When reports come out that renowned pachinko manufacturer Konami treats its game developers like prisoners, you won’t hear much. But when a website suggests that the new game Metal Gear Solid V has required microtransactions? Konami comes out swinging.
Last night, the website GameSpot reported that a section of Metal Gear Solid V — specifically, the PVP multiplayer — is locked behind a paywall. “Access to [the game’s] competitive multiplayer mode, Forward Operating Base, will be restricted behind a microtransaction paywall, GameSpot wrote. “In order to participate in the online multiplayer mode, where players attack each other’s bases, they must first use real-world money to purchase MB Coins.”
Today, Konami denied that report, going hard at GameSpot in a strong statement they sent over to PC Gamer:
Gamespot posted an article following the review that the PVP (FOB) mode in MGSV TPP will be restricted behind a micro-transaction paywall and that is simply not true. The FOB mode will be fully accessible at launch and the micro-transaction layer to that specific feature in the game primarily acts as an accelerator. We’ll have more details at launch, but we did try and clear these rumours up when they started circulating during E3. We even addressed this in our official E3 2015 demo when it went live during that show.
Goddamn. “That is simply not true.” Konami going HAM. Now, you might be wondering: who’s actually telling the truth? Game publishers tend to lie and mislead people when faced with information that they don’t want made public, so it’s silly to take Konami’s statement at face value, but the game comes out in a week. If Konami is really misleading people, we’ll know about it pretty quickly.
I’ve been playing Metal Gear Solid V — it’s goddamn fantastic — but I haven’t gotten to the point where I can unlock FOBs, and the online features won’t be enabled until the game’s officially out on September 1. I haven’t seen anything in the game about microtransactions or MB Coins yet. So I can’t confirm these details firsthand.
GameSpot‘s Peter Brown has doubled down on his reporting, for what it’s worth, tweeting an image that suggests that players have to buy these MB Coins to buy territory and place FOBs. But none of us know how MB Coins are obtained or whether we’ll be able to get them through natural in-game progression once the servers go live. We simply don’t have all the information yet.
So is this the case of a corporation trying to hide consumer-unfriendly decisions or a video game website jumping to angry conclusions based on incomplete info? We won’t know the full deal until next week. Either way, it’s all very entertaining.
Comments
47 responses to “Konami Slams GameSpot For Report On MGSV Microtransactions”
Sounds like it is locked behind a pay wall.
Nearly every game is locked behind a progression wall. Which this sounds like it is. You can pay to open it up.
A paywall usually indicates that the only way to access is to pay.
so we pay out our backsides for the game, get into the online multiplayer portion of the game, then we have to pay again just to be on an even playing field with those that have spent hundreds of dollars+, its the mobile game of city thrones with kings paywall implementation alright.
Pretty much every game has this these days. Pay to unlock features that you would normally unlock through progression. This really is nothing new
Are you ever on an even playing field for multi-player games that include some form of persistent progression rewards? Removing the ability to spend cash in lieu of spending time on the game doesn’t remove that imbalance.
And frankly somebody who has lots of stuff they paid for should have plenty to steal. >:D
Or you have to pay to be on an even playing field with 13 year olds with no jobs who play all day and night.
Awww no, goddammit. I am so super excited about this part of the game (and I never, ever give a shit about multiplayer or PVP, ever) – I don’t want it to get all microtransactiony. Let me just give you some bucks straight up, and then let me play your goddamn clever game and then tell everyone how great it is.
Either way there’s still microtransactions in a full priced game. Unacceptable.
Full priced game with a full priced prologue
But ground zeroes was never full priced :/
Exactly and thank you.
It almost was.
For Australians, it technically still was.
Sounds like more pot stirring.
I’ll reserve judgement. Honestly sounds like one of those features where you can just fast track something like resources/ingame money if you don’t have the time to put in to the game to earn it or just can’t be bothered. If that’s all it is, I won’t be too fussed. Going to be playing the proverbials out of this game anyway, so sure it won’t be an issue.
Probably going to be like Forza on Xbone – everyone went nuts about ‘FORCED MICROTRANASACTIONS AND PAYWALLS’ and it just turned out that you could essentially buy money if you didn’t want to put in the time to win races to make money. Was barely noticeable. I didn’t even find the game mentioning it that often.
But it’s the internet – everything is a crime against humanity, and the work of the devil. There’s always something new to get indignant and wave your arms about.
Yep. Let the roar of bloated entitlement be heard!
Exactly this. Now I’m not racing/driving game nut, but even I had enough cash after 10 hours to buy a couple of the most expensive cars in Forza 5.
These microtrans, like the GTA$, are for the weekend warriors who don’t have time (or desire) to play enough to earn the the in game currency.
so if you dont have time to grind it out its fine, if you dont have the desire to grind it out its fine, but when youve droped $100 on the game and dont have money to not grind, what do you do other then experience a sub par multiplayer experience
This is a good point. It’s not always a binary solution. Some people are time and money poor. And then what you have is a system that punishes them with no solution because Konami got greedy. I would argue anyone with a full time job and a family would fall under this umbrella, or even students with part-time jobs.
The fact of the matter is the game isnt out yet so we can’t make that call, because it hasn’t been tested. The whole hubbub about Forza 5 was BS though. GTA$ however, I can understand why peiple think they payout system is a bit flawed.
Play the game and get there on your own… If you’ve paid $100 for any game you’ve payed too much.
I think the biggest thing with these issues is it’s about trust. Sure, with a developer or specifically a publisher you can trust to do the right thing, micro-transactions are fine, even a good thing for many players. But you can’t trust them most of the time. Unless we the player base see proof that the game’s treating non-paying customers fairly, giving them equal opportunity to play the game effectively without spending cash, we literally just have to take them at their word.
I’ll stop getting worried about micro-transactions when I feel like I can trust these publishers. And nothing in recent history makes me confident in the major publishers’ ability to not be greedy and underhanded with their systems.
Jetpack Joyride by Half-Brick was one of the few games I felt was treating me with respect micro-transaction wise.
I think the main concern is that once a game offers a paid shortcut like this, there will be an incentive to increase the prices of the in-game items.
Without the micro-transactions, the optimal pricing of the in-game items would be to make it challenging to acquire without the player getting bored. With micro-transactions, it might make sense to increase those prices a bit in the hope that some proportion of players will take the easy way out and buy currency with real money.
How is that any more justifiable?
I mean why is it acceptable to make a game where the experience of playing to get through it can be replaced with paying to get through it?
Everyone seems happy to brush aside concerns on the basis that these kinds of microtransactions are optional; yet they don’t realise that it will always negatively affect the experience of non-paying players.
Either it will foster a Pay-to-Win component in multiplayer, or artificially inflate the costs of progressing in single-player. Sure you can pay or just keeping ‘grinding’ for free, but of course the effort of the grind will be so meticulously tweaked to frustrate and encourage paying.
In Forza: if anyone would rather pay than actually play the races then what the fuck is wrong with your goddamn racing game.
What? A reasonable perspective?
*looks around*
Is this still the internet?
“renowned pachinko manufacturer Konami”
lel…
I am liking this trend of subtly jabbing Konami at the start of every story.
Konami Branded Ham. I like it….
Renowned pork manufacturer. Mmmm….
DONT EAT IT! Konami makes the ham out of disgruntled employees!!
Yeah,
liketolerate or hate them that sounds like standard microtransactions to me and not locking out content. I think Gamespot might have stretched it a little far in their story.MTs have no place in full-price games. Period.
Agreed!
I didn’t say it did belong, only that Gamespot worded it like you had to pay to be able to play that mode properly, and not the standard crappy “pay to go faster” stuff that it actually seems to be.
They’re journalists. They have to grab your attention in a short time span, a very short span given that it’s online journalism. If exaggeration and some rumoring are required, so be it.
Although I will say that putting micro-transactions in for anything that isn’t DLC (that’s been developed AFTER release, EA) is sinful.
They explained this in one of the gameplay videos: The micro transactions are only there if you are lazy and want to breeze through the game by unlocking heaps of stuff quickly. Everything in the game is accessible without using any micro transactions.
How long does that take? What is the drop-rate for this currency? How much of this currency is needed to purchase the highest tier items? Can we lose those items once purchased? These are all questions that need to be answered before they’ve “explained this”.
I honestly can’t tell if you’re joking or not.
What? Why would this be a joke?
Can’t we just use the Konami code to unlock the content?
I miss cheat codes. Now we have to pay for them!
I know. Big Head mode should be a bonus to extend the life of a game when you unlock it or use it as a cheat not a friggin’ dollar purchase. I’ll never get over it. When I am an old men I will tell young kids that “In my day Sega was a thing and we had magical devices called action replay/gamesharks”, then I will die.
Yep, my sentiments exactly!
Could not agree more, especially back before google was big and those codes weren’t easy to come by!
I think the gamespot story is just click bait, I highly doubt they would make you pay further to unlock content like this. Whilst anything is possible with Konami, I don’t think they would go this far
If you’re putting microtransactions in a full priced retail game, then you deserve all the shit that’s thrown at you. DLC is one thing as it’s content to extend the life of the game, but microtransactions are a deliberate attempt to score more cash out of a consumer for pretty much nothing of real value.
So it’ll be terrible and entirely rigged just like GTA V’s Online which now has only a tiny playerbase, or rather a ‘following’.
https://steamdb.info/app/271590/graphs/
the numbers don’t lie.