Nine to Five Takes Steps to Fix Pay to Win Issue

In one of my recent articles, I talked about Nine to Five, a new fps game from Redhill Games. At the time of writing the article, the reviews for the game were mixed with many of the negative reviews citing “pay to win” practices in the game, among other issues. Taking a look at the game in its previous state, it was easy to see where these pay-to-win claims were coming from.

The weapons and armors in the game had large price tags on them when compared to how much currency you were awarded per match. Additionally, it offered the ability to quickly buy these weapons and armor not only by using premium currency to purchase credit packs but also by offering fully-customized guns for premium currency at prices that were cheaper than converting the currency to credits and buying the same gun.

The reason these practices are seen as pay-to-win is because of the power discrepancy between players that are able to buy whatever gear they want with real money and other players who don’t have that kind of money. Players that don’t spend money will have to play the game for hundreds of matches in order to get some of the higher-tier weapons and armors in the game.

With the most recent update, Redhill Games has taken some steps to get rid of the pay-to-win problem. The most notable change that occurred was the removal of the premium weapon marketplace. This was where fully modified weapons were sold for premium currency only and were cheaper than buying the base weapon. While the premium currency can still be converted to credits to buy guns, players will have to unlock the attachments for the guns like normal.

Patch 0.1.0.1 is now live!

With this patch, we are introducing weekend tasks, improving animations, audio, gameplay and much more.

Read the full patch notes here: https://t.co/YUmM6Kkz1w pic.twitter.com/k5ZZYG9pLM

— Nine to Five (@NineToFiveGame) September 2, 2021

There were two other notable changes to allow players that don’t want to spend money on the game to stand a fighting chance at getting new weapons and armor. The first change was an increase to level up credits. Even if players had already passed a level, they were given the credits that they would have gained at previous levels. The second change was the addition of special weekend missions.

Completing these weekend missions will award players with weapons and attachments. Additionally, these missions don’t seem to be harder than other missions that are available at any other time. Hopefully, these changes will keep the game from being more on the play-to-win side of things.