State of Decay 2 Boasts No Microtransactions and Cross-Platform Play

Lou Contaldi March 10, 2018 11:33 AM EST

State of Decay 2's developer Undead Labs talks microtransactions, region locking, cross-platform play, and more on Discord.

Every year has a different gaming buzzword; this year it is “no microtransactions.” And this “feature” has been noted as a big selling point (to fans, at least) for Sony’s biggest game this spring, God of War. Thankfully, one of Microsoft’s flagship titles is taking that challenge — State of Decay 2 has re-confirmed to its community that no microtransactions are being planned for the game at this time.

This may come as a shock to many. Seattle-based developer Undead Labs has mentioned before that they are against the trend of micro-transactions. However, with the newly-revealed price point of $30, skeptics started coming out of the woodwork. In one of Undead Labs’ many live streams, the chat was spammed with comments asking how they plan to subsidize the very low cost.

With this question in mind, one of the Undead Labs community managers noted in the State of Decay 2 Discord channel firmly that the game has no plans of implementing paid microtransactions:

Obviously, there is a line drawn here between microtransactions and other paid DLC. Whereas paid DLC may cover expansions — something that many fans of the series enjoy — it will not include things like loot boxes or crates. It wasn’t expanded on if cosmetic options would fall into the latter category, but we can certainly hope so.

Speaking to the $30 price point, Undead Labs recognized that the $30 price tag was a risk for an ambitious game — and refusing to dip into a microtransaction honeypot will put that further in jeopardy. However, they noted both in their Discord and the livestreams that it was a conscious choice by both them and Microsoft to create a low barrier of entry and get as many players interested in the game early on. With a dedicated community, they believe they will be able to make back the costs — especially with people buying the expansions down the line.

Outside of this, a few lingering questions about the game got answered. Yes, there will be Xbox One-PC cross-platform play. In other words, gamers who have friends on both consoles don’t need to organize everyone to buy for just one platform.

On top of that, players going into State of Decay 2 shouldn’t expect “character creation” so to speak, so much as character discovery and fine-tuning. Instead, Undead Labs is sticking to the term Character Promotion or Character Development. More details on that will be shared later.

As one other sub-note, it seems like Undead Labs (at this time) isn’t sure whether the keys will be region locked — in the sense where friends will need to make sure to get the correct key for other regions.

State of Decay 2 is expected to go on a media spree in their build-up to launch. Earlier this week it was revealed the game would be coming out in a little over two months, and then we got 25 minutes of gameplay footage showing zombie-slaying mayhem. Even better, those grabbing the new Xbox Game Pass will have access to State of Decay 2 on day one.

As mentioned above, State of Decay 2 comes to PC and Xbox One on May 22, 2018.