Evolve never really took off like many people thought it would. For months, it was touted as the next big thing in eSports: the dawn of a new 4v1 era, where teams didn't always need to be perfectly balanced to have a highly competitive match.
Judging by the pre-release publishing, Evolve was going to be huge — and yet, when the game finally launched back in 2015, the community disappeared almost instantly. In just a few months, it was almost as if the game had never launched in the first place.
For a long time, most people assumed that Turtle Rock Studios was simply working on its next project. Support for the game slowed to a crawl, and the community continued to shrink until only a few dozen players were logging in at a time. Simply put, Evolve had essentially died.
Then, Turtle Rock Studios did something drastic. Instead of continuing to try and support a game that no one was playing, the team completely reworked how Evolve was structured. Players no longer had to pay for the game — instead, a new free-to-play system was introduced, with players instead purchasing individual characters and customization options.
It was a huge change, but it looks like the new system is working: according to Steam Charts, the new free-to-play version of Evolve is now home to several thousand players at any given time, with upwards of 25,000 unique users during peak hours.
The Evolve: Stage Two beta is currently live — you can download it on Steam or from the game's official site.
