The mainline Forza games frequently find themselves on the wrong side of microtransaction controversies. For example, Forza Motorsport 5 was roundly criticized for a lack of content and an abundance of microtransactions back when it launched, and Forza Motorsport 7 last year found itself mired in a controversy surrounding its implementation of lootboxes, something which Turn10 ended up going back on, at least partially.
Turn 10’s Alan Hartman announced on the official blog of the series that the loot boxes are being removed from this game. More to the point, for those who were worried that these kinds of monetization methods may infest the upcoming Forza Horizon 4 as well, he explicitly specified that paid tokens will not be in that game, either- so you can rest easy on that front.
“One major area of discussion for the team has been prize crates.,” he said. “While we’ve never charged money for prize crates in Forza Motorsport 7, their presence in the game has continued to be a source of controversy. The overwhelming feedback has been that this system feels out of place in the game. After careful consideration, we have decided to completely remove prize crates from Forza Motorsport 7. Similarly, paid tokens – which were a part of previous Forza games – will not be coming to Forza Motorsport 7 or Forza Horizon 4.”
He specified that due to the complexity of removing one single system that is so inextricably intertwined with all the other ones in the game, this process will take time, and that Turn10 anticipates it happening by Winter this year. So there’s a while to go- but it’s good to see that they are removing them entirely. Hopefully, they don’t go back on this with future games. For now, that includes Forza Horizon 4 only- Turn10 confirmed while back Forza 8 is not under development for now.