Earlier today, Helldivers 2 developer Arrowhead deployed the opening bit of the game’s first ever crossover. It’s some gear inspired by dormant PlayStation shooter Killzone, but the prices players are being asked to pay for this stuff have prompted some backlash.
Basically, as we reported in our story this morning about the deployment of this Helldivers X Killzone collab, the amount of super credits being charged individually for the new assault rifle and armour set that’ve been added to the superstore with this update has drawn ire for not being that far off of the 1000 super creds – that’s HD2’s in-game currency – folks are used to paying for a full Warbond containing a bunch of stuff.
Now, Arrowhead CEO Shams Jorjani has taken to the game’s Discord Server to address to this pricing criticism from Super Earthers.
“Hey – quick comment on the Helghast stuff,” he wrote in an initial post, “Firstly – this is our first collaboration so we’ll be figuring it out as we go along. Let us know what you’d like to see in the future. Secondly it’s optional – the more of this we sell – the more illuminate type stuff we can keep dropping for free.”
Jorjani then did as Helldivers 2’s high profile devs often do when they pop up on the server like this and responded directly to some players replying to his message. “To be clear – that’s not what we want to do,” he told one accusing Arrowhead of “planting the seed of the possibility of having to pay for non-collab/content updates into peoples heads” with this gear, adding: “But the better the overall business does the bigger/better the ongoing free updates will be.”
While sticking to the point of view that “if we monetize optional stuff we can cram in more fun core stuff”, the CEO did acknowledge the criticism and suggest the studio will be receptive to the “valid” negative feedback it’s gotten on these prices. “Our intent was to try different things and see how players respond, how the stuff sells and improve over time,” he wrote in one of his final posts during this little bit of server chatter.
How do you feel about this Helldivers 2/Killzone crossover and how much the gear included in it costs? Let us know below!