Offworld Industries has introduced that paid downloadable content material (DLC) is coming to military-sim shooter Squad, regardless of beforehand claiming the sport would by no means function DLC.
In a blog post printed to Steam (by way of PC Gamer), Offworld Industries introduced that Squad‘s replace 44.27 will introduce emotes to the sport. Whereas some can be handed out without cost at launch, two separate bundles of emotes can be offered as microtransactions – one thing the studio beforehand mentioned it could by no means do.
“We perceive that paid content material in gaming may be controversial and that earlier management at Offworld had acknowledged that paid DLC would by no means be added to Squad,” acknowledged the studio within the announcement weblog.
Offworld Industries defined that whereas it nonetheless intends to launch free updates, it wants “a method to proceed to fund the event of Squad“. Nonetheless, in a Q&A towards the top of the announcement, the studio declines to verify whether or not new maps or factions can be lauched as paid DLC sooner or later.
Since emotes had been introduced, Squad‘s Steam page has been hit with a wave of negative player reviews taking difficulty with the sport’s monetisation plans.
“No to microtransactions and emotes,” reads one, whereas one other complains that Squad is “now getting microtransactions within the type of paid emotes whereas being a 12 months late from [Offworld’s] roadmap, missing optimisation and affected by horrendous FPS drops.”
Squad‘s subreddit has additionally been crammed with important posts, starting from a call to boycott emotes to issues over Offworld Video games CEO Vlad Ceraldi’s background in mobile gaming.
Trying forward, Offworld Industries can be “intently monitoring the recognition of emotes and the curiosity of the group in them.”
In different gaming information, 2023’s State Of The Sport Business survey has discovered that an amazing majority of builders contemplate harassment from gamers a “critical” difficulty.