Evolve launches free version on PC today
Turtle Rock Studios announces Evolve will be made free-to-play on PC.
Chris Ashton & Phil Robb, cofounders of Turtle Rock Studios, have announced on their official community blog that Evolve will be made free to play as a Beta on PC.
"When people first started playing Evolve at those and other conferences, it was magical. Sure, there was the AAA videogame hype surrounding our title. Yeah, we also had the flashy displays, the giant Goliath statue, and all the other things AAA games do to get people excited. And that stuff was cool. Really cool. But, what we lived for -- what was cooler by far -- was just seeing people play Evolve for the first time. We worked on it for years and then, suddenly, people got to experience our game, controller in-hand. There was genuine excitement -- real joy -- when people played. It was like nothing they’d ever played before and watching it happen was like no high we ever felt."
"We want that magic back and we aim to make it happen. We’ve made a lot of changes, improvements and additions to Evolve over the past year and we’ve got a lot more coming. In short, we’re giving this game a vigorous overhaul!"
The development team has taken the poor sales and reviews to heart and are already working on some improvements.
"Just to give you some examples:
- We’re reworking the hunter classes to make the team less reliant on having experienced trappers and medics.
- We’re making improvements to the maps and UI.
- We’re improving load times, overall performance, and getting you into the game faster.
- We’re focusing on improving stability and fixing bugs.
- We’re completely reworking our progression system and tutorials.
- We’re adding more customization options.
Most importantly, we just want to put the game in your hands. Try Evolve out. See what you think. We hope you like it and we're not going to charge you to give it a try."
You heard them right, folks. Evolve will be free-to-play.
"Here’s how it’s going to work: We’re going to make Evolve free on PC as a Beta starting on July 7. This is going to allow us to hit our new server infrastructure really hard and we need your help testing. Stuff could break, and that’s our hope, because that will give us time to improve things as we go. 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. 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."
They also explained their plans for customers who have already purchased the game and DLC.
"Anyone who owns classic Evolve will be given “Founder” status in the new free version, and all the content you already own comes with you to the new version. As long as we work on Evolve, we will show our appreciation for our committed fans and early adopters with gifts, rewards, and special access. Why? Because you believed like we did, and we will never forget that."
Many Shackers will wonder if this is too little too late for the franchise, but I appreciate the steps that Turtle Rock is taking to salvage their project. The studio also stated that they will be increasingly involved with their community to help build them the game that we all want. The free Evolve Beta will go live on Steam on July 7.
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Asif Khan posted a new article, Evolve Free on PC
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It just ended up being pretty boring as a final product right? Then coupled with no one playing it got even worse?
Maybe free will help build a community around it but it seems highly unlikely that people would rally around a failed product just because it's free.
Even worse, how are they going to monetize it now?-
Well they are calling it a Beta.... So maybe if they actually fix it they will try to sell something? More likely they take what they learn from the Beta and make a sequel? I dunno. It seems like a Dev team that has their heart almost too wrapped up in the project. There was probably a lot of pressure from the executives at Take Two. Not sure if this will work out, but hey free game!
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Yeah. The beta tag makes it seem even weirder. Like they're going to throw shit against the wall to see if it sticks and then suddenly say "oh, cool, no beta any more, time to pay!"
Which I suppose might work if they stumble upon a formula that's good, but it'd probably really piss a bunch of people off too.
Whole thing feels weird. Anyway, yeah. Free game! -
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According to https://evolvegame.com/ it's 2 more hours!
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I hope so, too, but it doesn't seem likely if it'll take that long. Evolve had a huge amount of marketing and hype, which is probably why it took so long for this to happen a year and a half later. Battleborn had very little marketing and even less hype. It's in Gearbox's interest to go F2P ASAP, as in within 6 months, if they want any kind of community to develop around the game.
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I'll definitely try it out. I still play on PS4 every now and then. I like that they're going to balance the classes to not be so dependent on trapper and medic. Bad medics/trappers could make the difference between winning and losing in that game, even against an NPC monster.
I don't like that so much content was locked behind pay walls on a game I purchased, but in a free game that doesn't sting as bad. -
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