Dust 514 gets a "Cover Charge"

For those of you unfamiliar with the Dust 514, feel free to check out our recent discussion on the game and how it will fit within the EVE Online world. In short, the game is said to be a free-to-play MMO FPS set to release exclusively on the Playstation 3 sometime next year. However, news from today seems to indicate that the "free" part of that description isn't entirely true. There is now apparently a $10-$20 fee being referred to as a "cover charge" that players must pay in order to get started with the game. CCP CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson stated that "You're really getting the game for free but you have to pre-buy credits in the beginning." The amount of credits players then start with with will vary based on how much they paid in their cover charge. Pétursson also then went to say that, "We might go fully free-to-play down the line, but in the beginning we have a cover charge just to manage the initial launch of it." It looks like the purpose of this fee is to help support the game and continue its growth.

I personally don't have a problem with having to purchase something once at the start of the game, but having to do so after the game is marketed as "free" is a bit bothersome. The game is still free of any subscriptions though, which makes it cheaper than most major MMOs on the market today. Dust 514 is coming along very nicely at the moment, with current battlefields approximately 5 kilometers across and a player cap of 64. Unique vehicles and a command structure are also going to be included to make the shooter elements stand out from others in its genre.  Furthermore, both MMOs, (Dust 514 and EVE Online) will hopefully merge seamlessly across the two different platforms.  Dust 514 is scheduled to release sometime around Spring 2012 and even from the little we've seen thus far, $10-$20 is a small price to pay for a game with such huge potential.