Speaking to Larry “Major Nelson” Hryb (via GameSpot), Bethesda’s Pete Hines shared additional information about the game’s in-game purchases where he reassured gamers that that microtransaction system is limited to just cosmetics. This means that if you’d rather not spend real-life money, you won’t have to.
The currency used for these transactions are called Atoms and according to Hines, the game will be giving out plenty of those, meaning that if you’d prefer grinding for them instead of purchasing them using real-life money, you should not have a problem doing so. “Atoms are thing that we use and hand out as you play the game–quite honestly we throw them at you all the time.”
Hines also shared how easy it is to earn them, “You get them as little rewards leaving the Vault or the first time you kill a creature or the first time you pick fruits or vegetables from somewhere. It’s a little challenge reward. Atoms are used in our shop to buy cosmetics things. So you know, new outfits or skins or things like that. [Things to customise] your character to look unique from everybody else.”
That being said, there is an in-game feature called Perk Cards which allows gamers to unlock more abilities, but those will not be sold using real-life money so once again, users won’t need to worry about a pay-to-win scenario.