Early backers of game decry ‘bait and switch’ after it backtracks on monetisation promises, dev chooses to stir the pot: ‘Seeing Reddit lose it today lets me breathe a huge sigh of relief’

The Bazaar, after seven long years, is finally entering into open beta with a F2P package—and it’s, uh, not going great.

Here’s the rub: In a recent video going over patch 0.1.8’s notes, it was revealed that the autobattler would be receiving a “prize pass”—a battlepass-style earn-via-playing system which’ll allow players to grind card 10-card expansions for certain heroes, providing they’ve paid for the premium version. They’ll be available for the first month, after which you’ll need to purchase them with 999 gems, a currency equivalent to around $10, though gems can also be won with good ranked runs.

If you aren’t familiar with the game, that might all sound pretty standard. However, it’s not landed well with its playerbase for a handful of reasons. Firstly, some have pointed out that when the game’s Kickstarter originally launched back in 2018, it made the following guarantee:

“In my game, you start the game with a couple classes unlocked. Those classes have all the cards in the game for them. Your class is just as balanced as any other. As more classes get introduced to the game, you’ll have the option of unlocking them, either by spending money or in-game currency … Most of the revenue will come from cosmetics—think of it monetizing like a traditional MOBA.”

Now, while it’s pretty normal for a game to make adjustments to its monetisation goals over time, I’m pretty sure card-based expansions are against the spirit of the thing. “Those classes have all the cards in the game for them” feels pretty clear-cut, and these new expansions aren’t making good on that promise.

Others have pointed to past tweets by the game’s creator, Reynad, which promised that the game “has no cards you need to collect at all”. Well, now there are cards you need to collect. Oops. People are none-too-pleased.

“Imagine throwing under the bus all the people that supported your vision and company for five f*cking years lmao,” writes one incensed player in the game’s subreddit. “They willfully led the player base to believe that they were following through on their promises, while they knew that they did not intend to follow through,” writes another in a separate thread, describing the whole fiasco as a “bait and switch”.

Things aren’t much better on the Discord right now, either. As one player points out, a year from now, any new player coming to the game will have to complete about 186 runs of ranked, “assuming this player is an insane flawless god.” Another player writes: “I can’t tell if this is like an insanely long grift, or a genuinely good passion project turned greedy.” Oof.

Reynad hasn’t been helping matters, mostly by stirring the pot. He’s called the entire debacle “a great exercise in showing why we should communicate less. I regret doing a patch note video at all this week. It gives people a day to lie, assume the worst, and doomsay, rather than just experience the new content first hand.”

In another message, he writes: “I was sooooo stressed about monetization over the past few years but seeing Reddit lose it today lets me breathe a huge sigh of relief. I’m pretty confident we’re on the right track now.”

I’m all for developers not basing their strategies off Reddit feedback—but I do think it’s probably wise to respond with grace and not pick random fights when the pitchforks are out. Especially when we’re talking about prior promises. Said promises may have been made half-a-decade ago, and times change, but I’m left scratching my head and wondering just what Reynad and co. thought would happen.