For Honor's Gameplay DLC will Be Free. But...

Ubisoft let it be known late last month that they were going to forego industry knowledge and their own selfish past in order to embrace a more customer-friendly attitude, and while I, and others, were excited by the news, we were also cautious about the claims. It’s a promise we’ve all heard before, in some form or another, and words are all nice and pretty until we see some action to back it up. You can thank Konami for teaching us that lesson the hard way with Metal Gear Solid 5 and the clusterduck that unfortunately bogs down an otherwise lovely experience.

Well, it seems the folks behind Rayman and Assassin’s Creed are finally stepping up to that ideal, for they recently announced that their upcoming melee-combat MOBA thing, For Honor, will do exactly what they said they would do. Namely, all maps, characters, and modes that will be released as post-launch DLC will be made available for free. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that there will be monetization. Namely, you can spend real money to purchase Steel. Now, Steel is the in-game currency earned through play, which unlocks things like weapons and characters, and it can apparently be purchased as well as earned as a shortcut. But they were also quick to point out that while Steel could be purchased, progression could not, and most of the weapons were locked behind a certain level, so you couldn’t purchase an end-game item when you pop in the disk for the first time.

They also made it clear that everything could be earned in-game, simply through playing.

That’s always a good deal, but we have to reserve true excitement until we see exactly how quickly someone can earn Steel, how much things cost, and how much Steel you get per dollar. It’s all well and good if everything can be “technically” earned in-game, but if it’s simply a matter of 40+ hours of grinding or spending 5 bucks… that can hardly be called “free” at all. And I’m looking squarely at you, PlanetSide 2.

For Honor will be released February 14th, 2017.