Almost a year ago when Killing Floor 2 launched in Early Access I had an internal fight between my love for all things Killing Floor and my common sense telling me that Early Access games are rarely worth the trouble. Sadly, it would appear that this statement still holds true.

From the time of release till today there have been only two major patches, an unacceptably low amount for a game that is supposed to be in a beta testing phase. Despite all of the people I've chatted with telling me its a good game that is only getting better with time I still find it difficult to get excited about it when the development pace is this glacial.

And now, instead of furthering the game's progress towards release Killing Floor 2 has received an update that adds microtransactions, random skin drops and trading. At the very least they had enough common sense not to add stat boosts to the skins like Payday 2 did.

 Don't get me wrong though, I don't hate the game, the developers or the fact that it has microtransactions, its the timing that bothers me.

I've talked about this in my various articles on Payday 2 but a cosmetic chest isn't a negative thing. If anything, CS:GO proved that such boxes can even boost player involvement in the game as they collect, trade and sell cosmetics with other players.

It can be a great microtransaction system, especially if there are also random drops, and as long as any form of in game benefit stays away from it I don't see much of a reason to complain. And indeed that isn't why I'm unhappy with this update.

What really grinds my gears here is the fact that the game is still very much so in beta yet is adding paid microtransactions with the idea of selling DLC weapons in the future. How about finishing the game first before worrying about monetization? People that paid for Early Access gave their money with the knowledge that it will be used to further the game's development and after 8 months of very little to show, it really isn't the time to bring out a patch that mostly contains microtransactions.

I still have a lot of respect for Tripwire and I do hope they can get the game's development back on track but I am definitely not happy how Killing Floor 2, a great game by many accounts, is acting like one of the numerous Steam games that use Early Access as a shield from criticism while still gladly accepting money from people.