Spanish developer MercurySteam has rebuilt and rebranded its episodic online shooter Raiders of the Broken Planet as a free-to-play title called Spacelords.

Raiders launched in September last year, and charged players $9.99 per episodic story campaign. The studio hoped the model would open up the game to more people, but it didn't quite work as intended. 

Rather than abandon the game entirely, MercurySteam has built a new title on the back of Raiders, and although Spacelords will be set in the same universe as its predecessor, it will feature some key (as yet unnamed) differences. 

"Our vision is to see our game enjoyed by millions of users for years to come and putting all of the game's rich content into their hands for free is the way to realize it," explained Spacelords director, Enric Alvarez.

"We've answered our community and hope this removal of any payment barriers will build our devoted community further."

For those players who've already dropped cash on Raiders, rewards will be handed out in the form of exclusive content that won't be made available to anyone else. The studio will detail the exact nature of those prizes in the coming days. 

New players, meanwhile, won't have to wait too long to get in on the free-to-play action, with Raiders set to relaunch as Spacelords on August 23.