Split Fiction accomplishes a feat rarely seen in co-op games: Owners can play with their friends for no additional cost.
A free version of the game, referred to as the Friend’s Pass, is available on all storefronts where Split Fiction is sold. Simply download this version of the game, and as long as one person owns it, both can play.
Hazelight Studios implemented this feature back in 2018 with its first game, A Way Out, and it revolutionized the co-op gaming experience. It returned in 2021’s It Takes Two, which took home the grand prize at The Game Awards when it won Game of the Year. This year’s Split Fiction continues the trend, and its success is no secret, selling over two million copies in its first week.
Split Fiction would be fantastic even without the Friend’s Pass, but Hazelight’s refusal to give up on its vision, one which boldly states that the golden era of local co-op must not be forgotten, should inspire a revolution in multiplayer games of the future.
Split Fiction changes the way we see online games
Multiplayer games have changed dramatically since the popularization of online play, for better and worse.
The beauty of local co-op is that your desire to play something isn’t reliant on other people’s ownership. If you want a game, you simply buy it, invite friends over, and enjoy. That purchase isn’t informed by whether or not others are also willing to invest, but exclusively through their desire to play with you.
But that’s not the case for online games. If two people want to play together, both need to purchase the title in question. The advantage here is that you can play with friends anywhere in the world, but again, everyone needs to own the game.
Hazelight has paved the way for a new type of multiplayer, one that eliminates the barriers of local and online play by utilizing advancements in technology to address the flaws inherent to each approach.
This system combines the advantages of local and online into one: Not only can you play with friends anywhere but they can join without needing to purchase the game. This is brilliant, as it returns us to the accessibility of local co-op and lowers the barrier to entry.
However, there’s one glaring issue: Profit. On paper, the Friend’s Pass cuts a game’s sales in half. If only one player needs to buy a game for two people to play it, a developer could be making far less. And if the one who bought it ends up playing with more than one person, the profits could dwindle even further.
However, that’s not the right way to look at it, as it could be a phenomenal business decision. Multiplayer games fight for recognition in a brutally competitive environment. Success is largely dependent on what’s popular and if influencers are playing it. That’s true for all games, but singleplayer titles have an advantage: They don’t need a community to be enjoyed.
I played a small indie title called Bossgame: The Final Boss Is My Heart this year. It launched in 2023 and has as little as 67 reviews on Steam. As a single-player game, I could experience it worrying about the size of its player-base. It’s unpopular and I wish it had more fans, but that unpopularity had no impact on my gameplay.
If it was a co-op game, I’d need to convince a friend to buy it. That, in and of itself, can inform an initial purchase. If someone decides not to spend money on a co-op game because they can’t find someone to play it with, then there is no profit to begin with.
Quality matters for determining success, but would you buy an online game if you didn’t have anyone to play it with? I certainly wouldn’t. And even if I was interested in buying it, the burden is placed on me to convince other people that it’s worth spending money on.
Single-player games don’t have that issue. Others aren’t necessary to ensure your purchase is worthwhile. You can decide what you want to buy based on your own tastes. Split Fiction blends the financial advantages of single-player games into a multiplayer title: You don’t need to ask anyone to buy it, you just need someone to play it with.
I played Split Fiction with my best friend, and I didn’t hesitate in my purchase once I confirmed she was interested in playing together. If the Friend’s Pass didn’t exist, it’s unlikely that she would have spent $49.99. In that case, I wouldn’t have bought it to begin with. My purchase of Split Fiction was guaranteed because only I needed to own it.
The idea that the Friend’s Pass cuts profits in half is reliant on the preconception that the amount of purchases remains stagnant when applying it. You could look at Split Fiction’s sales and say, “This would have made twice as much money if both players were buying it,” but that assessment doesn’t account for the increased likelihood of a purchase occurring thanks to its existence. By lowering the barrier to entry, the Friend’s Pass increases the chance of people playing the game to begin with, potentially growing profits rather than reducing them.
This applies to any co-op game, as there have been many cases where I don’t purchase something because I can’t convince anyone to buy it with me. I’ve been wanting to play The Outlast Trials for over a year now, but before I can buy it, I need to find a friend willing to invest $39.99. If buying the game myself was enough to play it with friends, I would’ve done so a long time ago.
I’m not arguing that every multiplayer game that implements a Friend’s Pass will guarantee more sales, but it has the potential to expand the size of a player-base. It could increase the chance of success for some multiplayer titles, especially ones with smaller communities. It’s brutal trying to stand out in gaming right now, but it’s especially hard for multiplayer games, as they can find success only through simultaneous interest.
Split Fiction proves that this approach can be enormously successful for both the player and developer. After all, the game broke records with 259,003 concurrent players on Steam just a few days after launch, coming in at 52nd of all time.
Beyond the Friend’s Pass being a nice way to choose what you want to play with people rather than adhering to what’s popular, it guarantees purchases that would have never occurred otherwise. Having the opportunity to tell a friend, “I bought a game, let’s play it!” rather than “Do you want to buy this with me?” is the future of multiplayer.
Hazelight paves the way for a new type of multiplayer
Since online gaming has taken the stage, purchasing a multiplayer title is a decision largely informed by FOMO (fear of missing out). It revolves around one simple question: Are your friends playing it?
Besides Split Fiction, I haven’t bought a multiplayer game that wasn’t popularized by influencers or social media in a long time. There are tons of co-op games on Steam that will never shine because they need community, and I’m unlikely to invest without friends.
But that doesn’t need to be the case! Local co-op games can be played freely with others through a single purchase, so why should online multiplayer be any different? Hazelight challenges that notion and keeps the spirit of local co-op alive through the Friend’s Pass, and I wish more developers would follow in its footsteps.
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