Model (2024), the VR recreation that brings a singular twist to prop hunt, goes free-to-play on Quest beginning as we speak—which might 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 normally includes a workforce of hunters taking pictures every thing that strikes, and their prey evading them by morphing into on a regular basis objects.
As an alternative, 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 normal space, however can solely hearth their gun as soon as earlier than a settle down interval, giving aliens the right 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 quite a lot of maps. A $10 in-app buy provides in progression-locked character skins, customized video games, rotating recreation sorts, extra maps, and mod assist. The studio hasn’t talked about another 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, known as ‘Towers’, which introduces portals to the sport for the primary time. You’ll find Model over on the Horizon Retailer for Quest 2 and above at no 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 line with SteamDB knowledge. Making the sport free-to-play will undoubtedly enhance these numbers throughout each platforms, though there appears to be one thing greater at play.
Whereas freemium video games like Gorilla Tag, Inhabitants: One, Rec Room, and Animal Firm have fared properly 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 likely to spend extra time in social video games—and whereas Ryan doesn’t explicitly state this—in addition they spend more cash on in-app purchases.
So, whereas Model definitely isn’t the primary, we anticipate 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.
