Halo: MCC's New In-Game Store Doesn't Have Any Microtransactions

343 Industries has shed some new light on one of the features coming to Halo: The Master Chief Collection in a future update. The "Exchange," as it's called, is an in-game store of sorts where players can spend their season points--but not real money--to acquire certain items.

Technical designer Dana Jerpbak said in a blog post the Exchange was designed with two primary goals, the first of which was to create a system where players could have more freedom and choice for content to unlock. The second was to create a place where players could spend season points to pick up items from a previous season that had ended already.

"As an additional goal, we also wanted to minimize the fear of missing out, or 'FOMO' associated with this experience," Jerpbak said. "The Exchange will offer customization items from two overarching categories: previous limited-time season content and new themed content."

With each new season, like the upcoming Season 6, these categories will grow with even more content to unlock. They will be spread between Featured and Limited Time categories, which should be familiar to people who play Fortnite, Apex Legends, and others.

"The former is a collection of themed bundles of items which will grow over time (typically when a new season is introduced). The latter is a collection of standalone items which rotates each week," Jerpbak said. "Of course, you could see featured standalone items or rotational bundles introduced in the future as well."

For the certain items that were previously available from a seasonal challenge, their price will reflect the difficulty of the challenge in question. Jerpbak also mentioned that these challenge rewards will "sit out" for a period of around one season (about two months) after the challenge runs out. This is all being done so players who unlock the current-season challenge reward feel like their time and investment was meaningful.

"It's important that players who worked hard to earn a reward experience the temporal value of having the reward well before it becomes more broadly available," Jerpbak said. "Players are understandably attached to rewards they've earned for difficult challenges and we intend not to trivialize that by 'just giving away' prestigious rewards."

Also in the blog post, Jerpbak stressed that content in The Exchange can only be unlocked with season points, not real money.

"Exchange items are unlocked through season points which players earn by leveling up and completing challenges in MCC. No real money is involved whatsoever," Jerpbak said.

343 already tested MCC's new Exchange feature in a previous beta test, or flight, but the feature has not yet released for everyone.

MCC's Season 6 update is coming next, and it adds new maps for Halo 3 that originally debuted in the canceled free-to-play Halo Online game for Russia.