Q-Games title The Tomorrow Children didn’t catch on like Sony was hoping it would during its initial release in 2016, for the PlayStation 4. The free-to-play town-building game with a soviet union aesthetic failed to find an audience leading to Sony shutting down its servers a little over a year later.
It was announced in 2021 that Q-Games had regained the rights to the game from Sony with plans to relaunch the title on their terms. However, this time around Q-Games will be changing up the formula to their title, starting with the fact that it will no longer be free-to-play.
Speaking with gameindustry.biz, Q-Games founder Dylan Cuthbert spoke about this change, giving the reason for the change:
It means the game can be balanced a lot better, because we don’t have to try and squeeze a bit of money out of the player at every opportunity. We can just actually build the game properly, based on normal – more normal, I suppose – progression methods.
He then went on to state:
I really think the [problem] was basically just the free-to-play thing. I think people, especially at that time, didn’t like microtransactions in general. At the time as well, I saw many comments saying, ‘If this game was just a one-time purchase, I’d buy it.’ Loads of people said that.
Initial reviews did suggest that the Microtransactions present in the game, something that was viewed as ironic given the story heavily relies on the theme of joyless labor. It remains to be seen if this change will give the team room to create a more meaningful experience, but it does seem like a step in the right direction.
Another major change that will be coming to the game is a switch to Peer 2 Peer, in order to save money on servers. Q-Games aims to release their second debut sometime near the end of 2022, with the game coming to PlayStation 4 initially, though PlayStation 5 players will most likely have access.
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