One of the ways that many companies use to try and attract gamers to their games is by removing as many restrictions/hurdles as possible, such as an upfront fee where they are hoping that a free game will make the game more attractive for gamers to pick up. This has worked extremely well for various titles over the years.Now Blizzard’s Overwatch doesn’t employ such a system and instead relies on an upfront fee, and it looks like that model won’t be going away anytime soon. Speaking to Eurogamer in an interview, Overwatch’s director Jeff Kaplan was asked if there might come a time for the game to adopt a free-to-play model, in which Kaplan pretty much shut that idea down.
According to Kaplan, “Overwatch was designed not to be free-to-play but that should always be a consideration. For us, right now, we have a lot of free weekends and we have a tremendous response to those, they’re really successful. Right now that’s the state we’re in, and we haven’t given serious thought to putting Overwatch free-to-play at this time.”
So far Blizzard has yet to introduce a trial/starter’s edition of the game, which will let players try before they buy. Instead the company has largely resorted to launching free weekend events that lets anyone play the game for free over the course of a weekend to help them decide.
Filed in . Read more about Blizzard, Blizzcon, Blizzcon 2018 and Overwatch.