Forza Horizon 6 update throws the game's economy into chaos

Playground Games wants players to value cars more, but the community takes issue with how the studio is going about it

Forza Horizon 6 rolled out a significant update on Monday. The update heralds the next four-week Series in the game's Festival Playlist, which starts on Thursday and celebrates Italian Exotics. As well as the month-long series of themed events and reward cars, an Italian Passion Car Pack is available to download featuring a quartet of new Ferraris and Alfa Romeos.

None of this is what has the Forza Horizon community worked up right now, though. Instead, players are stinging from changes to the game's economy that make the acquisition of rare cars much harder.

References to these changes in developer Playground Games' official information and patch notes are somewhat bland. "Removed Auction House price cap for cars not purchasable in the Autoshow," they say, and "Fixes have been applied to numerous exploits," including "Skill Points farming from Estates." These notes don't fully encapsulate what has happened.

There's a good analysis of the situation in this YouTube video by HokiHoski, but I'll attempt to break it down. First, a little context. Over previous entries, especially in Forza Horizon 5, the Forza Horizon games have become increasingly rewarding, showering players in cars, cash, and Wheelspins (which award more cash and more cars). Wheelspsins are also the only way to earn certain rare cars, including many of the sought-after Forza Edition cars, which have valuable boosts to credits and skill scores. Some people (myself included) felt Forza Horizon 5 was excessively rewarding to the extent that it dampened the player's sense of progression and excitement at adding new cars to your garage.

At launch, Forza Horizon 6 noticeably slowed this economy down. Players earned credits and Wheelspins more slowly, and car drop rates had been toned down. There was compensation: Rare cars (which can't be bought in the Autoshow, the in-game car shop) had price caps that would prevent them getting too expensive on the auction house where players trade cars with each other.

The new update removes these limits; there's now just a global buy-it-now cap set at 20 million credits. On the plus side, this means auctions for rare cars hang around for longer instead of being sniped instantly, and bidding wars emerge. But many players now simply can't afford to fill out their collections of rare and wheelspin-only cars this way. This doesn't just apply to exotic beasts and Forza edition cars; some relatively humble machines, like the 1989 Toyota MR2 and the 1997 Nissan Skyline GT-R V-Spec, both seasonal rewards that have cycled out, are being listed at 20 million credits. More casual players feel locked out of using the auction house to complete their car collections.

What smarts for many players about these changes is that Playground has also made credits harder to come by. Players are reporting that credit rewards from the game's longest races have been dramatically nerfed. (This change is not specifically mentioned in the patch notes.) And, crucially, the developer has reduced the number of Skill Points that can be earned from maps made with the Estate and EventHub creation tools to just one.

The latter change essentially renders the Skill Point farms that have overrun these tools useless. Skill Points can be used to max out the skill tree on certain cars that reward players with a Super Wheelspin, i.e. more cash and more rare cars. Players were repeatedly buying one of these cars (the 1998 Subaru Impreza 22B) and using Estate maps to grind out skill points and profit from the Wheelspin. It's debatable whether this is really an exploit — it seems more like a loophole, unintentional or otherwise, in the actual game design. Either way, Playground has shut it down.

You can file all of this under the eternal seesaw of balancing any online game. It's possible that Playground has overcorrected, or focused its economy tweaks on its most dedicated fans without thinking of the impact on more casual players. At the same time, it's hard to mourn the dumb player-created Skill Point farms, or to argue with the ethos that players should progress by actually playing the game rather than grinding exploits and sniping auction house listings. And perhaps it's OK for rare cars to actually be rare. (It's important to note one lifeline offered by the update, though: some rare cars, previously limited to Wheelspins or seasonal rewards, will be offered as Aftermarket sales at a used car dealership near the stadium.)

The problem, really, is one of Playground's own making. Forza Horizon 5 set an expectation among players that they would be able to fill out a complete car collection relatively easily. Forza Horizon 6 changed that, and now Playground is doubling down. The studio basically wants players to value cars in the game more, because it thinks that will make the game better. That might be right. But it's a tough lesson to take from the developer that devalued them in the first place.