Square Enix’s Foamstars is Officially Going Free-to-Play This October

Square Enix has officially announced that Foamstars, its online third-person shooter similar to Splatoon, is going free-to-play in October 2024. Foamstars came out as a PlayStation exclusive back in February 2024, but it severely underperformed commercially according to the publisher.

Foamstars was available on the PlayStation store for $30 before this change and from October 4, it can be claimed by anyone for free. It is still limited to PlayStation consoles only, namely the PS4 and PS5, and is unlikely to be ported due to its limited popularity.

Going free-to-play isn’t exactly a big blow to the publisher because Foamstars was available to PS+ subscribers from day 1 for free. And now it will be free for everyone. The reason for this change in monetization, according to Square Enix, is that Foamstars has underperformed since launch, and the player base isn’t where it should be. This switch to free-to-play might result in more players joining the community.

For the players who either purchased the game or got it for free via PS+, Sony is giving a few extra goodies to make up for it. This includes a legacy gift that has 12 exclusive color-variant bubble beastie skins, 1 exclusive slide board design, and 1 “Legacy” title for online play.

Square Enix confirmed that almost all its games that were released recently, including Foamstars, Final Fantasy 16, and even Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, all underperformed compared to the company’s internal projections and the respective games’ budgets.

This comes soon after the release of Concord, which came out only a week ago, and has already seen a massive drop in players down to only around 100 on PC. Even at launch, the PC numbers peaked at a measly 700 players. Compared to the budget of the game, this is likely a massive blow to the studio. This is likely because the interest in the hero-shooter genre has dropped, plus, Overwatch 2 and even the upcoming Marvel Rials are both free-to-play, so there isn’t room for a paid game in this space.