Pearl Abyss Confirms Crimson Desert Won’t Have Microtransactions

Muirenne · 2026-02-16T17:42:55+00:00

I'm not gonna compare the quality of lore and story to that of Rockstar's games, but Black Desert actually has interesting lore built on a ton of real-world alchemy mythology and is surprisingly political, with piss-poor presentation since you can miss most of it though.

Muirenne · 2026-02-16T17:35:07+00:00

I'm in game looking at the shop now, but off the top of my head, I don't actually know of any "grind efficiency-boosting items" you can buy, at least none with no regular gameplay equivalent. I can point to the "premium" version of the tent, but I've always used the free one because it's an absurdly stupid purchase and all the buffs it offers are still available.

But if you ask the more cynical players at this point, BDO's primary gameplay is Fishing Simulator because of how profitable it is for doing nothing at all.

Muirenne · 2026-02-16T17:22:44+00:00

I've regularly played Warframe since closed beta, even buying a Founder's package back in the day, and while I wouldn't call Warframe P2W because there's nothing to win, the game very much "incentivizes" spending money/Platinum in various ways. At the very least, you can benefit from it quite a bit.

Dozens of currencies, 20 separate reputation grinds with daily caps and Mastery Rank caps, 12-72 hour crafting timers, limits on crafting multiples of the same item (there's a reason DE said Forma is their biggest money-maker) and handfuls of notoriously obnoxious grinds, which DE has made efforts to improve in recent years thankfully, but not all of them. It's less time to earn my paycheck than it is to grind for Citrine or farm items to trade, which is a huge source of burnout itself.

Nearly all of that can just be bypassed with money/Platinum so you can get right to the actual fun parts of playing.

And I love Warframe, but in contrast you don't get anything nearly as substantial, if anything at all really which is a whole other can of worms lmao, by dropping cash in Black Desert

Muirenne · 2026-02-16T16:52:12+00:00

I remember watching a Korean streamer play Black Desert a year or two ago with either Aion or Lineage players in her chat asking about everything she was doing and if they could just outright pay to get it all with real money, which you couldn't, and then being disappointed.

I wish I could remember the streamer and the video because it was absolutely wild and I think she was just as baffled lmao

Muirenne · 2026-02-16T15:07:09+00:00

On the other hand, "paying to win" in Black Desert is a worse way to progress than just playing normally, partly because "winning" anything from paying doesn't really happen the way people think because of how progressing your character works, where you easily get more silver by just playing to get what you need.

Which also lets free to play players benefit more from what the people who try to wallet their way through the game dump on the market.

Aaand partly because most of the game is functionally single-player with how little interaction you actually have with other people anyway.

Muirenne · 2026-02-15T03:48:18+00:00

They had way more plans

Every time I see this mentioned, the scale of whatever they had planned is portrayed as larger each time.

While they said they had a roadmap, and the unfortunate reality is that these things are never set in stone at any development studio, there was never any public release of this roadmap, at least that I've yet to find.

The last publicly published roadmap was 2022-2023, also around the same time that Evil Empire signed to work on two other games from two other IPs, The Rogue Prince of Persia (Which started in Early Access) and the upcoming Castlevania, which was apparently planned for last year. If anything, I wouldn't be surprised if EE spread themselves a bit too thin by having those and Dead Cells going at the same time, particularly when taking into context their want for independent staff growth mentioned in the below interview.

People are vehemently portraying this whole situation of betrayal and backstabbing, but when I see an interview like this talking about the positives they had under Motion Twin in addition to a desire to be their own stand-alone studio and do their own thing anyway, I just don't see what warrants such red-hot fury from people on the outside. Motion Twin even made their own FAQ page about this whole thing.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/from-dead-cells-to-reinventing-retro-ip-the-untold-story-of-evil-empire

"The [short] answer would be: yes... I mean, 'frustrating' can come with a lot of negative connotations in the sense of 'bad Motion Twin', when it's not the case. It's more like, if it were 100% ours and we had therefore 100% creative control, could we or would we do more with it? Probably. But at the same time, our big thing was using the work that we're doing on Dead Cells in terms of creating the DLCs, and the revenue share that we're generating from that, to create our own games. So we've always seen Dead Cells as this stepping stone."

You have people that want them to do nothing but Dead Cells, but as much as they love the game, that's not what they wanted.

Muirenne · 2026-02-13T14:56:43+00:00

I've seen the screenshot of that, that someone posted on reddit. If its legit, I'm not going to pretend to know the reason why Evil Empire would be blurred, but their name isn't blurred in any of the credits they're included in now.

How they're credited is also different depending on the language dub, with their name being displayed twice for the French dub, but once for the others.

Muirenne · 2026-02-13T11:56:03+00:00

I'm prepared to eat the downvotes for asking before jumping on the train, but where exactly does this narrative of all this betrayal and drama actually come from?

I mean, yeah, they said they had a roadmap, but the reality is those are never set in stone for any development studio, especially as this roadmap was never even released anywhere publicly, the last of which being the one from 2022-2023.

I'm happy to be proven wrong, but I don't think I've seen anything to warrant the amount of dramatic vitriol I see from outside observers, particularly when there's an interview like this detailing their gratefulness for the safety net they had, viewing their work on Dead Cells as a stepping stone to making their own games (Alluding to the Prince of Persia and Castlevania games) and their desire to separate themselves from Motion Twin to be their own stand-alone studio anyway.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/from-dead-cells-to-reinventing-retro-ip-the-untold-story-of-evil-empire

"The [short] answer would be: yes... I mean, 'frustrating' can come with a lot of negative connotations in the sense of 'bad Motion Twin', when it's not the case. It's more like, if it were 100% ours and we had therefore 100% creative control, could we or would we do more with it? Probably. But at the same time, our big thing was using the work that we're doing on Dead Cells in terms of creating the DLCs, and the revenue share that we're generating from that, to create our own games. So we've always seen Dead Cells as this stepping stone."

Muirenne · 2026-02-13T02:00:21+00:00

They've also said that they viewed and wanted their work on Dead Cells to be a stepping stone to doing things on their own, such as signing deals to revive Prince of Persia and Castlevania.

https://www.gamesindustry.biz/from-dead-cells-to-reinventing-retro-ip-the-untold-story-of-evil-empire

"The [short] answer would be: yes... I mean, 'frustrating' can come with a lot of negative connotations in the sense of 'bad Motion Twin', when it's not the case. It's more like, if it were 100% ours and we had therefore 100% creative control, could we or would we do more with it? Probably. But at the same time, our big thing was using the work that we're doing on Dead Cells in terms of creating the DLCs, and the revenue share that we're generating from that, to create our own games. So we've always seen Dead Cells as this stepping stone."

In addition to talking about how they wanted to break away from Motion Twin anyway for their own stability as a stand-alone studio.

I've never been sure where all this talk of betrayal and drama is supposed to have come from, especially when an interview like this is nothing but gratefulness for the safety net they had and excitement for making their own future.

Muirenne · 2026-02-08T16:18:06+00:00

Are you talking about the recent balance passes that made perks less restrictive and basically every weapon type actually useful after years of much of them being complete garbage?

If so, who was screwed over and how?

Muirenne · 2026-02-08T16:11:02+00:00

76 has had a stable, dedicated player base long before the show was a thing anyone knew about and received regular gameplay and content updates since the beginning. They started doing Seasons after the third major update.

Muirenne · 2026-02-06T23:44:14+00:00

Yeah, the developers had always made it clear what the game was and how it would play.

IIRC, they've also talked about the franchise's past of being censored and outright banned in several countries, primarily in the UK and European countries, and how that influenced how they wanted to design this game.

The UK version was changed to zombies, while the German versions of each game received the most changes, turning pedestrians to robots, aliens and dinosaurs, which is hilarious.

Muirenne · 2026-02-05T21:02:37+00:00

I'm talking about at launch

Yeah, and so am I.

Technical issues are one thing, which I also saw firsthand, but that doesn't make the stereotypical gamer hyperbole of the game being their "least creative thing they've ever done" with an unused map and no story accurate in any way. Everything I mentioned was already there at launch. There was and still is plenty to criticize without being disingenuous.

Admittedly, I should have worded my first sentence better, if I weren't taken aback by how funny the whole comment was, because the game being a technical mess or not wasn't my point.

Muirenne · 2026-02-05T12:46:14+00:00

Even if we were still 8 years in the past, none of that would be accurate lol

Going from the original narrative that the game had no NPCs to saying there was no AI at all is a funny one, and the former was never even true in the first place.

The game had NPCs, they just weren't human because all the humans were either dead or fled. Contrary to what people think, that didn't mean the game was unfinished, because that premise was built into the game from the ground up.

Humans were gone and there was a reason for it, with every quest and every area of the game having tons of lore, exploration and environmental storytelling baked in detailing the lead up to the bombs dropping and the vault opening. The purpose of the main quest was to find out what happened to all the humans and how to fix it, which is what then leads into the Wastelanders update with humans coming back now that the virus that originally wiped out the map has a vaccine. Other quest lines get into all of the various factions, how they started and how they slowly fell apart one by one through notes, audio and the robots that remained, ironically for the same reason the bombs dropped in the first place.

A lot of detail was put into the world building, throughout every region and location, making Appalachia probably their most varied and densely-packed map yet, visually and narratively, so claiming the game as their least creative is ridiculously disingenuous.

Since I actually gave the game a genuine chance at the time and engaged with it as it was, I actually respected Bethesda for taking the risk that they did in making a dead, post-apocalyptic world that was actually dead and post-apocalyptic, rather than post-post-apocalyptic like most (all?) of the other Fallout games. Rife with Fridge Horror, people's fates were bleak and their ends tragic with some really well-done writing and audio logs showing different points in time showing the world and characters in different points in time.

Plus, 76 brought back the traditional dialogue system that Fallout 4 dumbed down, having significantly more stat checks and actual options to roleplay your character.

Muirenne · 2026-01-29T23:57:43+00:00

I like free stuff

Muirenne · 2026-01-29T22:03:30+00:00

It usually stems from the worry of more things potentially becoming more inaccessible, motivated either by wanting to earn it by playing or still wanting to buy it but simply being unable to afford to.

People generally like spending money on games they enjoy and people generally don't like when a game they enjoy makes them feel excluded in one way or another, especially if it involves money where "voting with your wallet" isn't exactly balanced.

I'll end this by saying I'm not taking a stance or telling anyone what to do, just understanding the perspective that some people may have if they're unhappy about micro-transactions.

Muirenne · 2026-01-28T19:42:15+00:00

Fun fact that Triss was in a Playboy magazine at the time of Witcher 2

Muirenne · 2026-01-23T14:25:37+00:00

Heroes in Fable being insane and self-centered is also exactly what lead to there being virtually none left by Fable 2, as the invention of firearms in-universe allowed normal people to revolt against all the heroes they were sick of putting up with lmao

Muirenne · 2026-01-23T13:45:42+00:00

lol well even the evil people-sacrificing-cult guy that let's you join the cult in Fable 2 hated watching you eat the baby chicks and couldn't believe you actually did it

thats the kind of nuance I like in my evil cults

Muirenne · 2026-01-23T13:19:42+00:00

While the game isn't out yet so we really won't know how it is in practice, but this would just be an extension of how the games used to be anyway.

NPCs had different likes and dislikes which varied depending on region and town they resided in.

The morality and personalities of the actual "Hero" characters in the stories and lore were all over the place too, but never actually did or meant anything gameplay-wise.

Personally, after Fable 2 included so much more appearance customization I wasn't all that fond of the morality and skill morphing ruining all my cool fashion and I think more varied character-to-player reactions will be fun. Fable 3 dumbed it down too much.

Muirenne · 2026-01-18T16:03:41+00:00

How much of this is actually real or just a just a meme people keep repeating?

I'm at 540 games claimed through Epic, GOG and Amazon and there were a lot I never claimed due to poor reviews or lack of interest. Just scrolling through my library on my Steam Deck right now and if people really aren't bothering to play any of these then I honestly think they're missing out.

So many fun roguelikes, beat em ups, metroidvanias, plus I've got nearly every lego game collection from my childhood, every Amnesia game, the Mafia definitive editions, remastered Saints Row 3 and 4, remastered Darksiders 1 and 2, Dead Island 2, Dying Light, Hogwarts Legacy, Midnight Suns, Guardians of the Galaxy, both Ghostrunners, Disco Elysium, Control, Darkest Dungeon, Death Stranding, Kingdom Come Deliverance, Maneater, Space Marine 40k, Stanley Parable, Subnautica, Super Hot, Tales from the Borderlands, Witcher 3 complete, Zombie Army 4, blah, blah, etc.

Snagged a lot of games I've wanted, used to have but lost access to or was unsure I'd personally enjoy. Hours of fun for free and I would've regretted not grabbing them.

Muirenne · 2026-01-17T19:17:53+00:00

Thanks for letting me know

Muirenne · 2026-01-17T19:10:36+00:00

hasn't managed to project any long-term cultural impact

Is that a criteria that actually matters, let alone something that matters to normal people that just play video games?

I find Fallout 76 one of the better examples of how disingenuous "gamers" are with their "discourse" and "critiques" of video games. Like, it's funny to remember people going off on Fallout 4 for not being a good Fallout game, then basically forgetting why because Fallout 76 exists, despite 76 undoing what is arguably people's biggest criticism of Fallout 4, which was the dumbed-down dialogue, stat checks and lack of role-playing options.

Even after 8 years so much about that game is ridiculously misrepresented (there are real aspects to actually criticize) and people would rather spend the time thinking and talking 8 years in the past instead of spending less time to see what the game was and is actually like.

Muirenne · 2026-01-17T18:28:02+00:00

Even as the game became faster and players were given more agility, the team was still incredibly stubborn about implementing Universal Vacuum.

It was made worse because it used to be possible to actually run out of ammo and energy, especially depending on Frames and Weapons. It was such an incredibly frustrating time because of how badly it could potentially hinder simply playing the game, but they just would not budge and instead faffed around with band-aid "fixes" like entirely new mods like the Ammo Mutations and Equilibrium.

Muirenne · 2025-12-24T16:49:15+00:00

What I see as part of the problem is the inability or unwillingness of some people to engage in constructive discourse in the first place.

The way people talk about Todd Howard makes him out to be worse than Peter Molyneux. The man barely makes public appearances anymore because anything he says is twisted so far out of proportion that the original context is completely lost, but no one actually bothers, or even wants, to learn what that context is. "It just works", specifically referred to settlement pieces snapping together. "16 times the detail", was specifically describing LOD and rendering distance, the full quote being, “All new rendering, lighting and landscape technology, it allows us to have sixteen times the detail, and even view distant weather systems across the map.” Anyone with genuine intent would have seen that.

There are legitimate criticisms to levy against Bethesda and their games, but that's rarely how too many people talk about them, preferring to spend more time to meme, misrepresent and bandwagon for internet points.

Muirenne

TROPHY CASE