Star Trek Online could go free-to-play

Star Trek Online could become the next MMO to become a free-to-play title.

Developer Cryptic recently announced plans to make its current subscription-based MMO Champions Online a free-to-play title. If that proves a good move, then its Star Trek title could follow suit.

I’m sure people are wondering whether we’ll do it with Star Trek and the question is really how well it does for Champions,” Cryptic boss Jack Emmert told Eurogamer.

Does it work or doesn’t it? We’re not sold one way or the other with Star Trek yet. If people want Star Trek to go free-to-play then get in and play Champions and help make it a great success, because that would send a strong message.

I’m not going to say we’ll do or die if we don’t get five times our revenue or whatever the stats were that Turbine did [when it made Dungeons & Dragons Online free-to-play]

If we did Turbine’s level of success that would certainly merit the discussion. There are more people than just I on that decision and I can’t begin to say it would be an automatic ‘yes, we’d do it’.

We’re just hoping to open it up and increase the fanbase, and we’ll just wait and see – I’d love it if we got their results, but hey, if that doesn’t happen it doesn’t happen.”