You may not love the free to play “games as services" model, but one thing that it does allow is a more constant revenue stream which can enable the steady flow of updates over months and years that we’ve come to expect from our mobile games. Bad Piggies (Free) originally launched as a paid title much like its sibling Angry Birds, and despite one freebie promotion way back in 2013 it’s remained that way ever since. However, that one-time dollar entry fee seems to not be covering Rovio’s ambitions of keeping the game constantly updated, so today they’ve rolled out a huge version 2.0 update to Bad Piggies along with a price switch down to free.
Among the many new features are tons of new parts to build your vehicles in the new Custom Contraptions mode. You can find a daily hidden loot crate to unlock these new parts, and if you end up with a stock of parts you don’t want or need you can toss them into the Scrap Machine at a shot of crafting a new part that you do want. Yes, crafting has come to Bad Piggies.
This whole switchover is nothing new in the mobile space, and there’s really two ways to look at it. One is that now that the game is set up for earning a steadier stream of revenue, Rovio may be able to continuously add more new things to it and it will live a longer and happier(?) life. The other side is that a lot of people have paid for this game over the roughly 4 years since it’s been released, and those people now have to deal with fullscreen video ads, daily log-in bonuses, gacha item crafting, and that sort of thing. To be honest it would be hard to say you didn’t get your dollar’s worth since Bad Piggies first released, but if you hate the typical free to play shenanigans, this could be a potential ruining factor for one of your favorite games.
At any rate, if you never checked out Bad Piggies before, it’s a seriously cool anti-Angry Birds that has you building crazy contraptions in order to safely deliver your piggies to the end of a level in order to collect the scattered pieces of a master plan to steal the Birds’ eggs. It’s totally silly and fun building ridiculous vehicles and I’m hoping that this new version doesn’t taint that original Bad Piggies experience.
