Dragon’s Dogma 2, one of the most anticipated games of the year, has just launched on Steam. However, its impressive player numbers are marred by performance issues and Capcom’s decision to add a bunch of greedy in-app purchases.
Released on March 22, Dragon’s Dogma received critical acclaim, with an average score on Metacritic ranging from 86 (Xbox Series X) to 90 (PC). Players around the world were also hyped about the game, but they were in for an unpleasant surprise from Capcom.
On Steam, Dragon’s Dogma launched to “Mostly Negative” reviews, with only 39% of the 5,569 early reviews being positive. Although many users praised the gameplay and its core mechanics, they criticized the game for poor optimization, the presence of Denuvo, and… you guessed it, microtransactions.
While performance issues were something players were at least aware of, since Dragon’s Dogma 2 is very CPU-intensive, the amount of in-app purchases ranging from $0.99 to $4.99 was just disturbing. And as can be seen on SteamDB, they were all added right at launch without Capcom announcing them in advance.
Some of the microtransactions are classic BS like in-game premium currency, but there are plenty of really outrageous offerings. How about a Portcrystal (used for fast travel) for $2.99? Or the ability to change your character appearance once for $1.99? Or perhaps someone wants a Wakestone, which restores the dead to life, for $0.99?
And you can buy all the DLCs for “only” $41.79! Sounds like a great deal, especially for a game that already costs $70.
“Hey Capcom, you can purchase a “good review DLC” for $1.99,” one user wrote on Steam.
This is not the first time the Japanese publisher has added in-app purchases to its games. It introduced microtransactions to last year’s Resident Evil 4 after its launch, and Monster Hunter titles are full of various items that can be purchased with real money. So the company’s new game is not unique in this sense.
The worst part about Dragon’s Dogma 2 is that things like character appearance are on Capcom’s servers, so players can’t just start a new game and create a new pawn even after turning off cloud saves and deleting the data on their hardware.
“Spent 5 hours in the char creator, then turns out I missed something about my posture and I’ve got a really fruity run,” a user wrote. “Literally no way to delete char and restart from what I built in the creator.”
To be fair, most items sold as microtransactions can also be obtained in the game for free and are not required for the full experience. However, players simply don’t want to see so many additional monetization elements in a full-price, single-player game.
At the moment of writing this, the user rating for Dragon’s Dogma 2 has improved slightly, to “Mixed” (40% positive reviews). But many are still disappointed with Capcom’s monetization decisions and the fact that the game can’t properly run even on high-end systems with powerful CPUs and GPUs like the RTX 4090.
UPDATE: Capcom has finally addressed the situation in a post on Steam, apologizing to players “for any inconvenience.” Right now, it is investigating and fixing critical technical issues (crushes, freezing, etc.), also promising to improve performance related to the CPU usage in the future.
The company noted that most of the paid DLC items can be obtained in-game for free. But it is “looking at adding a feature to the Steam version of the game that will allow players that are already playing to restart the game.”
Despite a massive backlash, Dragon’s Dogma 2 had an impressive launch in terms of player count. According to SteamDB, it quickly peaked at 184,742 concurrent users, making it one of the best Capcom releases on Steam by that metric.
Dragon’s Dogma 2 currently ranks 5th, right between Resident Evil 4 Remake (168.1k CCU) and Monster Hunter Rise (231.3k CCU). The top three titles are Capcom Arcade Stadium (488.7k CCU), Capcom Arcade 2nd Stadium (463.9k CCU), and Monster Hunter: World (334.6k CCU).
The 184k peak also makes Dragon’s Dogma 2 the 4th biggest launch of 2024, trailing only Last Epoch, Helldivers 2, and Palworld. The full top 10 can be seen below:
- Palworld — 2.1 million CCU;
- Helldivers 2 — 458.7k CCU;
- Last Epoch — 264.7k CCU;
- Dragon’s Dogma 2 — 184.7k CCU;
- Enshrouded — 160.4k CCU;
- Granblue Fantasy: Relink — 114k CCU;
- Deep Rock Galactic: Survivor — 56.9k CCU;
- Supermarket Simulator — 51.3k CCU;
- Tekken 8 — 49.9k CCU;
- Nightingale — 47.5k CCU.