Arena Breakout Infinite early access launched for PC on Aug. 13, with hundreds of players flooding its servers. But many players quickly realized the game features pervasive pay-to-win elements, and they’re not happy.
Immediately after Arena Breakout Infinite launched, multiple posts regarding the game’s pay-to-win system flooded Reddit. Frustrated players are complaining about the game being pay-to-win when the developer didn’t reveal this information beforehand.
“I’m just shocked at the number of people defending this… Games have simply brainwashed people. No way this flies 5 or 10 years ago,” one of the top posts on the game’s subreddit reads.
Other players dove into the details behind Arena Breakout Infinite’s pay-to-win mechanics. Many claim the free loot you get just for playing isn’t good enough, which could be a deliberate decision to encourage you to spend money. “The problem is STILL not buying Koens [in-game, purchasable currency], it’s that loot is worthless simply to encourage you to buy Koens. If loot was fair value like [in] Escape from Tarkov and I could reliably pistol run zero to hero, then fine […] but Tencent here decided to make it difficult by having everything be worthless,” one player wrote.
One player proved their point by converting Koens to US Dollars. Their calculations revealed that Thermal Images, an advanced scope, costs $24.44. Other items like a helmet or a piece of body armor cost $6.60 and $4.03 each. Additionally, it seems you can still lose these items in-game. “Imagine paying any cash [for] non-permanent pixels,” another player wrote.
It remains to be seen whether Arena Breakout Infinite will attract a lot of players long-term. Looking at the current community sentiment, though, it doesn’t seem likely.
