry for someone trying to pick up an older game, and being able to pay $5 or $10 and ‘demo’ all of the DLC for a month is a nice way to see what’s worth buying or if the game is even going to have enough longevity to make buying the DLC worth it.
Obviously when it’s accompanied by a huge increase in the price of the DLC, it sours it considerably, but at its core, the subscription itself is not a bad thing.
Yeah, i agree on that; when i heard that i thought about jumping in for a month and playing it again; it actually is pretty fun, but it’s simply too expensive to buy in. I would be happy if other games with lots of DLC or expensive DLC considered something similar; Paradox games are the first thing that come to mind, but there’s other stuff like Rimworld where you can drop 100 Bucks on expansions that i simply do not have.