Spicy Horse Spice Up ‘Akaneiro: Demon Hunters’ Payment Model

Over the past couple of years we have seen many games begin to emerge in the free to play market. This has for the longest time seemed to be every developer/ publishers way of moving forward in the currently over saturated marketplace.

The free to play model has a lot of advantages with the most prominent being it allows for a much wider adoption of the game. Providing the implementation of micro-transactions has been done tactfully it can in fact result in huge revenue for the company in question.

Of course the free to play model does suffer from a lot of risk and in some cases it may not achieve a healthy profit. It really is a balancing act and recently Spicy Horse has decided to change the model of their up and coming action RPG Akaneiro: Demon Hunters (Akaneiro) to a paid model.

Akaneiro is a new east meets west take on the Red Riding Hood fable. Akaneiro puts a new spin on the story by stating that Red Riding Hood was in fact the first demon slayer, and since the early days has been training a secretive, protective cult.

Set in feudal Japan Akaneiro follows your adventures as you help to keep the monsters and spirits out of the real world. The art style is great and although still in early closed beta stages from what I have played so far it is a lot of fun and very well put together.

It’s a game I am rather excited to see the end result and with the changing of model it may work out for the best. Providing micro-transactions don’t really play a major role in the game now.

There has been much speculation as to why Spicy Horse have changed their model for Akaneiro, and I personally feel it may be a combination of a few things. Spicy Horse have a couple of free to play games and they may not be seeing returns as healthy as they initially expected for them, implementation of the micro-transactions may not be quite as viable as once thought, and with Spicy Horse looking to start a potential crowd funding program a free to play model may not work.

Spicy horse has officially confirmed the change but have not yet elaborated on the reasons for it as of yet. They have said however that they expect to do a follow up post this week so expect more information to come to light about the change over the course of the week. Be sure to visit the official site here.

Information via Gamesta