At a time in which lootbox and season pass dominate the multiplayer market, it’s pleasing to see developers ditching the successful business model in favor of community relations. According to Gamewatcher, New World Interactive’s upcoming multiplayer FPS will be devoid of paid DLC and microtransacrtions.
New World Interactive told Gamewatcher that all significant Insurgency Sandstorm DLC will be free as they don’t wish to “split up our community or create unfair gameplay advantages.” The game’s ‘appearance credits’ can not be paid with real world money and is used to unlock cosmetics at launch. However, they might be made available to purchase after the launch purely for cosmetic purposes.
“If a player doesn’t want to spend the time to unlock a cool pair of gloves, a fancy tactical helmet, or whatever, they would have this secondary shortcut option,” the developers told them. “Since these items are cosmetic, we feel this is a nice way for players to support us and more quickly get the character they want without breaking gameplay balance.”
The developers went on to explain that there will be a lot of maps, weapons, cosmetics, and other post launch content, totally free of cost. “This content will be offered for free in regular updates to the game so as to not split up our community or create unfair gameplay advantages”, said New World Interactive.
Insurgency Sandstorm will release on September 18th for PC.