Evolve, the 4v1 multiplayer game that launched last year to tepid responses, is now free-to-play on PC. It’s also getting some major gameplay changes and an entirely new progression system.
The developers at Turtle Rock announced the news in a heartfelt letter posted on the forums yesterday. Turtle Rock co-founders Chris Ashton and Phil Robb opened up about some of the mistakes they made — like the “DLC shitstorm” that turned off a lot of potential players — and talked about some of the changes they have been making to the game over the past year:
When people first started playing Evolve at those and other conferences, it was magical. Sure, there was the AAA video game 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!
People who bought Evolve on PC before today will be given “Founder” status, the devs said. The console versions will still cost money.
Comments
10 responses to “Evolve Goes Free-To-Play On PC”
Interesting…
I know they are never going to be able to make everyone happy all of the time but I’m pretty sure this is the nail in the coffin for my hopes of them bringing in LAN mode. When they close the servers down on this one, it’ll be gone forever. >_>
Kind of thought they would do something along these lines. Not hard to see battleborn doing the same in 6 months.
Seriously happy about this. Evolve was a really fun game that tanked hard through no fault of the gameplay. It’ll be good to be able to jump back in again.
I found the movement (both monster and humans) to be really clunky and inelegant. It felt like everything was wading through molasses.
I enjoyed evolve, put 40 or so hours into it. however, I think If they fixed the movement in that game, it would play better.
I was rewatching Jurassic World the other day and it made me feel like playing a game where I’m a giant monster hunting people in a forest, so this is good timing for me.
They have stated that if the PC free thing works, then consoles will be next – http://i.imgur.com/iaIPYgk.png
I was curious about this when it was first launched but couldn’t validate buying it, now I might download it to check it out (if enough people play)
I’m in the same boat, couldn’t justify the price after playing a bit of the Beta (and the DLC issues cemented it after I hadn’t picked it up)
Might just go download again now though and see how it’s Evolved 😉
It looks like the game has gone from <500 players the last few months to over 10,000 in a day.
http://steamcharts.com/app/273350