After revealing a new subscription program for the 12-year-old crime sim Payday 2, developer Starbreeze Studios subsequently increased a DLC bundle pack by 44% from $118 to $170. Now, in response to the backlash, the team has apologized, reverting the price to its original amount after admitting it “messed up.”
Starbreeze’s head of commercial, Gustav Nisser, told PC Gamer that the Infamous Collection’s 44% jump was not tied to the introduction of the new Payday 2: Subscription, a $5/month program that gives you access to a plethora of the game’s DLC packs. While fans reportedly thought that the Infamous Collection’s price hike was in some way a funnel toward the Subscription service, Nisser said it was all just really bad timing.
“If we had realized the change would be happening so close to the subscription launch, we wouldn’t have done it,” Nisser said. “In addition, we always aim to communicate upcoming price changes to our community and in this case we missed doing that as well. So basically we messed up in a couple of different ways, particularly both internal coordination and community communication and … the results speak for themselves. The community has been pretty clear that they felt it looked like we were trying to push people into the subscription, and I completely understand that. For better or worse that’s not the case, literally just a mishap.”
To do good by the game’s ardent fanbase, Starbreeze has not only apologized but also completely reversed course. The Infamous Collection is back to its original $118 price, with an additional 31% off on top of that, bringing the bundle down to $84.92 (on Steam).
“The community has been pretty clear about how it looks next to the subscription launch–and they’re not wrong, it’s terrible timing,” Nisser said. “We definitely didn’t handle this right, and we’ll be apologising to the community. Hopefully there will be at least some acceptance that this was an honest mistake.”
Both the Infamous Collection and the Subscription program are strictly for Payday 2, not Payday 3. That’s seemingly because, according to SteamDB data, Payday 3 doesn’t tend to crack 1,000 concurrent players while Payday 2 frequently has tens of thousands playing at any given time. The former is clearly more popular than the latter.
The Infamous Collection (only available for the PC version of the game right now) features over 70 pieces of DLC, including various cosmetics, weapons, characters, and more. You don’t have to spend $118 (or $84.92) for any of these packs, though, as they’re all available piecemeal and currently discounted on Steam.
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