The Future of Knockout City

Strap in, brawlers. We’ve got a lot of news to share about the next Season of Knockout CityTM and the future of the game beyond that!

To kick things off, let’s talk about Season 5, Greatest Hits. At the end of this Season, we’ll be crossing Knockout City’s one-year anniversary, and what a year it’s been! The game has seen 32 different Playlists, 9 maps, 6 Special Balls (plus the Snowball from Snowbrawl Fight!), over 1,200 customizations, tons of features, and more.

Season 5 will be a celebration of the best that Year 1 of Knockout City had to offer, bringing back Superpowers!, Chain Reaction, Basketbrawl, and more. Don’t worry, we still have some surprises in store, too. Some amazing new customizations, a brand-new special event in the spring with exclusive unlockables, a whole new season of League Play, and plenty of other goodies as well.

That’s right, after Season 5 is over, we’re going to be kicking off Year 2 of Knockout City, and it comes with one huge headline to mix things up: Knockout City is going free-to-play, beginning this spring with Season 6! We’re really excited to bring our game to millions of new players around the world, by removing the price tag entirely.

With that being said, we do want to take a moment to thank our day one fans for purchasing Knockout City and supporting us from the very beginning. Your dedication and loyalty motivates us everyday to continue to build our world, and we couldn’t have gotten this far without you. Our first priority will always be our community, and we’ve built a special Season 6 Loyalty Bundle specifically for those who have already purchased the game before Season 6 launches that’ll include exclusive legendary cosmetics, XP boosts, and 2,000 Holobux.*

The other big change happening over the first few seasons of Year 2 is that we (Velan Studios) are going to be self-publishing Knockout City! From the day we founded our studio, we’ve worked to deliver revolutionary new game experiences to you, our amazing community of players. We couldn’t have introduced Knockout City to the world without the incredible support of EA Originals, but now as we switch to free-to-play, the natural next step is for us to take over publishing responsibilities and work even more closely with our community. We have exciting plans for Knockout City, and bringing publishing in-house will allow us to fully realize our vision for the long-term future of this game. There’s so much to look forward to, because this is just the beginning.

So, what does this mean in practice? A few things:

For starters, we have a bunch of behind-the-scenes work to do to get ready for going free-to-play, and our team is all-hands-on-deck working on that. As a result, Season 5 will have a little less content than some of our previous seasons. There won’t be a new Brawl Pass for Season 5, we’ll have fewer bundles and new cosmetics for the season, and there’s no new map or new ball. However, this shift in content is only temporary, and we’ll have a new Brawl Pass, more cosmetics, and plenty of new features coming in Season 6, with more new maps and balls coming in future seasons (sneak peek: There’ll be a new Special Ball coming in Season 6, but you’ll have to wait until we’re closer for details!). For now, you will still need an EA Account to play, and your data will be processed in-line with EA’s Privacy & Cookie Policy.

We’ll be sharing more about Season 5: Greatest Hits, the upcoming move to free-to-play and self-publishing, and the exciting future of Knockout City in the coming days, weeks, and months. We can’t wait to show you what we have in store.