Amazon Game Studios Breaks Into The Gaming Biz – Will Breakaway Be Free-to-Play?

A year ago, I would have considered this no-brainer: of course Breakaway will be F2P, it’s just how games like this are done these days. Then came Overwatch, which turned the paradigm for arena brawlers upside down, being a paid competitive game that turned out to be hugely successful. Granted, it had the development power and marketing might of Blizzard behind it, two factors that proved more than sufficient for breaking the stranglehold of F2P on the competitive PvP genre. With them, you get a big success like Overwatch; without them, you get Battleborn.

Does AGS have those same elements in place for non-F2P success? The dev team is certainly star-studded, with veterans from Portal, Guild Wars 2, Far Cry 2, and the acquisition of Double Helix (Killer Instinct reboot), though it remains to be seen if all these superstars can work together efficiently. The marketing budget and overall “presence” of Amazon and Twitch is also arguably on par with Blizzard, so all the pieces would seem to be in place for a full-price retail launch for Breakaway.

And then there’s the Twitch integration, which will allow viewers to “gamble” on matches using a new kind of currency, thus allowing people to be invested in the game without playing – or paying for – it (and won’t be abused at all, I’m sure).