Trackmania changes its subs model after belatedly realising it was too generous, dev says it has 'to be realistic'

pcgamer.com:

Developer Nadeo has announced changes to the Trackmania business model, following the 2020 game's recent re-release on consoles. This iteration of Trackmania was something of a soft reboot for the series (heavily based on Trackmania Nations) and arrived with a free-to-play business model, under which players could access a bunch of the game's features for free and subscribe to access additional community content: «standard» access costing around $10 a year, and «club» access $25 a year. 

That model (and the fact you need a Ubisoft account to play) has inevitably attracted some pushback over the game's life thus far, though I found it pretty generous and played this latest version without paying anything. Three years after release, however, and with the game hitting various consoles this May, Nadeo has somewhat belatedly announced it has been too generous—and things are changing.

In a new post on the game's site Nadeo says the console release has «surpassed our highest expectations in terms of both amount of players and playing time» which means «we need to adapt the quantity of content given for free with the Starter Access». Adapting the quantity of content, of course, means it's been giving too much away. There's even what could be considered a slight backhand at the moaners: Nadeo says it has «to be realistic and compare the situation with the efforts made by the studio».

Thus the «starter» edition of Trackmania, which is the free access point, will now give access to the first 10 campaign tracks per season (each season consists of 25 tracks), and access to royal and ranked modes, and the community focused arcade channel. This will apply from the winter 2024 update which is due January 9 2024. 

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