Elite Dangerous developer Frontier has introduced a major change to the close to decade-old house sim: the sale of ships for actual cash.
In a post on the Elite Dangerous website, Frontier mentioned it’ll promote three months of early entry to the Python Mk II ship from Could 7 for 16,250 ARX, the sport’s premium digital foreign money. 16,800 ARX prices $12.99 from the shop. House owners of the Odyssey growth can purchase the ship from August 7 for credit, Elite’s non-premium digital foreign money. Those that don’t personal Odyssey can solely entry ship variants from the shop for ARX.
Frontier can also be promoting Pre-Constructed Ship packages, which embody ships which have been upgraded from their base fashions. “We envision these Pre-built Ships to be a faster means for newer gamers to get entangled within the areas they’ve essentially the most curiosity in, or for our current gamers who’re contemplating a brand new profession path in recreation, however shouldn’t have time to commit to a brand new construct from scratch,” Frontier mentioned. A Pre-Constructed Ship package deal consists of instant-access to a pre-fitted ship, a ship equipment, and a paintjob — basically skipping the grind related to upgrading ships.
It’s protected to say this announcement has infuriated veteran gamers of Elite Dangerous, a few of whom have accused Frontier of happening the Star Citizen route in its bid to generate income from the long-running house recreation. Whereas gamers will proceed to have the ability to earn ARX in-game by taking part in Elite Dangerous every day, or by contributing to occasions in-game, the actual fact you should buy the foreign money with real-world cash and spend it on early entry to new ships has sparked pay-to-win accusations.
“And with a single article about literal p2w ships you could have now formally misplaced all belief,” mentioned redditor Xay_DE. “It is ridiculous sufficient that you’ve to pay IRL cash to do any type of ship customization in a recreation you could have to pay cash for, however including paid-for ships, as soon as once more in a recreation you could have to pay for, is unacceptable,” said Endulos.
Some players are now pointing to a 2019 assertion during which Frontier mentioned “ARX can solely be used to purchase beauty Recreation Extras and won’t be used to introduce and purchase pay-to-win purchases.” It appears probably that Frontier would dispute the pay-to-win accusations, pointing to the actual fact ARX may be obtained by gameplay, as so many builders of video games with comparable methods typically do. Countering this, some gamers are insisting any benefit, together with time saved, needs to be thought-about pay-to-win.
Frontier has struggled in recent times after a string of video games failed to hit gross sales projections. In November, Frontier issued a buying and selling replace following poor launch gross sales of its real-time technique recreation Warhammer Age of Sigmar: Realms of Spoil. The studio has additionally suffered a spherical of layoffs. Earlier in April, Frontier bought the publishing rights to RollerCoaster Tycoon 3 to Atari for $7 million, bringing in much-needed money.
Countering the doom and gloom, Frontier mentioned gross sales of its video games since January have been “in-line with expectations”, with Jurassic World Evolution 2 and Planet Zoo main the cost. The latest console launch of Planet Zoo noticed “robust participant engagement”, with complete gross sales up to and together with the day of launch better than the gross sales achieved by Planet Coaster when that recreation got here out on consoles in November 2020.
In a earlier replace, Frontier mentioned it was refocusing on artistic administration simulation video games (CMS). With this in thoughts, Frontier has confirmed three future CMS video games, with one releasing in every of the following three monetary years. Alongside this it’ll proceed to develop and assist its current portfolio of video games, together with Elite Dangerous, F1 Supervisor, and Realms of Spoil.
Wesley is the UK Information Editor for IGN. Discover him on Twitter at @wyp100. You possibly can attain Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.