Model (2024), the VR recreation that brings a novel twist to prop hunt, goes free-to-play on Quest beginning at this time—which may level to extra builders opting to go the freemium route.
Launched final June on Quest and SteamVR headsets, Model isn’t your typical shooter, neither is it your typical recreation of prop hunt, which often entails a group of hunters capturing all the pieces that strikes, and their prey evading them by morphing into on a regular basis objects.
As a substitute, two gun-toting Brokers hunt three shape-shifting aliens, aka Mannequins, who can evade seize by mixing into crowds of frozen NPCs. Brokers can observe down a Model to a basic space, however can solely fireplace their gun as soon as earlier than a settle down interval, giving aliens the proper second to leap out and strike down the hunter.
Now, developer Quick Journey Video games is making Model free-to-play on Quest, which incorporates the bottom recreation and a wide range of maps. A $10 in-app buy provides in progression-locked character skins, customized video games, rotating recreation varieties, extra maps, and mod assist. The studio hasn’t talked about every other microtransactions past that $10 paywall.
Very similar to Gorilla Tag, Model will nonetheless be a paid app on Steam, albeit with a brand new worth of $10 (initially $20). Whereas the studio hasn’t mentioned as a lot, One other Axiom says Gorilla Tag does this to maintain away griefers, who can extra simply hack the sport on PC and clog servers with undesirable conduct.
The free-to-play launch additionally comes with a brand new replace, which features a new map, referred to as ‘Towers’, which introduces portals to the sport for the primary time. You could find Model over on the Horizon Retailer for Quest 2 and above without cost, and over on Steam for PC VR headsets, priced at $10.
However why free-to-play, and why now? Whereas usually well-received, Model isn’t the preferred multiplayer recreation on the market; we haven’t seen concurrent participant numbers on Quest, its hottest platform, though on Steam it solely counted an all-time peak of 26 PC gamers following launch, in keeping with SteamDB information. Making the sport free-to-play will undoubtedly increase these numbers throughout each platforms, though there appears to be one thing larger at play.
Whereas freemium video games like Gorilla Tag, Inhabitants: One, Rec Room, and Animal Firm have fared effectively on Quest previously, the free-to-play pattern seems to be rising on the standalone platform.
Meta’s VP of Metaverse Content material, Samantha Ryan, lately confirmed that Quest has seen an inflow of youthful customers with the launch of Quest 3S, which is contributing to the rise of free-to-play titles. Youthful gamers are inclined to spend extra time in social video games—and whereas Ryan doesn’t explicitly state this—additionally they spend more cash on in-app purchases.
So, whereas Model definitely isn’t the primary, we count on it received’t be the final ‘premium’ Quest recreation to leap on the free-to-play bandwagon following Meta’s announcement, as builders are undoubtedly trying to nab even a fraction of the virality Gorilla Tag noticed, which led it to topping $100 million in gross income final summer season.
