Outpost Games sent round a mailer this week announcing that SOS Battle Royale is now “free to play forever,” thanks to its latest patch, content update 4, which adds “a ton of new weapons, loads of new outfits, leaderboards, and a Season Pass through which you can earn great rewards.” Sounds nice, right?
Well, maybe take a jaunt over to Steam, where the game’s recent reviews have sunk to “overwhelmingly negative.” You’ll recall that the original idea behind the game was to toss 16 players into a map and have them play a 30-minute match to find a relic and escape in a helicopter, with up to three winners per match and the chance to coordinate via voice chat. There were plenty of survival mechanics along the way, including making your own weapons and traps to survive as the audience cheered you on a la Running Man.
The problem was that back in May, the studio decided to gut the reality TV show-themed survival game it had and turn it into Yet Another Battle Royale Clone, stripping all of its survival and crafting mechanics from the core module and relegating them to a “classic” mode. Beta testers, especially those who’d paid for the game, were livid.
But the recent spike of angry reviews demanding refunds puts even the May batch to shame, as apparently Outpost is now eliminating that classic mode altogether.
Technically the game’s still in early access, and you know the rules for buying games in early access, but still.
