Knockout City is fast approaching its one year anniversary and developers Velan Studios have released information on Season 5 and have officially announced that the game will be free to play in Spring 2022 along with Season 6. The unique dodgeball game achieved huge success on launch with great reviews across the board and are now preparing to remove the price tag completely. The first year has seen 32 various playlists, 9 different maps, 6 special balls and over 1200 different customisation options.
Season 5 launches on 1st March 2022 and will be a celebration of the best that Year 1 of Knockout City had to offer, bringing back Superpowers, Chain Reaction, Basketbrawl, and more. They have assured players that they still have some surprises in store too. Some amazing new customizations, a brand-new special event in the spring with exclusive unlockables, a whole new season of League Play, and plenty of other goodies as well.
Once Season 5 finishes this is when Season 6 will launch and the game will be free to all. To thank fans who invested in the game over the past year a special Season 6 loyalty package will be available. This will include exclusive legendary cosmetics, XP boosts, and 2,000 Holobux.
The other big news for Knockout City is that the game will be breaking away from under the umbrella of EA and will be totally self-published by Velan Studios. They released the following statement in response to this:
“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 and work even more closely with our community. We have exciting plans for Knockout City, and bringing publishing in-house will allow us to fully realize our vision for the long-term future of this game. There’s so much to look forward to because this is just the beginning.
So, what does this mean in practice? A few things:
For starters, we have a bunch of behind-the-scenes work to do to get ready for going free-to-play, and our team is all-hands-on-deck working on that. As a result, Season 5 will have a little less content than some of our previous seasons. There won’t be a new Brawl Pass for Season 5, we’ll have fewer bundles and new cosmetics for the season, and there’s no new map or new ball. However, this shift in content is only temporary, and we’ll have a new Brawl Pass, more cosmetics, and plenty of new features coming in Season 6, with more new maps and balls coming in future seasons (sneak peek: There’ll be a new Special Ball coming in Season 6, but you’ll have to wait until we’re closer for details!). For now, you will still need an EA Account to play, and your data will be processed in line with EA’s Privacy & Cookie Policy.
We’ll be sharing more about Season 5: Greatest Hits, the upcoming move to free-to-play and self-publishing, and the exciting future of Knockout City in the coming days, weeks, and months. We can’t wait to show you what we have in store”.
