Rumor: Deus Ex: Mankind Divided Microtransactions Were a Last-minute Addition, Game Needs 3mil Copies to Break Even

I had to think about whether it was opportune of me to post this for a good while. While Jim Sterling’s video report on the development of Mankind Divided provide a lot of insight on the game, they come from a single anonymous source, a developer involved in the project, and might not paint the full picture on what was going on. That said, while they do have to be taken with a grain of salt, a lot of the reports sound pretty believable.

What I find particularly interesting, is that Sterling mentions that microtransactions were only added to the game during the very last stretch of development, two weeks before the actual submission for approval. This was a mandate from the publisher, the European branch of Square Enix, which was also responsible for the addition of the Breach mode to the game, in fear that the main campaign would otherwise be too stale as the game’s single main attraction.

Sterling also added that the game apparently had a budget of 70 million CAD, and that to break even it would need to sell at least 3 million copies. This doesn’t bode well for Mankind Divided’s sequel, which was supposedly already in development as this shenanigans supposedly happened. You can watch the full video below, although I will stress again that the reports might be incomplete or possibly misleading due to the fact that he didn’t manage to corroborate them with additional sources: