Size Five Games' Gun Monkeys launched late last month, and while the simian online deathmatch has been getting good reviews, and has managed to recoup its development costs, there aren't too many people actually playing it . Rather than letting the userbase dwindle into nothing, like a lot of multiplayer-only games, Size Five have taken the bold step of reducing the price of the game, from $10 to $5.99/£3.99, throwing in an extra copy for good measure. Dan Marshall explained the decision on the website , stressing that "it's something I'm doing extremely reluctantly", and that "it's just not fair on the people who are playing and enjoying the game that they're struggling to find people to play".
"You have to sell HYPER-LOTS of copies in order for the servers to have anyone in them," Marshall elaborates in the blog post, "triply so if you're trying to get a game at 4am. This is a fact I now know that I didn't really appreciate before."
"If you're a loyal Gun Monkeys player, hopefully you understand this change is all to help keep those servers busy. It's something I'm doing *extremely* reluctantly, because I don't want to devalue the game, I 100% think it's worth $10. But I've come to the conclusion that the game's multiplayer-only concept is a tough sell, so a pricing change is a necessary evil. It's just not fair on the people who are playing and enjoying the game that they're struggling to find people to play, so I'm doing everything in my power to remedy that."
In an interview with Polygon , Marshall says of multiplayer-only games that “they're a ballache to make, they're a ballache to test, and it turns out they're a ballache to sell,” so I'd imagine Size Five will stick to single-player games in the future. (They're still working on The Swindle, before you ask.)
If you already own Gun Monkeys, you should find your free copy ready and waiting in your inbox/inventory.
Thanks to VG247 .
