Turtlerock Studios and 2K Games made a desperate move to bring back the players to the game Evolve. They decided to make it free-to-play, risking practically nothing given that their player count had been driven into the ground, with less than 200 active players a day. Well, the move to a free-to-play model has paid off for the game, as it has surged with more than a million new players.

COG Connected spotted the news from over on Twitter, where the official account for Evolve sent out the following tweet.

1M #Stage2 PC players in less than a week! THANK YOU! Celebrate w/ this free skin. #StageUp https://t.co/5zXeo8B70S pic.twitter.com/NA7YAkw4Rq

— Evolve (@EvolveGame) July 13, 2016

It had been reported before that Evolve Stage 2 managed to bring in 40,000 active players a day after going free-to-play. Those numbers just kept growing since its re-release on July 8th last week.

Evolve Stage 2 has steadily climbed up to more than a million total new players. Turtlerock is funding the game through the DLC and microtransactions.

Speaking of DLC… if you join in and start playing Evolve Stage 2 before July 18th, you’re eligible for receiving a free DLC hunter skin.

According to the Steam game stats, a snapshot shows that at the moment Turtlerock’s revived and resuscitated asymmetric first-person shooter is now peaking at around 39,000 players per day, which is down from what it was when it was peaking during the original re-release but it’s still impressive numbers nonetheless.

I was never particularly big on Evolve. It was a game that had potential that felt squandered under the mediocrity of trying to appeal to casuals.

Anyway, if you want to get in on the game and play-test some monsters or some hunters, feel free to do so right now since the game is free-to-play for the foreseeable future. Be warned that it’s still not entirely fair and frustration is bound to ensue. Learn more by checking out the official website.