Offworld Trading Company multiplayer is now free-to-play! To get a key for a multiplayer-only version of the game, simply sign up to our company mailing list.

Soren posted his thoughts on moving the game to free-to-play on his blog. Here’s an excerpt:

I’ve had a long-running love–hate–fear relationship with free-to-play games; indeed, I even made one! However, after they did end up either eating or expanding the industry (depending on one’s perspective), it is clear now that there are different types of free-to-play games and different reasons to use the model. Our model is the simplest, dumbest available. Multiplayer is free, and we are developing new DLC and retrofitting old DLC to be mutually exclusive so that players can buy whatever parts of the game they like. The most obvious purchase is the base game itself, which unlocks all sorts of things, but there are other attractive options which can be bought and played without the base game:

Blue Chip Ventures, a series of scripted scenarios and challenges that help teach the game

Market Corrections, three scripted campaigns that give access to that side of the game

Limited Supply, an alternate version of Offworld which takes away the market in favor of resource puzzles

There’s even a cosmetic-only set of skins for special buildings called Conspicuous Consumption. (See, we were thinking ahead!)

I’m very curious to see what will happen. In the two hours since the free version came out, our player base has already quadrupled. Hopefully, multiplayer games will now always be available for budding tycoons.