Dust 514, the first-person shooter spinoff from PC MMO EVE Online, is free-to-play. Sort of.
It’s been revealed that the PS3 game won’t actually be free to download, as players will have to stump up a “cover charge” of $10-20 (the final price hasn’t been decided) just to get access to the game, which will then be “refunded” to the player in the form of in-game credits.
Um. If you have to pay money to download a game, it’s not free-to-play. Doesn’t matter how it’s framed. It’s $10-20 to play. Not really sure why it couldn’t have been advertised as such in the first place!
The “good” news to come of this is that CCP’s Hilmar Veigar PĂ©tursson says “We might go fully free-to-play down the line, but in the beginning we have a cover charge just to manage the initial launch of it.”
Typical free-to-play games are free to download and try out, and are then supported when players purchase in-game items or perks.
UPDATE – Seems this was announced back at E3 and lost amongst the maelstrom. Sorry for being so mean!
DUST 514 requires “cover charge” from PS3 players [GI.biz, reg required]
