Planetside 2 very nearly slid into dangerous waters with Sony Online Entertainment’s plan to introduce paid-for implants. Thankfully SOE have made the right decision and made a massive u-turn after players denounced the move.
Implants would, in the usual sci-fi manner, offer significant advantages to your soldier, from displaying enemy player health bars on your HUD to increasing the range of your IFF radar. They’re all things that players would kill for. Even… *gulp* pay for. And that’s the big problem. Implants can be bought with real-word money, and thus Planetside 2 becomes pay to win. Booo.
Luckily Planetside 2 runs a public test server, and the implants had been in action there under test conditions (as you can see in the video above). Players immediately saw the danger that implants could induce, and made Sony aware.
SOE president John Smedley tweeted: “After reading through your comments we have decided to go back to the drawing board on implants.” Sony have now removed implants from the next update , hopefully never to be seen again with a real-world price tag on them.
Thanks, Rock, Paper, Shotgun.