Why Fall Guys Free For All Is A Late Attempt At Resurrection

Thought you had played it all? Mediatonic recently made the headlines at its Live Announcement event on May 16th; the major announcement being that its major hit, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, is going free-for-all from June 21st. Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is back with a bang, or is it?

When it comes to scoring an overnight fortune, Mediatonic snagged the jackpot back in August 2020 when it launched its own take on a Battle Royale, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, in which 60 players compete against each other to be the last bean standing.

However, there’s a twist. Unlike popular action-Battle Royale games like PUBG, Call of Duty: Warzone, and Fortnite, there are no weapons, but instead, a bunch of game modes and obstacle courses to choose from. Right from the beginning, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout took the world by storm, quite literally when content creators started playing it and the popularity of the game rose from a couple of hundred downloads to over a million in just a week.

It became an instant hit in the community as at that time, COVID-19 was on the hike all around the world and people were locked up in their homes, trying random things to make their time interesting; that’s when the game took off.

The colorful beans were so well received by the audience that everyone, ranging from the top content creators to average players, was playing it. Unfortunately, the publicity surrounding Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout was short-lived; the ironic reason being the falling player count.

Right after the fruitful first couple of months since the release of Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, the average monthly players started to decline drastically for the next two months. The rise and fall of the game are one of a kind, considering the fact that it managed to reach its all-time high player count and fall to 13.2% of the peak concurrent players just within the first four months.

As of recent, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout is set to go free-for-all, as Fall Guys Free For All, from June 21st across multiple platforms; Epic Games Store, Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo. Along with that, it will also be supporting cross-platform gameplay extensively.

It’s pretty clear that this is an attempt by Mediatonic to try and revive the game back to its glory. This time, it has targeted a vast market and heavily advertised by partnering with goliaths like Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo to create awareness and publicity of this recent decision.

We believe that Mediatonic should have played the “Free For All” card back when the game’s immediate downfall was still imminent. With that being said, it took the company two whole years to come to this conclusion.

If we take a closer look, Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout has lost a huge chunk of players that may not return when the game goes free-to-play. Other than that, some players might not be satisfied with the decision of the game going free-to-play, since they paid for the game. Although, it’s worth mentioning that Mediatonic has promised that such players will be gifted a Legacy Pack.

Regardless, there’s a high chance that making the game free-to-play won’t bring back the good ol’ crowded lobbies that it once had back in its first month, or even near that. Even if Mediatonic somehow manages to pull it off, the resurrection of Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout will likely be momentary and won’t last long, more or less the same as it happened after the first two months of its release.

One example of such a scenario is Among Us, back when the game was made free for a specific time on Epic Games Store in May 2021. Sure, the player count of Among Us crossed two million but it has significantly reduced again.

In conclusion, while Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout going free-to-play might be remarkable news for many players, the demise of the game is inevitable. As such, Mediatonic advertising the game as “Free For All” is certainly a late attempt at resurrecting the game, which is likely to fail, as was the case with Among Us.