So the competitive multiplayer in Battleborn is now free to play getting a free unlimited trial. Characters will be on a weekly rotation, but otherwise, you get to play the game as much as you want for free. One might even say that it's free to play, but Gearbox wouldn't be that one.

Seeing as much of the game will now be free, it will be interesting to see how much Gearbox decides to charge for the full game, now that the title is more than six months old, and has to compete with other hero shooters, such Overwatch, Paladins, Paragon, and soon LawBrakers.

So you can now play Battleborn for free. The question is, will you?

[Edit] Why isn't Gearbox using the term free to play? Read post #40 for a likely explanation.

Oh, gearbox.

I own Battleborn and haven't played it since the day I bought it. It's not what I want from a game - the single player content feels like a cooperative shooter you can play alone but shouldn't. I'll be excited as hell to see what Borderlands 3 is, but nothing's getting me interested in this.

I'm sure the 10 people who are still playing it won't really care what they call it, since they're already willingly playing Battleborn.

free to hobby

1. Should have been F2P from the start.
2. Not calling F2P now is even stupider, regardless of how it's chopped up. Just call it what it essentially is. I feel like there's going to be a large chunk of people who see "Free Trial" and go nah, I'm good.

I'm one of the few people who didn't actually hate this game. I mean, the humor was largely shit, but I had fun in the open beta. I think releasing so close to Overwatch didn't do this game any favors, but Gearbox's handling of this game is, at best, questionable.

I played this game in beta,it was not great.

I forgot Battleborn even existed till I saw a copy of it for like $10 at Walmart the other day.

Here's a reason not to make a mutliplayer only game, if it fails, then you're shackled to it until you recoup costs. I would bet that most of Gearbox want to sweep the game under the rug and make Borderlands 3 right now instead.

Wow, even the comments section on the official Gearbox You Tube channel is nothing but people shitting on this game.

I'll say this, the beta for it was better than the recent beta for Raiders of the Broken Planet, and I actually really like Mercury Steam, but oooph.. they have a ways to go.

Battleborn was almost free already on the PSN store whenever I checked out sales, like literally around $5-10, so free to play isn't that crazy.

EDIT: Also to not be entirely shitty, I always thought the character designs in Battleborn were really great, and for the most part enjoyed them more than the character in Overwatch, but the gameplay just wasn't there.

But... it's just not fun. D:

Welp any chance they had of resurrecting the game just died.

Man just suck it up and call what it is and do it right. There's no shame in f2p Gearbox, the most successful games in existence today are f2p.

Even that video was depressing, woof.

As we all know, no hobby is free and thus Battleborn must charge to retain it's official Hobby Grade.

When i see 'Free trial, the first thing i think about is a demo / beta test kind of thing. When the free thing is your main gamemode, i feel like you're selling it short with that name.

I doubt that it's going to matter though. I expect a similar situation as Evolve had. People will check it out, get bored and move on.

The most surprising thing about this is that it took so long. Though of course, Gearbox being Gearbox, had to find some way to fuck up even doing this right. That game just had no soul what so ever.

Its better than F2P. Its hobby grade F2P.

I own Overwatch.

No I will never be playing this.

Man, look, Gearbox you made a dud. Just take your licks, walk away from it, and learn from the experience.

@mike: The best part is, according to Steam Charts those are still the best numbers they've seen in months.

I would rather pay 5 bucks and get all the content, and i am not willing to do that either. Beta was bad and it was real ugly on ps4, especially compared to overwatch which had a beta like the next week.

Man, this game could have been really good had they done it right. I guess you could say that about any game but this really could have been something.

They could pay me and I still wouldn't want anything to do with it. Gearbox's style and humor doesn't work any more, I'm not 15.

Yeah, totally agree. I'd say out of all of these new moba-influenced hero brawlers(Paragon,Paladins,Overwatch etc.) that Battleborn beats them all on character design. Especially Overwatch, which has about 2 interesting looking characters, imo.

Does this remind anyone else of Super Monday Night Combat? My friends and I played the shit out of that game, and like Battleborn, it slowly died off and only had a dedicated fanbase of a few hundred in the last few weeks before we quit playing as well. I feel really bad for the people still playing, they must genuinely love the game, but they have so few people to play it with, I know that feeling very well. It especially sucks because Gearbox isn't some small studio that will leave gamebreaking bugs in the game for months like they were in SMNC, at least, I certainly hope so.

Gearbox continues to make me sad. I like Borderlands 1, and by extension want to like the company that made it...but, man, they know how to dig their own grave. Just call it free 2 play. Trying to give yourself an out to say "but at least we didn't have to go free 2 play!" is so sad.

The free-to-play angle of this announcement is not the most interesting aspect to me. There are going to be a significant number of additions being made to Battleborn. It seems like they've put a lot of work into this game since launch, when the responsible thing to do would be to abandon it. The game suffers from a severe lack of focus. Too chaotic and unstructured to compete with a MOBA like Paragon, and not fluid and simple enough to be a match for team shooters like Overwatch or Paladins. None of their upcoming changes address this. The effort they've been putting in adds window dressing to a game with flaws in its foundation.

@random45: Man I loved SMNC and the original MNC as well. They were definitely more popular than Battleborn I think, it's just the developers weren't making enough money to keep supporting it. It's a shame since that game was a classic.

This is just sad... it must be really hard to be those developers and be real proud of your product but have it get crushed by a juggernaut like Overwatch. And then they have to get on camera and try to hype up the <1000 active users post-FTP? As a software engineer myself, I don't envy them.

Agreed. This should have gone free to play a month or so after release. They should have reworked the entire game to incentivize cosmetic loot boxes, and perhaps other gear that adds slight adjustments to characters without being pay to win. They waited far too long.

At one point, the issue would be pay for Overwatch, or play Battleborn for free. Now it's pay for Overwatch, or play Battleborn for free, or play Paladins for free, or play Paragon for free, or pickup Titanfall 2 or Battlefield 1 on sale, or wait a little bit for LawBrakers, or wait a little longer for Destiny 2, etc.

Or PS Plus members can play the six player co-op game, Killing Floor 2, which just became available as a FREE download today.

Really bad timing with this one.

Battleborn isn't a hero shooter it's a action MOBA. Big mistake most people make. Also it's "hobbygrade"

Started downloaded it on Steam. Got about 2mb in and decided to stop it. Won't likely play it if I do download it so it's really just a waste of space.

God damn they better be bringing us some more borderlands. I want an announcement at E3 big shtyle.

I didn't make a mistake.

My point was that it's a shooter with heroes, and it has to compete with other hero-focused shooters. Paragon is also a MOBA, but it's still a shooter with specific characters, or "heroes," instead of classes. The same is true for every game that I listed.

I've played Battleborn, and I am aware of the MOBA elements. Despite that fact, the game's biggest competition is still going to be Overwatch, not Paragon.

i think it kind of sucks for them that they're increasingly closer to being known as That Borderlands Company; i actually sort of rooted for them when they announced this for at least trying to get out of that mold. guess it wasn't enough, though, and a pretty tepid game all things said. gearbox also gets an undue amount of hate i think (though not exactly unwarranted; pitchford and co have made some undeniably bonehead moves). i should try this out just to do them a solid and, hey, maybe i'll like it. but i've got so much to go through now. maybe someday.

i as well look forward to borderlands tres. i hope they find a good way of combining the charm and novelty of the 1st with the crazy systems and loot carrots of the 2nd.

@random45: whenever i look back i laugh when i realize that game was basically a goddamn MOBA. looked sweet and had a good sense of style, but i feel it would be lost entirely in the deluge of indie and not-so-indie shooters nowadays.

@spaceinsomniac: I just think that comparing Overwatch with Battleborne is dumb just because they came out at the same launch window and got the same cartoon art style doesn't mean that the game is the same. Overwatch and TF 2 are in the same bandwagon Battleborn is just a MOBA that's being played in first / third person. But i get your point :D

Also Blizzard did everything in there mind to make this game not succeed. It's like they where afraid that this game would take a way there playerbase witch is just bonkers to think about.

As an update, this now makes perfect sense why Gearbox is refusing to use the term free to play, and that's because apparently they told people that it wouldn't be going free to play. As you might expect, people who have been playing since day one are both relived that they now have some people playing the game again, and livid that they were outright lied to.

Here's an interesting explanation from a day one Battleborn player with over 300 hours played, who goes into all the ups and downs the game has seen. He's not happy about being a founder of a full retail title that was in many ways broken and unplayable at launch.

Yet another reason not to trust Gearbox, I suppose.

@spaceinsomniac: That guy was so upset he started turning into Penn Jillette.

Hah, no kidding.

I see where he's coming from, even if he gets all over-the-top with it . Another weird note on Gearbox's record.

This is the level of excitement you get from a dude who knows his job depends on the success of this transition and his ability to sell it. Working in games must suck to have such little stability and job security.

Also, I wish anything Gearbox did appealed to me. Their comedy style is in your face "LOOK AT HOW FUNNY I AM! HAHA HAHA" and that's just annoying, not funny.

I saw the "trial" advertised on Xbox Live this morning and assumed it was just one of those free weekends or limited time trials they have from time-to-time. I have no interest in this game, even for free, but that's a terrible way to market a transition to free-to-play.

This stuff is just sad. Those poor devs have worked hard to improve a failed game(1600 changes/content additions, omg). I guess they've stayed employed, so that's good.

But there are so few people playing the game, and there never were very many. Seems like management doesn't have the courage to call it. Just get those people working on BL3 already.

This youtuber has a real strong opinion on what it takes for gearbox to earn his 60$, but he forgot to not buy the game at release for 60$.

If people truly care about their purchase being worthwhile, how about stop buying games with the hope that it becomes better. Buy it when you know it's worth your money instead. For some people that's at launch, for others after 3-4 updates.

Yeah that does explain it.

Still the wrong call though. They aren't fooling anybody. Either way they broke their promise. It'd better to be honest with their customers and try to cut a fair deal with the people who paid 60 bucks or whatever,

Agreed. And as Cameron pointed out so nicely not calling it free to play is just going to confuse people.

I would think the same thing if I saw a "trial" version of a game like this. For example, I've specifically decided not to play during Overwatch free weekends, because of the large file size and limited availability. But if Overwatch went free to play, I'd certainly download it then. Some people will see "trial" and think the same thing. "Oh, that's probably a timed or otherwise really limited version of the game."

The way Randy was going on about it on Twitter it first sounded like he had wanted to call it F2P so as to get attention in the F2P sections of the digital storefronts. But then it turns out he had wanted Battleborn to appear as both a retail priced and F2P product and get double the exposure? I don't think it works that way.

Just take the L, Randy, holy shit. The naming of this is actively hurting the chances of this being some grand resurgence of Battleborn. Also, stop tweeting. I get it, there are a lot of assholes on the internet and you feel like it's right to stand your ground but enganging in verbal mudslinging with anyone that happens to draw your attention is not a good look for you and it's not a good look for Gearbox.