New Torchlight game ditches free-to-play model, renamed Torchlight 3

The developers of Torchlight Frontiers, a free-to-play, shared-world version of Runic Games’ Torchlight action role-playing game series, are overhauling the game and renaming it Torchlight 3. The developers pitched the change as taking Torchlight “back to its roots,” and will sell the game on Steam this summer for an undisclosed price.

Torchlight 3 will feature a linear progression system, similar to 2009’s Torchlight and its 2012 sequel.

“When we started developing Torchlight Frontiers, we were focused on creating a shared-world experience,” said Max Schaefer, CEO of Echtra Games and co-founder of the Torchlight franchise. “During development, you often discover what type of product a game was meant to be and we found Torchlight Frontiers was meant to be a true successor to Torchlight I & II. Based on this and extensive feedback from our Alpha testers, we decided it was time to take the game back to its roots and model it after the classic Torchlight games that ARPG fans have come to love. We’d like to thank our dedicated player base for supporting us and providing such insightful feedback during early development.”

Echtra Games announced Torchlight Frontiers in 2018 as a “shared, persistent [and] dynamically generated world” set in the Torchlight franchise. Echtra took over development of the series after Runic Games closed in 2017. Echtra Games was founded by Max Schaefer, one of the leads on Diablo 2 and a designer on Torchlight, in 2016. The studio is owned by Perfect World Entertainment.