Controversial Battle Royale game, The Culling, is back from the dead, bringing with it a pay-to-play mechanic that’s more than a little baffling. In case you don’t remember, The Culling games has a pretty rocky start in life, which led to a number of them getting canned pretty much right off the bat.
It all started with the original 2016 title, The Culling, which followed the typical BR style with an added focus on smaller battles and melee combat. It was pretty good, but was soon forgotten as Fortnite and PUBG grew in strength. Developer Xaviant decided to work on The Culling 2, which failed so hard it was removed from Steam just a couple of weeks after launch.
Going back to basics, Xaviant resurrected the original Culling game, remarketed it as free-to-play and rebranded it as The Culling: Origins. Again, this project was canned, though it lasted nearly a year.
Cut to now, and Xaviant is back at it again, with an Xbox relaunch of The Culling: Origins, which was boasting a bizarre business model.
Just a matter of days ago, if you want to play The Culling: Origins, you’d first need to buy a copy of the game (unless you had the free-to-play version). Once you had that, you’d be able to take part in one (that’s one) match per day. If you wanted to play more, you’d need to buy tokens or an online pass (unless you win your daily match, in which case you’d win one online token).
Naturally, this was a disaster, and just a few days after the reveal, the pay-to-play mechanic has already been changed.
Director of operations, Josh Van Veld, stated the following: “In retrospect, it was really obvious that one was not going to give us the flow of players. But you have to remember, we were kind of terrified of everybody coming back, overloading the servers, costing us a tonne of money and not spending anything. So we were afraid to turn that dial.”
The pay-to-play mechanic has now been tweaked, and you can play up to 10 matches a day before you’ll need to buy your tokens. An improvement, but not too big of an improvement for a game that isn’t free.
Online Match Tokens can be bought in packs, ranging from $0.99 USD for three, to $4.99 USD for 20. Alternatively, you can pick up the Online Pass for unlimited online play, costing $1.99 USD for seven days of access, or $5.99 USD for 30 days.
Featured Image Credit: Xaviant