Dragon’s Dogma 2 has surprise microtransactions, and players are angry

Capcom’s fantasy role-playing game Dragon’s Dogma 2 has launched at last to critical acclaim — but reactions from some players are much harsher. At the center of these complaints is a suite of 21 downloadable items Capcom released without warning alongside Dragon’s Dogma 2 across PC, PlayStation, and Xbox. Most of them are single-use in-game items enabling features like new fast-travel locations, the ability to change characters’ appearance, and combat revives.

On Steam, where Dragon’s Dogma 2 was a much-hyped and wishlisted title, user reviews sit at “Mostly Negative” at time of writing. Alongside the microtransactions, critical players cite the game’s poor performance on PC, and the developer’s use of the unpopular anti-cheat and anti-piracy software Denuvo. (Polygon has contacted Capcom for comment and will update if we hear back.)

Capcom is often criticized for tagging a lot of microtransactions onto largely single-player games, like the Resident Evil 4 remake or Monster Hunter Rise. If Dragon’s Dogma 2 is drawing more ire than usual, it could be because of the way the items on sale interact with Dragon’s Dogma 2’s intentionally challenging and restrictive game design.

It’s important to note that all the items for sale can be obtained during normal gameplay, so in theory, Capcom is only offering an additional convenience to players. If you play the game for long enough, you’ll end up with most of these items in your inventory, such as the Rift Crystals that allow you to hire Pawn party members at a higher level than your character to help out with tough fights (500 Rift Crystals cost $0.99, while a pack of 2,500 costs $4.99).

But many of the items for sale are rare, expensive, or difficult to obtain in the game. Wakestones, for example, allow you to revive your character in the middle of combat, and are rare enough that players are advised to save them for use during only the most challenging encounters. But now the temptation is there to just buy your way out of trouble for $0.99.

The Art of Metamorphosis item, which allows you to change your character’s appearance, can be bought from a vendor, but comes at a high price: 500 Rift Crystals. That’s too much to afford early in the game, and sellers have limited inventory. Capcom is selling these for $1.99.

The availability of Portcrystals for $2.99 each has caused some players to accuse Capcom of selling fast travel, but this isn’t strictly accurate. Fast travel is very restricted in Dragon’s Dogma 2 by design, to encourage exploration of the open world and to make distances feel significant (a choice that can be frustrating to some players). Portcrystals allow players to create new fast-travel points within the game, which is useful because only a handful exist in major towns. But to use Portcrystals you need Ferrystones, another rare resource.

Tellingly, Capcom has chosen not to make Ferrystones available as microtransactions, indicating that literally selling fast travel was a design Rubicon the development team was unwilling to cross. Nonetheless, selling Portcrystals is still a controversial choice, given how extremely rare this item is in the game — in our first 50 hours with the game, we only found one, and it was as a quest reward.

Dragon’s Dogma 2 is a single-player game, so it’s easy for players to simply ignore these microtransactions if they find them distasteful. If there’s an issue, it’s how they interact with the game’s distinctive design ethos, which is to use the scarcity of these items (among other things) to make the experience more challenging and immersive. Selling the items would seem to either break that ethos, or call it into question by suggesting scarcity was a sales tactic all along.

Plus, there’s a $15 bundle on sale that includes 1,500 Rift Crystals and one each of all the DLC items (notably excluding the Portcrystal). This bundle is also included in the game’s $80 Deluxe Edition, so there is an option for people willing to part with a bit more money.

Capcom — which is charging $70 for the base game, a first for the company — has yet to comment on Dragon’s Dogma 2’s microtransactions. If it were to defend itself, it might offer a similar argument to Tekken producer Katsuhiro Harada, who recently argued that this kind of monetization was a necessary countermeasure for the rapidly rising cost of game development.

Regardless of the reasoning behind them, Dragon’s Dogma 2’s microtransactions are unlikely to tarnish its reputation for good; it’s an engrossing game that seems likely to captivate even more players than its cultish predecessor. But they’re another sign of the increasing pressure on AAA game development — and that’s probably here to stay.