[Update] Dark And Light Will Be Buy-To-Play In North America And Europe
Update: In the time since this article was posted, Snail Games released a statement via Facebook confirming that the mention of Dark and Light being "a p2p game" was, in fact, a miscommunication. Dark and Light will be a buy-to-play title, but there will be no subscription.
It was previously announced that Snail Games might pursue a buy-to-play business model for Dark and Light, as well as Age of Wushu 2. At the time, it was unconfirmed. Yesterday, however, a Reddit user posted a screenshot of Snail Games Associate Producer Horsejoke confirming that the game would be buy-to-play in a Discord message.
Furthermore, in a now-removed comment on the official Facebook page, it was stated that the game will be pay-to-play. 2p managed to capture a screenshot before it was removed, which you can see below.
2p also notes that Snail Games is aiming to launch a Beta in late October or early November and that an official website should be ready by the end of this month.
Matt's Take:
It's quite interesting to see that Snail Games might be going the box fee plus subscription route for Dark and Light in the West. Subscription games are widely recognized as being on the decline and all of their games up until now have been free-to-play, albeit Age of Wushu offers an optional subscription. With the focus on PvP and other player interactions, this may very well be the way to go, but it remains to be seen if the game can drum up enough hype to be successful, should it, in fact, opt for such a high barrier to entry. For the time being, I'm skeptical about whether the confirmation of a subscription model was intentional, as the comment was removed. Until there is further confirmation, we should all keep in mind that there may have been a miscommunication involving the terms "buy-to-play" and "pay-to-play."
