Payday 2 has been the subject of a lot of criticism lately. Their introduction of random paid skins with a random chance for a random stat boost didn't go over well with the community or the media, to say the least.

But they've finally realized the error of their ways and have issued a public apology in order to reconcile with the community... except not really.

This is what Overkill had to say:

"The past few weeks have been some of the most challenging in the history of this community. Players have been angry with us, media have written about us en masse and our volunteer moderators went on strike. For all the distress we've caused the past few weeks, I'd just like to take the time and say that we’re sorry. We've done a lot of things right in the past, but these past few weeks we screwed up.

We need to get better at many things, and we will do our best to improve as soon as possible.

Below is a short update on what’s going on right now. "

And that is it, that's all they had to say on that, the rest of the fairly long post is an advertisement for all the other things they're doing in the future. Actions speak louder than words, and this right here is a lot of talking without actually committing yourself towards making any positive change.

Call me a cynic but this whole "apology" feels like it was there to bait us in to clicking the post so they can tell us about these new exciting tournaments they have coming up! How a tournament in a horde-mode game can work they haven't elaborated, nor have they said anything about the fact that there are paid skins with stat boosts that can skew results.

But you might say, oh Ash its only like +1 or 2 damage, that doesn't matter. To which my response would be, oh yes it matters, it matters a lot. Even a measly +2 damage on some weapons can help them achieve certain thresholds.

And there is a big difference in efficiency when on the highest difficulty you can down a strong enemy with 2 headshots rather than 3 since the game was and thankfully still is balanced without the paid skins in mind.

Don't get me wrong though, I have nothing against them attempting tournaments, they might even end up being very fun to watch but announcing them right now and during their apology just seems like deflection.

What I am actually annoyed with is that they are willing to sacrifice all of their community goodwill for short term profit, something the old Overkill crew would never have done, they even had a manifesto about NEVER putting in micro-transactions.

I mentioned this before but CS-GO doesn't need to put stats on their paid skins to sell them, simply having cool shiny skins is enough for players to covet them.

But instead of removing the random stat boosts and placing them elsewhere Overkill decided to double up on the randomness and added random exp&money boosts that can randomly appear on skins as well. Brilliant!

Sigh, I've gone through my anger phase about this, I've gone through disappointment and now? Now I simply don't care. Whatever good there was in Payday 2 has left with some of the team members earlier this year only to be replaced with greed.

Such a shame.