After the game ceased being available for sale on Steam earlier today, with a countdown on the official site still ticking down with the hashtag #StageUp, we can now confirm that Turtle Rock and 2K's asymmetrical shooter Evolve is indeed about to re-launch as a free-to-play title on PC. With Turtle Rock co-founders Chris Ashton and Phil Robb posting the announcement on the studio's forums a short while ago.

But the change wont be instantaneous, and at this stage is limited to the PC with the game somehow going back into Beta tomorrow. The Beta itself is expected to run for a number of weeks, and possibly months, as changes are made to improve the game based on player feedback.

As for the game itself, a large number of people continuously point to Evovle's dwindling player base as the direct result of DLC focused marketing, micro-transations, and Season Pass bonuses gone wrong. Now, that's not to say that these were the only factors that adversely affected public perception of the game, but it's clear that it was a major component when the post refers to this part of the game's launch as a "DLC Shitstorm".

When people first started playing Evolve at those and other conferences, it was magical. Sure, there was the AAA videogame hype surrounding our title. Yeah, we also had the flashy displays, the giant Goliath statue, and all the other things AAA games do to get people excited. And that stuff was cool. Really cool. But, what we lived for -- what was cooler by far -- was just seeing people play Evolve for the first time. We worked on it for years and then, suddenly, people got to experience our game, controller in-hand. There was genuine excitement -- real joy -- when people played. It was like nothing they’d ever played before and watching it happen was like no high we ever felt.

Then, when Evolve launched, the reception wasn’t what we expected. Sure, there were some good reviews. There were also bad reviews. Yes, there was excitement. There was also disappointment – for players and for us. The DLC shitstorm hit full force and washed away people’s enthusiasm, dragging us further and further from that first magical pick-up-and-play experience.

We want that magic back and we aim to make it happen. We’ve made a lot of changes, improvements and additions to Evolve over the past year and we’ve got a lot more coming. In short, we’re giving this game a vigorous overhaul!

In a lot of ways it sounds like Evolve 2.0, but time will tell if it find an audience this time around.