By Bryan Smith on July 7, 2016 at 1:39pm
Turtle Rock Studios has announced that their game "Evolve" will be free-to-play come July 7 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.
Then, when Evolve launched, the reception wasn’t what we expected. Sure, there were some good reviews. There were also bad reviews. Yes, there was excitement. There was also disappointment – for players and for us. The DLC shitstorm hit full force and washed away people’s enthusiasm, dragging us further and further from that first magical pick-up-and-play experience.
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!
It seems that Turtle Rock has been listening to the feedback, with a common detracting theme that many critics, players, outlets, and the like have lambasted the game for being the "DLC shitstorm" (for context, the game had a season pass before being officially revealed). In addition to the free-to-play model being embraced, the game is getting tweaks, such as hunter classes not relying on medics/trappers so much, load times, a completely reworked progression system, and more.
The PC free-to-play model is being implemented as a Beta as a way to test and "break" things (their words to figure out what works). Turtle Rock also mentioned what happens for those who already purchased the game.
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.
As part of our promise to recapture the magic and improve the Evolve experience across-the-board, we're going to ratchet up our communication with the community. We will be continually updating our social channels, our forums and our website to let you know how it’s going.
We have lived and breathed Evolve for over four years and we feel like we are just getting started. Since launch we realized Evolve has provided people some of their most exciting gaming moments and we want to make more of those for everyone... well, everyone who is OK with being periodically murdered (brutally) by terrifying alien monsters.
If the free-to-play model proves successful, they'll bring it to consoles. Whether it works will have to be seen. With this new update, are you interested in revisiting "Evolve" once more?
Turtle Rock Studios
