The mirror of Disney Dreamlight Valley reveals its inner self.

Take a look at this game—isn't it cool? If your collection included an immersive Disney game with your favorite characters, wouldn't you believe it was complete? Yes, indeed, everything seems OK until you realize how much it costs to play Disney Dreamlight Valley, particularly when you consider how excellent the experience is.

I still adore farming and building beautiful villages for my Disney-licensed pals to live in, but the performance is still dubious and I disagree with the heavy commercialization. At this point, the game is starting to seem like a guilty pleasure.

To provide you with some background, Disney Dreamlight Valley went on sale for early access in September 2022 and ranged in price from $30 to $70, depending on the version you choose. These contained moonstones, part of the game's premium cash, special furniture and apparel, and other bits and pieces for personalization. This is an extremely expensive price for an early access game.

The promise that DDLV will be free on all platforms after the early access period, which was supposed to iron out any performance difficulties and bugs in the game, was what truly pulled people in. During this time, players could still buy premium currency and things with real money.

I apologize, but it was untrue. As the game approaches its first anniversary and gets ready to end early access on December 5, 2023, Gameloft announces that it has chosen to keep the game as a paid experience rather than make it free to play, which was, ironically, one of the game's selling points. The game isn't in particularly better shape than it was before. In addition, the studio retained all of the game's microtransactions while also adding a paid expansion pass and other paid DLC choices.

It was never really thought that the game would be this cheap, but it's taking the Mickey. Who made this decision? McDuck, Scrooge? But I'm getting off topic. Of course, you may pay whatever you want to keep playing the game if you love it, but for those who don't have a lot of money to spend, it detracts from the experience.

How much does it cost to get the whole Disney Dreamlight Valley experience, complete with all the extras? Take out your calculator and let's look at this. On the Nintendo Switch, the original basic game now costs, at the very least, $39.99 to $69.99. Separately, the Rift in Time expansion pass costs $29.99. The two Wall-E and Ursula outfit packs cost four thousand moonstones each. How much, however, are moonstones? To afford both outfit bundles, you would need to purchase a standard and a huge pack for $9.99 and $19.99, respectively, since there isn't a pack of 8,000 available. Moonstones are something you can get in the game, but they're purposefully scarce and then easily bought in the shop.

You're looking at an eye-watering $99.96 for the game, expansion, and two costume packs combined. And that's before you add any more moonstones to your wallet in order to get the Star Path prizes!

To contrast this with another greedy game, let's take a look at The Sims 4. You may purchase a Stuff Pack for $9.99, which contains an average of 50–60 additional haircuts, cosmetics, clothes, and furniture pieces in addition to sporadic new, minor gameplay aspects. To purchase a pack of moonstones in Disney Dreamlight Valley and get a summer attire for Scrooge McDuck, you must spend $9.99. Nothing, no quests. Regarding this circumstance, a Redditor said, "You know it's bad when EA is giving the better deal."

You can play the game for "free" on Xbox Game Pass and Apple Arcade if you don't want to pay $50 for it, although both are premium services. Even while there are some upfront savings, many services come at a high expense over time. Oh, and there's more: the Cozy Edition of the game is available for actual purchase. You don't get a game card, though—it's just a code in a box.

I'm used to paying for in-game items; in Genshin Impact, for example, I often pay for primogems. However, in that case, the game itself is free, huge, and works flawlessly 99.9% of the time with frequent, substantial upgrades - all for free. In regards to Disney Dreamlight Valley, I can't say the same.

Apart from the bittersweet feeling caused by the initial announcement that DDLV will be free for all players across all platforms being withdrawn, the price is very exorbitant in light of the quality and functionality of the games, and overall, I don't believe it's worth paying.

There have been several problems with the game on all platforms since it was released. Players have seen it all: crashes, servers that won't work for days at a time, Olaf and Kristoff merging into one gelatinous character inside Anna's house, players disappearing from the game, quests that glitch out and prevent you from continuing, and a plethora of problems with character models changing colors and textures. Although the game is no longer available for early access and is somewhat expensive to play, there are still issues with the most recent release of the expansion pass.

The issue at hand is whether the game is really prepared to leave early access and become a fully paid title. For me, I'm not sure. Despite being a complete release after a full year of early access testing, it still feels a touch rough around the edges, and problems continue to crop up every time one is fixed.

What this signifies for Disney Dreamlight Valley's future is something else I wonder about. Will there be one or more premium expansion passes available? Even if this current pass will get upgrades in the future in addition to those for the main game, $30 is still a significant amount of money. For my part, I think Dreamlight Valley will take a similar turn to The Sims 4, where the core game becomes free but everything else is in-app purchase. Even so, would it really be worth it given the enormous expenses and certain aspects of forced change?

All we can do is wait and watch, then form our own opinions. Here are several games like Animal Crossing to try if you enjoy decorating as much as I do, and here are the available Disney Dreamlight Valley codes if you are playing the game.