Let me just cut to the chase; Neowiz has ZERO shame with pulling this BS cash grab stunt with their Bless franchise.
I called this back in 2018 when they made their original announcement for the Xbox One (with regards to milking the Bless IP on the PC platform to fund the console version); the console version was developed by another Neowiz’ subsidiary, Round 8 Studio. At the time, Neowiz Bless Studio (NBS) had launched Bless Online on Steam (initially as a buy-to-play title); they obviously did not want to suddenly have this newer version of a game based on the Bless IP, to be competing with this older technical nightmare version (whose development began in 2011 and had enough underlying core design problems where NBS ended up announcing a “rebuild” project in 2017, which itself was merely a bandaid fix).
The buy-to-play western version (launched as an early access title) ended up being a major cash grab and still launched with technical flaws (which to make a longer story short, resulted in the game bleeding players over several months to where it was critical enough to force them to go free-to-play 5 months later when it finally came out of early access). Neowiz eventually shuttered the entire Bless Online franchise in all regions (with the Steam version being the last to close on September 9, 2019). Simply put, a massive failure that most sane people could see from early on.
Bless Unleashed launched as a free-to-play Xbox One only title on March 12, 2020. Maintaining a healthy player population on console platforms is always a challenge so it wasn’t surprising to hear they are looking to bring the Bless franchise back onto the PC. Translation: we milked the frontloaded founders pack revenues for all that we could and our metrics reveal that we now need new suckers to milk this pig for all that we can.
Anyone and I mean anyone who falls for what will be a frontloaded founders pack cash grab, deserves being scammed out of their money since Unleashed will not have any long term viability because the studio (and parent company) behind it, primarily sees the franchise as something to be milked (because they view their customer base, as punching bag suckers who will fall for it again). If they try to push the PC version as a paid to play product, that is also going to be huge red flag (because the Xbox One version was released as a free-to-play title with monetization designed around the cash shop). Neowiz has proven by the failure that was Bless Online (Bless in South Korea), and the inability to retain a healthy player base on console, that they are INCAPABLE of creating a viable title with ANY long term lifespan. It’s a complete cash grab for suckers who cannot get enough of being ripped off by false promises.
