It was a big day for jelly bean battle royale Fall Guys. Mediatonic announced the pandemic-era hit would go free-to-play, land on Xbox and Switch next month, and start its seasonal calendar over from scratch again. It’s effectively going the Rocket League route, but three years ahead of schedule.
Here’s a rundown of what Mediatonic announced during Monday’s livestream:
- Fall Guys goes free-to-play on June 21
- It will come to Switch, Xbox, and Epic Games Store the same day
- A new PS5 version will feature “faster load times and other performance upgrades”
- There will be a new 100-level season pass
- Anyone who already bought the game will get the Legacy Pack including Regal, Dwarf, Veggie Dog, and other cosmetics.
- There will be full cross-platform play and cross-progression on all platforms
- The game is leaving Steam
That last part is disappointing for Steam users but not surprising after Epic Games acquired Mediatonic in March 2021. While current owners can still play Steam and will get future updates, the studio confirmed that new players on PC will only be able to access the game through the Epic Games Store. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s the same exact trajectory Rocket League followed.
Psyonix’s car soccer game launched for free on PS4 through PlayStation Plus in 2015. It arrived on Xbox and Switch in the years that followed. Epic Games acquired it and the studio in 2019. A year later, Rocket League went free-to-play and ditched Steam. It even rebooted its seasonal calendar to mark the occasion.
The Fortnite-ification of Rocket League also brought with it a big resurgence in active players, and it seems like that’s a big part of the current push with Fall Guys. The former saw its Steam concurrent players double to 140,000 when it went free-to-play, even though it was no longer for sale on that platform. While Fall Guys had a big summer debut in 2020 in the early days of the global pandemic, interest and players have dropped off with each subsequent season, at least on Steam.
To capitalise on the coming influx of new players, Fall Guys’ next season will be called Free For All, featuring new levels, costumes, and challenges. It will also have a new premium currency called Showbucks, because no free-to-play transformation is complete without an added layer of microtransactions.
