2023-07-07 21:46:47
In the battle royale Hell: Bladepoint, up to sixty players compete on an island in battles inspired by martial arts. Developed by Chinese 24 Entertainment and published by NetEase Games, the game made its PC debut in the summer of 2021, before being ported to Xbox Series X/S and then to Xbox One the following year. His conquest of consoles continues since Naraka: Bladepoint should arrive on PS5 this July 13, but that’s not all: on this occasion, it will also go free-to-play.
By free-to-play, we mean that it will no longer be necessary to pay its selling price (currently 20 euros) to download it, but the title already did not include a subscription. On the other hand, the microtransactions already present in the game will be maintained and should continue to provide a regular source of income for the publisher. Beyond the barrier to entry which is about to be removed, this is not therefore a total change of economic model.
It is surprising that this move to free comes at the very moment when Hell: Bladepoint lands on a new platform, which logically should have allowed it to garner new sales, but it makes sense if the statistics show that the bulk of the revenue comes from microtransactions. In addition, players of the free version will see their progress slowed down, and can cancel this penalty by switching to a paid version.
We can also see the desire to revive the declining popularity of the game. Indeed, despite satisfactory sales (twenty million players are mentioned), Hell: Bladepoint received an influx of negative reviews on Steam from November 2022. Mainly due to: inequalities observed with Chinese players for ping reasons (servers not being locked by region), poor optimization on PC as well as the supposed presence of many bots.
On the PC version, players were also concerned about having to deactivate certain security options in their operating system to be able to launch the game. This is a requirement of certain multiplayer games in order to be able to install a invasive anti-cheat software. The process, which exposes to security vulnerabilities and potential nebulous exploitation of data, legitimately has something to cool users and some have therefore refused.
The result does not forgive: Hell: Bladepoint finds itself today with “average” recent ratings on Steam, and only retains an overall “somewhat positive” rating because a period determined as “off-topic” was excluded from the review score (although it is possible in their preferences to decide to take it into account anyway). We therefore suspect that the publisher is trying to save the furniture in the face of this collapse in its rating.
Naraka: Bladepoint saw an influx of negative ratings on Steam starting in late November 2022.
Will this release on PS5 be an opportunity to raise the bar? In any case, it will arrive with some in-game goodies, and more for PlayStation Store subscribers. In addition, it will be quickly followed by the arrival of a new heroine, since from August 9 the nine-tailed vixen Tessa will join the ranks of the sixteen characters already playable. The latest addition to this list was Zai, who entered the arena on June 1.
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