Razer Suspends Paid To Play Program Citing Customer Feedback

Razer is putting a stop to its Paid to Play program, which allowed gamers to earn zSilver reward currency that can be used to purchase Razer products and discounts, simply for playing games.

The announcement comes in the form of a forum post, which outlined the company’s reasons for suspending the program. Razer cited “an increasing amount of negative feedback” as the primary reason for the program’s removal, but the company also left the fate of the reward program open-ended, indicating it would be working to improve the negative aspects.

“With an increasing amount of negative feedback on the Paid to Play program, we’re going to be taking a hard look into the overall program and mechanics to do right for you and all the gamers who participated,” said a company representative. “While we take time to develop ways to make it rewarding and beneficial for all, we will suspend the Paid to Play program, effective March 1, 2018. In the event that we are unable to provide a satisfactory solution, the program will be suspended indefinitely.”

To be clear, zSilver and its catalog of rewards aren’t going anywhere. Razer still doles out the currency to customers using zGold for gaming purchases, being an active contributor on Razer Insider, and by logging into, syncing your Steam account with, and subscribing to Razer Cortex.

We aren’t sure why any gamer, let alone an “increasing amount,” would look down on a Paid to Play program, and we suspect that its demise may have more to do with loopholes or abuses that may have been discovered since the program’s inception than from an outcry of gamers who feel they’ve been cheated somehow (who would complain about getting free stuff?). Razer’s statement doesn’t seem optimistic that the program would remain in any form, and the company’s promise of making time to “develop ways to make it rewarding and beneficial for all” sounds like lip service to end a rewards program that may not have been rewarding to Razer itself.

The Razer Paid to Play program ends on March 1.