Watch Dogs: Legion sells in-game cash for real money

As is customary for a modern Ubisoft open-world icon-clearer, Watch Dogs: Legion launches today with not only a £50 price tag and a £34 season pass but optional not-so-microtransactions too. Ubisoft are selling 'WD Credits' in bundles ranging from £4 to £42, which you can spend on in-game goodies like unique characters, skins, maps of collectibles, and wads of digicash. You don't need any of these to complete Legion but welp, it's still gross to see them juicing the game so much.

Monetising full-price games like this isn't new for Ubisoft (Assassin's Creed Odyssey sold in-game cash and boosters, for one), but if they keep doing it I'll keep grumbling. So! With Legion they're selling 'WD Credits' to spend in an in-game microtransaction store. Depending on the size of the bundle you buy, prices for WD Credits range from £0.86 to £0.58 per 100 (classic bit of microtransaction psychology - as is selling them in quantities that don't match the price of individual items). So you're looking at about £11 for a themed bundle of skins:

Or if you don't want to hunt collectibles yourself (or, like, find a map on Google), you can pay about £4 for in-game maps:

It also sells operatives with unique and striking looks:

Or hell, if you don't want to earn in-game cash by playing, you can buy it with real money. It's 900 WD Credits (about £7) for 24,000 ETO. How much is that? WELL! Our Nate so very helpfully visited a shop to demonstrate what you can buy for £2's worth of ETO.

Thanks, Nate. Smashed it. (Do check out his Watch Dogs: Legion review for more of his adventures in merry cockney mayhem.)

You don't need to buy any of this. Most the items are cosmetic, and the actual practical ones are only time-savers. But the store's very presence is objectionable. I don't want to covet premium skins, and I will always suspect the game's being ungenerous with my time in an attempt to rinse me for boosters. This is a full-price game with paid DLC on launch day, and here's Ubisoft with a grubby microtransaction store out of a free-to-play game too. How much must I pay for them to treat my purchase as complete? Evidently £84 is not enough.