The Culling: Origins' pay-per-match monetization

"I don't like telling people not to buy a game. Even with what I know of The Last of Us 2 and Naughty Dog in general, all I'll suggest is get the game used or on sale. Please, for the love of Arceus, DON'T BUY THIS GAME!"

- Grust, the founder of this wiki

The Culling was developed and published by Xaviant and was one of the first battle royale games when it came out in 2017 and was very popular for its time. However, it was soon dwarfed by both Fortnite and PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. In an attempt to be popular, a sequel, The Culling 2, was made, which was heavily panned for its wonky physics, gameplay, melee and gunplay and blatant rip-off of PUBG. Some time afterwards, the game went offline but was rebooted as a free-to-play game. However, on May 12, 2020, Xaviant attempted to rebrand the game on Xbox One as The Culling: Origins, which came with a monetization scheme called pay-per-match. When it was announced, it was said that gamers would get one single free match per day and then forced to buy either token to continue playing or use a free token if they won a game (see picture for prices). While this was supposedly done to keep servers online, the announcement was met with such a huge backlash that Xaviant changed the model to 10 free matches per day. Despite the ongoing backlash due to it being a new form of monetization, it's widely agreed to be even worse than loot boxes as at least loot boxes let you continue to play the game even if you don't buy them and it would encourage other greedy companies to try to replicate it.

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