You may have noticed XP popups for murders in Thief gameplay demos and wondered, "What's up with that?" Why, you may even have posted a comment on this Internet about them! Developer Eidos Montreal has kept an eye on the discontent, and pulled the experience system entirely. Now players will be more reliant upon stealing, which is kind of the point of a Thief game.

"At first, we wanted to outline the progression of the player with XP, but it was reducing our motivation to steal," game director Nic Cantin explained in a blog post. "The main goal of a thief should be to gain loot. Garrett is already the Master Thief, so we saw no need to have XP as a core mechanic."

He added, "The E3 reaction was right, rewarding killing like that was wrong for a Master Thief."

With XP gone, Garrett will rely upon swiping money and treasure to buy new tools, whether they're to help his sneaking or a little more hostile. Though supposedly you can play through without buying anything, if you fancy a challenge.

"Fans might be surprised how often the devs go to the forum to see how things are perceived in the 'real world,'" Contin said. "This feedback is extremely valuable to us, so as you can imagine, the consistent reaction to the XP system was something that indicated we needed to revisit some design decisions."

Thief is due February 25, 2014, on PC, Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, and PS3.