There's no such thing. It's just milking people who are crazy enough to fall into the trap of buying them.
$30 is not a microtransaction, thats a macrotransaction, thats an entire other video game.
Free to play doesnt give a game a pass on predatory business tactics, they are free to play for one reason only... to sell you worthless pixels for ridiculous prices. F2P games are designed for that purpose and that purpose only.
But I agree that any paid game should have zero MTX, cosmetic or not. Industry is killing its creative aspect with all this monetisation shit.
A lot of UE games are low performance or use shit features (like TAA). You can make something which "looks good" quickly with the engine and a lot of devs do just that instead of taking their time to tweak things for better performance or visual fidelity. So instead we get stuck with blurry messes.
They haven't fucked us over so far with DLC, MTX or any bullshit with their previous entries, so no reason to believe they will do here, they are very open with their development and talking to the community. So until they actually screw us over, it's unfair to pretend we are being.
It just sounds like a miscommunication/misuse of the term by KRAFTON, Unknown Worlds then came out to clarify. We will just have to wait and see, we can get actually angry once we know there's going to be some bullshit involved.
The only current downside to the next Subnautica is that it's going to be built on UE5, I just hope they manage to avoid all the shortcuts.
I thought the soundtrack was good on it's own (I love Ben Prunty's music), but it did not fit the game.
The way the music and audio design in-general in the first game all fit together so well is what made half the experience.
And yeah...
::: spoiler spoiler
you go down to find out what happens to your sister, then that becomes a side quest you can forget about and you fuck off with a random alien :')
:::
It's not becoming GaaS, they just meant it will receive updates like the current ones did, was a mistake in wording.
I hope it's more like Subnautica and not Below Zero too, having a silent protagonist explore a world and uncover story was far more fun than full voice acted characters. Not the mention how broken the BZ story was and how the world never made you feel uneasy like the original did.
This was a mistake in their wording, the next Subnautica will be like the others, they simple meant it will receive updates for a time after, just like the other ones did. There won't be any battle pass or mtx bullshit.
Edit, link: https://unknownworlds.com/subnautica/an-update-about-the-next-subnautica/
He was though, some people might have known his name from Metal Gear, but majority of people didnt. Then TGA and Death Stranding rolled around and suddenly we were told we should care.
He takes no more 'experimental swings' than hundreds of indie developers. The only difference is, his studio has the money for the marketing campaigns.
I know right? He was suddenly hyped up so much, I guess it's one way to sell games. I'd understand if it was Miyamoto or something, but the man made Metal Gear and not everyone has even heard of that.
He was heavily pushed with geoff keighley's the game awards partnership he made.