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“Evolve” is the five-player game that came out last year, which was marketed as a fun multiplayer experience where four would play as hunters and one would be the monster. Unfortunately, the title was plagued with issues that the developers have never been able to completely address, ranging from the dull gameplay to the unbelievably ill-advised disaster that was the downloadable content. In a bid to retain relevance and to attract some new blood, “Turtle Rock” is making their game free-to-play.
As ArsTechnica points out, “Evolve” has been a struggle of a game for its developers since its release a year ago, largely because of the issues that turned off potential players from the game. Of these issues, the confusing pre-purchase and DLC arrangement made for a lot of frustrated players, largely because it provided some with more content than others.
As such, it was almost inevitable that “Turtle Rock” would make their title F2P simply because they don’t have enough players to justify the game’s existence. For some context, “Steam” users of the paid version of the game averages only 100 players at any given time. In comparison, the much older game “Left 4 Dead 2” clocks in over 10,000 players a day.
Since the appeal of an online game like “Evolve” revolves around being able to start a match fast as soon as players are found, the developers were left with no other choice but to shift from paid to free if they want to survive. This isn’t the first instance where a previously paid game had to become F2P either, as the majority of popular MMO games have also resorted to removing the up-front costs in order to maintain their fan base.
In order to avoid putting paid players in the awkward position of feeling like they were cheated, “Turtle Rock” is giving these gamers special status, according to Polygon. They will be able to keep all of the content they unlocked. For new players, they will need to earn silver keys in order to get more content from the game.
