Dust 514 dev: "We don't expect most players to spend money"

CCP CMO David Reid has told GamesIndustry that most players of F2P EVE tie-in Dust 514 will never spend a bean. This is fine, apparently.

"We do not expect most of them to spend money, and we don't need them to," he said.

"The vast majority of players in a game like this don't spend money, but the game is much better for having them there."

Reid added that F2P is still a new concept for consoles, and the transition will be made smoother by offering initiatives such as the £13.99 Mercenary Pack, which includes in-game currency to get players used to micro-transactions.

"I think console players have seen this, whether it's Fallout or Call Of Duty map packs or Rock Band tracks, we know that console players are familiar with this idea overall," Reid said.

"But not in the way that a fully free-to-play, microtransaction based game is going to do so this an exciting opportunity for console people to sort of, in a pretty low risk way, try this stuff out.

"We think we're kind of doing something fairly historic here, and we want gamers to feel excited about trying that without being worried about it. And I think we found a good way to do that here."

The MMO shooter's beta starts this week.