GDC Report: LawBreakers Ditches Free-to-Play, Changes Art Style

It seems like Cliff Bleszinski may agree with Jason Winter's assessment of the future of free-to-play games. Today at GDC Boss Key Studios, the team behind the previously announced free-to-play title LawBreakers, made a few big announcements...the most notable being that the game would no longer be free-to-play. While an official price has yet to be revealed, a "less than $60" tagline was revealed.

“As the game continued to take shape, we realized free-to-play wasn’t the right fit for what we’re building,” said Cliff Bleszinski of Gears of War fame. “LawBreakers is a competitive game at heart and that means balance is a big priority to me, my team, and our community. Using a digital premium model helps ensure an even playing field by giving fans access to every available role without any barriers.”

While the officially released announcement is very politically correct, Polygon reports that the presentation wasn't exactly "glowing" about the free-to-play model as a whole. "We did a lot of discussions and even more research. There are some core free-to-play games that do well, but for us, we didn’t want to go down the well of players buying 'energy' or other sleazy things," Bleszinski said. "A lot of core gamers have a negative reaction when they hear free-to-play because they think they’ll get ripped off." The free-to-play community having "rampant negativity" was also spoken to.

While this marks the end of our LawBreakers coverage here on MMOBomb, those looking forward to the game should know that the art style has been overhauled and that the title will initially release exclusively on Steam. You can add it to your wishlist now.