http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/34412/Interview_Heroes_of_Newerths_Marc_DeForest_On_Evolving_Business_Models.phpchoice quotes
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much of the company's San Francisco staff was transferred to the company's main office in Michigan - everyone except the artists, according to DeForest, a move that's resulted in a "significant increase in our communication and collaboration," he says.
"It really energized the company, and since then, we've probably doubled our head count… to about 52 right now," adds DeForest.
But the studio still sees itself as small, focused on maintaining an "independent, family feel."
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DeForest emphasizes that S2 is "not disappointed at all" with the game's performance at any stage of its life cycle. "In a year, we've almost doubled in size, and that's with a pay-to-play model," he says. "With the RMT shop, we've got a lot of additions that should go in a patch within the next 45 days or so. We want to flush that out and get it to a point where our average revenue per user lets us look at the possibility of a different business model."
Its efforts to transition and eventually consider a free-to-play model are helped by its continued free-to-play closed beta in Southeast Asia, he says - again, current numbers related to HoN's retail client don't include these users, although to celebrate HoN's retail anniversary the company rolled out a free-to-play week for those users as well.
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"More competition is better… competition drives us to do better things," he says. "The more people we have to compete with, the more I want to be better for our players," says DeForest.
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Nowhere in that article did I say HoN is becoming F2P.
HoN may or may not go F2P. However, if it were ever to take that direction, there would most definitely be a barrier created for those that purchased the game to shield them from the F2P enviornment.
Please don't jump to conclusions, spread misinformation, and overreact to "nothing".