On the 5th of December, Bohemia Interactive, the creators of Arma 3 and DayZ, officially released Ylands on Steam after two years of the game sitting in early access. The official 1.0 release of Ylands also marks the game departure from the $15 cost of the early access version into a free to play game for anyone to join the community. Early Access supporters did receive Ylands first paid expansion Ylands Exploration for free as a gift for supporting the game during its development cycle. The decision was done to help boost the community around the game.
Bohemia Interactive describes Ylands as an open sandbox where players can create whatever they wish and upload and share their creations. Creators that upload their creations can even monetize them with the in-game premium currency “Coyns”. Bohemia Interactive will take 70% of the spent Coyns but the creator keeps the rest to spend on creations or turn them in for actual currency. As another bonus to early access supporters, they will receive 4600 Coyns, $20, as gift. Coyns can also be spent as well on other objects in the store and the in game store is supposed to offer 4,000 free items alongside what can be purchased outright and Coyns can be used to pay for private and persistent servers. People who run and host public servers can also earn Coyns from their servers.
Ylands Exploration is available as well for $15 which gives players the experience of a survival game. Players will be stranded on a desert isle and will have overcome obstacles from resource collecting to combating foes to survive. As the current island runs out of resources, players will have to build a ship and sail to a new island to survive on. After 2 hours of playing Ylands Exploration, players will also get a nice bonus of 4600 Coyns.
Ylands is available on PC, iOS, and Android.