Evolve – MMO Fallout

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We’ve been keeping a close eye on Evolve ever since its Stage 2 update to free to play went into beta on PC, hoping that it would revitalize the community and bring new life into a game that hit too many hurdles (many it placed itself) during development. It didn’t, while Evolve ballooned up to over 51 thousand players in July, as of the past 30 days less than 10% of those remain. With the free to play update on PC complete and the console versions still up in the air, Turtle Rock Studios announced today that their handling of the game has come to an end.

“Today, Turtle Rock finishes development on the project and begins to transition day-to-day server operation to 2K, as we take the operation of the Evolve franchise fully in-house.”

According to Community Manager “Shaners,” the decision to end the contract was made by 2K Games pulling the license. Whether or not Evolve Stage 2, the free to play transition, will come to consoles is unknown, however Turtle Rock won’t be heading it. There are no plans to continue creating content for Evolve.

(Source: Evolve)

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Turtle Rock Studios officially announced today that Evolve will re-launch with a free to play model. The announcement comes after the title was mysteriously removed from sale on Steam last night. In addition to removing the entrance fee, players will be able to unlock everything simply by playing the game.

Evolve has been completely overhauled on PC with new game design, gameplay mechanics, and improved gameplay balance and system performance. All of the content in Evolve, including all the content released following its launch, is unlockable in Evolve Stage 2 completely free simply by playing the game.

Evolve Stage 2, as it has been named, will release today in beta mode and likely stay there for a while. While Evolve was critically praised upon release, both the game and Turtle Rock Studios have been heavily criticized over the game’s monetization strategy. Evolve was advertised as being “built from the ground up” for DLC, launching with more than $100 in microtransactions.

Player traffic on PC has plummeted in the year since launch, down to an average of 100 concurrent players. The question of whether the game would go free to play has been in speculation since shortly after launch.

(Source: Steam)