Daily reminder that Bluehole broke their promise not to monetize before the end of Early Access

They built up trust within people who bought the game by seeming to have better business practices than those who came before, by promising not to make the same mistakes as those who came before. They sold a lot of copies of the game based on the trust they built within the community. Then they said "looks like Early Access is going to take a lot longer than we expected." Ok, things happen. Disappointing, but not the end of the world. And then they said "4 million+ user base, so fuck you. Can't get your $30 back now. Lemme see what else is in that wallet."

They turned us all into some lunch money victims.

EDIT: I don't think people understand the problem created by monetizing before Early Access ends. Maybe you didn't buy into H1Z1 or understand exactly what happened. They were making a lot of money from the crates they were selling. There was no incentive to push development because people were throwing money at them in the game's unfinished state. It could've been a much better game. But they found a shittier, more efficient business model: Take most of your resources out of development and let people throw handfuls of money at an unfinished game.

It's stupid to say "Don't buy them, they don't give an advantage." It's not about the items, it's about the incentive to continue developing until completion before they say, "meh - seems to be good enough, look at all this cash." Why would Brendan "Hot Carl" Greene bother making a promise if it wasn't a big deal?