EVE Online expands its free-to-play offerings in the wake of studio instability

Good news, EVE Online fans! CCP is pretty happy with how the game’s Alpha clone system has worked out, all things considered. In fact, the studio is so happy with how it’s worked out that it’s giving Alpha clones a wider array of options in the game, starting with a new set of skills that these free players can train. No more faction restrictions, battlecruisers and battleships are now available, and both small and medium Tech II weapons will all be added to the Alpha training repertoire. So everyone get get in on the big space battles.

Those big space battles will be taking place in plain old two-dimensional displays, of course, as the developer recently shut down its VR division (and apparently gutted EVE’s community team – we’ll have a detailed report on that soon). This prompted several developers to chime in and assert that the VR game industry isn’t dead, although the cutting loose of CCP’s heavy investment in the field certainly doesn’t indicate a robust installed base or healthy growth. The developers chiming in do admit that it’s not a field in which there’s lots of money to be made at the moment, although all things considered that alone doesn’t seem to have made the decision for CCP.