H1Z1 Microtransactions Won’t Consist of Weapons, Ammo, Food, or Other Survival Essentials

During a company meeting lead by SOE President John Smeadley, the studio discussed some of the potential monetization options for their upcoming free-to-play title, H1Z1.

In his recent post, he detailed what was discussed, and it seems that, for now, most of the microtransactions in the game will be for cosmetic items.

“Some of our outcomes. Please note I’ll do a comprehensive posting after we’re done with this. We have another meeting Thursday to discuss.

  1. “We will be selling wearables. We felt like this will be a good, fair revenue generator. However – we recognize how important finding wearables in the world is so you’ll be able to find and craft a lot of stuff. We agree that’s something important. We’ve also come up with a pretty awesome idea to let players who kill other players loot stuff. So if a player has a black ski mask and gets killed by another player, that player can wear the ski mask for a few deaths (we have durability in the game. Station Cash wearables won’t degrade at all but when you loot something.. it will degrade. Please note the original player always keeps their SC purchased wearables. This gives the great feeling of whacking some unsuspecting fool who decided to bring a knife to a gun fight. Also – you will be perfectly able to get ghille suits in game cheaply either by crafting or finding them. We won’t sell those. Please note – you still lose everything if you die. If you bought a Station Cash item it will be in a global inventory that is basically anything you bought for real money. We don’t like the idea of a stash you can readily access in a survival game. So yeah, it’s hard. Deal or don’t play.
  2. “We will NOT be selling Guns, Ammo, Food, Water… i.e. That’s kind of the whole game and it would suck in our opinion if we did that.
  3. “Nor will we sell boosts that will impact #2.
  4. “Emote Pack – of course we’ll have the basics for free. But we felt like this is another good and fair revenue generator.
  5. “Character slots – feels reasonable.

Smedly added, “That Monetization thread has turned out to be a terrific source of ideas and it also is helping us steer clear of the stuff you just don’t want to see,” and that there is “More to come late this week,” during another meeting.

Fortunately, it seems that they truly are aiming for a free-to-play model that isn’t loaded with purchase items that players can get an advantage with.

H1Z1 is set to get early access in the coming months for the PC version with a full release not yet dated. The PS4 version will soon follow after it’s full release.

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