The Kickstarter-funded arena shooter Diabotical is going to be moving to the Epic Games Store — and it's launching as a free-to-play title. As a consequence of the Diabotical Epic Games Store launch, the Kickstarter backers are being offered a refund.
What is Diabotical, anyways? Well, you can get a pretty good idea by checking out its Kickstarter trailer:
In short, it's an old-school arena shooter featuring chonky robots with silly paint jobs. The game raised £168,314 of a £110,000 goal a few years back, but The GD Studio failed to get it out by the promised release date.
The devs haven't stopped working, though! Unfortunately, they've now made the announcement of the Diabotical Epic Games Store release in a backer update.
Diabotical will be going to the Epic Games Store and will be free-to-play.
Kickstarter backers who wish to receive a refund will be refunded since the game has not been delivered on time and since the game will now be exclusively on the Epic Games Store.
The backer update also detailed why the developers have made the decision, although it seems to have done little to assuage an awful lot of scorn that they're getting in the comments.
Epic Games has funded the studio which is what will allow the game to be released free-to-play, for the servers to scale for free-to-play, for the team to keep working on the game for at least 2 years after release, to have some funds for the esports scene, and some help in promoting the game. Things that we think will lead to a better game than it would have been without Epic's support, and we think it will lead to a bigger community which will be better for the game's matchmaking, content and longevity. The studio remains in control of the game.
The Future of the Diabotical Epic Games Store Release
Now that Epic Games is backing Diabotical, what's in store for this game's future?
To start, a testing period will be kicking off on the weekends of Q1 2020, likely starting in February. The game will be made available to those Kickstarter backers who decide to stay on board with the campaign and they'll have "limited modes and features".
From there, the developers aim to properly launch the Diabotical Epic Games Store version as a free-to-play title sometime around GDC 2020 — that's March 16–20, 2020.
That won't be the end of development, though! $250,000 has been set aside for esports, so I guess we'll be seeing if an arena shooter can cut it in the modern Battle Royale market. Here's hoping that they can pull it off.
What do you think of Diabotical moving to the Epic Games Store? Do you think the developers made the right move? Let us know in the comments below!
