10,000-hour puzzle RPG Tactical Nexus becomes free-to-play because the devs “don’t want to extort money” from players who end up not playing the game  

The Japanese indie game Tactical Nexus recently became free-to-play on Steam. Previously sold for $19.99, the development team explains that they dropped the price to zero dollars because they noticed that most purchasers hadn’t played the game or had played it very little. Apparently, they do not feel comfortable profiting from people who purchase the game but don’t end up playing it.  

Tactical Nexus is a high-difficulty puzzle game with RPG elements that promises 10,000 hours of gameplay. Inspired by Tower of the Sorcerer, the game combines resource management, logic puzzles, and power-ups. It does not include random elements, and players need to carefully consider the order in which to fight enemies, the timing of acquiring items, and how to allocate bonuses as they level up.  

The game is simple, yet deep, and has received high praise for its strategic depth, which can take hours to master. At the time of writing, Tactical Nexus has a Very Positive status on Steam, with 98% of 110 reviews being favorable. User reviews indicate that players spent from several hundred to more than 1,000 hours playing the game. 

The title was released on Steam in November 2019, with the base game priced at $19.99. However, as of July 16, Team-Tactical Nexus has made Tactical Nexus’s base game free, as per their announcement from June 29. 

The reasoning behind the decision is interesting – the developers note that the majority of players who purchased the base game aren’t playing it or are playing it very little.  Tactical Nexus has a free demo available which is said to offer dozens of hours of play time, but it seems that about 65% of players who purchased the full base game have barely played beyond what the free demo offers. Team-Tactical Nexus comment that they did not intend to make a profit from the game in the first place, and they decided to make it free because they did not want to “extort tens of thousands of dollars from people who don’t play the game.” 

The developers also mention that cultural differences caused dissatisfaction with the game’s pricing in the US: “We have also learned in recent months that there is a huge difference in cultural backgrounds between Japan and the rest of the world (especially the US), which is why this price point was provoking emotions, especially among foreign players. (…) In Japan, games for “enthusiasts/niche” players are sometimes sold at high prices, but I have learned that such high pricing is perceived as “exploitative” in other countries.” 

As for Tactical Nexus’s paid DLC, Chapter 3 to 8’s prices will remain unchanged until at least 2027. On the other hand, players who have purchased the base game at full price will be eligible to receive Chapter 8 of the DLC for free as a form of compensation. According to Team-Tactical Nexus, “You only need to purchase DLC after you have played at least 100 hours of the base game.” They also remind players that it is possible to complete the main game without purchasing DLC. 

According to Team-Tactical Nexus, the average playing time for the game was about 217 hours as of July of this year, and they are aiming to increase it to over 300 hours. It will be interesting to see how Tactical Nexus’s play time statistics develop in the future. 

Tactical Nexus is available for free for the PC (Steam).