Yesterday, Helldivers 2 officially revealed its first crossover skins collaboration: Killzone 2. But players immediately balked at the $20 price tag, and now the sci-fi shooter’s developers are trying to put down the fan rebellion with a holiday freebie.
The Helghast-inspired Killzone sets are $20 a piece, more than anything else currently in the paid-for game. While Arrowhead Game Studios won’t confirm that future collaborations will be priced lower than that, it is giving away the second set in the crossover to try to win back fans heading into the end-of-year break.
“Firstly, we are gifting to everyone the planned second wave of the Helldivers x Killzone collaboration items today, free of charge,” the devs wrote in a new blog post. “The distribution of those items will begin shortly, in two waves. As such we’re also going to extend the duration of the items currently in the Superstore from 5 days to 10 days so that you have a chance to get hold of it and reduce the risk of missing out.”
At issue is the fact that Helldivers 2 is a $40 game charging free-to-play prices for new skins as part of a potential slippery slope, amid its expanding post-launch monetization strategy. Arrowhead’s CEO made the argument that premium sets like the Killzone collaboration are how the company can afford to keep major updates, like the recent introduction of the Illuminate enemy faction, completely free.
But many players felt like it was crossing a line and out of step with the game’s previous pattern of releasing new items as unlockable in $10 battle passes (which can be partly paid for with currency slowly accumulated in game). In fact, the Killzone set was originally supposed to be part of a Warbond, but the studio decided against that over concerns about a backlash to that as well. “Some of you are not happy with the prices of the items and we will revisit this,” the company responded in its latest update.
In addition to lengthening the stay of new crossover items in the shop’s monthly rotation, it sounds like Arrowhead is also looking at a way to have a secondary shop of items that never changes so that latecomers always have a chance to buy the more highly sought-after crossover merch. Some fans worried that this latest economic encroachment was due to publisher Sony’s meddling, but CEO Shams Jorjani said in the Helldivers 2 Discord that that wasn’t the case. “It’s a partnership but we are in the driving seat behind the decisions,” he wrote. “This one is on us.”
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