While many gamers are excited for the upcoming soft reboot of the Call of Duty Modern Warfare-franchise, it’s also still unclear how intrusive Activision’s in-game microtransactions will be. Developer Infinity Ward addressed the issue on Reddit but it’s still a bit unclear just how prominent loot boxes and microtransactions will be.
About two weeks ago we at Game Enthusiast wrote an article reflecting on the controversial monetization practices in Call of Duty-games, with Activision being appointed the main culprit by many and even some of their own studios. Infinity Ward however has stuck behind the publisher, promising that they are ” focused on making a different system for Modern Warfare”.
Modern Warfare-developer Artpeasant reacts to a user complaining about the MTX (microtransactions) system of Black Ops 4, which received a lot of criticism for featuring actual weapons in loot boxes. According to Artpeasant Infinity Ward is focused on changing that for Modern Warfare. He calls it a “direct path to content for players.”
That suggests that all the in-game items can be ‘indirectly’ unlocked by playing the game, with players having the possibility to buy their way through the progression system. Still, how steep the incline will be for progression is entirely unclear.
Like many free-to-play titles (mobile or otherwise), players can get funneled into a progression grindfest really quickly. So depending on how much time players will have to invest into unlocking in-game items will determine how the new system will be received.
The original post titled A developers POV by Infinity Ward-dev Artpeasant asked the community to look at it from the perspective of the studio. According to the dev, there’s a lot of ‘drama’ going around on the internet and people shouldn’t be ‘ill informed by half baked inflammatory rumors’.
On October 25th we will know whether the concerns were justified or indeed half baked and inflammatory. Modern Warfare will be releasing for PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC.