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“If the price is not acceptable to you, you have the option to not pay it.”
The Texas Chain Saw Massacre players have hit back at the game’s monetisation strategy after Gun and Sumo outlined its plans for upcoming DLC.
“We’ve seen some discussion, and for transparency, we wanted to share pricing for any and all future content for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre,” the team stated via a statement posted to its social media channels, including Twitter/X.
The tweet went on to give prices for upcoming skins and characters, confirming “premium content” – such as a Leatherface skin designed by Greg Nicotero – will cost $16, new characters, both victim and family, will sell for $10, executions $7, and clothing and weapon cosmetics for $5. Other content, such as “maps, etc.”, will be released for free.
In later comments, it was confirmed that each Family and Victim character would have their own “skill trees, unique abilities, attributes, base cosmetics, and executions”, and the Execution Pack would include “an execution for every Family member, similar to the pack that was available at launch”.
Responding to commenters surprised at the prices, the team confirmed that there would not be any alternate means of unlocking the content in-game, and while DLC bundles were not available now, they may be “in the future”.
Challenged in a post on the subreddit that posted a meme about the prices, brand strategy lead Matt Shotcha said: “I understand where you’re coming from, and I know we can debate this to death if we want to. But ultimately, like it or not, being a realist is realising that if the price is not acceptable to you, you have the option to not pay it, which sends a cleaner message than memes.
“That said, I’m not trying to be dismissive of the concerns, we’re going to report on them. But we also have our reasons why we’ve priced these things at these rates, and even if I ran down the list, users here would not be interested in hearing that and simply call bullshit, accuse us of simple greed, etc.
We’ve seen some discussion and for transparency, we wanted to share pricing for any and all future content for The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. pic.twitter.com/DGRdVgvxxD
— The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (@TXChainSawGame) September 28, 2023
Finally we all agree on something
byu/JustJig inTXChainSawGame
“That all being said, I appreciate that you want to see the game continue. We are obviously confident that it will be able to do so with these prices. We wouldn’t have shared them if we thought it would be the death of the game.”
Fans also wondered if the introduction of premium characters would make the game’s prolific “lobby dodging” worse, as players keep ducking out of lobbies that won’t let them play as their preferred characters, something the team said it would “evaluate and monitor closely”.
I’ve spent many a glorious hour with The Texas Chain Saw Massacre since its release last month and am having a bloody good time (well, when people aren’t lobby dodging or cheating, anyways). However, poor server stability at launch and confusing onboarding saw it get 3 stars out of 5 at the time.
