BLACKWOOD keeps two wallets, and they are not interchangeable. Clean Cash is what the DVD store earns and what your legitimate life is paid for with; Dirty Cash is what contracts pay and what the underground sells you. Once a day the game moves a slice of the dirty pile across into the clean one — one direction only, on the developer's own description.
Everything below is from the studio's pre-launch material: the official Everything You Need to Know About BLACKWOOD announcement on Steam, and the Gameplay Deep Dive video on the developer's own channel, AttritoM7 Productions. Where the two are worded differently, we say so rather than smoothing it over.
Where each currency comes from
The Deep Dive states the split directly:
"Blackwood also has two separate economies. Your DVD store earns clean money for expanding the business, buying outfits, stocking DVDs, and purchasing civilian weapons. Contracts pay dirty money, giving you access to everything that happens underground."
The announcement adds one qualifier to the contract side: Dirty Cash is "riskier but far more lucrative" than what the counter brings in. That is the developer's characterisation, not a number — no contract payout figures have been published.
What each currency buys
These two lists are the developer's, published as bullet points in the announcement. Neither list is described as exhaustive, but neither has anything else added to it either.
| Currency | What the developer lists it paying for |
|---|---|
| Clean Cash earned by the DVD store | Monthly rent and recurring expenses Store upgrades and expansions Outfits, civilian weapons, and relationships |
| Dirty Cash earned from contracts | Rare weapons and ammunition Black-market upgrades and combat gear Special items that unlock unique takedowns |
Two things worth reading carefully. "Relationships" is the developer's own word and it sits on the Clean Cash side, but nothing published explains what spending on a relationship actually looks like. And rent sits at the top of the Clean Cash list, which is why the store matters for staying solvent — the deadline and the amount are on Monthly Bills & Hush Money.
The daily conversion
This is the part most easily mangled into "15% conversion" with no explanation of 15% of what. The full sentence from the announcement:
"Each day, a portion of your dirty earnings is converted into clean cash. 15% of whatever Clean Cash you earn daily is taken from Dirty Cash and added to your Clean Cash total, showing how Anton launders money to keep his life running."
Broken into the three things you actually need:
| Question | What the developer states |
|---|---|
| Which direction? | Dirty Cash to Clean Cash. No reverse conversion is described anywhere. |
| How often? | Every day, automatically. Not per transaction, not per contract, not monthly. |
| 15% of what? | Of the Clean Cash you earn that day. It is not 15% of your Dirty Cash balance, and not 15% of your contract income. |
The official wording is not fully self-consistent, and we are not papering over it. The first half of the sentence says "a portion of your dirty earnings is converted", which reads as though the percentage is taken off contract income. The second half defines the figure explicitly against daily Clean Cash. We go with the half that carries the number, and we quote it as written. We are not restating it as "15% of your dirty earnings", because that is a different calculation and nobody has confirmed which one the game performs.
"Launders money" is the developer's phrasing, not ours. The mechanic is framed as how Anton makes contract income spendable in his above-board life, which is also why the transfer is tied to the store's daily takings rather than to the size of the dirty pile.
Where you spend each one
The Deep Dive splits the shopping by venue, not just by currency. The black market is where "military variants, illegal modifications, untraceable ammunitions, and even damaged weapons you can rebuild, strip for parts, or sell" come from — the Dirty Cash side. Civilian weapons, in the developer's words, "are purchased online" instead, on the Clean Cash side.
The announcement adds that online orders arrive after a delivery wait, and that paying extra can get them the same day. That is our paraphrase of the announcement rather than a quoted sentence, and no prices or wait times have been published.
Open questions about the two wallets
- How the two balances are displayed. No interface has been shown, so we cannot tell you where either total appears on screen.
- What "relationships" spending is. Official word, never expanded on.
- Whether the 15% is fixed. No published cap, floor, or indication that it changes with story progress or store upgrades.
- Whether Dirty Cash can pay the monthly bill directly. The developer lists rent under Clean Cash but never says Dirty Cash is barred from it. Other pre-launch pages state flatly that it cannot — that is their reading of the same published list, not something the studio said.
We are deliberately not publishing worked conversion examples or projected daily totals. With one unverified percentage and no measured income figures, any such table would be invention dressed up as maths.
FAQ
Can I convert Clean Cash back into Dirty Cash in BLACKWOOD?
Nothing published describes a conversion in that direction. The developer only describes Dirty Cash being converted into Clean Cash, once a day, automatically. If a manual exchange exists in either direction, it has not been shown.
How much money gets laundered each day?
The developer's wording is that 15% of whatever Clean Cash you earn that day is taken from Dirty Cash and added to your Clean Cash total. So the size of the transfer is pegged to that day's store takings, not to how much Dirty Cash you are sitting on. We have not been able to verify the behaviour in play.
Where do I buy civilian weapons?
Online, with Clean Cash, according to the official Gameplay Deep Dive. The black market is the Dirty Cash side of the split and carries military variants, illegal modifications, untraceable ammunition and damaged weapons. Online orders have a delivery wait you can pay to shorten.