The developer of the eponymous Battlegrounds, PlayerUnknown himself, known in the real world as Brendan Greene, has spoken out about the recent controversy surrounding paid for loot crates in the game. That issue reared its head because of the game having not left early access and him having stated previously that it would not include microtransactions until the game had been officially released.
"We got hit hard. I said we wouldn't have microtransactions until we left Early Access, but it comes from my naivety", he said in his chat with GamesIndustry.
Clarifying that statement a little though, he said: "To be fair, we're still not adding any kind of skin system with microtransactions fully until we leave Early Access, but we do need to test it, and we need to test percentages."
That's been at the core of Greene's reasoning with the inclusion of microtransactions during the game's pre-release development, that ultimately if they were going to debut such a feature in the final release of Battlegrounds, that they would need to test the feature out first. That in turn, means running something like that in the test version of the game.
As it stands, the profits from the in game loot crate system are all funnelled to tournaments and charities, so it's not like Bluehole is looking to make more money. Afterall, it has sold more than 10 million copies in the past six months alone.
Greene acknowledges that people should be allowed to air their grievances though. He wants the game to be reviewed fairly, but laments that some may not go back and change their reviews in the future.
"People have a right to say what they want, y'know, but with some reviews I feel bad because it'll say something like 'Performance is shitty', but when we improve it they won't go back and change that review," he said.
How did you guys feel about Bluehole's introduction ofthe loot crate system so early in the game's Early Access window?