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BHVR's Monetization. (An open letter to BHVR.)
What was being thought when BHVR decided to monetize DBD how they did? I can understand full priced DLC for licensed characters, and I can even understand paying for original DLC (although unlocking two characters with shards per DLC is awful to grind, and three is straight up impossibly annoying), but where I get pissed is the skins.
This game, that you've paid full price and then four times over on top of that, decides to charge 10-15 PER SKIN, with very rare sales and F2P MONETIZATION TACTICS. Limited time cosmetics, removing cosmetics that were already available in the store, making 15 dollar skins that are barely different from the 10 dollar skins, and making it damn near IMPOSSIBLE to grind the skins for free.
Shard prices for skins should be HALF of what they are, and epic skins should be 5 dollars for a COLLECTION of skins, not 10 PER SKIN. DBD's monetization is god-awful, and I feel like I'm playing a gacha game when I look at the cosmetic shop because of how much these skins cost.
I seriously can't recommend buying skins, and with this prime free rift pass, you can get the rift pass for free for the foreseeable future. Please, don't spend more money on skins in this game. The monetization makes me legitimately angry.
(Note: This is not a hate letter towards BHVR, I am simply very upset with how this game has chosen to monetize itself.)
Comments
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Yeah, it's a fun game if you're into it, but it's so goddamn hard to get into and so not worth it that it's literally a better idea to recommend IDV or DBDM compared to base DBD, and those games have ACTUAL GAMBLING in them.
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Yeah with the massive grind. Multiple dlc adding like 100$+ Many micro transactions and memory required for fearures. It acts like a ftp game but it is still a paid game at the end of the day. It and overwatch i kinda both wanted to go ftp. Overwatch did but dbd hasn't. Its very aged imo.
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The fact that you can get everything for free except for licensed content (which they cannot give for free due to having to pay the license) means that they need to have some way to make up that money, so they do so with cosmetics. Which are COMPLETELY OPTIONAL. I have Jill Valentine, I can play Jill Valentine. Do I NEED Claire Redfield? Nope. Jill and her perks are 100% playable without me owning Claire Redfield. So, Claire costs what she costs, again because they need to pay the license and because the Claire Redfield legendary is not required to play Jill nor to use Jill's perks.
As for time-limited stuff, yea it kinda sucks that I can't go into the store right now and buy Trapper Krampus but... well, I can get him this December and... maybe I'll use him outside of December, but probably not.
That said, yes I am a Claire main and BHVR please give us this:
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do you really think, that a company that does not update their own credits has any dignity?
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killer skins ESPECIALLY need to be repriced. you barely see it ffs, dont get me started on the legendary/ultra rare category-$15 for a skin, while a character is $5 and comes with perks, prestige cosmetics, and customizeability
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The monetisation in DBD is a lot better than most games, especially now that they are making all original cosmetics available to buy with shards.
I've bought every single original DLC with shards (plus loads of cosmetics) and I still have a constant 50k shard buffer.
The amount of money that I've spend on DBD over the years is nothing compared to the sheer amount of free content I've received.
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Keep in mind that DBD is a live service game which costs them a lot of money to keep going so the fact we can even earn cosmetics and even original characters just by playing the game is a good thing. Its perfectly fine how they are selling the skins. What matters is how good those skins are. I don't mind paying $5-10 for skins if I like them. In fact I think their current monetization encourages them to make better content that people are more willing to spend money on. I was actually surprised that they switched to the gradual progression from auric to iridescent shards. They didn't have to do that so the fact we can earn most of the content just by playing the game is really cool.
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I would love that for Claire. She should've been an actual survivor and Rebecca could've been legendary. Claire has quite the pool of cosmetics to choose from
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Lmao is this a joke?
That's an absolutely wild take. "Yeah I'd like them to make the actual content more expensive so that I can afford more cosmetics 😡"
The skins are priced that way so that they can make the actual characters and gameplay content cheaper and more accessible? This has always been the case?
Would it be better if new characters were only available in Rifts and unlockable at tier 45? 👀 And for that matter, you can get so many damn cosmetics for $10 in the Rift. And if you play, you'll never pay for the Rift more than once. I've straight up bought maybe two skins in my life with Cells, a few with Shards (of which I still have over 90k), and have gotten so many straight up for free or from the Rift?
DbD has the least predatory monetization of any online game I've played. I'm absolutely flabbergasted by this atrocity of an open letter, BHVR please don't listen to these people lol
Edit: and yes I did finally sign up and into the forums just to comment on how wild this is
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Time-limited cosmetics clearly need to stop, that's disgusting.
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F2P game monetization is a house of cards reliant on whales.
Even a huge player base means nothing if players don’t spend money so the company can pay for servers, customer support, labor costs, etc. All of which need a continual flow of funds if services are continually used by a player base.
At the very least that is why the initial buy-in should not be removed, as it acts as future funding for new account services.
Your comparison of the current monetization model to a gacha game is the most ill informed take I have ever seen. Gacha systems are slot machines with no duplication protection that prey on gambling addictions. You don’t know what you’re getting, and stacking the odds in the houses favor just makes them more money.
You admonish FOMO but complain that there are infrequent sales. You know sales for things that don’t have logistics issues necessitating the sale are purely to incite FOMO right?
Though I am neutral about the Auric prices of outfits. Maybe lowering the prices will make them more accessible to players, making more sales that level out when they were higher priced, but maybe overall increasing player retention and perhaps satisfaction with more manageable financial sinks.
Maybe the better option would be to incite fomo with seasonal sales on a full (not time-limited) catalogue. (Though BHVR would likely have to roll back their couple-month limit for assured Shard prices, either abolish it, or shift it to like a year)
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I'm going to be real with you, let's look at DBD in this way:
- you pay for a base game
- you can pick and choose dlc you want or don't want, or all of them if you so choose. Same goes with skins.
- you do NOT pay a monthly fee like an MMO. You buy the game you play it for free and however much you want
- more importantly, a sole reason for a company to exist is to make money. This is the society we live in. The company has employees they need to pay. The artists who make the skins need to be paid. The way the game is made, the only actual revenue comes from dlc sales, and skin sales. Because there is no monthly fee to pay the game, they would actively lose money if they did not sell enough skins or dlc. At some point dlc sales for a specific chapter stagnate, because you can buy originals with shards and over time most people will have it do it just stops. So what's next? Skins, battle pass for skins (which by the way is a ONE TIME INVESTMENT)
Servers are very expensive, btw. And you need to buy multiple in each region you operate in. So realistically the only option other than to shut down the servers, effectively killing the game (they are not going back to p2p), or charging a monthly fee like some stupid MMO, which would effectively kill the game too. This is an objective truth.
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Sure, a comapny exists to make money. How about not use greedy tactics to do it? Those tend to push customers away.
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I'll pay for skins, happily. But the ones that are crusted from head to toe in dirt, are not being purchased. I get it's a survival horror game but I want cute looking skins for my characters. Just make bloody/muddy options unlockable or able to be customized if you want your characters looking like that.
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I agree that the skins are over-priced and the grind to get anything for free feels like it's deliberately slow and tedious.
I don't actually know the reason why, but speaking from my own experience, I have a much more problematic relationship with in-game purchases in DBD than I do in any other game. I always think I'm not going to spend money, but then I get so bored, and it's been so long since I've gotten any reward for playing -- and suddenly, I'm like, "Why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't I spend $10 if it's going to make me happy for the next three hours?"
And then, little bit by little bit, the tally of how much I've spent on this game keeps going up. And it's not out of joy or excitement -- it's not because I love whatever they just released SO MUCH that I feel I need to have it -- often I'm buying things that I initially didn't like, but then I got bored enough to pay for novelty.
And, like, regardless of whose fault it is, it feels kind of bad.
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I don't have an issue with it. I pick and choose what I spend my money on, nothing is compulsory to pay for (except base game obviously). For a game that updates as often as DBD does, not to mention the costs of licenses, resources, and employees, I think their monetisation is fine personally.
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