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When it was announced last week that “Turtle Rock” would be making their multiplayer AAA title “Evolve” free-to-play as a result of the depressing number of players they had (100 a day on average), many saw it as a last-ditch attempt to lure in players and save their game. Considering the explosion of subscribers that followed immediately after the announcement, it would seem that the developers got their wish. The only question now is how long will this rise in interest last and how will “Turtle Rock” capitalize on the trend?
According to Steam Charts, the average number of players of “Evolve” went from 106.2 in June, to 3,103.7 a day over the last 30 days as of writing this piece. That’s a 2822.41% increase. At its peak, the number of players went from 234 to 51,099 respectively.
Calling the initiative “Evolve Stage 2,” the developers have made some sweeping changes to the online FPS in order to entice new players, encourage existing players, and perhaps placate the ones who left the community after becoming frustrated with “Turtle Rock’s” many blunders. This was made clear enough by the announcement they released, explaining what they intend to do with the game.
“We’ll parse out major Beta revisions, updates, and features over a period of weeks and months — a plan we’re going to continually communicate here,” Turtle Rock wrote on its official website. “This allows us to test new features and major changes to make our game more accessible and ever closer to the joy we saw when we first showed our baby to the world. Just as importantly, this Beta plan gives us the flexibility and time we need to keep fixing bugs and making Evolve more stable.”
After cracking the top 10 titles on Steam, according to Forbes, the question of how long the developers will be able to retain these numbers is at the forefront of the trend. Is this just the initial excitement inflating the numbers or does Turtle Rock actually have a plan to make this move sustainable?
