Turn 10 Studios, the developer behind the racing game Forza Motortsport 6 has quietly added microtransactions to their game over the weekend. Players are now able to buy a new currency called 'tokens' that will allow players to buy new cars, upgrades, and randomized mod packs for your rides with real money instead of the currency earned by playing the game. This announcement was made on the official Forza Motorsport website in addition to a whole host of new cars.
A forum post on the Forza forums detailed a few limitations: tokens are consumables, which mean that you won't be able to get them back if you decide to restart the game. Cars bought with the tokens cannot be sold for half value like the cars you bought with credits. All selling does is remove them from your garage, and you will not be reimbursed. Mod packs can be sold for their value in credits. Tokens do not count towards the "Paid DCL Owned" portion of the Forza Rewards Score feature. Packs bought with tokens are only available to the owner of the account used to buy them, unlike the cars you unlocked via progression, which can be shared with other XBL Gold members.
Prices on the Xbox Store and the in-game store start as low as a dollar for 100 tokens all the way up to 20.000 tokens for 100 bucks. The timing in of itself is a bit strange since the microtransactions were added 2 months after the game saw its release on the Xbox One, making it seem like they intentionally patched them in later to prevent them from impacting the game's review scores.
Destructoid reached out to Turn 10 for comment, but instead, they got a response from a Microsoft spokesperson:
Forza Motorsport 6 was designed, tuned and play-tested from the ground up without Tokens. Now that we’ve confirmed that the game economy is balanced and fun for our players out in the wild, we are offering them as a matter of player choice. Some players appreciate using Tokens as a way of gaining immediate access to content that may take many hours to acquire in the normal course of play. There is also an option within the in-game menu to turn off Tokens entirely. We are dedicated to creating open-ended, evolving experiences that are built with and for our fans.
Turn 10 suffered player backlash when they baked microtransactions into Forza Motorsport 5's economy, saying that investing money into a car builds a connection between you and the vehicle you purchased. The backlash was so great that they developer decided to remove the microtransactions from 5, and promised to not include them in Forza Motorsport 6 unless players specifically asked for them. Whether this has happened now is anyone's guess at this point, but at least players have the option to remove all mention of the token system from the game via the HUD menu. That's something, at least.
This is also not the first time that microtransactions have been upped in a game post-launch. Konami recently ramped up microtransactions in Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain. Let's hope this is not a new trend for buy to play games.