NBA 2K18 is off to a really rough start

NBA 2K18 is suffering a very rough start to its release with many fans of the series upset with data loss issues, horrendous microtransactions that support a pay-to-win scheme, and even a big kerfuffle over the attempt to alter review scores. Things aren’t looking great for NBA 2K18.

The game, which retails at full price, features an in-game shop that allows you to purchase Virtual Currency (VC). That Virtual Currency can then be used to purchase customisation options for your players, as well as directly purchasing upgrades. This has of course caused a backlash from the community who aren’t happy with what is essentially a pay-to-win scheme being thrown into their full priced game.

There has been widespread backlash on Steam as very average and low satisfaction reviews pile up on the game’s Steam page with players suggesting the game is worse than pay-to-win mobile games. There are 3,300 reviews on Steam at the time of writing and many of the comments show frustration with having to purchase an $80 AU game to then have to spend a lot of money getting their stats up to have a reasonable impact on just the Career Mode alone.

Steam user ntpeace summed up a lot of the user negativity:

“We need to spend more money to 100% play this game just after bought 60$ full price game. 

All i want to play is my career mode, i don’t want playing park proam blah.. blah..
and 2K offered one of worst experience ever since i enjoyed 2k series.

VC, VC, VC..
They removed difficulty slider bonus, player size bonus 
so playing 5mins for pro level twice is better than playing 12 mins for HOF level once. 
you need to play more than 200 games with A+ grades to reach 85~86 ovr. 

and player motions, 
you have to buy motions what you like, sooner or later you noticed it locked 😀
you need to reach 60, 70, 80 ovr ratings to unlock this motions.

so.. it means playing 100~200 games with no/basic motions (took thousands of mins in real life)
or just spent more money 🙁

so disappointed. i won’t recommend this game.”

 

On top of the microtransaction fiasco, the opening week of the game’s launch saw many Xbox players lose their VC purchases in widespread data loss. Players then had to raise a ticket with 2K to have their VC restored.

News has also emerged that the 2K team are pressuring The Sixth Axis to remove a game review score of 3/10 due to wording around the score being a protest against the plethora of microtransactions riddling the otherwise beloved series and how difficult it is to gather VC, almost forcing players to make a  purchase to progress the main story of the game.  The full details can be read here, in a statement release by The Sixth Axis.

With all of these issues coming together, it’s no surprise we are seeing some serious backlash over NBA 2k18.