PGA Tour 2K25 is a great game, arguably among the best golf games of all-time, and right now 2K and HB Studios are squandering all those good vibes with unnecessary greed.
For anyone who has not followed PGA Tour 2K25‘s release, it had an early release window where those who spent a premium ($100+) could play the game a week early — a by-the-books thing to do that’s mostly been accepted in the industry (for better or worse). During this time, the AP costs (how you level up your character’s attributes) and VC (how you purchase AP with virtual currency) were set at specific levels. These levels were probably too forgiving and favorable to the consumer, and I think HB Studios probably did not expect as many folks to be able to level their characters to 99 overall in such a short amount of time.
And, to be clear, when I say too favorable to the consumer, I mean strictly from a “grind” perspective the XP gameplay loop was too easy. Taking microtransactions totally out of the equation, many of us still want some semblance of a grind to get to a 99 overall. Yes, people will use exploits and glitches to get to 99 as quickly as possible, but that’s just embedded in some people’s DNA. During the pre-release window, playing the game “normally” still was giving out too many rewards.
However, what’s also important to note is the game wasn’t receiving favorable reviews and feedback because it was easy to level your character. At most, it was simply being praised for not being the “usual 2K greed machine” by slipping VC into every orifice of the experience.
However, on the eve of PGA 2K’s official release, HB Studios and 2K went a new direction and XP gains and VC gains were both nerfed into the ground. Ultimately, this meant the number of hours needed to grind went up a ton, and the amount of VC/XP you were earning went down a ton. This applied to quests and other areas of the game, so it was basically a universal nerfing.
There is a good post on reddit by Not_Star_Lord that highlighted the general issues and detailed how the grind had changed after these changes:
I wouldn’t worry so much about every single number and if it’s 100 percent accurate, the point is that the developers, or whoever decided to nerf the progression system, made a big mistake. And, again, nerfing the pace of progression was fine on its own. It’s maybe too extreme now in the other direction, but that would not be causing this level of outrage. The true problem is buying VC now gives you less progress, and VC is still the universal currency. If you want to grind your character to max level, then that’s still available (albeit much more time consuming), but now buying the same amount of VC won’t get you nearly as close to max level. On top of that, you need VC not just for leveling but for cosmetics and things like Ranked matchmaking and consumable balls.
This all adds up and returns us back to the same issue we now have every year with games like NBA 2K where the focus is on all the wrong parts of the game at launch. Instead of talking about PGA Tour 2K25 being an early favorite for sports game of the year, now we have to talk about how 2K is ruining another gameplay experience trying to pepper us with ways to get more money out of us.
I talk about this from time to time, but while these changes may make 2K money on an earnings report somewhere, we also never know the true impact of what these moves do to sales that never even occur. It says a lot when important members of the PGA 2K community like Seamount4Life decide to simply sit it out on launch day.
Sorry everyone, but I am cancelling my 12-hour #PGATOUR2K25 Launch Day Stream today.
Today was a day I was counting down to for months, a day for us to all celebrate the best golf game in this franchise's history and arguably ever. But unfortunately, all of that was derailed by…
— Seamount4Life (@Seamount4Life) February 28, 2025
It says a lot when you see people saying “I was going to buy the game tomorrow but now I’m cancelling my pre-order.” You’re also going to have people who were going to buy a Season Pass and now won’t because of these changes. Everything costs, and while 2K may get some people’s money, it’s not going to come nearly as willingly as it was before all this started.
There are always going to be exceptions to all this as well. If you’re insanely talented at the game, the grind still won’t be as bad. But 95 percent of the people playing this game aren’t going to reach those elite levels in order to make the grind quick and easy.
From a “pure” golfer perspective, the other thing that bothers me here is HB Studios made other changes I actually like in the initial patch window. Instead of making the game easier, they actually made it harder. The swing variability increased a bit, sweet spots feel even a bit smaller, and I’m all for those tweaks right now because the challenge of the game is a part of its appeal.
Regardless, none of that will matter unless HB and 2K act quickly and figure out how to revert some of these VC changes. Tying VC to attributes in any sports game is “pay to win” no matter how much you want to argue it (“grind to 99” is baloney), but it’s what 2K has decided to do in its sports games. I think as bad as that is as a concept, I wouldn’t expect them to remove that aspect (after all, that was in PGA 2K during pre-release as well), but they need to revert these other changes to some extent to save the goodwill they built up before launch. If they delay too long, a great start will be wasted and what was a true feel-good sports gaming surprise will be another in a long line of greed-induced sliced tee shots into the woods.
