In an effort to avoid the issues of many other recent Electronic Arts published games, developer DICE was able to release Battlefield V without any sort of loot boxes, DLC packs, or season passes. Instead, its microtransactions for cosmetics would provide a long-tail of revenue but were not implemented at launch to avoid any negativity surrounding their inclusion.

That’s a trick played by the Forza franchise and several other triple-A releases, where they launch without any sort of real-money micotransactions until all the reviews come out, and after the launch hype settles in, so to does the nickel and diming begin. For Battlefield V, DICE says this was in an effort for players to acclimatize themselves to the cosmetic progression system in Battlefield V.

In January 2019 however, microtransactions will be added to Battlefield V, according to a retailer leaked which revealed for Xbox One a $49.99 purchase for 6000 of the premium Battlefield coins.

Dropping random loot box (i.e. gambling) and DLC pricing was a great thing for Battlefield, but DICE and EA are botching this up on two fronts.

1. Battlefield V is Still Missing Content

Battlefield V was rushed and didn’t launch with all of its advertised content, both big and small. During its launch event, and during a preview session with devs for us and other outlets before its announcement, a four-player co-op campaign (“Combined Arms”) was advertised as a mode that could generate objectives and narratives for players. A battle royale mode was also teased, and later revealed as “Firestorm” but it too is not available until late spring at the earliest.

There are also some core features missing from gameplay and progression in the game, including the ability to drag downed enemies (meaning DICE straight up didn’t finish designing gameplay before release) and the cosmetics for vehicles didn’t launch until Battlefield V’s Tides of War live service began a few weeks after launch.

Microtransactions are being implemented before the game is “complete” in a traditional sense and this is partly due to how rushed BFV is. Even rival Black Ops 4 had a three-year dev cycle. BFV had two years by comparisons since Battlefield 1 launched. Battlefield V is great, it’s just not finished.

2. Battlefield V is holding back company coins from players

The max level cap in Battlefield V is 50 and a lot of players, myself included, reached that in a few short weeks. When at that level, rewards for the in-game Company Coin currency come to a halt. Given that we’re weeks away now from a premium currency release, the timing of this yet-to-be-fixed issue is not good from an optics standpoint. The community management team has been mostly silent to updating players on this earnings problem (and issues surrounding advertised features not yet delivered and weak deluxe edition rewards). DICE likely doesn’t want players being able to buy all the cosmetics with their in-game earnings, when real money will be available soon.

We’ve reached out to EA’s PR team on Battlefield V for comment on the premium currency release in January and the issues surround company coin.

More: Where to Find Battlefield V’s Creepy Stalker Gnome Easter Egg

Source: Retailer Leak