The upcoming shooter from the GTFO development team will feature microtransactions but will avoid loot boxes, complex monetization schemes, or any form of in-game currency like “buckazoids.”

In every round of GTFO, you’re dragged gasping from a cryo-coffin and dropped into the bowels of an enormous laboratory by a horrible pincer-crane. Reaching your appointed floor, you’re asked to hack terminals and reach waypoints while trying not to rouse a sleeping population of mutants. It’s a terrible fate, but as your turrets run out of bullets and the bipedal lampreys overwhelm your friends, you can take consolation in the knowledge that there are no microtransactions – for when 10 Chambers launched the early access version in 2019, they promised to release all DLC for free. “There but for the grace of God go I,” you can say, thinking with a shudder of games like Overwatch, while the Shadows tear your head from your body.

No such consolation awaits players of 10 Chambers’ forthcoming Den of Wolves, a cyberpunk co-op heist shooter in the tradition of Payday 2. According to audio director Simon Viklund , the game will “most likely” have microtransactions, for the simple reason that the studio is now 10 times bigger than when they launched GTFO, and needs to make more money. Don’t be entirely depressed, however – there will be no “maths-fuckery”, no pay to win, and no “buckazoids”.

“The way we launched GTFO – you pay for it once, and you have the whole game – that was a viable business approach for when we were nine members of staff,” Viklund told VG247 in a recent interview. “But now we’re 100 people, the burn rate is way bigger, and Den of Wolves is a much more ambitious game. So we’re hoping it turns into a live service type thing.”

(“Burn rate” is the speed at which a company depletes its cash reserves when it’s losing money.)

Lest the mention of “live service” give you hives, keep reading. “It’s not going to be a subscription service, it’s going to be a premium price,” Viklund qualified. “Maybe two-thirds of what triple-A games usually cost. So it’s more in the level of GTFO, the Payday games, and Vermintide – those other first-person co-op games. That’s the space we’re occupying.

“So, yes, there will be microtransactions, most likely,” he said. “There will be DLC, but nothing that is pay-to-win, nothing that is math-fuckery where, you know, for 20 bucks you buy 100 buckazoids and then everything you can buy in the game costs 64 buckazoids, so you can never ever get rid of all your buckazoids, so you always have that splinter in your mind telling you: ‘I’m leaving money on the table in this game, I need to buy more buckazoids’. It’s manipulative, stuff like that.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Viklund clarified that the game won’t have an in-game currency – if you buy things it’ll be with real money – and there won’t be any randomised lootbox-style elements to get the ratings agencies in a tizz about whether this is literally gambling. People who buy stuff like DLC maps will be able to host friends who haven’t bought that DLC. There are also some interesting allusions to how the microtransactions might form part of the game’s darknet underworld stylings. Please don’t suddenly reveal that this is a cryptocurrency game, 10 Chambers.

We missed the chance to go see Den Of Wolves recently because RPS does not, despite much zesty correspondence with management, have access to a cryogenic warehouse full of deployable drone agents. We must conserve our cannon fodder for press events so grandiose you can see them from space. Still – as and when Graham’s horrible hell-pincer selects me for preview build duties, I’m looking forward to playing it.