PAYDAY 2 drills will soon be a thing of the past, putting an end to the game's "Crate & key" microtransaction system.
OVERKILL made a Steam Community announcement that detailed the upcoming changes. Citing "legal rulings concerning the purchase of digital items", they have announced that they are going to be removing PAYDAY 2 drills and making it possible to open safes without using them.
Safes will remain unchanged aside from the ability to open them without the use of a drill.
What Happens to Existing PAYDAY 2 Drills and Safes?
Of course, there are still a fair few drills and safes floating around in player's inventories. The Steam Community Market page for the game shows nearly 400 pages of listings, a portion of which includes the colorful loot box analogues. What's going to happen to those?
According to OVERKILL, here are the plans for next week:
- Safes that require drills will be able to be opened without drills.
- The ability to purchase drills will be removed.
- Any existing drills held by players will be converted into a corresponding safe. For example, a "Dallas Safe" drill will be turned into a "Dallas Safe".
- The existing stock of safes — many of which are currently unobtainable except through the Steam marketplace — will be added to the game's loot rotation at a low percentage.
- The ability to sell specific skins and items on the Steam marketplace will remain.
The min-maxers out there might notice a tiny flaw in this plan, but OVERKILL has already addressed it. Players could snap up a bunch of safes or drills at current prices (whichever is cheaper) and then immediately put those contents up on the marketplace.
It's true that you could do that, but the catch is that this change is applying to everyone. Odds are, the skin marketplace is going to be kind of crazy after this change deploys, so you probably shouldn't expect to make massive profits or anything like that. The conversion of PAYDAY 2 drills into safes and the removal of the requirement for drills to open safes will effectively increase the supply of items in the market, subsequently lowering prices.
On the upside, you'll probably be able to grab up some skins on the PAYDAY 2 marketplace after this change goes through at the best prices ever! You can look forward to these changes to drills and safes in PAYDAY 2 arriving sometime next week.
What do you think of the changes to PAYDAY 2 drills and safes? Are you happy to see the crate & key-style microtransactions go the way of the dodo? Let us know in the comments below!
