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Overkill hasn’t responded to my requests for comment, either. I’ve asked twice, but so far, I’ve heard nothing. Onto the seventh day of Crimefest, I guess?

Having players who did pay for a drill getting screwed doesn’t help matters:

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Worse still, the patch doesn’t really address the core problem. You can still buy better weapons, and it’s unclear what the drop rate is for drills. If Overkill makes it low enough, players may never see them. This “fix” isn’t as egregious, but it still sucks. It’d be one thing if Payday 2 was a free-to-play game that made these design choices upfront, but it’s happening two years after the release date. The kinds of people who are still playing are your most hardcore fans.

The response from players has been, unsurprisingly, pretty mixed:

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Even if Overkill completely drops these changes from Payday 2, it’s poisoned the community. Built into the relationship between developer and player is trust. It’s possible for both sides to break that trust, but in this case, it’s on Overkill.

The biggest problem for Overkill is a GameSpot quote from Payday 2 lead designer David Goldfarb. Asked if the game would get microtransactions:

“No. No. God, I hope not. Never. No.”

Goldfarb left Overkill to build an independent studio earlier this year, prompting him to poke fun at the tension with the fans a few days ago:

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He clarified, however, that microtransactions didn’t prompt him to quit.

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Players have reason to be cynical these days. Games have been released broken, taking nearly a year to become reliably playable. Kickstarter projects ask for money, then don’t deliver. Some companies ask players to shell out $50 for a season pass that doesn’t detail the content you’re paying for. And even if you decide to gamble on one of those passes, it’s possible all the content sucks.

To keep making new levels, weapons, heists, and other content to ensure Payday 2 stays fresh, Overkill has to, of course, keep making money. But there ways of talking to your community about such changes. This time, they got it wrong.

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You can reach the author of this post at patrick.klepek@kotaku.com or on Twitter at @patrickklepek.