During a 26-minute Outriders broadcast that aired on May 28, Square Enix and People Can Fly confirmed that though the upcoming RPG shooter will require a persistent internet connection to play, it won’t feature microtransactions or loot boxes.
The news comes from a quick Q&A at the end of the broadcast. Responding to a Twitter user asking if Outriders would feature any progression systems “locked behind microtransactions, Robbie Palmer, Outriders Community Manager, said, “This is an easy one. No, Outriders will not feature microtransactions.”
The question and answer can be seen at around the 24-minute mark in the video below.
As for loot boxes, Creative Director Bartosz Kmita told IGN that, “The bad things that are sometimes connected to games as a service, like loot boxes or any pay to win mechanics, we are against them. So we’re not using them at all in our game.”
Of course, loot boxes have been a hot topic in the industry for some time. They feature in popular games like Destiny 2, Madden, and Overwatch, as well as many (many) mobile games. They veritably print money for some publishers, such as EA, who reportedly “made $993 million from live services” during Q3 of its 2020 fiscal year (the fourth quarter of 2019).
Though some gamers love to hate microtransactions and loot boxes (and others love to deal with them), world governments and game ratings boards have taken action against them in the last several years.
The ESRB has added tags to physical games that “include randomized purchases,” while the Belgian Game Commission and the United States’ Federal Trade Commission (FTC) have investigated loot boxes as a form of gambling, as well as for their effects on children, respectively.
Since Outriders is not games as a service, and will more or less contain the entire gameplay experience in the box on launch day, it makes sense that it will not employ microtransactions or loot boxes. People Can Fly have also said that Outriders will most likely receive DLC sometime after launch, but that any expansions will also steer clear of microtransactions.
May’s Outriders broadcast is just one of many more to come, and it shed a lot of new light on the game, including more information on the Trickster class. People Can Fly said that more broadcasts will come throughout the year and be the primary ways by which new information about the game will be shared with fans.
Outriders is set to launch sometime in Holiday 2020 for PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Series X. See what we had to say about going hands-on with Outriders earlier this year at PAX East.
