Battleborn was released in May, but already now the player count on the PC version has rapidly fallen and only a few hundred players want to devastate the Solus system daily. Is Battleborn at its end or will a saving Free2Play version come soon?
Battleborn had a decent player community at launch in May, was very successful in the charts and according to Steam Charts had an average population of over 4,000 players. Not much, but not little either; enough for numerous exciting PvP and PvE rounds in Gearbox’s wacky shooter coop MOBA. But then Blizzard’s Overwatch came, and although there were clear differences between Battleborn and Overwatch, the player count for Gearbox’s MOBA shooter dropped rapidly since then.
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In June, instead of over 4,000 players, there were only an average of a thousand online per day, and in July this number dropped again to only about 700 players. This corresponds to a total decline of over 80% and means, in plain language, that only two(!) out of the originally 10 players are still playing Battleborn today.
Free2Play as salvation?
On consoles such as PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the situation looks a bit better, but even there players complain about long waiting times between 2 and 10 minutes until they finally find a match. With these disastrous numbers not even three months after release, Battleborn has a real problem, but there is still hope. Because the asymmetric shooter MMO Evolve recently had even less players (around 100 per day) and thanks to the recent Free2Play transition, the player base increased by over 9,000 percent!
Battleborn could also rely on Free2Play as a salvation and thus present a real alternative to Overwatch. Because Blizzard’s online shooter is still only available for expensive money and currently even discourages some players with the unfinished game systems in ranked play. And since Battleborn has already introduced microtransactions , the step to becoming a Free2Play game seems to have been planned in advance. It remains exciting.
Mein-MMO says: Battleborn has always been a tragically misunderstood game for me, which was completely unjustly compared with Overwatch and had to compete against Overwatch due to the almost simultaneous release (which was orchestrated by Blizzard). This duel went to Blizzard, and the future of Battleborn as a Buy2Play title was actually over.
Related to the topic: Battleborn – Not a game for casuals!
Therefore, in my opinion, Gearbox must re-release Battleborn as quickly as possible as a Free2Play title and save itself into its own niche. Because in its current state, there is nothing more to gain, and the virtually dead Evolve was also revived by the step to Free2Play. But what do you think? Do you believe in a salvation of Battleborn as a Free2Play title or is the game already dead and buried? And would you play it as a Free2Play game?
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