Atlas Reactor Going "Fully Free To Play," Will Let Players Earn Freelancers

Jason Winter
By Jason Winter, News Editor Posted:
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atlas reactor

CORRECTION: A previous version of this article stated that Atlas Reactor only had about 50,000 owners on Steam, according to Steam Spy. Those were actually the stats of the Atlas Reactor VR character viewer, not the game itself, which Steam Spy reports as having about 500,000 owners as of Jan. 23. The information has been corrected in the article.

Atlas Reactor was free-to-play. Then it was buy-to-play. Then it was buy-to-play with a not-great free-to-play option. And later this month, it will be "fully free-to-play," according to Executive Producer Peter Ju. This game has more final forms than a Dragon Ball Z character.

According to Ju's producer's letter on the Atlas Reactor website, the Season 2 patch on Jan. 17 will make it possible for players to earn freelancers through gameplay. You can still pay the full purchase price, starting at $29.99, to gain access to all freelancers, and players who purchase the game before Jan. 17 will get "a special thank-you package." Season 2 also adds a new freelancer, new rewards, and a new game mode that will be open to both paid and free players.

Ju says that being able to earn freelancers was players' "number one request post-launch," and it's something I considered a deal-breaker in my initial review of the game's F2P potential. I also groused about the weird time gate on being able to open reward boxes, which Trion Worlds also addressed shortly after launch.

So I have to give Trion positive points for realizing it had poor systems in place and correcting them. Of course, this F2P iteration is basically the game Trion had during beta and felt the need to twist in all sorts of different directions, so maybe it should have just left well enough alone from the start.

Then again, these changes might be a matter of necessity. According to Steam Spy, Atlas Reactor only has about 500,000 owners (with very little change since the F2P move has been announced). By comparison, Devilian has around 400,000, and all other Trion Worlds games number in the millions. Obviously, Steam doesn't cover everything, since you can download Trion's games via its own launcher, and Atlas Reactor hasn't been out for as long as the other games, but it's not exactly lighting the world on fire.

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In this article: Trion Worlds, Atlas Reactor.

About the Author

Jason Winter
Jason Winter, News Editor

Jason Winter is a veteran gaming journalist, he brings a wide range of experience to MMOBomb, including two years with Beckett Media where he served as the editor of the leading gaming magazine Massive Online Gamer. He has also written professionally for several gaming websites.

More Stories by Jason Winter

Discussion (12)

Sighs 7 years ago
F2P MMO milking at it's finest.

Subpar writers per usual 7 years ago
(After the change to F2P->B2P) Saying they where Free-2-Play is ignorant. They where pretty open with the fact that it was buy-2-play with a trial. Whetever that was good or not, that is another question.

Deathloche 7 years ago
They should have done this from the beginning

View 1 reply
asdf 7 years ago
Heh..knew they were gonna milk the stupid ones then going f2p.
A more manner comment: It's a nice game,maybe now more people will join.

Risea 7 years ago
Do a good game with a good F2P model i have played the beta and find the game amazing, then do everything wrong before even releasing the game now i just have 0 interest in playing this again, Trion Worlds is just full of retardeds executives

View 2 replies
Hellsworth 7 years ago
You should be able to sue companies for moves like these.... Either you are B2P and you don't need a cash shop or you have a cash shop and you're F2P. These things are just uphauling and the income generated feels something like "Stealing candy from babies!", either that OR they should warn people "Guys, 1st 3 months we're B2P with Cash Shop and we are going F2P on the !", because this way I'm sure some people will feel they've been conned and it also reveals how the developers and publishers look at their player base! So, next comes the famous "Trion is shit!" which is long due in these matters at any time!

Urs00 7 years ago
I said here already and will say it again, their b2p move was just to take advantage of the b2p trend that was happening at that time (and apparently is dying already),many companies decided to take advantage of the "p2w sentiment" that was happening in the west to sell a b2p with the same f2p cash shop, claiming b2p cash shop is not abusive
And I also said that all those "b2p" games would be b2p for a couple of months and transition back to f2p, because b2p is profitable only at the beginning, when people see what the actual game is and the sales drop, the "f2p transition" happens
People are finally realizing this, that all those b2p are coming with the same cash shop, the trend is already dying and now they need to cut their losses
Trion published f2p before this game, they know how to do cosmetics and non-p2w consumables, they know those things sell... and they knew this was a niche game, they deserve no praise for this move, only an "I told you so"

View 2 replies

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