Killing Floor 2 announces paid micro-content to continue development; fans respond with negative review bombing

Killing Floor 2 is not just a fantastic shooter, but it’s also a fantastically supported shooter. Four years after its release, developer Tripwire Interactive has done well to provide players with free content – including entire maps – on a frequent basis. From now on, Killing Floor DLC will cost money and, as gamers are prone to do, fans have responded by review bombing the long-supported title.

Announced via the game’s Steam page, product lead David Amata detailed the reasoning behind the game’s upcoming paid DLC.

“After over 4+ years of content support for Killing Floor 2 since Early Access launch, it has been our pleasure to provide continuous features, weapons, maps, modes, zeds, and more at no cost to you,” Amata said.

“As we have looked at the life cycle of the game, we strived to look at new ways that will enable the game to live on and grow well into the future… While the updates have all been free in terms of features, weapons, zeds, maps, etc, the cost of development has certainly been anything but. Ultimately, that status quo of our current strategy cannot sustain the current level of support that you have all grown accustomed to without a major shakeup.”

With development costs becoming higher than the game’s income, Tripwire has been left with two options: reduce the amount of content in each update or find new sources of revenue. They chose the latter.

To start, Killing Floor 2 will receive $9.99 optional weapon DLC with each weapon receiving 5 unique skins. Tripwire is keen to point out that these paid weapons will not affect the game’s balance. Instead, they’ll simply offer new gameplay opportunities. Also, if one person owns the DLC, players in the same match will also have access to it.

After the announcement, fans took to Steam in order to negatively review bomb the title.

“After multiple years of development, Tripwire has announced that they are going back on what they said and are now adding weapon DLC to the game, averaging around $9.99 each,” says Freakous, a player with over 160 hours in KF2. “There isn’t much else to say. Going back on their word, after years of support they are now beginning their avalanche of DLC weaponry like they did in the first game, on top of a market of microtransaction cosmetics.”

“In 2019, something went wrong, and this became very apparent when Tripwire announced that all future content releases in the form of weapons (you know, the pew-pew stuff that has an effect on gameplay) would be locked inside $10 DLC packs,” says Winter, a player with over 270 hours in the title. “I was looking forward to reviewing this GAME at a milestone of 300 hours played. Now, I find myself issuing a warning about a scummy PRODUCT, unsure if I’ll ever give it another minute of my life.”

“10$ for 1 gun and 5 ?????? skins. ???? off and I hope this game dies,” says Goose Lightning, a player with over 240 hours of playtime. “Fun game, but it’s future looks bleak, devs are going to be charging $10 for ONE new DLC weapon, the game goes cheaper than that on sale, disgusting,” says Corvus, a Killing Floor 2 player that’s played for 332 hours.

After years of continued support, it’s only fair that Tripwire should be able to recoup development costs, especially as development of Killing Floor 3 ramps up. Nevertheless, “fans” will always be this way in the gaming sphere it would seem.