No microtransactions, no in-game shop, no expensive deluxe packages and no paid DLCs. This is the promise of a new MMORPG on Steam, which digs up an old-school payment model. Not all genre fans like this plan.
Which MMORPG is it? Ship of Heroes was actually supposed to be released on Steam in August 2025, but there have been repeated difficulties with the approval process by Valve. Initially, there were ambiguities regarding the payment model. Following that, there were also problems accessing the beta version.
Meanwhile, the icebergs have been navigated around. The release of the superhero MMORPG is scheduled for this afternoon, on September 22, 2025. The developers promise you a game in the style of City of Heroes, meaning without major Marvel or DC license, but with plenty of character options and superpowers.
You can expect missions for groups of up to 10 players, 60-player raids, crafting, and a housing system. Except for the two raids, all content should be manageable solo, by the way. Anyone who wants to team up with other players has to use chat or other social channels. The developers consciously avoid an automated dungeon finder.
Pricing model like the big ones
What kind of payment model does the game use? Ship of Heroes comes very old-school, with full price and subscription (though so far only the dollar prices are available):
- For 60 USD you can download Ship of Heroes, install it, and play for the first month.
- Every additional month costs a subscription: 15 USD for one month, 42 USD for 3 months, 78 USD for 6 months, 144 USD for 12 months.
This puts Ship of Heroes on par with the few remaining subscription MMORPGs like World of Warcraft or Final Fantasy XIV (although they now offer alternatives like the WoW Token (WoW) and an extensive free version (FFXIV)).
The developers of Ship of Heroes justify this step by stating that it allows them to completely forgo revenue sources like in-game shops, microtransactions, expensive deluxe editions, or comparable offers. All content available at launch and up to 2 years after the launch shall belong to the subscription without restrictions.
How is the community reacting? Anyone who has read my article When someone announces such an MMORPG, I take the front seat on the hype train knows: fundamentally, I would gladly accept such an old-school payment model with full price and subscription (but without microtransactions and shop) if the corresponding game justifies the price.
20 years of experience with the MMORPG genre, all the screenshots and trailers I have seen from Ship of Heroes, as well as the recent difficulties with Valve, tell me that the developers are likely opting for the wrong model or setting the prices too high. And it’s not even considering that this is the debut work of a small indie studio.
Countless discussions on Steam and Reddit currently show that many other players feel the same way. Among them are many supporters of Ship of Heroes, who have already been able to play the MMORPG and are now pleading with the developers to significantly lower the prices.
- Percello writes on Steam: “Imagine working 9 years on a game, only to watch it fail within the first 2 months because you wouldn’t lower the price, which was too high for everyone. That’s 9 years of your life that you can’t get back.”
- Brian9824 feels the same on Steam: “60 dollars and 15 dollars per month for a new indie game without history and from a studio that has no other games is a big mistake. With this price, you will scare away most players and only keep the most hardcore fans.”
- Designer-Message-685 calculates on Reddit with a forecasted failure: “I have been following this game for years and it looks like complete trash. It will be a flop, and anyone who spends money on it should get a refund when the game inevitably fails in three months.”
How do the developers respond? Especially on Steam, officials regularly join the discussions, suggesting that subscriptions could always be taken out when it is financially feasible (source: Steam). They respect the concerns but stick to their plan.
Another response was given on Steam regarding why developers would ban critical comments from the community. One developer’s response:
Constructive criticism has neither been deleted nor censored. However, to be constructive, one cannot be 100% negative. None of the critics ever come in and say something like, “I love these three features of SoH, but I dislike these two others for reasons x, y, and z.” Instead, they usually start by claiming a negative opinion as a physical law and then go on with more of that. Ship of Heroes was developed with enormous involvement and support from the community. The community asked for what they wanted, and we are delivering it. But trolls remain trolls. They seem to have a kind of entitlement that can be summarized as: “We can come into your house and scream at the top of our lungs that your spouse is ugly and your children are stupid.” That’s not constructive criticism.
Developer SoH7 on Steam
You can imagine that this type of response was not well received by parts of the community. On Reddit, Havesh writes:
“This guy thinks constructive criticism means a criticism sandwich. Unbelievable. Constructive criticism doesn’t just mean saying you don’t like something, but also explaining why you don’t like it. You don’t even have to offer solutions for criticism to be constructive.”
Ship of Heroes fits in with the frustration over the pricing model among the various other (mostly disappointing) MMORPGs that have been released this year so far. Will there be a positive outlier in 2025? 9 new MMORPGs have been released in 2025 – the ranking of shame reveals which game has disappointed the most
