Another video game is falling victim to sneaky subscription practices, though the method is quite unusual; rather than implementing a regular "pay to win" feature, sim-racing game Le Mans Ultimate promises a "pay not to lose" advantage to players with a monthly subscription. Did you take last place? Did another driver wreck your car? Or were you the one to hit another driver? Pay the fee, and all shall be forgotten.

As a competitive online racing game, Le Mans Ultimate players have a "driver rank" and a "safety rank" that represent their driver skills and punish reckless moves, respectively. So, if you're an amazingly skilled driver but tend to cause a lot of crashes, your driver rank may be high, but your safety rank will be low. These rankings will affect matchmaking when a player joins a race. Naturally, they also serve as a badge of honor.

Of course, accidents happen; drivers can lose rank due to crashes, a failing internet connection, or a mischievous cat, which is why Studio 397, the developer of Le Mans Ultimate, announced their plan to implement an "Event Joker" system in their next update, which will release on July 28. Every 10 races, the player earns a Joker (up to a maximum stack of three), which they can use to nullify one race result. The race result will still count if it was part of a championship, but the result won't damage the player's driver and safety rank.

While this sounds reasonable enough, Le Mans Ultimate's Joker system has its player base up in arms as Reddit gets flooded with posts like "The new 'Race Joker' is the worst idea ever" and "New joker system is P2W." The comment section under a YouTube video introducing the Joker system, too, is dominated by remarks like "Surely you're joking about the Jokers," "[Jokers are] the worst idea I have ever seen in an online game," and "We shouldn't accept this type of shit."

Though some of the criticism is directed at the Joker system itself, arguing that unfair race results also happen in real-life racing, the main reason behind the backlash is that Jokers are only available to players with a paid monthly "Pro" or "Pro+" membership. Essentially, every player who pays $8 a month gets to remove their worst result out of every 10 races. Even if none of those races involve an unfortunate accident with a cat, they'll simply gain more rank points relative to their non-subscribed peers by deleting their worst race.

As Reddit user Tophattingson puts it: "[Driver rank] gains would no longer be based only on your performance against other drivers. They would also be based on how strategically you can use your Jokers to undo results. They would also uniquely reward inconsistency because those spikey negative results represent the best place to use Jokers."

But the Jokers cause more than just a pay-to-win discussion; according to many Le Mans Ultimate players, they're a (virtual) safety hazard. A driver's safety rank is meant to inspire sportsmanship and ensure that those who drive well get matched with drivers of similar caliber. With a Joker on hand, one could, potentially, be a menace on track and get away with it. Although willful bad driving would ideally result in a temporary player ban, a loss of safety rank is the only form of punishment when intention isn't clear.

Should Le Mans Ultimate's developers wish to nullify the opposition to their Joker plans, the obvious solution would be to make Jokers available to everyone — but that wouldn't move ambitious drivers to subscribe to their "Pro" plan, would it? Or, you know, drop the whole Joker plan in the bin and make a DNF ("did not finish") result less impactful, no matter if you pay a monthly fee or not. As it stands, the Joker system is an interesting new twist in the greater discussion of what should and should not be locked behind paywalls in gaming.