Dirty Bomb is going free-to-play, in the most literal interpretation of the term.
After an update next week, all monetization will be patched out of the game, following last month's announcement that the dev team is winding down live support for the game.
It’s both a nice gesture and a neat way for the developer to thank Dirty Bomb’s players for supporting the game through the years, even though the team won't be making any new content for the game from here on out.
Developer Splash Damage announced last year that it was planning to end development of new Dirty Bomb content due to diminishing returns and offer refunds to players that had purchased “Merc Pack DLC” since it wasn’t going to be releasing any more characters in the future.
While Splash Damage doesn’t plan to make more characters or content for the game, it does plan for Dirty Bomb to remain online and playable for as long as a “meaningful number of players” still logged in to play.
Now, as a thank you to the players that have stuck with the game throughout the years, Splash Damage is releasing a patch that removes premium currency from the game, making all of those items purchasable with Dirty Bomb’s regular, earnable currency instead.
The patch will almost triple the rate at which players earn credits in addition to converting any single unit of premium currency into roughly 20 regular credits. On top of that, the team is bringing back some popular in-game items that, for whatever reason, were no longer available, though the dev says in the patch notes that not every back catalog item has been brought back due to some unfortunate technical limitations.