Counter Strike: GO’s key crate system has been “studied heavily” as Lawbreakers builds its plans for monetisation after ditching free-to-play, says Boss Key Productions CEO Cliff Bleszinski.
In an interview with TrustedReviews, Bleszinski shared insight into how microtransactions will be implemented into the game, which recently dropped its free-to-play business model in favour of a one-off payment supplemented by microtransactions for cosmetic items.
“One of the systems we studied heavily was how Counter Strike: GO kind of does the key crate system,” he said.
“I don’t like spending money in games I’ve already bought, CS:GO, I can’t remember the entry price as I bought it years ago, but once you’re in, you know, I bought those keys, and I’ve been happy most of the time with things that I’ve gotten out of them, because I can break them down and scavenge them.”
Bleszinski went further to discuss the cosmetic items, and the current issue the team is having of creating entertaining standard characters, but ones that aren’t “too cool” so that players are discouraged from buying new skins.
Boss Key Productions CEO Cliff Bleszinski
“So we’re still working through and figuring it out, all that out, but one of the trickiest things that, if you have the conversations about, is the base character that you get for whatever the fee is for the game needs to be cool but not too, too cool.
“Because we want to have this system where you have the default character then there’s upgraded, then there’s the super-duper ones in various conditions with different skin patterns and meshes and things like that or we’re saving a lot of particles on the character so eventually you can have a flaming Kitsuno or something like that some way down the line.
“That’s the one that’s going to be super-duper cool. So Dan and I fight in my office about what the default ‘cool’ is for the characters, I think we’ve hit a good balance, but we still argue about it all the time.”
Lawbreakers will launch exclusively on PC this summer. Players can add the game to their Steam wishlist right now.
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Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
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We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
