Gaming🎮 How do you keep a free-to-play game alive? We asked one of the most popular battle royales on Steam, that boasts over 40 million players

[Royal_Lizard]

The landscape of free-to-play games is competitive - literally. From MOBAs, Hero Shooters and massive gacha RPGs, to Battle Royales and whatever Fall Guys is, there’s no shortage of ways to scratch that PvP itch with no upfront investment outside of your time (and the power to run your console, and the money to buy your TV, and to buy Pickled Onion Monster Munch to snack on…)

With such a crowded landscape, that only gets busier as more new releases add to the pile every month, successful F2P games need to strike a delicate balance to stand out and stay on top. But when something’s “free”, it’s another task entirely to make that something worthwhile, particularly in the long term. So I wanted to find out some of what goes into keeping a free-to-play game relevant and thriving over multiple years.

Naraka: Bladepoint is a game I’ve been interested in for a while, with a fervid fanbase of hundreds of thousands of global players every day on Steam alone. A big portion of its player base is in China, which I found out when I visited the Naraka J Cup World Championships last year to try and understand its appeal more, but its developer, 24 Entertainment, definitely has designs on expanding its reach in different territories too.

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