Yes you heard that right, an anonymous source close to Gearbox was interviewed by the Gaming News Site Kotaku and claims that the game will be going free to play. Apparently, the announcement may even happen as early as mid November. The game was reportedly intended by Gearbox to be free to play at launch but a decision by publisher 2K changed this.

While there's a risk the rumor could be false, a lot of things speak for this being a possibility. 2k has already done the same in the past with cooperative shooter Evolve which originally launched as a full priced game before being pulled from Steam, overhauled then relaunched as a free to play game, Evolve Stage 2. While the same wasn't done for console versions it seems to be the goal later down the road.

The decision would likely be made in the light of Battleborn struggling to compete with the Blizzard game Overwatch, underperforming in terms of sales. New copies can now be found being retailing at far below the launch price. This is despite the games being quite different in terms of gameplay and Battleborn receiving a fair amount of positive reviews. Free content updates, tournaments and events have  all been held by Gearbox in order to promote the game but have proved largely unsuccessful in doing so. Going free to play could  perhaps be the key to build the game's popularity.

What are your thoughts surrounding this? Have you played Battleborn and if so what did you think? If not would this encourage you to try the game out? Share what you think!

Zlinqx : It sad I don't know much about games of today I would be able to give a feel of what I want to say about them. I do know somethings about Overwatch, but not enough to go into depth about the game. I doubt this game would be free as you said its just that normally games are not free to get. We can only wait, and see what happens I may have to look up Battleborn to see what its about to know further about the game. '-'

That is hilarious. I hear that they just kept under-performing compared to Overwatch and even Bootleg Overwa--Paladins. But hey, I actually had fun with Paladins, so maybe I will give Battleborn a shot.

Battleborn was ok. Overwatch is way better though.

They had no chance against Overwatch.

Vanelan : Yeah, Ogrewatch really shrekt the competition. Really, there was no comparison. It was like picking an enormous, stinking onion in a swamp, or just a trash can.

A user of this : That was so bad but it made me laugh anyway. xD

A user of this :
Vanelan :

While they're similar in the sense of their art style and the game being based around massive character rosters, the actual gameplay style and progression is very different. Not to mention Battleborn actually has a single player. It feels sort of Borderlands inspired. So I don't think you can make a completely fair comparison with the two. With Overwatch and Paladins it makes more sense since Paladins is more or less just bootleg Overwatch (but I forgive you Hirez because of Smite <3). 

I did play Battleborne and it really just doesn't stay interesting enough...
Since I have the choice, I would pick Overwatch every time.

Battleborne just can't decide what kinda game it wants to be. It tries to mix Arena, FPS, and MOBA but doesn't quite do either too well...

Bad, bad idea. No game should ever start out premium and then go Free to Play. It's a slap in the face to early adopters, and in a market with so many people afraid to bite at launch the last thing we need is developers pulling stuff like this.

I mean how would you feel if you bought a game for $60 then a few days later everyone else got it for free? Price cuts are one thing, but this? Nah, not cool 2K. This is milking on an all new level...a very, very low level.

Eirinn : The same thing happened with Evolve, past buyers got a few keys which could be used to buy something like a skin meaning they more or less got screwed over. Regardless I think going f2p is probably going to boost the game's popularity like it did for Evolve since for many the main obstacle to play a game like this simply is not being able to or not wanting to spend money. Though it likely also means the community will become a lot more toxic.

While I don't condone 2K's actions in the slightest, I do think it's a good thing that game gets a bit more attention.