As previously detailed, Gears 5 won't feature random loot boxes or a season pass, and now developer The Coalition has revealed that the upcoming third-person shooter will use "a very player-centric, player-friendly way of doing customisation and monetisation."

Multiplayer design director Ryan Cleven spoke to GamesIndustry.Biz during Gamescom 2019, where the outlet asked if Gears 5 will include microtransactions. Though confirming the latest Gears entry will have various forms of in-game currencies, Cleven reiterated Gears 5 will have no randomized loot boxes and players will always know what they're getting whether earning or purchasing content.

Cleven assured that Gears 5 is a player-first game, saying The Coalition can service people looking to expedite their experience while keeping the spirit intact. "We really think we're ahead of the industry here in getting rid of loot boxes and making sure that we can both service people that are looking to accelerate their progression or earn cosmetics using money but also keeping the integrity of the game experience," Cleven told GI.Biz.

With governments investigating the psychological nature of loot boxes, Cleven was asked whether the backlash towards games like Apex Legends and Star Wars Battlefront II has forced The Coalition to reconsider how monetization works in Gears 5. Cleven said none of that was a concern. "We had made [the decision to cut loot boxes] before all that happened," he explained. "We were sort of reading the tea leaves, I guess, and we were one of the earliest to adopt card packs inside our games... We put the challenge to ourselves: can we still provide purchasable things to players that want to purchase and still have the rest of the players really enjoy the system? That was a challenge we set right from the beginning of Gears 5."

Instead, The Coalition seems more concerned with providing the best experience possible to its players when Gears 5 launches on PC and Xbox One on September 10. "We just felt that [loot boxes] weren't a good fit for Gears and we wanted to be ahead of the curve looking for possible solutions, even before all the controversy."

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