Battleborn getting a free trial but not going free to play

There was a little confusion last night over rumours that Gearbox’s hero shooter Battleborn would be going free to play. The story was originally leaked by Kotaku who had received information from a developer at Gearbox that the title would be receiving some form of free “trial version” in the future.

As is the way with gaming rumours, the story spun out of control and many just took the title at face value – that Battleborn, as a whole, was going free to play. Gearbox Software head, Randy Pitchford, quickly jumped on the rumours declaring them false but did confirm that the game has “some unannounced plans to do a trial version”.

Whatever the circumstances of the leak, the trial version of the game won’t be available for “a few months” as the team still do not have a plan of how exactly it will proceed. We do know however that the trial will not be timed. Because of that, we can most likely assume that the trial will be a “lesser” form of the game itself with possible heroes, modes or missions locked-off until the full, retail version is bought.

2K did earlier confirm that Battleborn had fallen extremely short of expectations: “While the game launched to solid reviews, its performance in the market has been below our expectations” but that they would continue to support it and “to drive engagement and recurrent consumer spending on the title through add-on content and virtual currency.”