The free-to-play giant robot shooterMecha Breakhas been an instant hit on Steam,nearing almost 100,000 concurrent playersjust hours after its release on the platform.
Mecha Break’s most recent demo peakedat over 300,000 players, so the success of Amazing Seasun Games' latest offering isn’t entirely unexpected.
The game already offers a substantial selection of modes, including a 3v3 player-versus-player (PvP) mode, a more complex 6v6 mode, and a player-versus-player-versus-environment (PvPvE) extraction shooter-style mode.
These early numbers are impressive and showcase the appetite among players to hop into a giant robot in order to blast other giant robots with friends. For comparison, Armored Core 6, a completely different type of mecha game,peaked at over 150,000 players on Steam.
Mecha Break, being free-to-play and multiplayer, has the opportunity to eclipse those numbers. However, there’s an elephant in the room with Mecha Break that needs to be addressed.
“Micro” Transactions
Something very apparent as soon as you launch Mecha Break isthe aggressive monetisation of the free-to-play title. There’s an absurd amount of cosmetics already available, as you may customise both your mecha and your pilot.
You can control your pilot during intermission periods, offering another avenue for customisation.
In gaming, no microtransaction goes unnoticed, and this is reflected inMecha Break’s user reviews, which currently sit at ‘Mixed’ on Steam. As you may have gleaned, the majority of these negative reviews concern the game’s monetisation.
“I played the game before release and loved it,“writes Qzacidman, a reviewer. “I was excited to play it until I was greeted with by the insane microtransactions and an auction house you can sell said microtransactions on. $47.99 for a pilot and a mech? You can straight up pay money to extract items from mashmak (the extraction mode). Who thought this was a good idea? The game had the potential to be the next big thing but now I feel dirty playing it…”
While a lot of players find aggressive monetisation off-putting, there are always players attracted to these money-laden grinds. Mecha Break will be hoping to attract more of the latter than the former.
