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Dean Hall, the creator of DayZ and more recently Icarus, has called out Valve regarding the use of gambling-related monetisation methods in its games.
In an interview with Eurogamer, Hall said, “It’s something I think Valve does not get anywhere near enough criticism about. I’m honestly disgusted with gambling mechanics in video games at all – they have absolutely no place.
“My challenge to game developers,” he added, “is that if they think these things are not a problem, they make the data available to universities who are crying out to study this stuff.”
Hall’s remarks refer to loot boxes in Counter-Strike 2, which offer weapon and armour skins that can be traded with other players and so fuel a multi-billion dollar marketplace surrounding the game – a marketplace that includes significant betting activity.
Loot boxes have generally been moved away from after multiple countries commissioned investigations into their use and the effect they were having on younger minds. But Valve sidestepped the resulting regulations by changing the loot box system so you pay for the contents inside the box rather than the box itself.
Hall’s comments came while speaking to me about survival game Icarus, which was originally going to be free-to-play before it switched to the expensive DLC model it has now – the Paradox model, as Hall calls it. It’s a divisive model but RocketWerkz – Hall’s studio – needed to use it in order to survive, he told me.
Players aren’t the only ones who are unhappy with it. “I’m not happy either,” Hall said. “I agree with a lot of the people who get mad about the DLC approach. I don’t really like the Icarus approach. We needed it to survive.
“I actually think a lot of gamers don’t realise that 99 percent of devs out there are sitting there going, I don’t like this. So who’s winning? Because it’s sure not us. There’s a lot of game studios like mine that are just holding on and trying to keep making the games we want to make, but not necessarily happy with how they monetise.”
Hall’s answer to this problem may come in Kitten Space Agency, the unashamed and somewhat blatant Kerbal Space Program follow-up that RocketWerkz is working on now. The idea is to make it free – free with the option of a contribution if you want to pay.
“I want to find a different way,” he said. “We’ve got to do something. We’ve got to try something. And if there’s ever a game that deserves trying that, it’s a KSP-style game. That’s one game I think maybe we can try and do something different with. We say games can inspire, and inspiration should be free, which is kind of a tagline with KSA. I think the game deserves better, I really do – I think the game deserves to be free.”
Kitten Space Agency doesn’t have a release date yet but testing is starting to open out, albeit to select guests at the moment. Whether or not an optional fee will work for Kitten Space Agency, and whether the income it generates will be enough for RocketWerkz to survive on, remains to be seen. Life has been tough for the New Zealand studio; the launch of Icarus four years ago nearly dragged it under. But as I discussed in a candid interview with Dean Hall, things are starting to turn around.
