Skip to main content

The Electronic Wireless Show podcast S2 Episode 38: The risky business of free-to-play

Remedy play it safe

A confused Alan Wake sits at a table in an Alan Wake 2 cutscene.
Image credit: Rock Paper Shotgun/Epic Games Publishing

In this episode of the Electronic Wireless Show podcast, Nate and I put on some ill-fitting industry analyst hats to consider the current state of the free-to-play games market: a peculiar arena, one that that enriches some almost as often as it dooms others. It’s all proven just too dangerous for Alan Wake 2 devs Remedy Entertainment, who’ve rebooted their upcoming F2P shooter Vanguard as a more traditional paid game. We later return to our core competences, in press release-speak, to talk about the Steam Deck OLED and the games we’ve been playing this week.

Also this week: Nate continues to tease his mysterious RPG campaign into the Tower of Jocularity, I forget the word "kazoo" while literally holding one in my hands, and we recommend some fun things that aren’t games.

You can listen above, or on on Spotify, iTunes, Stitcher, or Pocket Casts. You can find the RSS feed here, and you can discuss the episode on our Discord channel, which has a dedicated room for podcast chat.

Music is by Jack de Quidt.

Links

  • Relive the droning horror of the South Africa World Cup's vuvuzela craze, which actually took place in 2010, not 2008. James, you halfwit.
  • Cheers to Eurogamer for initially spotting Remedy’s investor note.
  • The Cycle: Frontier was one of several big-name F2P games to perish this year alone.
  • I’m still a bit iffy about Control’s multiplayer spin-off. The tone! Protect the tone!
  • CrossfireX, which I also forgot the name of (it was one of those days), features Remedy-developed singleplayer campaigns. And is apparently rubbish.
  • The Steam Deck OLED, meanwhile, is the opposite of rubbish.

This week I’ve been playing gawwwwwjus puzzle-platformer Planet of Lana, and Nate has been bossing goats around in Age of Empires II: Definitive Edition.

Recommendations this week are the Asia Asia food hall in Birmingham (I would like to retroactively extend this to food halls in general), and the upbeat Netflix doc Mission: Joy – Finding Happiness in Trouble Times.

Read this next