If you’re one of the people that are eagerly anticipating The War Z, you may have something new to contemplate before jumping into the game — or at least before you buy any items from the cash shop.

Much like everything else in a zombie overrun world, your cash shop items are not safe.  If you purchase something and then are foolish enough to die with it on you, you’re going to lose it.

According Hammerpoint Marketing Director Alex Josef in a recent interview with Gaming Blend:

You’ll lose what you have in your backback when you die in both normal and hardcore modes.  And yes, if you bought something using real money, you’ll lose that item as well. This is a price you’ll have to pay.

He goes on to say that this decision was deliberately made to make players treat the game more seriously.

We’ve discussed that a lot and at the end decided that this will provide a pretty good incentive for players to either be extra cautious while playing or just not spend too much money in the game and instead try to procure all items by finding them in the game world.

On the one hand, I kind of like this logic.  But on the other… I wonder what the point of the cash shop is if they’re hoping you’ll opt to find other ways to acquire items.