Battalion 1944’s studio cuts ties with Square Enix, will make the game free

Battalion 1944 will be made completely free starting next week, as a result of development studio Bulkhead Interactive cutting ties with publisher Square Enix.

In a statement on the game’s Steam page, Bulkhead announced: “We have formally ended our relationship with Square Enix. We want to start this exciting new chapter where we began, focusing on the players.

“With this in mind, we will be releasing Battalion: Legacy for free on Steam.”

According to Bulkhead, Legacy will be the “revisited and final version of Battalion 1944, released for free to all on August 16th 2022”.

“We have taken the best aspects of Battalion 1944 and honed in on these to create a fluid bug free experience, featuring a working server browser, an added faction, new weapons, classic Search & Destroy game mode with all weapons available, complete UI rework and visual overhaul,” the studio explained.

“Battalion: Legacy is the culmination of work consolidated into one old school experience for all to enjoy.”

Battalion 1944 first launched as a Kickstarter in 2016 and was funded in three days, but this included selling keys for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions of the game. The game was ultimately never released on console, and Bulkhead now plans to refund backers half a decade later.

“We are deeply disappointed that Battalion 1944 never made it to console and we will be refunding all console Kickstarter backers,” it explained. “Thank you to everyone that backed the console version and we’re sorry it has taken so long to rectify this.

“We appreciate the passionate support we received from the fans of Battalion and old-school shooters. We hope you continue with us on our journey to making first person shooters that are built with the community and the players at the heart of development.”

The studio is now working on 5v5 tactical FPS Promod, and a “player-driven FPS sandbox” called Wardogs.