The developers of Clicker Heroes are abandoning their free-to-play model in the game’s sequel. Clicker Heroes 2 won’t feature the in-game currency of its predecessor, to avoid feeding into potential gambling issues among its player-base.
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In a blog post announcing the decision to market the game for $29.99, developers Playsaurus say “games are inherently addictive,” but they’re trying to make sure that the addictive nature of their games isn’t having an adverse impact on vulnerable players. Playsaurus claim that Clicker Heroes 1 was designed “without the shop in mind so that you never have to purchase rubies to progress.”
“Despite this, we found that some number of players spent many thousands of dollars on rubies. I can only hope that these people could afford it, and that they were doing it to support us, and not to feed an addiction. But I strongly suspect that this is not the case. We made a lot of money from these players who spent thousands.”
Playsaurus say “we don’t want this kind of money if it came from anyone who regrets their decision, if it made their lives significantly worse as a result,” claiming had players asked them for a refund for the excess money they’d spent “we would give the refund in a heartbeat.”
The developers go on to say that another reason they’re changing the business model stems from the desire to improve the game as a whole. As a result, there’ll be major updates going forward, and multiple characters to choose from. Playsaurus also say they plan to introduce mods to the game, something that doesn’t really work in a free-to-play environment. You can read the blog post in its entirety here.
Clicker Heroes 2 is slated for release “some time in 2018.”