The Culling Goes Back To Its Day One Roots, Relaunches Today As Free-To-Play

The Culling's been through a lot. Its player based was ... well, "culled" ... following a series of questionable moves by developer Xaviant Games, including the release of the utterly panned The Culling 2. That led the team to abandon that project two months ago while going back to the original Culling game, with plans to revert it back to its original form and relaunch as a free-to-play title.

That plan finally comes to fruition today, as The Culling: Origins is now fully free-to-play. "Admitting failure and choosing a path forward wasn’t easy" reads the dev blog on the launch, which also talks about the "stunning new art direction" and other new features in the game, such as leaderboards, new weapons, skill-based matchmaking, and voice chat.

As far as monetization goes, you can buy premium cosmetics (clothing, weapon skins, taunts, victory celebrations, and Culling Cards) with premium currency via paid DLC. You can also earn XP in-game that nets you a Culling Crate, a.k.a. loot box, whenever you level up. Those will net you cosmetics or credits, which you can use to buy cosmetics, and will occasionally drop real-money currency in the form of Tokens, which can be used to buy premium items.

Check out The Culling on Steam for more information on the game.