No Hawking Hawken: It’s Free-To-Play

Time to spin the wheel of game payment: the game is Hawken. A beautiful multiplayer, mech basher. What will we do to get it on our PC? Do we pay all-out, or is it going to land on this part of the wheel marked “free-for-all”. Ready? Spin! Tick-a-tick-a-tick-a-tick-tock. Oh my! Put your money away, people. Hide your Dollars, burn your Euros (I know, it’s too easy), laminate your Lira, rip up your Real. Punt the Pound: Hawken is free.

Hawken will be published by developers Adhesive Games's newly formed publishing arm, Meteor. For a tiny independent developer, the ambition is rather staggering. It’s not surprising they want to keep things in-house: Hawken seems to have captured a lot of public attention. Other indie-biggie, League of Legends' 12 million player count has inspired the developers that freemium is the route to follow.

Excitingly, they’ve just announced beta sign-ups. Get enough people to sign-up via referral and you’ll have your space reserved. I humbly present a non-referral link here.

And here's some footage from last year's PAX. It's out 12.12.12. See what they did?

Via Venturebeat.