The gaming industry is no stranger to a spot of exaggerated anger, but fans of Disney Speedstorm may be entitled to be irritated. The free-to-play racer, despite some sturdy kart racing gameplay, has been on a rocky road for a while, due to the way its gacha system works. Effectively, you need to collect shards to unlock and upgrade racers, and this can lead to an unbalanced online experience.
Despite the issues, though, fans were generally looking forward to the new season of Wreck-It Ralph content, as well as some streamlining of the crafting system, which meant you’d no longer need specific materials to level up racers. However, a Community Pitstop teasing some changes to Season 7 has stopped the community in its tracks, and honestly, the backlash is beyond anything we’ve seen before.
Players are talking about taking legal action, and developer Gameloft has been branded as “thieves”. So, just what exactly is going on?
Well, at the headline level, the changes seem smart: requirements have been reduced for the title’s Battle Pass system, Golden Pass – and content from previous seasons is making a comeback as part of a new single player Tournaments mode. Great updates, we’re sure you’ll agree. The problem is that the studio is tying everything to new subscription-like business models.
So, for unlimited attempts at the new Tournaments, you’ll need to purchase a Vault Pass for $7.99, otherwise you’ll only be able to attempt four of these per day. Meanwhile, the Golden Pass will now be split into two parts, each costing $9.99 a pop, meaning the total cost of unlocking everything per season will be at least $27.97. Gameloft argues there’ll be much more to earn in the Golden Passes, hence the price hike.
But the thing that’s really driving fans crazy is that Golden Passes will no longer be purchasable with in-game currency, meaning you’ll need to pod out real cash to access the premium rewards tracks. Many had bought Founders Editions of the game, or simply saved up their tokens, in order to unlock future Golden Passes.
It means some fans are now considering legal action against Gameloft, or giving up on the game entirely. Obviously, we’ll need to test out the changes first-hand before we truly get a sense of how much damage the developer has done here, but Disney Speedstorm was already on thin ice, and this uproar is not going to help. It’s unfortunate really, because the core game is pretty great.
[source disneyspeedstorm.com]
Comments 24
Lmao Disney and greed.
No better duo
Wow that seems like a complete sh*tty thing to do.
But honestly do we expect any better in this day and age of micro transactions, battle passes etc that people willingly pay for over and over?
All "Passes" and monetization changes should be banned in games. People should recieve what they bought.
@djlard Technically the game is free, though. (Unless you bought the Founders Pack!)
This Game has been awful from day 1 especially on switch which you could Say it's because of the hardware but this is a mobile game 5fps is no excuse especially when the models aren't even that good looking
This is disgusting.
In-game monetization should be strictly illegal for games aimed at kids
Also in the disgusted category.
I cannot see how companies like this, or those that add microtransactions post review, do not see the damage it does their reputation for future games.
Good reputation is hard to gain, but very easy to lose.
I understand this is FTP, but in general gaming terms I wouldnt mind a higher entry rate - ie original purchase cost - if only we could get rid of these horrible MTX.
I take a pass when a game needs a "pass" to finish it.
I really hope every “game” like this crashes and burns. It shouldn’t be part of the gaming industry. No sympathy for the addicts - I mean players - there is a long history of this type of thing they could have learned from.
Why couldn't we just get a solid full priced Disney kart racer like Mario Kart or CTR? Such a missed opportunity
It's a shame they ruined this game with the passes and micro transactions. I bought one season pass because my kids love frozen, but immediately decided to never do that again for this game. You can't even play every level in a season because you need certain characters on specific levels to be able to play and finish those. So unless you put in a lot of money you won't be able to do everything.
It's a shame because the core gameplay is good and fun. Then again it does show what Disney is in it's current state.
This is why I don't touch garbage like this to start with
This "free" to play model seriously needs to go. All it does is make games much worse to play and potentially significantly more expensive too
I played Speedstorm for around 2 hours before losing interest, due to the need to purchase and then level up individual characters to even have a hope of being competitive. Plus, hot take, but:
1. Speedstorm's gameplay isn't the hot sh*t everyone says it is.
2. Speedstorm's visuals/track designs are ugly.
There are so many far better - and less scummy - Kart racer alternatives out there, I'm amazed the game's lasted this long.
@get2sammyb I bought the founder's pack but i could not just get into the racing. It seemed bizarre and random. I know that that's the type of game but Mario Kart is much superior in terms of gameplay.
Gameloft and Disney be like: "we've got to have money".
Hard to find a gacha game with fair pricing these days
New Disney CEO, new greedy schemes to fleece the rabble.
As someone who has about 250 hours into this, without spending a penny, since it actually went FTP a few months ago instead of requiring a purchase, I enjoy the racing, not the online multiplayer the “matchmaking” is too pay-to-win, and the PS5 graphics and some of the music and characters. I still have no intention on spending any money and how much longer I play will be based on how things pan out over the next few weeks.
For some context on this, in case Sony players don’t know Disney Dreamlight Valley was announced as FTP on Switch but after awhile they decided to make it pay to play. So while they aren’t doing the same thing here as it sounds like there will still be a free element to the pass I’m not surprised they are trying to basically make another game pay to play.
Also, the player base was already a little annoyed b/c the devs announced Wreck it Ralph would be in the new season when there were about 9 days to go in the old season, then about 3 days later they announced the new season wouldn’t start for another 3 weeks, but by then the old season was over so there was nothing new to do, just wait, and as players waited the dev just keeps drop feeding bad news, this no tokens for the season pass basically just being the last straw.
So I don’t think they’re done messing with stuff, just have to wait and see if they finally get something right, or find enough whales to keep the game going with fewer players.🤷🏻♂️
It's Disney and Gameloft, what else did you expect except greed
Sonic and All-stars Racing Transformed is coming in the mail tonight. I will be happy sad.
@rjejr Sounds like most other whales are dropping the game for now maybe… I don’t know… we’ll see. I’m going to keep playing…. but any decision that makes the player base smaller definitely stinks… and this will most certainly do that for now.
Sounds confusing but bad. Yikes.
@inverseIV I traveled for 4 days and didn't really miss it. Played a bit since we've been back but it's just kinda there. They could be trying to see how much money they could make while it's hot before they run out of steam, if it gets too bad for them they just announce "we listened to our fans, purchasing a pass with tokens is now back" and try to play the hero.
Mostly I'm just hoping the rain stops and the temperature rises so I can start going outside inside of being stuck inside playing this. 😂
That’s inherent with FTP business model. They’ll understandably try to make money and squeeze some juice afterwards. Sometimes they do it well. Sometimes not…
@get2sammyb Then refund all the founders and change your policy you can have it both ways.
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