Mannequin, a Prop Hunt-Inspired Game, Launches as a Free-to-Play Title on Quest Amidst the Rise of Freemium Multiplayer Games

Starting today, the virtual reality game Mannequin (2024) offers a fresh spin on the classic prop hunt genre and is now available for free on Quest. This move could signal a growing trend among developers to adopt the freemium business model.

Released last June for Quest and SteamVR headsets, Mannequin doesn’t fit the mold of your standard shooter or prop hunt game. Typically, prop hunt involves a team of hunters shooting anything that seems suspicious while the hunted transform into ordinary objects to evade them. In contrast, Mannequin pits two armed Agents against three shape-shifting aliens—known as Mannequins—who skillfully dodge capture by blending seamlessly into a crowd of frozen NPCs. Though Agents can zero in on a Mannequin’s general location, they’re constrained by a one-shot rule before triggering a cool down—an opening perfect for the aliens to launch their attack.

Fast Travel Games, the developer behind Mannequin, has decided to release the game for free on Quest, complete with the base game and several maps. For those interested in additional features, a $10 in-app purchase unlocks character skins, custom games, new rotating game types, more maps, and mod support. Beyond this single paywall, the studio hasn’t introduced any additional microtransactions.

Similar to Gorilla Tag’s strategy, Mannequin will continue to be a paid game on Steam, now at a reduced price of $10 from its original $20. Although Fast Travel Games hasn’t explicitly stated this, Another Axiom explains that keeping a price tag deters griefers, who find it easier to disrupt the game on PC platforms.

This free-to-play launch is accompanied by a new update featuring the ‘Towers’ map, complete with portals, a first for the game. You can grab Mannequin on the Horizon Store for Quest 2 and beyond at no cost, and it’s also available on Steam for PC VR headsets at $10.

So, why the shift to free-to-play, and why now? While Mannequin has generally been well-received, it’s not necessarily a heavyweight in the multiplayer arena. Although we lack concurrent player data for Quest, on Steam, the game only saw an all-time peak of 26 players post-launch, according to SteamDB stats. Switching to a free-to-play model is bound to lift those numbers on both platforms, yet a broader trend seems to be unfolding.

Free-to-play hits like Gorilla Tag, Population: One, Rec Room, and Animal Company have a stronghold on Quest, and this model’s popularity appears to be expanding on the standalone system.

According to Samantha Ryan, Meta’s VP of Metaverse Content, with the recent arrival of Quest 3S, Quest has drawn a younger audience, further fueling the rise of free-to-play games. Unsurprisingly, these younger gamers not only spend more time in social gaming environments but, as one might infer, they also tend to invest more in in-app purchases.

While Mannequin might be one of the early adopters in this transition, it’s likely not the last premium Quest title to embrace the free-to-play model following Meta’s revelation. Developers are no doubt eager to capture even a slice of the viral success Gorilla Tag enjoyed, which saw it surpassing $100 million in gross revenue last summer.