Critically-acclaimed 10-player co-op platformer Pico Park is accidentally made permanently free on Steam

The game’s Classic Edition can no longer be charged for on Steam, its developer says

Critically-acclaimed 10-player co-op platformer Pico Park is accidentally made permanently free on Steam

The developer of critically acclaimed co-op platformer Pico Park says they’ve accidentally made the game permanently free on Steam.

Pico Park (now known as Pico Park: Classic Edition) was originally released in 2016 and is a co-operative puzzle platformer for up to 10 players.

The game’s user reviews are marked as Mostly Positive on Steam, with 74% of the user reviews to date being positive.

While the Classic Edition has been temporarily free on Steam for a while, its developer Tecopark decided to update it recently and add new features including online multiplayer support.

Notifying users about the update in August, Tecopark wrote: “I’m thinking of updating Classic Edition for the first time in nine years. I kept Classic Edition because it’s Steam-exclusive and supports 10 players. Since I’m doing it anyway, I’ll  update it with online support. I might charge a small fee for it. I recommend installing it while it’s still free.”

The update was then added in mid-September, with the promised online multiplayer for 2-10 players, as well as updated graphics to match more recent Pico Park titles, Steam Input support and support for monitors running at 60Hz or higher.

Tecopark told players they would “keep it free for about a week” before starting to charge for it, but they then realised this wasn’t actually possible because Steam limits how many times developers can make games free then change them back to paid titles.

“I was planning to switch to a paid plan after updating the online support, but I forgot that once you switch from paid to free, I can never go back to paid,” Tecopark wrote, declaring that Pico Park: Classic Edition is now “permanently free” on Steam.

“If you enjoy playing this free version, be sure to try the series (Pico Park, Pico Park 2) too.”

At this year’s BitSummit indie festival in Kyoto, VGC went hands-on with the new Switch 2 DLC for Pico Park 2, which adds mouse-based stages for the Joy-Con controllers.

“Pico Park 2 + Mouse Stage had me playing with three random strangers – all Japanese, naturally – and despite the language barrier we had an absolute blast working together to solve each of the game’s platforming-style puzzles,” we wrote.

“Each player controls their little character by holding down the mouse button, pulling back and letting go to fling them around (like Angry Birds but with far more gravity). The aim is to get through each stage by stacking on top of each other, hitting switches, blocking off lasers and various other fun gimmicks.

“There’s currently no equivalent of Snipperclips on Switch 2, but after 15 minutes playing Pico Park 2 + Mouse Stage, I reckon this might just be sort of the local multiplayer silliness that will lead to similar levels of living room hollering and cheering.”