40K Developers Criticised Over Twitch Drops

Complex Games, the developers of the new Warhammer 40,000: Chaos Gate -- Daemonhunters, have issued a statement to frustrated players after running a campaign where certain in-game items were only available to those who sat through some Twitch streams. From a report: While Complex probably thought they were running a fairly standard (by 2022 standards anyway) release window promotional thing, the nature of the items and the fanbase and platform in question weren't having it. Here's an example of a negative review left on the game's Steam page as a result, one of many that presumably prompted the statement: "The game would have gotten a thumbs up but for one thing. The developers for some ridiculous reason decided to put 11 ingame items(not skins or cosmetics but actual weapons and armor) behind twitch drops on the day of release. In order to get these items you not only have to create and link a Frontier account and a Twitch account but you have to watch hours and hours of inane twitch streamers prattling on instead of actually playing the game you paid for. They also are timed so if you miss them you miss them forever. If there was another way to earn these ingame it would not be a big deal..." The Angry Joe stream was actually only 45 minutes, but their point remains. The items weren't anything fancy or game-breaking. Most of them were just very slight variations on early-game weapons and armour that you'll move past in a few hours anyway. But it's the spirit of the move -- and its mandates on player's time if they want to try out everything the game has to offer -- that has upset people as much as its practical consequences. As a result, Complex have said that every item offered during the streams will now be given away to free to all players later this month.

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