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 weblog publish revealed to Steam (by way of PC Gamer), Offworld Industries introduced that Squad‘s replace 44.27 will introduce emotes to the sport. While some will probably be handed out at no cost at launch, two separate bundles of emotes will probably be bought as microtransactions – one thing the studio beforehand mentioned it might by no means do.
“We understand that paid content in gaming can be controversial and that previous leadership at Offworld had stated that paid DLC would never 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 approach to proceed to fund the event of Squad“. However, in a Q&A towards the top of the announcement, the studio declines to verify whether or not new maps or factions will probably be lauched as paid DLC sooner or later.
Since emotes have been introduced, Squad‘s Steam page has been hit with a wave of negative player reviews taking issue with the game’s monetisation plans.
“No to microtransactions and emotes,” reads one, whereas one other complains that Squad is “now getting microtransactions in the form of paid emotes while being a year late from [Offworld’s] roadmap, lacking optimisation and suffering from horrendous FPS drops.”
Squad‘s subreddit has also been filled with critical posts, ranging from a call to boycott emotes to concerns over Offworld Games CEO Vlad Ceraldi’s background in cell gaming.
Looking forward, Offworld Industries will probably be “closely monitoring the popularity of emotes and the interest of the community in them.”
In different gaming information, 2023’s State Of The Game Industry survey has discovered that an amazing majority of builders take into account harassment from gamers a “serious” concern.
