I think that with a game like Crimson Desert, you’d be well within your right to have an eyebrow pre-raised considering its online, sort of free-to-play (depending on where you live) predecessor Black Desert Online regarding the like of microtransactions. I know I certainly have! At a glance Crimson Desert certainly looks like it could fall into similar pitfalls if only based on vibes alone. However! Developer Pearl Abyss would quite like you to know that, in that regard at least, you have nothing to worry about.
Speaking on the Dropped Frames show (ta, Okami13_), marketing director at Pearly Abyss America Will Powers explained, “I can say that definitively: there is not a cosmetic cash shop. This is made to be a premium experience that you buy and you enjoy the world, and not something for microtransactions. It’s a monetisation model. If you do free-to-play then you need to make up the revenue in a different way. This is a premium experience. That is the transaction. Full stop.”
This is, admittedly, an annoying thing to have to be thankful for. I sure would like it if games weren’t designed to exploit the most exploitable of us! Still, it’s something, even if this doesn’t totally rule out other bits of, admittedly still annoying but slightly less so, DLC, expansions and the like.
Last month, the action game got a bit more of a lengthier look-in which quite honestly befuddled me at points. It’s obviously very much a medieval fantasy setting, but it’s just so realistic looking that the flashy particle effects, literal mechs, and just straight up dragons feel like they don’t contrast as well as they potentially might in a more stylised setting. Ah well, at least you only have to pay for it all once!
