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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare‘s release on October 25 is coming up soon, and now one of the developers has clarified the game’s stance on loot boxes. In short, there are none.

Infinity Ward’s Joel Emslie said on Reddit that the studio is “definitely not working on any kind of supply drop or loot box system.” He added that Modern Warfare’s “functional” content, which impacts gameplay, is unlocked through gameplay, not by paying for it.

More details about how Modern Warfare handles this system will be shared this week, he said.

Emslie’s comments came in response to renewed discussion about whether or not Modern Warfare would feature supply drops or loot boxes like in previous Call of Duty games. “Sigh. There continues to be misinformed and incorrect info being pushed about Modern Warfare,” he said.

In 2017’s Call of Duty: WWII, from developer Sledgehammer, loot boxes literally rained down from the sky in the game’s social space.

While Call of Duty: Modern Warfare may not have loot boxes, the game may still feature the Call of Duty Points virtual currency from previous games. If it’s implemented similarly to previous titles, players will be able to buy these Points with real money and spend them on cosmetic items like weapon skins and emotes that do not impact gameplay.

Loot boxes have created a lot of controversy, and governments around the world are examining the business practice to determine if they will take legal action. In August, it was announced that new games or game updates that add loot boxes on Microsoft, Nintendo, and Sony platforms will be required to disclose the rarity rates of items.

One of the sacred Unwritten Rules of the Internet is that there must always be “The Show.” The mantle of The Show is passed down from one franchise to another like a postmodern coronation. There’s no formal ceremony, no single agreed-upon source announces the ascendance of a new monarch to the throne of the internet zeitgeist, and yet the current holder of the title is always exceedingly easy to spot. In fact, The Show’s single identifier is the ubiquity and tone with which it is discussed and debated in the cultural feeding frenzy of social media. If you’re even passively online you don’t need to go looking for The Show. The Show will find you. And now The Show is HBO’s Succession.

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One of the most talked-about developments in gaming over the past year has been Fortnite developer Epic establishing a new digital store and its pursuit of exclusives–of which there have been many. In addition to paying for exclusives, Epic’s store gives creators 88 percent of revenue compared to 30 percent on Steam and others. Publisher Ubisoft no longer releases new titles on Steam because they believe the 70/30 revenue split is “unreasonable.”

Now, one of the founders of boutique game publisher Devolver Digital (Hotline Miami, Genital Jousting, Fall Guys) has spoken up to defend Steam and call for a “reset” of the wider conversation that can at times paint Steam as the bad guy.

Devolver is publishing MediaTonic’s wacky battle royale game Fall Guys

“I feel like this conversation needs to be reset,” Graeme Struthers told GameSpot at PAX Aus. “The conversation never really took place properly in my opinion.”

Struthers said the launch of Steam more than a decade ago changed the landscape of PC gaming. Steam was an integral part of the success of Devolver and other studios, he said.

One part of what made Steam appealing then and continues to now is that developers are paid every month, which is not the case with every store.

“Every month we were getting paid, and you were being paid accurately,” he said. “We’ve all got our horror stories about doing audits on our publishers and finding huge discrepancies about what was being reported in sales. Here’s Steam–every month, accurate, straightforward, and transparent.”

Regarding the revenue share model, Struthers pointed out that Steam’s 30 percent cut was a more generous offering than others at the time. The payment scheme that Steam offered allowed publishers to offer more favorable terms to developers, Struthers said.

“To come out of a model [before Steam] where we were, as a games publisher, maybe making 25 percent, and that’s if you were successful. To be in a 70/30 relationship, it was transformative in every sense,” he said. “And that led to realignment with relationships with developers. If there is more money and it’s more frequent, you can have better terms with developers.”

“Steam has invested I don’t know how many hundreds of millions of dollars in their platform; Epic have yet to do that.” — Struthers

With the launch of competing game stores–including Epic’s–developers have more options, and this competition is good overall for the industry, Struthers said. At the same time, Struthers stressed that comparing Steam to Epic directly is not fair or helpful.

Steam has been around for more than a decade; it’s a refined platform with important toolsets and features for developers and consumers alike that make for a better overall experience, Struthers said.

“Competition is going to come along at some point. Epic have taken a view that their way of bringing content to their platform is far more generous revenue share and obviously they’ve been pushing exclusives–that’s great,” he explained. “And it’s giving developers and publishers a choice. You can’t compare the two things however as like for like. Steam has invested I don’t know how many hundreds of millions of dollars in their platform; Epic have yet to do that. I’m not saying they won’t, and hopefully they will. In terms of the features and in terms of the toolsets for developers, there’s a ways to go. But competition is good.”

Finally, Struthers said all the drama and controversy over Epic paying for exclusives “doesn’t really hold up” because exclusivity has been a part of gaming since the beginning.

“The rise about developers and publishers going to Epic and exclusivity, it doesn’t really hold up,” he said. “I play games on PlayStation, Xbox, and Switch, and Devolver–we’ve done console exclusives with Sony, with Microsoft–I think it’s good, but I think we have to respect Steam for what they’ve done. Without them, none of this would have been a conversation in the first place.”

In addition to paying developers a larger share of revenue, Epic gives studios money up front to convince them to make games exclusively for Steam. Games like The Division 2, Metro Exodus, and Borderlands 3 are all currently exclusive to the Epic Games Store (apart from publisher-specific stores), though they will also release on other PC stores at a later date. The next big exclusive for Epic is The Outer Worlds from developer Obsidian; it launches on October 25.

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22 years ago (gosh!) saw the games press all abuzz about Game Arts’ JRPG Grandia, calling it Sega Saturn’s answer to Final Fantasy VII. Did it deliver? Its numerous fans sure thought so, and in 2000 IGN itself ranked Grandia’s later Sony PlayStation port as the 17th best PlayStation game of all time.

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Microsoft is introducing new text filtering options on Xbox One consoles, giving players more control over what kinds of messages they receive. The company says this is both to improve parental controls and reduce online harassment and bullying.

According to the announcement, you’ll be able to select a set of new automated text filters soon. Those will start with private messages, and then expand into other areas like profiles, Clubs, and your Activity Feed. The filters come in four settings–Friendly, Medium, Mature, and Unfiltered–but you’ll be able to set those content levels individually for different message types, like those from Friends versus message requests from Internet randos.

“For example, we recognize that while some adults use profanity without any ill intent while gaming, parents with small children likely won’t find this same experience acceptable,” the announcement states. “Similarly, there are differences between the everyday speech you’d use with your friends and harmful insults that could negatively impact anyone. With this in mind, we’ve ensured our safety settings are configurable along a spectrum from most filtered to least filtered so you can choose what is best for you.”

When a message hits the filter, you’ll see a message warning that potentially offensive content was sent, and you can click on the placeholder to change the settings. Adult accounts will be able to see the content that has been filtered out. Child accounts will be set to the highest filtering level by default, but parents can change it as needed.

The text filters are going to Xbox Insiders now, and will begin populating among the larger community later this month. Once the feature is live for you, you can find it under Settings > General > Online safety & family > Message safety.