Update: The game director for Rise of the Tomb Raider, Brian Horton, replied to a fan on twitter questioning whether or not the game would have microtransactions – he replied "nope." While this clearly states there won't be any, it makes the reply from Hughes even more vague and confusing.
In 2013, developer Crystal Dynamics unleashed the Tomb Raider reboot on the gaming community. Although the game didn't openly advertise that there were microtransactions or in-app purchases, they did exist. If players had $1 on hand, they could buy boosts for accuracy, agility, damage taken and more.
During a gameplay session with the highly anticipated Rise of the Tomb Raider, GameInformer noticed that the game had the potential for in-app purchases.
During gameplay, the player triggered a pop-up alert that said there was a challenge available for them to complete. Upon completing the challenge, they were awarded "credits" to that could be redeemed in the marketplace for card packs.
No other information was made available at the time, but this leaves an opening for players to purchase the in-game credits with real money in order to purchase the card packs whenever they want. Offering players to purchase game credits with real-world money is nothing new, a number of games do it — granted the last time Crystal Dynamics and Square Enix did it they made the purchases pretty cheap.
When asked about the feature, creative director Noah Hughes stated that more news would come in the future.
“We will be talking more about that in the near feature. Generally, we are excited about offering ways for people to have a connected experience,” Hughes says. “We’ll share details in the future. It’s a separate facet of the game.”
Rise of the Tomb Raider hits the Xbox One and Xbox 360 exclusively on Nov. 10 before arriving on PC and PlayStation 4 in 2016.
