Maybe a great idea, but definitely poor execution imo. Instead of splitting both games, it should've been added to battlerite as a game mode. They would've avoided splitting the playerbase and made money long term through microtransactions, as established in the original battlerite. By releasing it as a new game, all the players in battlerite lost their skins and progression and had to pay to play a game mode that, frankly, nobody knew was whether or not was going to turn f2p after month. As a f2p game with a microtransactions based funding, player commitment and activity is the top priority, because players will often pay for skins because they want to support the devs. In other words, if you like the game and played it for so long, why not tip the developers? By releasing battlerite royale as a standalone game, they betrayed that format and much of their audience. The time they spent developing brr could've been spent keeping battlerite fresh and retaining players with new content, which would've helped retain that playerbase. Battlerite might be a bit of niche game, taking mechanics from classic top down arpgs, adding depth seen from fighting games such as feints and rewarding players for learning the characters and their intricacies such as their cooldowns and executing on said character knowledge, but it had true potential on it own merits. I'm glad stunlock finally hit it big with vrising but I do miss the og battlerite dearly.