Payday 2 dev apologizes for microtransaction U-turn

After getting on the wrong side of fans by adding microtransactions to Payday 2, despite claiming it would never happen, developer Overkill has issued an apology via its Steam page. 

Studio producer, Almir Listo, apologized for the distress the team has caused its fans and moderators, adding that it plans to do better in the future.

"The past few weeks have been some of the most challenging in the history of this community. Players have been angry with us, media have written about us en masse and our volunteer moderators went on strike," said Listo. 

"For all the distress we've caused the past few weeks, I'd just like to take the time and say that we’re sorry. We've done a lot of things right in the past, but these past few weeks we screwed up. 

"We need to get better at many things, and we will do our best to improve as soon as possible."

During a Reddit AMA in October Listo explained why the developer had performed a U-turn, telling fans that the microtransactions were added to help support Overkill's growing team, which recently tripled in size. 

"Two and a half years ago, during development of Payday 2 and in the build-up for its release, myself and then Game Director David Goldfarb said that there would be no microtransactions...if you asked me then, there would be no way we would've added a system like we just did," wrote Listo.

"We have a deal to produce a specific amount of content until 2017. However, we at Overkill want to create more than what we and 505 Games agreed on. We want to do everything we can to make Payday 2 as awesome as possible. 

"In order to do that, we made the decision to triple the size of the crew. To ensure that we can keep the size of the team, we decided that the best approach was to introduce the Black Market update to the game."