New extraction shooter BR1 Infinite brings new meaning to “pay to play” by paying players for each in-game kill

New extraction shooter, BR1 Infinite, is reportedly bringing new meaning to the term “pay to play” by paying players for each in-game kill.

As spotted by Polygon, BR1 Infinite is offering players $10 (£7.41) an hour and $1 (75p) for every kill. The catch, however, is that spawning into a match costs $1 of your IRL hard-earned cash, so a bad run can damage your bank balance as well as your pride.

BR1 Infinite bills itself as the first real-money extraction shooter developed by Bravo Ready Studios, a company with a background steeped in gambling and consumer tech. It’s reportedly backed by PUBG publisher Krafton, Solana Ventures and 6MV, among other investors.

Access is invite-only and PC-only, with a limited number of spots advertised in each post.

Once in, the monetisation loop revolves around keeping a positive kill/death ratio, looting and extracting cash drops, and trading operatives and skins. The team claims to have paid out more than $100,000 to testers so far, who reportedly get free spawns as part of that arrangement.

Beyond the concerns about legitimacy and safety, some players think a real-money system like this is also an open invitation to cheating, boosting, and exploits, all layered on top of what’s reportedly a fairly bare-bones shooter, with players controlling droids or apes across simple maps in pursuit of the payouts. That hasn’t stopped 40,000 players joining the Discord, though.

More concerningly still, there doesn’t seem to be any obvious age gate or verification to prevent underage players from accessing a game that contains pay-to-win-like mechanics.

Curiously, the company’s social presence goes back much further than the game itself. One profile dates to 2011 and has undergone seven name changes, the most recent in 2022, around the time Bravo Ready Studios began releasing games in earnest (thanks, IG). It’s unclear exactly why BR1 Infinite has only started trending now, though scepticism about the project dates back a couple of years online.