Square Enix has confirmed Foamstars, its online multiplayer game all about shooting foam, will be free-to-play from 4th October 2024. The title first launched as a PS Plus Essential offering in February, but it failed to generate and hold on to an audience that could support it in the long term. Now, it's chosen to remove the cost of entry entirely in the hopes that those put off by the £24.99 / $29.99 cost after its month of PS Plus availability will give it a shot.
If you already own Foamstars — either through PS Plus Essential or having bought it — you'll be given a Legacy Gift Pack. This contains 12 Bubble Beastie skins, an exclusive Slide Board design, and a legacy title. Since the game is going free-to-play the requirement to have an active PS Plus membership to play online is also being removed. Anyone with a PSN account can download and play the full game from 4th October 2024.
We shared a decent amount of praise for the game in our Foamstars PS5 review, awarding a 7/10 rating and praising its overall gameplay loop, visual and audio presentation, and character abilities. However, the title has struggled to maintain an active playerbase, with it being reported to have lost 95 per cent of players since launch. Making it free-to-play may be seen as the last hurrah for Foamstars.
Without having to pay for it, will you try Foamstars in October? Let us know in the comments below.
[source support.na.square-enix.com]
Comments 25
I played the beta some time last year & seemed to enjoy playing it, but due to the requirement of PlayStation Plus to actually play the game, I could not bring myself to buying it. Now that it is gonna be free to play soon, I can hop back in for real.
I'm not surprised in all honesty. If I'm being honest, it should've been free-to-play from the get go.
If the game was on PC, and since it's going free-to-play, I wouldn't mind trying it.
This game was on Season 3 or something like a couple of months after release. Total madness.
This game doesn't even have a page on wikipedia it got forgotten so quick.
Played it after release via PS+. There were only a few different rounds so it was extremely repetitive and got boring quite quickly. Don't know if that has changed at all, but I didn't think what was there at the time was very good anyway so I have no interest in going back.
Forgotten is right! Completely forgot this existed until I saw the article lol
Guess this is the future for Concord too, huh?
I enjoyed this game quite a bit when it launched, despite the negative reviews and reception. I'm probably going to hop back in when it goes free-to-play. Here's hoping they get new players in and offer meaningful updates to increase the longevity of the game. It's got fast paced movement and fun hero types so I'd recommend it to anyone curious, especially now that its free.
Yes, but only to get the trophy they released a few weeks ago, since I let my ps plus subscription lapse I haven't been able to log in and grab it.
I actually liked this game to, so I hope the free model does it some good as it is a lot of fun
And February they gonna shut it.
Calling it now.
Is this like a Splatoon knockoff chasing the Fortnite money?
@PeakUnagi they did make some improvements to gameplay and added a new mode but the que for anything other than the main game mode is so empty that you can't properly try out the new modes. Hoping for more players in October.
Sony released this on PS Plus in February and it lost 95% of the player base by April 10th.
i’m tired of childish cartoony looking games that’s been infesting the gaming landscape since like , ever now . i ain’t playing this crap , can we get some multiplayers that doesn’t look like it was made for 10 year olds again ?
Why they had a price anyways, they clearly know their audience doesn't have money it's a roadblock, otherwise why even bother with PS+ and the game price, how much extra money do these companies want versus their audience spending money smaller cosmetic prices.
I don't mind cartoony artstyles or dark mature ones but when boring military ones appear with nothing theme/setting or gameplay exciting they aren't worth the time or worth looking at trailers for. ONL/Future Gaming had some and I'm like what's so good about these generic games, too many, no effort put in at all. Generic looking maps, generic artstyle, generic gameplay, wow how distinct to sell a product and we get copy cat garbage. I don't care for MP shooters but also for this reason even besides the handful of solo campaign ones we get that are less but more compelling and varied of themes/locations and gameplay to be good enough at least.
To me Foamstars sucks, barely any compelling modes. Eh lobby/house and whatever of cosmetics. Gameplay is ok but why a wipe out move for a surfboard why nothing more to do with it. Why not more FOAM exciting use case modes. Pathetic. They have no imagination and made 2 done before modes. Wow how exciting......
At least Splatoon had mechanics I wanted to use for how simple but effectively focused it was, campaign or MP (not played 2's MP don't care to but they did put effort into the mode/seasons I can tell). 2's campaign is the best platformer shooter I've played in years because there BARELY ARE ANY. XD
It needs better game design. Something many Square published games seem to suffer from the past 2 years, the gameplay just sucks, the stories are fair and graphics and the rest but the gameplay is pathetic, similar, grindy or not worth it.
FF7/16 have more passion/presentation and gameplay fun to them then Diofield, ok remakes of tactics games and other than Valkyria Elysium the rest were just whatever. Both Star Ocean (latest entry and remake of 2) were fine.
@3Above Yeah I'm hoping they can get a player base boost. I played quite a bit and was there day one so I get all those exclusive goodies which is nice. Hoping they scale back the insane prices of those microsanctions in the store and offer good value for their battle passes.
Not surprised sadly. Saw this coming.
Concord is probably the next one to go free to play
I thought they had gone f2p and had shutdown already.
I'll give them props for such move, even if it was too little too late. If only Sony did the same for Destruction All Stars though.
Anyone remember destruction all stars?
Hopefully both square and Sony are learning that the future isn't live service games. Hopefully. Let alone getting us to pay for the live service. Get back to making phenomenal brilliant games and we will all be happy.
I miss the ps4 multiplayer days. Titanfall 2, bf1,bf4, better CODs. Now we are in a generation of pink costumes and male make-up.
Not surprising...it's no Splatoon
I still laugh at the fact all these companies went blind after they saw how much revenue live service games generate, it's like they forgot that single player games are still generating good income. And the risks associated with developing both is the same, it would either be great, ok or it would flop completely that goes for both types of games
@SamMR
Like it or not, a successful live service game can generate far more long-term revenue than most single-player games could ever dream of - this is why so many companies keep chasing them. A single player game usually makes the vast majority of its money in the first few weeks, maybe months, of its release, whereas a successful live service game keeps making money for years to come. Compare, say, Fortnite to any big Sony single player game - God of War, Spiderman, Last of Us etc. We may all think that the latter are better games, but they (the first ones in these series) made their money for Sony years ago, which is why Sony has to keep making sequels to make more money from them. Fortnite, by contrast, keeps on making a shedload of money year after year after year. So, live service games are actually very different risk propositions to single player ones - high risk/high reward. Most inevitably fail, but the ones that hit big hit reaaaalllly big, generating billions of dollars. I, personally, have no interest in them, but I understand why Sony and others keep taking punts on them.
@ecurb7 this is a genuine question - has there been many successful 'free to play' games since Fortnight. I googled it and the top ten list seems to be games that have been going for quite a few years now - Fall Guys, Apex Legends, Rocket League . If this is true, it seems a very high risk strategy and why maybe why @samMR was questioning it so strongly. Apart from the big Chinese adventure games, I am unsure if there are other big recent success stories?
@Jonnyl
I don't play them myself, and as I say, the vast majority do seem to fail. But I still hear about the hits, and 'new' ones do still happen; from the last few years - COD: Warzone, Overwatch 2, Genshin Impact. Heck, Sony's own hit, Helldivers 2, must count, though I know player numbers have fallen off since launch. Anyway, just consider Genshin Impact, which absolutely prints money - $1 billion every six months (so says google). This is crazy money, which no single player game can hope to match. So, of course companies like Sony are going to want their own golden goose. We may wish that it wasn't so, but it is.
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