Scavengersis a new free-to-play battle royale from Midwinter Entertainment with PvE elements, meaning it is trying to break into an already extremely competitive market. Knowing that, publisher Improbable Worlds decided to open up Early Access forScavengers, but only via a system of keys shared through Twitch drops. It seems that more players are wanted, however, as Early Access forScavengersis now being opened for any player that wants to try it out.
Early Access officially started forScavengerson April 28. Like several games have over the past couple of years,Scavengersdecided to make Twitch the focus of its initial launch.Early Accesscodes could only be earned by watching several streamers hired to focus on the game. The strategy mixes a soft launch with a major marketing campaign, and the effort was quite successful, too, with over 100,000 viewers on Twitch at the beginning.
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Two days later, however,Scavengersis forgoing theTwitch drop systemin favor of a simpler option. Starting today, every player that wants to tryScavengerscan play the game. All that’s required is going toScavengers' Steam profile and clicking the “Play Now” button to begin installation. There don’t appear to be any limits regarding how many players can join or if this is a stress test, so Midwinter must be confident in the current stability of the game.
Early Access forScavengersis only planned to last a few months, as Midwinter will use the time to receive player feedback so it can tune balance and progression before launching. Otherwise, the full game as Midwinter plans it to be at launch is available. Being afree-to-play live service game, players can likely expect routine post-launch support following launch, though Midwinter’s plans haven’t been fully detailed yet.
It’s somewhat odd thatScavengersjumped from Early Access codes via Twitch to opening up access entirely in just two days. It’s possible that the Twitch drops were just a way to ensure server stability. It’s also possible that the Twitch drops didn’t convert into a significant number of players as expected given persuading players to try anew battle royale gameisn’t a simple thing to do.
For fans of the battle royale genre,Scavengersoffers new experiences with some unique mechanics that aren’t found in other titles. Players will raid outposts of AI to get experience and loot, while also competing with up to 20 other three-person squads for the same resources. It’ll be interesting to see how wellScavengers’PvPvE gameplayresonates with battle royale fans.
