Not today, Sauron, not today. In a glorious victory for everything that is good and pure, Middle-Earth: Shadow of War is removing every trace of microtransactions, effective as of July 2018.

Microtransactions, as every gamer knows, have always been a controversial practise. A lot of titles seem to steer them one of three ways: Overpriced cosmetic items, a kind of surplus charge to access content that was already on the disk and held back on purpose, or pay-to-win loot box foolishness.

Some games are guilty of more than one of these specific crimes, and others even boldly go for the hat trick. Last year, the fire, fury and brimstone against microtransactions really came to a head. Titles like For Honor, Destiny 2 and, of course, the notorious Star Wars Battlefront II were at the forefront of this.

The latter in particular was so vilified even the mighty EA had to concede, completely reworking the way that crates and such worked. Just a few short weeks later, Monolith has announced that they’re doing away with similar systems in Shadow of War, six months after its release.

As the developers explained in a blog post, the game was designed to revolved around the unique Nemesis System. The key to this is the ability to gradually foster relationships with both allies and enemies, across the game’s vast world. This whole concept, naturally, was at odds with the game’s microtransactions, which allowed players to essentially skip all of that and buy desired Orcs at the game’s Market.

With the benefit of hindsight, an apologetic Monolith go on, this detracts from the core concepts of the game, and reduces immersion even for players who don’t make any additional purchases themselves. As such, they write, "In order to fully restore the core promise of the Nemesis System, we’ll be permanently removing Gold, War Chests and the Market from Shadow of War.”

On the surface, then, this is excellent news, but what does it mean for players who have purchased some in-game Gold? They’ll have a limited time to spend it as normal, before the changes come into effect. Should they miss that period, any currency they’re holding will be converted into in-game items automatically.

To be specific, the ability to purchase Gold will be removed from the game on May 8 this year, while Gold itself, the Market and War Chests will be permanently removed on July 17 2018. While this is no simple goodwill gesture from the bottom of Monolith’s newly-loving Grinchy hearts, a positive change is always a positive change. Rejoice, Shadow of War fans.