Don’t worry, Metal Gear Solid V’s multiplayer won’t be hidden behind a paywall

Yesterday GameSpot reported that in order to play The Phantom Pain’s multiplayer, players would first have to spend real world money. Specifically, players would have to purchase “waters” on which to build their Forward Operating Base (FOB) with Mother Base Coins, which are bought with actual money. Since multiplayer revolves around these FOBs, it seemed the mode was essentially locked until players paid up.

Obviously, gamers weren’t happy to hear that after paying full price for a new game they would need to spend extra to unlock its multiplayer. Konami wasn’t happy either, issuing a statement to PC Gamer that this wasn’t the case.

“The FOB mode will be fully accessible at launch and the micro-transaction layer to that specific feature in the game primarily acts as an accelerator,” the statement read. “We’ll have more details at launch, but we did try and clear these rumours up when they started circulating during E3. We even addressed this in our official E3 2015 demo when it went live during that show.”

Later Konami clarified how The Phantom Pain’s multiplayer component utilized microtransactions to GameSpot. “To clarify, the initial FOB, which includes the FOB command platform and all sub-platforms, is not behind a Mother Base coin paywall. Maintaining other FOBs past the initial set of FOB platforms can be purchased with Mother Base coins. More information regarding the payment model for FOB will be provided closer to launch.”

There are still a number of details that Konami hasn’t shared — how much Mother Base Coins will cost, for example — but it’s certainly nice to know that the multiplayer isn’t strictly pay-to-play, at least beyond the initial purchase of the game.

Luckily we won’t have to wait long to find out: Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain is out September 1 for the PlayStation 4 PlayStation 3, Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC.