Firaxis remains committed to tradition DLC and expansion models rather than microtransactions

Don't expect Firaxis' games to start asking you to spend a few dollars to increase your resources any time soon.

Earlier, Civilization 6's first major expansion, Rise and Fall, was announced. It's a fairly traditional $30 expansion, and the most major DLC released for the game yet.

Earlier this year, they released the excellent War of the Chosen expansion for XCom 2, a substantial update that reinvented the game in interesting ways. Both games also have smaller pieces of DLC available - some of them largely cosmetic - but they've largely focused on the expansion pack model of DLC.

Of course, a lot of studios are pivoting more towards microtransactions these days - which has lead to some big controversies, like the whole Star Wars Battlefront 2 kerfuffle - so we're naturally on edge about what could happen to our favourite strategy series.

In an interview with Eurogamer, Anton Strenger - the lead designer of Rise and Fall - said that Firaxis is unlikely to embrace this model.

Speaking to the site, Stenger stated that "everyone in the studio here at Firaxis: our love, our passion and our expertise are in expansion packs". Because of the sorts of games they make, they "have the opportunity to add not just content in the way that some other games are able to do, but really deep changes to our systems and rules", which would not be possible with smaller microtransactions.

This is likely good news for fans of either series - being able to purchase currency in XCom, for example, would pretty seriously unbalance the game.

Rise and Fall is due for release on February 9, 2018.