Silent Hill: Ascension monetisation is a time skip, not pay-to-win, developer insists
The CEO of Silent Hill: Ascension developer Genvid has defended the game's transactions, and said they were there to allow people to «skip time» in gaining in-game currency rather than being a way to «game the system».
CEO Jacob Navok's comments come after the game's second night of new content, and amid backlash to its monetisation scheme.
Navok posted last night on X, formerly Twitter, to respond to a wave of complaints about the game and attempt to explain Ascension's economy, which consists of in-game currency earned by playing mini-puzzles and completing live-service style tasks, whilst also providing context on the removal of global live chat.
«It would be very difficult for a single person to change a decision,» Navok began his explainer of how the monetisation isn't pay-to-win. Players can cast their decisions by using the game's currency, influence points. One decision costs 200 points, and currently the options have millions of points behind each one. The currency packs, which range from 6000 to 26,400 points, won't give anyone who buys them any pay-to-win influence, Navok stated. «It's only useful if you don't want to do any puzzles,» he continued. Each pack can presumably be bought multiple times however, as there's no limitations mentioned on the game's store page. It's worth remembering that time skips are a common method of predatory monetisation in mobile games.
Given that some puzzles are locked behind the £20 season pass, Navok admitted Genvid «went too aggressive on puzzle locks». Rather than opening up all available puzzles to all players, the developer will now allow free puzzles to contain old levels, giving players a «wide backlog» of puzzles to farm influence points from. «Ironically the thing
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