Originally planned to be free-to-play, the upcoming co-op house-builder and designer sim Hometopia will now cost $19.99 during the Early Access period beginning Sept 27th.
In apology, a 15% launch discount was announced alongside the above.
If they’d cut MTX, it would be a welcome change.
That said, Unity’s new model encourages MTX in some ways, as new buys incur new Runtime costs, while MTX purchases from existing customers don’t. If anything, this encourages a model where there needs to be an upfront cost to cover the Unity tax, and further in-game purchases to make actual money.
I agree, Unity’s aggressive monetisation encourages devs/publishers to do the same. Tbf, the guy behind it all has been quoted saying that anyone who doesn’t aggressively monetise their game is an idiot…
Going from free to play to $20 is a big jump, when games like Minecraft (on Android), and Stardew Valley cost under £7.
It’s a huge jump. Difficult to compare it to a game on another platform though.
You can catch stardew on sale on steam at a similar price point. It’s only $15, US, normally.
Thought a discussion on this might be interesting. Unity may be signing their death but the decisions will have an impact on lots of studios and games in the meantime.
Not really sure what to do with this particular one myself. I’ve been really looking forward to Hometopia but this is a difficult pill to swallow for a game that proudly stated it would “always be free-to-play”.
