Lets get into the “controversial” details regarding Multiplayer that has people worried due to “microtransactions” in Cyberpunk 2077. Now if you guys are unaware, CD PROJEKT had a financial call of sorts for investors, where President and CEO Adam Kicinski & Piotr nielubowicz went over some financial results for CD PROJEKT group, and the groups future plans.
Now we already know that Cyberpunk 2077 will have a Multiplayer component, which is still in early development according to this call, but at around 26 minutes into the conference call it was asked how the monetization of the multiplayer component will be addressed.
Kicinski and piotr nielubowicz answer with that it is too early to share how this will be monetized, and there is no direction they have established for this. They do however mention that they will not change their current policies of offering wise monetization & value for money.
Now of course the vitriolic knee jerk reaction via social media has been significant, as it always is with the nature of these things. Putting this into perspective however let’s first talk about the missreporting of the mention of microtransactions. I want to point out the distinction between monetization and microtransactions. Microtransactions do fall within some monetization policies, but monetization does not necessarily mean microtransactions, which by definition is the act of purchasing virtual goods for micropayments.
Monetization could mean a subscription model or a one-time charge amongst a variety of other things. So no, whilst their monetization may be microtransaction-centric, by no means was microtransactions specifically ever mentioned under the umbrella of this monetization, atleast within this financial call. CDPR have also mentioned that when it comes to Single player there will be no Microtransactions.
Now I’m not going to dive too much into how much Servers costs companies to run, but here’s a hint: it’s damn expensive. Monetization for upkeep is something a business would have to do, to at the very least keep things up and running. Putting this into perspective, if you have bought or preordered a copy of cyberpunk, that’s a form of monetization. It’s a one time charge monetization, but it’s monetization regardless and the word in the gaming community gets a bad wrap.
Now CDPR has monetized before in their games. Take for instance Gwent, which is widely recognized for having a balanced monetization strategy that doesn’t seem to fragment its audience. Yes, this does include microtransactions, but in my searches I’ve found little to no complaints on the way its been implemented.
What I’m trying to say is it’s a little premature to pick up the pitchforks, knowing that we know essentially nothing about the Multiplayer experience, but if you do want to, atleast you have some more information at your disposal to do with what you please.
This conference call also yielded other interesting information pieces that have been overlooked including, Gwent mobile on Android targeting a Q1 2020 release, the safe assumption CDPR will do something with Next gen, The spokko mobile collaboration game being midway through development and based on one of the excisting CDPR IPs. They also mention that they don’t believe VR is viable right now, in terms of it being too niche, and that when they create games, theyd rather focus on something new rather than revisit old games for updates, although they did mention the Switcher 3 as an exception to that statement.
