The Battle Royale The Culling returned once again in May 2020 after several closures. Since then, the game has adopted a new payment model, which has received much criticism. Players can play for free once a day. Now the developers are commenting on the situation.
What happened? The Culling was released in 2016 as a mix of Battle Royale and survival game. In a small arena, 16 players fought against each other. Particularly, the melee weapons and the humorous tone stood out in The Culling.
However, the game failed multiple times for various reasons. On May 14, 2020, it returned again, albeit initially only for Xbox. A PC version is planned.
But The Culling faced immediate criticism because the new payment model of the Battle Royale does not sit well with many players.
What is wrong with the payment model? The Culling returns as a Buy2Play game. It must be purchased once before players can even play it.
Moreover, only the first match of the day is free in the new version. If you want to play more than one match, a token is needed, which you:
- can earn by winning a match
- or can buy directly online (3 tokens = €0.99, 10 tokens = €2.99, and 20 tokens = €4.99).
- Alternatively, there is an online pass that gives you permanent access to the games. It costs €1.99 for 7 days and €5.99 for 30 days.
This model immediately caused criticism among many players after the announcement. Comparisons to mobile games, where you have to pay for additional rounds, were also made.
Now the developers have commented and explained why they are relying on this new method.
“We were afraid that all players would come back”
How do the developers explain the new system? In an interview with PCGamer, the Director of Operations of Xaviant, Josh van Veld, commented on the payment model. And his story sounds very curious.
It is said that the Free2Play version of The Culling was closed in 2019 because there were too many players who did not spend enough. As a result, the Battle Royale was not profitable:
We quickly gained a million new players, which was overwhelming in several ways. And we didn’t have immediate insight into spending habits and similar things at that time.
It took a while for us to somehow realize how monetization compared to our server costs, and we were spending tens of thousands of dollars too much each month.
The new version aims to ensure that The Culling can survive long-term, even if it has to forgo larger player numbers.
Josh van Veld even states that they were afraid of having too many players at the re-release:
In hindsight, it is obvious that we couldn’t expect as many players as before. But let’s not forget that we were afraid that all players would come back, flood the servers, and cost us a ton of money even though they wouldn’t spend anything.
They don’t want to become “really big” with the game now, but simply want to stay in the market long-term. However, with a publisher, things could have turned out differently.
We tried a model to become really big, but we couldn’t afford to implement it functionally.
I think if we had been supported by a big publisher and had deeper pockets, we probably could have done something with all those Free2Play players.
Are the developers planning changes after the criticism? PC Gamer reports that the developers are considering adjusting the number of free games.
Aside from that, they want to stick to the payment model.
The Culling has a long but unfortunate history
What is the story of The Culling? The game may have registered a peak of 12,000 players on Steam at release in March 2016 (via Steamcharts), but it failed to engage players long-term.
For that reason, it was taken offline and The Culling 2 was announced instead.
However, the second part also failed because it shifted its focus away from melee combat and toward firearms. Thus, The Culling 2 resembled more of a (bad) clone of games like PUBG or H1Z1.
In a third attempt, The Culling Origins returned, the first part in a Free2Play variant. According to the above statements, this game was then reportedly successful, especially on Xbox.
The Culling was closed once again.
Now the game is back again, with the new payment model. It remains to be seen whether The Culling can now hold long-term with the new model or will be shut down for a fourth time.
