Paid Emotes Coming to Military Shooter Squad; Players Protest
The announcement of the introduction of paid emotes to Squad has angered the community of this tactical shooter. Fans fear that this is only the beginning of negative changes.
The community of the tactical shooter Squad is upset by the announcement of the addition of paid emotes to the game.
- The emotes are scheduled to appear in the upcoming update 4.2. One emote pack will be made available for free, but it will also be possible to buy two additional sets.
- It will not be possible to disable emotes on servers.
- The idea was met with a very bad reception. Years ago, the developers promised that there would be no microtransactions in the game, but since then the CEO of the company has changed and his vision of Squad's development is different.
- Many players criticize the idea of adding emotes, saying that they completely do not fit Squad's style.
Emotes are just the beginning?
Fans also fear that this is just the beginning of more aggressive monetization. Last year, studio Offworld Industries found a new CEO, the mobile market veteran James "Vlad" Ceraldi. On top of that, Chinese conglomerate Tencent acquired a minority stake in the company in 2022.
To make matters worse, in FAQ accompanying the announcement of emotes, the developers do not deny that they may release paid skins in the future. On the issue of buying additional maps and factions, they claim that they don't want to do so in order not to divide the community, but this statement sounds very diplomatic and there is no clear declaration that such solutions will never be introduced.
Squad players are outraged
Squad is a serious tactical shooter with a hardcore community. So it's not surprising that players reacted very negatively to the news, fearing that this is the beginning of very bad changes to their favorite game. Fans are calling for a boycott of paid emotes, hoping that poor sales will stop the changes. Some also cite the example of another game of this type, in the form of Insurgency: Sandstorm, which launched with a realistic atmosphere, but over time started getting heavily cartoonish skins.
The situation is not improved by the fact that Squad still has a lot of bugs, and the developers haven't fulfilled all the promises made during the Kickstarter fundraising campaign. So players start getting the impression that the studio is doing the wrong things by creating emotes.
