Ubisoft scraps For Honor cosmetic removal plan

Yesterday, Ubisoft announced plans to make a change to a large number of For Honor cosmetics that would see them removed from the in-game store, and then brought back at a discount in an ongoing rotation. The problem, as game director Damien Kieken explained during a Twitch stream, is that the weekly content release schedule means there's just too much stuff to properly deal with. New players are confronted with "a mountain" of stuff to unlock, he said, and player feedback indicates that the volume of cosmetics is "overwhelming." 

To give all this old crapola a proper send-off and give everyone a chance to grab it while they could, Ubisoft put all of it on sale for up to half-off until July 19. But the reaction from players was unexpectedly negative, many of whom interpreted the change as a short-term cash grab ahead of the Q1 sales report coming later this month. As a result, Ubisoft has decided to leave all of the items as they were. 

"We want to apologize on how we communicated these potential changes. Over the past year, thanks to the Warrior’s Den and your presence on the various platforms, we built what we believe to be a strong relationship with you all. Your feedback has been driving the production efforts including the various features and improvements we have made," Ubisoft community developer Eric Pope wrote on Reddit

"Reading the various threads made us realize that we didn’t properly explain what we wanted to do and why we were doing it. Even if we are not proceeding, we want to share the exact plan we had mind and why these changes were going to be made." 

Pope emphasized that the change was intended to address the "exponential curve of releasing weekly content on all heroes," and was not meant to put cosmetics out of reach or impede "player expression." Only items that were at least nine months old would have been put into rotation, he explained, and when they were returned to sale it would have always been at a discounted price. 

"Reading the various threads made us realize that we didn’t properly explain what we wanted to do and why we were doing it," Pope wrote. "Even if we are not proceeding, we want to share the exact plan we had mind and why these changes were going to be made." 

The For Honor Summer Sale will also continue as planned. It runs until June 19. 

Andy Chalk

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.