Word on the street has it that CD Project is planning on implementing what they’ve described to be a “wise monetization” strategy for Cyberpunk 2077 Multiplayer. This of course has raised the eyebrows of many gamers who obviously remember all the claims made by CD Projekt Red in terms of not participating is such business practices. Not to mention our sour history of other gaming companies unethical practices of such things. To my understanding, it seems that CD Projekt Red only spoke for the single player component of the game being monetization free, leaving the multiplayer portion up for debate.
Here’s the deal, just like you guys I hate how monetization in games these days has been handled. However, not all monetizations are bad! That’s one thing that’s important to take away from this. As long as a game company acts ethically when implementing a microtransaction or a monetization plan that does not take away or block away core experiences of the game (ie. cosmetics that can’t be obtained via playing or P2W), I generally don’t have a problem with them anymore.
In truth, I’ve long accepted that monetization will always be part of games that have multiplayer components. Of course, if I learn that a game’s monetization plans will be bad, I’ll do the wise thing and skip it entirely. CyberPunk 2077’s multiplayer component having some form of monetization does not come as a surprise to me whatsoever.
In fact, this revelation shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone who follows gaming business and culture. In my opinion and speculation, they had no choice. With the production of games getting more and more expensive, I’d be extremely surprised had they released this multiplayer component without it. The $60 you’ll pay will cover the cost for making the single player, and you can rest assured you won’t see a speck of monetization in Cyberpunk 2077, but what’s going to cover the servers for the multiplayer? These things don’t come cheap you know?
Aside from that, I, surprisingly have faith in CD Projekt to implement a monetization service that will be fair for its fanbase. I doubt they’ll mess it up after proclaiming to be against it all those practices in the past. At this point, they’ve realized that it’s a necessity in this day and age, and had to somewhat backtrack a bit to ensure survival. Not only that but this isn’t EA we’re talking about here, CD Projekt will listen to feedback when the time comes so let’s just wait and see what they’ll do.
I’ll be given them the benefit of the doubt and see what they have in store. However, that’s just one man’s opinion. Whether they’ll do it or not remains to be seen. Let me know how you feel about this?
