I am not the dev, I don’t know how the game is doing, but from the perspective of a player like me, it looks grim.
I have noticed that allot of people, who don’t know the genre (didn’t play TOS or anything like that before) don’t even bother to try it because of the presentation (indie complex game + bad graphics compare to AAA titles + chat based game), when someone gets temporary free access to a game that he sees as a pay to play, they would give it a try even if it doesn’t look amazing to them, I believe that if we give partial access to players, it would be a great way to increase the community.
I think this is allot better than a free weekend solution or free to play solution since it doesn’t ruin the playerbase (the new players will not come at once like in a free weekend so they will be surrounded by veteran players which can show them how the game is played [if you look at a full free to play like TOS, any queue other than ranked is a shitshow since most players are new and frankly don’t care about the game]) as well as, since the new players are friends of veteran players they are likely to accompanied by them and be taught how to properly play.
It won’t solve the problem completely but it will give the game some boost it desperately needs.
