In a press release earlier today, Stunlock Studios announced that Free-to-Play for Battlerite would come in “late 2017”, much later than the early-December rumors that were in circulation. Previously on the game's Steam store page, a switch to F2P was projected for the first quarter of 2017.

Stunlock stated that there are several things they “want to improve before a Free-To-Play release”. The immediate future holds a ranking system rework as well as a plethora of new cosmetics, but there are still several items that will take the bulk of 2017 to flesh out.

Plans are in motion to revamp a lot of the UI, including quests, profiles, ranking pages, and improvements to the Odeum (Battlerite’s in-game archive for sharing replays). In addition, many new skins, large-scale arenas, and item types are also in the works. To handle this immense output, they are also in the process of expanding the team.

The immediate reaction from the community has been one of concern, however. Concurrent player numbers are already falling off rapidly; even off the back of a successful Free Weekend promo, it’s unclear whether Battlerite can retain its player base until late next year. Legacy Bloodline Champion players remember the slow depreciation of Battlerite’s predecessor and are terrified at the prospect of seeing the same happen again.

But their fear may be just that - fear. Stunlock Studios has shown a keen ability for marketing so far with Battlerite, from the Closed Beta mass invites to the constant giveaways to the multiple free weekends. In fact, during the latest free weekend, Battlerite topped Steam charts as the “#1 best selling” game. There’s no reason to suspect that they haven’t carefully calculated their risks in delaying F2P and the mass injection of new blood for over a year.

The studio seems determined to first polish the game and fill it with enough content to keep free users entertained. As it stands right now, the game is rather devoid of cosmetics, social aspects, unique arenas, etc., and would likely not retain F2P players very well anyway.

It’s a race against the clock, but SLS still has plenty of flexibility. These are still just early stage plans that can change at any time. Nothing is set in stone quite yet.