The Culling was one of those games that started off a decent Battle Royale in some respects, but with Fortnite and PUBG taking the crown and players away to their own takes on the genre, The Culling kinda died, respawned, and died again. But it's back again, and this time there's a very strange thing you need to do in order to play for more than one day.

Back in 2016, The Culling was officially announced. A game by Xaviant that liked to market itself with a lot of blood with the goal of surviving as you'd expect to do in a Battle Royale. The game then arrived on Xbox One through the Xbox Game Preview service, but then shortly after development ended in 2017 as the developers went off to work on another title. Go forward to 2018, The Culling 2 was announced but the launch was...not brilliant.

So what did Xaviant do? It pulled The Culling 2 from digital storefronts and decided to go back to developing the original version of The Culling.

Now, Josh Van Veld, director of operations at Xaviant appeared in a new video from the studio to announce that The Culling is coming back, this time for Xbox One on May 14, 2020. That's tomorrow. Josh mentions that "running a free-to-play online game can be expensive," and goes into details on what's included with a high player count. He explains that when the game arrived free-to-play on Xbox One in the past, it apparently brought in over a million new players in a couple of months.

"Moving forward, The Culling will no longer be free-to-play," he announces. "if you already brought the game, even if you got it for free, you still own it, so you won't have to buy it again." He continues by stating that new players will get access to a one-day free trial, after that it'll cost $5.99.

"Every day, you'll get one free online match, and if you win an online match you'll earn a free match token. So you'll be able to play the game online every day without spending any additional money." he explains while detailing the bizarre new system. "If you want to play more than that, we'll be offering token packs along with passes that give unlimited access for a week, or a month."

He tries to justify the new approach by saying it means players won't be subjected to loot boxes and crates. Great.  Oh, and if you were an avid player, your profile will be reset.

Tokens packs go from $0.99 upwards to $5.99. Unlimited online passes go from $1.99-$5.99. Otherwise, you'll just have to hope you can...win in order to carry on playing for more than one match. Fantastic.

The Culling is being...re-released(?) tomorrow on May 14 for Xbox One. A PC version may be on the way.