Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja sent out an update, indicating that you no longer need to purchase a premium ticket in order to change the hair color for every single hair color change for a hairstyle. Now if you unlock the option to change the hair color for a style, you can alter the hair color for that style as much as you want without having to pay for it.

The news rolled out over on the official Dead or Alive Twitter account on March 26th, 2020.

Update for our fighters. #DOA6 #DEADORALIVE6 pic.twitter.com/gSd3Mo4bFH

— Official DEAD OR ALIVE Fighting Game (@DOATEC_OFFICIAL) March 26, 2020

In the post, the image explains how the new system works, and how they’re offering refunds for those who purchased premium tickets to alter the characters’ hair colors. The patch 1.21a only applies to the PS4 version of the game.

If you’re unable to view the image in the tweet, it reads…

“The hair color change feature has now been revised: hair color can now be unlocked permanently for any hairstyle that offers it, and includes all available colors. (E.f., if you purchase Hair Color for Marie Rose’s “Long” hairstyle, you will unlock all 16 hair colors for this hairstyle).

“All Premium Tickets that were used to purchase hair colors prior to this update, have been refunded (E.g., if you have used 5 Tickets to purchase hair colors on v1.20 and v1.21, you will receive 5 Premium Tickets when you apply the v1.21a update).

“As a result of the revision, all hair color settings have been reset to default.”

So basically, what this means is that you still have to purchase premium tickets to change the hair color, only now you purchase a ticket per hairstyle instead of per color. This is the kind of microtransaction gouging, one would have expected from a free-to-play gacha game, yet it’s being doled out for a full priced, $60 fighting game.

Now I’m sure some fanboys will attempt to say “But there’s a free version of the game! So the microtransactions aren’t that bad!” yet they will completely ignore the fact that the microtransactions are still present even if you purchase the $60 version of the game.

Even still, Koei Tecmo and Team Ninja really shot themselves in the feet with this move, desperate to monetize a dying game that was gimped for non-gamers and designed to appeal to practically no one.