Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's annoying microtransactions in the spotlight
We never asked for this.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's microtransactions are annoying a lot of players.
Eidos Montreal's cool action role-playing game launched on Tuesday to a positive reception from critics (check out our Deus Ex: Mankind Divided review, in which Edwin awards the game a recommended badge), but the pre-order DLC sparked a furious reaction on the game's subReddit.
The complaints revolve around single use, single save pre-order items. In the new Deus Ex, DLC items are saved in storage, and you can transfer them at any point to your inventory.
Players were surprised to discover that after DLC items were transferred to the inventory, they could not be used again, even on another playthrough.
In response, the community suggested players make a save as soon as the game allows, then claim the pre-order DLC, then start every subsequent playthrough from that save and not from a new game in the menu. It's a ridiculous situation and an even more ridiculous workaround forced upon players.
As you'd expect, Deus Ex players reacted in anger, taking to the game's subReddit to complain. That's where Eidos Montreal community manager "Poticha" stepped in.
Poticha clarified that there are two types of item in the game: consumables and durables.
Consumables are Praxis Kits, ammo, credits and crafting parts. These are one-time use items. And yes, once you add them to your inventory, they are consumed in your current playthrough and are not re-usable.
Poticha said consumables work the way they do "due to first-party constraints", which points the finger at Microsoft and Sony, although it's such a vague statement that it's hard to work out what it means.
Durables, however, are weapons, skins and augmentations, and are not one-time use. These are automatically available in all of your playthroughs, once you have downloaded and installed them.
This statement sparked more questions from players upset that there are consumables in the game in the first place.
Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, a full-price game, contains microtransactions for everything from in-game credits to Praxis Kits and Chipsets, the latter of which are used to buy premium booster packs and custom weapons for the Breach game mode.
But it's the microtransactions for the single-player that are causing the biggest stink. You can buy credits and Praxis Kits for the campaign, for example £3.59 for 5000 credits.
It's in this context that many players have accused publisher Square Enix of using consumables to create a microtransaction market for the new Deus Ex.
Here's Poticha again on Reddit, this time insisting Deus Ex's microtransactions had no impact on game design.
Microtransactions in big-budget games is nothing new, of course, and it's fair to say that Deus Ex doesn't ram them down players' throats. But there's still something icky about microtransactions being in a single-player focused game. If I fork out full-price for a hefty campaign, the last thing I want to see is an in-game shop.
For me? I'm just disappointed that Deus Ex, a game that by all accounts is pretty great, is being tarnished by annoying microtransactions.