It’s the year 2016, and people are actually playing Evolve. What a world.
Yesterday, Turtle Rock released Evolve Stage 2, a free-to-play, you know, evolution of the 4v1 multiplayer monster mash. Stage 2 also refreshes the game with a new progression system and mechanics. For now, it’s only on PC.
This has resulted in an influx of new players. At time of writing, Evolve was sitting pretty (or ugly, depending on whether monsters get your loin engine all revved up) at number 17 on Steam’s top 20 most-played games. So far, it’s peaked at 25,167 concurrent players.
As PC Gamer points out, Evolve peaked at 157 concurrent users the day before Stage 2 launched. It’s struggled to crack 1000 for all of 2016, hovering mostly in the low hundreds for the past few months. That’s bad, bad news for a major triple-A multiplayer release. The switch to free-to-play was sorely needed.
Will this player count jump last, though? Or will Evolve come crashing back to Earth like so many Goliaths? Some people who previously owned the game seem pretty pissed about the gameplay changes and the progress reset that heralded Stage 2‘s launch, claiming that things like a new scanning mechanic make the game too simple for its own good. A select few are, mystifyingly, spilling salty whale tears over the fact that more people are playing their game of choice. The reason? Because they didn’t have to pay money THEY DON’T KNOW THE STRUGGLE. Of course.
So we’ll see where this all ends up. Necromancy is a dangerous art. Evolve is back (and free!), but at what cost?
Comments
7 responses to “Evolve Cracks Steam’s Top 20 After Going Free To Play”
As a xbox one player who really enjoyed it for what it was, welcome the new changes and player base. Being wanting to play this on pc for a long time and it’s the perfect time to get in.
For me, the game died due to its long load times, five minutes (timed) between rounds, unacceptable these days. Perhaps the scan is a bit easy but I haven’t seen a monster being spotted by it yet.
Overall, I hope this has a healthy player base moving forward, def an underrated game spoiled by load times and dlc mismanagement.
Played the Beta and the core gameplay just wasn’t there. I wouldn’t play it for free when I’ve got plenty of other top quality games to go for.
im just trying to crack the download, 20gigs, been downloading since 8 am still not half way.
also turtle rock are the shittys co on the planet, ive yet to see them come out with any thing basic, NOT good(thats a high standed for them) just basic.
I did buy this at launch and had high hopes, but the game wasn’t quite right. It failed to capture whatever the magic something was that made Left4Dead so damn addictive and fun.
I would have played this for free, if Overwatch hadn’t beaten it to release and sucked up all my time. Maybe when OW gets stale I’ll go back to it… If it’s still around…
I’ve been playing it. I’m not completely sold on the changes, as the game pretty well much forces encounters now, with monsters being a little overpowered and lacking finesse, and hunter parties needing arguably better coordination during fights now, even at level 1.
But, its nice to have a game with players again.