Hunt: Showdown Developer Discusses Why Monetization Is Necessary For Sustainability

The inception of battle royale titles and multiplayer shooters have resulted in saturated and redundant elements in most multiplayer games. Game mechanics and ideas end up being amalgamated into each other without much innovation. This disparity is only expected to shrink thinner with more games flooding the market.

The gaming industry warmly welcomes video games that crave their own unique mechanics and innovations in already established genres. The unique cowboy PVPVE first-person shooter, Hunt: Showdown, is a great instance. Borrowing concepts from battle royale and FPS shooters, Hunt: Showdown provides a visionary venture where the player is both the hunter and the hunted.

If you are unfamiliar, teams are dropped onto a swamp-infested map where you must work together to track down monsters while preserving your gear and, most importantly, your life. Once you track and hunt the monster, you get the bounty and suddenly become the target of other teams. Escape the map while watching your back to ensure it does not end up stabbed with your eyes succumbing to darkness.

Hunt: Showdown is a work of art, but it has struggled to keep the economy afloat. The publishing manager from Crytek, Hans, appeared in an interview on the official Hunt: Showdown Youtube channel. He discussed the particulars of monetization changes, giving insight into why monetization is essential for the project to bloom for longevity.

The discussion between social media manager Bence Hamos and publishing manager Hans clarifies the recent monetization changes made last year and their struggle to ensure Crytek strikes a balance between improvement of the economy and happiness of the player base. 

When Hans was questioned about the last year’s monetization changes, such as bloodbond prices, in-game pop-up messages, etc., he replied, “For any game, you can only sell a finite number of copies so before it would become an unstable revenue source  we had to move away from this reliance, and make sure we got a better revenue stream from our DLC and bloodbond items.” 

Hans elaborated that Hunt: Showdown was supported by many free updates, and they want to tread down the same road for years. Hans continued to elaborate, “We simply know from any game that eventually this source becomes less. If we don’t do that, we, at some point, can’t support Hunt anymore. Last year we formed an extensive data review surrounding our economy’s monetization and revenue. Too  many bloodbonds were being pumped into the economy.”

Moreover, Hans said that bloodbond was the lowest source of income to sustain Hunt: Showdown. Changes to monetization were made to ensure that Hunt: Showdown’s future updates stay free. Hans stated, “it’s a steady source of revenue that supports us in our ability to release free content updates and give the game, keep the game going.”

Hans also raised points low revenue generated by bloodbond, saying that bloodbond were made accessible on purpose in the past and discussed its consequences. Hans cited, “we did this on purpose; we want to give people incentives to look into legendary items and to play for that, but it came to the point that by far the majority of bloodbonds in the economy were given away, and only a very small percentage was being sold.”

The publishing manager also explained that the introduction of new items in Hunt: Showdown sometimes resulted in losses, “on average for every 100 bloodbonds that we gave away; we sold only ten bloodbonds in some cases that even meant that for some of the items we released we were losing money of making money.” Hans also cited that sustainability is necessary for every title, “So obviously sustainability is super important for every game out there.”

Crytek made the monetization changes to curb the aforementioned issues. They had also planned to introduce new in-game money but deemed that too extreme and risky. Crytek decided to make small monetization changes to Hunt: Showdown instead. The method received minor backlash as the community accepted the generous changes.

It was an essential move to enhance the economy in Hunt: Showdown and ensure that title continues to receive free content in the future. The Youtube video also discusses the future plans for the alluring game, events, and bundle strategy changes.

Are you content with Hunt: Showdown’s monetization changes? Do let us know your opinions in the comments below.

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