No Driveclub Microtransactions, So Where Does That Leave The PS+ Version?

Although many racing games, such as Gran Turismo 6 and Forza Motorsport 5, or even the likes of Ubisoft’s upcoming open world racer The Crew feature micropayments for cars and progress, Driveclub’s design director Paul Rustchynsky has spoken out against them.

“Even Trials has been infected by this plague” he said, in a tweet linking to CVG’s Trials Frontier review, which heavily criticises the game’s use of purchases, dubbing it “a microtransaction monstrosity”.

He was then asked by another user whether Driveclub would be free of such micropayments, to which he replied that it absolutely would.

@PGDarkLordMalik Absolutely.

— Paul Rustchynsky (@Rushy33) April 10, 2014

That’s not the end of the story, though, is it? You might remember that Driveclub is getting a PlayStation Plus version, and one consensus may have been that the unavailable cars could be unlocked by using in-game credits, which presumably could be purchased with real money outwith the confines of the racing. At least, that would make sense.

But Rustchynsky confirms that there won’t be any consumables – meaning that you won’t be paying for money which you can use to buy further tracks or cars in-game – in yet another tweet, where he says the game “will of course offer content to purchase/download. But there will not be any ‘consumables’.”

That brings content to purchase back to the table, and perhaps means that Driveclub will feature purchasable cars and tracks, though these will perhaps be suitably priced, and more along the lines of traditional DLC, which I’m all for. A £5 pack seems like a much better deal than spending £5 on 1000 coins to find that a car costs 850.

But there’s still that PS+ version, and the most sensible option here may be to make it just a one-off upgrade – because, of course, it will be upgradeable to the full version – rather than buying bits here and there. If it is just some tracks and cars that are missing (you’ll still be able to get the platinum, so it seems likely) then I’m not sure how else they could do it.

Back before it was delayed, Evolution suggested that it would be an upgrade pack than individual cars and tracks too, but it will be interesting to see if they’ve decided to lock extra game modes within the PS+ edition – would the lack of an online mode unless you upgrade be more of an incentive to do so? Certainly, but isn’t that going against the mantra of PlayStation Plus?

Ultimately, it feels as though we know less about Driveclub now than we did before it was delayed, which is an odd situation to be in. With no public previews since last year, very little in the way of trailers or advertising, things like this go back to being less about “how will the upgrade work?” and may even soon become “will there still be an upgrade at all?”

I’m sure Sony are aware of this, but they’re not acting on it. We need Driveclub information, fast, or we’ll soon be losing hope. Just as we’ve done time and time again with The Last Guardian.