Evolve is getting a second season pass

A new Evolve 'Hunting Season' is about to get underway, as 2K Games announced today that four new Hunters and a new Monster are coming to the game, beginning with the Assault class bruiser Lennox. Lennox will be the first Hunter in Evolve to bring a melee attack to the party, thanks to the Plasma Lance that's part of her "Thunderchild" mechanized suit. She also packs a hard-hitting Autocannon and a Thunder Strike attack, for those less up-close-and-personal moments.

Unfortunately, the new Hunting Season brings with it a new Hunting Season pass. 2K hasn't announced pricing but the original season pass, which I suppose we should now refer to as the Hunting Season 1 pass, carries a regular, not insubstantial price of $25. Worse, the Season 2 content won't all be released at the same time: Lennox comes out on June 23, but the rest of the characters have to wait for indeterminate points "prior to the end of Take-Two Interactive, Inc.'s fiscal year on March 31, 2016."

That's more than nine months away, and while it's always nice to have new stuff to look forward to, I'm not entirely confident that anyone will be bothering with Evolve in nine months. Steam Charts indicates that its 30-day average player count is just north of 600; that's down by more than 100 over the past 30 days and doesn't put it anywhere close to the top 99 on Steam, which bottoms out with the 2013 edition of Tomb Raider, currently being played by around 2500 people. That's not to say that Evolve is a bad game, but numbers like that—especially for something that's still selling for $60/£35—really don't inspire great confidence in its longevity.

Update: The story originally indicated that Hunting Season 2 required a purchase of the season pass, but the new characters will also be offered for purchase individually.

Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.