All in a Back 4 Blood party can play paid DLC if one person owns it • Eurogamer.net

All in a Back 4 Blood party can play paid DLC as long as one player owns it, developer Turtle Rock has confirmed.

In a blog post, Turtle Rock said if your party leader owns a paid content drop, you will be able to play that content with them. This includes maps, gameplay and campaign.

“No separation. No exclusion. No split,” Turtle Rock said.

Back 4 Blood is a Left 4 Dead-style co-of first-person shooter in which you team up with friends to kill horrible zombie monsters, known in-game as Ridden.

At E3 last week, Turtle Rock revealed the game’s PvP – a mode called Swarm in which two squads of four face off against each other in a best-of-three series of rounds as teams swap between playing as the Cleaners and the Ridden.

Points are awarded based on how long the Cleaners can stay alive and endure Ridden attacks, with the team that keeps the clock going the longest as Cleaners winning the match.

While playing from the Ridden perspective, you can choose from nine Ridden variants, including the Tallboy, Bruiser, Crusher, Reeker, Exploder, Retch, Stinger, Hocker and Stalker. Each Ridden type has their own unique abilities that can be upgraded with enhancements called mutations, which can be used collectively to aid the team and help turn the tide as the match progresses.

The video below shows off how it works:

Addressing the obvious concern that Back 4 Blood’s PvP will be pay-to-win because it’s selling content drops, Turtle Rock explained that when it comes to PvP specifically, everyone who bought Back 4 Blood can get access to all additional PvP content, even without buying content drops.

So, players who don’t buy the content drops can earn new playable characters and Ridden in PvP for free through progression.

Also, all PvP players have access to the same cards at the start of each match, regardless of whether those players have bought content drops or not.

“We hope this answers some of your questions about what we’re doing to make sure there is no pay-to-win or community separation,” Turtle Rock said.

Back 4 Blood launches 12th October 2024 on PC, PlayStation and Xbox. It’s a day-one Xbox Game Pass title.