Why Retiring Forza Hub Negatively Affects the Franchise

After the vast success of Forza Horizon 4, the franchise has gained a ton of new players across the globe. Thanks to Xbox Game Pass, even the ones who aren’t ready to spend $60 on the game, are now able to try it out without additional costs. The community keeps growing each year and it simply doesn’t stop increasing! As we’re approaching the release of Forza Horizon 5, fantastic news is dropping frequently, including parts of the coming car roster.

Recently, the Twitter page of Forza Support came with less fantastic news for loyal fans as the Forza Hub will retire and no longer reward anyone. In other words, being a loyal player won’t reward you in any way because it “unbalances” the progression for players. Some used this feature as a primary in-game income because it provided up to 500,000 in-game credits each week for every Forza title on Xbox One.

As more players have joined our amazing community, we realized that a tier system has become unbalanced. Starting with Forza Horizon 5, new Forza titles will no longer use the Rewards Tier system. The reward system will be unchanged for previous titles. https://t.co/t9IQu8wEnR

— Forza Support (@forza_support) August 25, 2021

Advantage of using Forza Hub

Doing the math, you would’ve gained 12,000,000 credits by simply visiting Forza Hub once a week for a year. That is enough to buy dozens of cars. The loyalty rewards are also used to provide cars at the very beginning of the game to boost you a little. As mentioned, it becomes unbalanced if some players start with nothing, while others have a complete set of cars and money to finish the game without any significant effort! Still, there’s a purpose for this system because loyal players should be rewarded for staying loyal to Forza. It’s a great marketing strategy to keep fans keen to play and come back every week, increases weekly player count, and gives a reason for players to hop on the game again!

One of the starter cars, the all-new Ford Bronco

Personally, I have had a high opinion of Forza Hub because the rewards gave me a boost to upgrade my vehicles instead of grinding. Although it feels more rewarding to earn credits by racing, the game’s system of earning rewards is built differently compared to The Crew or Need For Speed. You’re meant to obtain cars quickly and explore the world in Forza with all your favourite cars.

Future for long-term players

With loyalty rewards disappearing (likely forever and ever), the future for long-term players doesn’t look too bright, considering Playground Games has started focusing more on the younger audience. In other words, the developers are forced to make the game more friendly for everyone. Any liveries that might come out as offensive will be removed, and the creator of the livery banned. As for the current situation, symbols such as the Confederate Flag and the Rising Sun Flag have already been banned.

Confederate flags, often used on Dodge Chargers, are now banned

The consequence for long-term players is that they cannot transfer any liveries from previous titles containing such symbols. It’s unclear how restricted the paint shop will be in the future, but Playground Games takes a different approach these days, and the odds of more symbols being banned is high. Thus, even more liveries may not be transferred from older titles, affecting long-term players who created these designs a long time ago. I have old Forza designs back from 2016 when Forza Horizon 3 came out. Importing the liveries to Horizon 4 might be a risk if anyone notices them and report them to Playground Games. Now I’m forced to redesign, which is a little shame because publishing designs in the paint shop provided you with in-game credits as well. 

Despite the disadvantage of certain players, it’s a better opportunity for newcomers to progress along with loyal fans. And luckily, we’re just 3 months from release, so the wait isn’t too long!