Borderlands publisher buys the rights to beloved indie roguelike Risk of Rain, immediately makes a free-to-play mobile gacha game

gamesradar.com:

A new Risk of Rain game is in development, and here comes the enormous but attached to that news: it's a free-to-play mobile gacha game in the works at a new studio under the series' new owner, Gearbox Publishing.

A year ago almost to the day, Gearbox Publishing officially acquired the Risk of Rain IP from original developer Hopoo Games after serving as the publisher on runaway hit Risk of Rain 2. At the recent 10-year Risk of Rain anniversary blowout, Gearbox announced Risk of Rain: Hostile Worlds, a new mobile title in the works at developer Frima Studio, best known for the reasonably well-liked action RPG Disciples: Liberation, mobile spinoff Forza Street, and contributions to Fortnite's mobile version.

Hostile Worlds will be the first Risk of Rain game without Hopoo attached. It's an isometric action game explicitly built for Android and iOS devices, currently in regional testing ahead of a proper global launch. The game's been billed as a four-player hero collector which streamlines Risk of Rain's core gameplay loop – shoot, collect items, kill a boss, repeat – and marries it to free-to-play monetization. 

Your primary weapon will shoot automatically, for example, while you focus on moving around and firing special abilities, plus you can play three Survivors at once and swap between them on the fly. In co-op, all four players have their own playable squads of three Survivors. A Q&A posted to the game's official Discord sheds some more light on how it plays. Let's get a big one out of the way: "What is the in-game economy like?" 

"Risk of Rain: Hostile Worlds is a hero collector-type game that encourages fans to mix and match their playstyles with a wide variety of Survivors," the post reads. "Players will be able