Having helped establish the Battle Royale genre, H1Z1 is now going from up-front purchase to a free-to-play model just a week after launch. First building on the popularity of survival game DayZ, and then a progenitor of the Battle Royale genre currently being dominated by Fortnite and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, H1Z1 is now making the transition from paid retail game to free-to-play. Announced in 2014, H1Z1 capitalised on enthusiasm for another title, DayZ, blending zombie apocalypse survival with elements of military simulation. Made available as an in-development title in 2015, it helped drive the growth of a subsequent genre, Battle Royale, in which scores of players face off against each other in a scramble to survive. Though first proposed as free-to-play with paid access only during that public development phase, by February 2016 Daybreak had rejected the free model – "at this time, we do not have any plans to make [H1Z1] Free-to-Play" it wrote.

Source: The Star March 09, 2018 11:37 UTC