Starting today, anyone with an Xbox One, PlayStation 4 or PC can download the free trial of Gearbox Software’s hero shooter Battleborn, gaining instant access to all of the game’s competitive multiplayer content. It’s like it’s gone half free-to-play.
Last spring we reported that Battleborn would be going partially free-to-play, releasing unlimited multiplayer with the co-op story content locked behind a paywall. Sources tell us the launch was delayed several times, but the Battleborn free trial is exactly what we expected it to be.
Players who download the Battleborn free trial are able to choose from a rotating roster of six of the game’s 30 characters, taking them into battle across four competitive multiplayer modes (with a fifth on the way). Free trial players will earn character and command ranks just like paying players — only the character selection will be initially limited.
What the free trial does not include is any of the game’s cooperative story missions. In order to access story content, trial players will need to upgrade to the full game, though characters, cosmetic enhancements and boosters can be purchased a la carte via the in-game store.
Players who purchased Battleborn prior to today’s free trial launch are rewarded with founder’s status, which includes
- 1000 Platinum
- 50,000 Credits
- Exclusive “Founder” player title
- Gold skins for Mellka and Deande
- Five Core Loot Packs
- One of each Command Faction Pack (five total)
- One Exclusive “Founder Loot Pack”
You can get more information on the free trial over on the Battleborn blog.
Comments
12 responses to “Battleborn’s Competitive Multiplayer Is Now Free-To-Play”
Surprised they’re giving away what I assume is probably the better half. God knows the other half isn’t worth paying for.
I picked up the digital special edition of Battleborn when it was on sale for like… ten bucks, and I kinda want that money back, so I can do something more worthwhile with it… like set it on fire for warmth. The ‘campaign’ is trash. It feels like an attempt at Borderlands humour by an after-school improv class full of ‘2edgy4u’ teens who were very impressed with themselves. Garbage writing, delivered in a 3rd-person MOBA-like. What’s
notto like?I was skeptical about Battleborn, but saw a large number of folks saying it was a hidden gem. If this is true, it is too well-hidden. I kept polishing away the crud and all I found was more crud. I deeply regret the purchase, the bandwidth I wasted on downloading it, and the time I spent trying to find something to like about it.
The problem with battleborn is that you can’t polish a turd.
Everyone knows you can polish a turd but in the end its still a turd if you don’t believe me watch myth busters
I actually watched that episode not that long ago. But yeah as you said a polished turd is still just a turd.
Good luck setting a digital edition on fire. You didn’t like the game solely based on the campaign because it had garbage writing???
I also disliked it for being a MOBA-lite! Seriously, though, what the fuck else IS a campaign if not a narrative? Tell me how much you enjoy doing anything with the video game equivalent of
playing over the top of it.
(Also, re-read what I said. It wasn’t the digital edition I wanted to set on fire. It was the money I spent on it. Because the warmth from the fire would’ve been better value than the ‘entertainment’ gained from the game.)
Writing aside I didn’t enjoy the campaign because the gameplay wasn’t engaging or fun.
Multiplayer I enjoyed however. The gameplay worked on this side of the game. They should have scrapped the gear/loot system and just left the helix system, it was just an over complicated system that put off a decent portion off players. Throw in some server issues, largely because they have next to none in the Oceania region and with whatever playerbase was left from those problems was doomed as 2k/GBX are only concerned about their US market.
Right got ya with the burning of the money, minor discrepancy you paid with credit card yeah hehe?? Just stirring…….. I’d be concerned for your health if you were burning aussie dollars though that would smell nasty, but probably still worth it
So they changed the business model again… they keep ressurecting this zombie that was dead out of the gate cause they released it at the wrong time… may get a couple twitch streamers interested in it for a week or two tops and then back to being one foot in the grave.
Game publishers need to take a page from Hollywood and plan their releases according to the market/consumers/competition or you know if its actually complete and playable.
Its a multi million dollar, several year investment let it mature before releasing it.
I was so disappointed about this game. Not for it being bad as i actually really like it but because of how it flopped by releasing too near to overwatch (though releasing it longer after probably wouldnt work well either as everyone would just say it looks like an overwatch ripoff, but who knows).
I played the beta for this and overwatch around the same time and found this way more fun but never actually bought it because i knew it was gonna be dead in the water with how popular overwatch was even before it released. Now that its F2P i will definitely hop on for the next few weeks that people are interested and hope i get my fun out of it in that time before it likely dies again, exactly how i did with Evolve recently.
Don’t think this will bring this game back to life. Playing multi player vs people who are the die hard fans, getting stomped is no fun and will put new players off even more.
I did a quick google search for variants of ‘please don’t pubstomp new players’ to bring back a thread I remembered about Battleborn and some other games’ communities pleading for exactly the same thing to avoid having their free weekends turn into negative advertisements for the game, killing their playerbase and turning off newbies with awful word of mouth sealing the game’s fate.
Turns out just about fucking every community asks for it. Evolve, Battleborn, Mechwarrior Online, Rainbow 6, Guns of Icarus, Paragon… it’s often a request that comes up from games that have had long betas, killing even their launch, as new players get turned off by a game full of ruthless 2yr beta-testing veterans.
In the end, multi-focused games are their own worst enemies, snakes devouring their own tails.
Meanwhile, 9 months ago: “There are no plans to convert Battleborn free to play.”
I guess I feel bad for the hard working coders, sound engineers, artists and whatever behind the game, but I just hate Randy so much that Battleborn’s continuing failure will always entertain me.