Knockout City studio leaves EA behind, will make the game free-to-play

Velan Studios has announced that Knockout City is going free-to-play and will now be self-published.

The game, which was released a year ago is currently enjoying its fifth season of content and will make substantial changes at the end of the season.

In a post to EA’s website, the developer also revealed that it would be leaving EA as its publisher at the end of Season 5.

“The other big change happening over the first few seasons of Year 2 is that we are going to be self-publishing Knockout City,” it announced.

“From the day we founded our studio, we’ve worked to deliver revolutionary new game experiences to you, our amazing community of players.

“We couldn’t have introduced Knockout City to the world without the incredible support of EA Originals, but now as we switch to free-to-play, the natural next step is for us to take over publishing responsibilities.”

Players will still be required to have an EA account to play Knockout City in the meantime, but it’s expected that once Velan Studios is solely responsible for the game, this will no longer be the case.

Knockout City is a team-based dodgeball game that was released last year under the EA Originals publishing brand.

The game was met with favourable reviews upon release, currently holding a score of 80 on reviews aggregator Metacritic.

EA Originals also published A Way Out and It Takes Two, both developed by Hazelight Studios.