The Culling has dusted itself off and is back again to grab a piece of the battle royal pie. But its resurgence started on the wrong foot when it took on a new monetization model that relies on people buying tokens and passes to play more matches.

Developer Xaviant said it changed its approach to monetization "so that players can visit the island for years to come," but by offering only one match per day before players pay, it was unlikely the island would attract many visitors.

Since the announcement, the limit of one match has been raised to 10 matches, and Director of Operations Josh Van Velde says he is embarrassed that the renewal was announced in that setting.

"In retrospect, it was clear that one match was not enough to get the players flowing. But remember, we were afraid that everyone would come back and overload the servers, spend a ton of money on us, and spend nothing. So we were afraid to turn the dial.

The same was true when Xaviant relaunched The Culling as The Culling: Origins was a free-to-play deal.

"We got a million new players very quickly," Van Veld recalls, "and it took us a while to figure out what monetization looked like compared to the cost of AWS, but we were spending tens of thousands of dollars every month."

The Culling's success was due to the fact that it was a free-to-play service.

Despite the large number of players, The Culling was shut down because developers could not cover costs with cosmetics and crates. Although he received a chilly response when it was announced, Van Veld believes that the new model could still be a solution, giving Xaviant a more stable income to sustain the studio and its games. The problem, he claims, is that developers did not expect players to come back every day.

"We certainly didn't look at it from the standpoint of, 'If this game lasts a year, I'm going to play it every day for a year.' We don't know if such a person exists."

Instead, Van Velde and team expected players to play regularly and make only a few purchases. They could save up a stockpile of tokens and occasionally dip into it when they ran out of free matches, or they could buy a pass and play a lot for a month. If so, players would only spend a few dollars, but for repeat players who play continuously, the cost could jump.

"I think a lot of players consider themselves long-term players and have told me that they are not thrilled with the idea of having to spend a significant amount of money on an ongoing basis, especially if someone purchased the game before it went free-to-play.

Perhaps as a result of the one-time suspension of the game along with The Culling 2, expectations for a restart of Xaviant have been fairly restrained. While surprised that players are willing to return on a regular basis, Van Veld stated that he does not want to become "a huge player in the genre" and just wants enough people to fill matches and keep the game alive.

"We tried the model of being huge, but we couldn't afford to make it work. If we had the backing of a big publisher and had deeper pockets, we probably could have done something when we got all the original free-to-play players.

Aside from increasing the number of matches that can be played before tokens are spent, Van Veld did not mention any other specific changes coming, but he said there are many places where adjustments could be made. The cost of tokens and existing passes could be adjusted. However, Zavianto does not intend to completely change this model.

Van Veld says that if he could go back in time, he would think that this model works well, but that it was unclear how to get the message across, and would sell it in a different way, simplifying things. However, it does not seem to be an easy model to articulate in an appealing way, especially when compared to the traditional free-to-play method.

"If you like it or want to give it a try, join us and give it a try. If you like it more than that, buy a reasonable pass and you can play as much as you want. Then you can play as much as you want. That way you can re-up whenever you want and never spend another cent if you stop playing. I think that would be easier to understand and present."

For a game with such big competition, it still seems like a hurdle. But we will have to wait and see if that will be enough to keep Xaviant endorsing "The Culling".

The Culling is currently available on Xbox One, but Xaviant also has plans for a PC version; the Xbox One community has always been large, so Xaviant is considering ways to provide a better experience for PC players, such as adding cross-play Xaviant is in the process of looking at ways to provide a better experience for PC players, such as adding cross-play. There is also the possibility of bringing back a PC version with private matches only and no monetization. With so much in the air, this does not seem imminent.