I'll make this quick. So I proudly announced that Play With Gilbert was going Free-To-Play soon after the Summer Sale and am cancelling it for now. I have a number of reasons and they have been brought to my attention thanks to a few of my closest (dev) friends. So yeah, I made the original decision in isolation (no pun intended), meaning, I decided it without ever consulting anyone and just deciding through emotions purely. So, what would the benefits be of making the game F2P? In my mind it would offer a game up for free, which I think would be received as a positive in general. I mean, what's wrong with that, right? Well, the negatives of this act has been shared with me by some of my friends who've had personal experience with doing so and experiences of this happening to other games. I'll try to explain what these are and why I changed my mind. The first one is that going free to play lowers expectations in general. The game would perhaps be perceived more as a low effort / low quality title and while this game surely is not a high tier game in general, it is something I put substantial effort into making it. I value the IP and I also value the community. It could also do harm in other ways. Such as the IP in general, which may spill over into Gilbert's World and I do not want to risk either games in a way that will hurt the franchise. Free games have been found to be at risk being criticized more harshly due to the fact that anyone could get it and it's easy to slam something when you gotten it for free. So far, the community around the game has been amazing, I don't want the game to turn into an open invite. Free games generally get a surge in player numbers for all the obvious reasons. This could result in attracting the wrong audience and with a title as specific as PWG I was told to really think about my decision. I've been through this myself with the game in earlier stages when I first released it and it resulted in a number of negative reviews because I did not specify the game being for children. (I also had some fundamental issues with how the character controlled initially and some minor bugs) but yeah, I don't want to go through that again. As it currently stands, the game seems to be finding the right people on Steam and I'd like to keep it that way. As many people probably know by now, indie games live or die on Steam through reviews. I don't like it, but it is what it is. A negative review weighs so much more than a positive one. Opening the game up would be yet another great risk. And then there's another more personal one. I actually never thought about how going F2P would impact my own income. I'm a small dev, pretty much by myself at this point and after doing some calculations, it would hurt me more than I thought it would. I really don't want to some across as greedy (I'm not) but as I said before, I want to be as open as possible. I only have two games out there right now and it brings food on the table. I didn't realize how much the game actually contributes to me being able to survive and stay and indie. So, I would open up the game to the wrong audience, risking a larger number of negative reviews and risking devaluing the IP/franchise as well as possibly changing the community around the game. As I said I'm happy with the community as it is. I met some amazing people here and I've read some heart warming and really cool reviews. I'm not sure how or what I'll do in the future, not yet. But right now after considering all these things I honestly don't want to change anything. The game isn't expensive, the demo has everything except more levels and I think in general, while I would love to give something back to people around the world, right now might not be the right time. Not just yet. So, I hope this makes sense. I'm not the greatest in putting thoughts down to text but I think I got the gist of it. If there are any questions or critique, please let me know and I hope you all can understand why I changed my mind. I'm not outright cancelling it at all, not yet. I want to think things over in the future and perhaps find a better way to do this, or at a better time. Thank you! Joure