The open beta for Mecha BREAK — a free-to-play multiplayer third-person shooter that's headed to Xbox and Windows PC as a timed console exclusive later this year — went live on PC on Sunday and has been hugely popular so far, with over 300,000 concurrent Steam users flooding into its mecha-filled battlefields mere hours after it started. However, while the demo has attracted lots of players, it's also come under fierce fire from the community.
At the time of writing, only 33% of the 5,182 Steam user reviews left for the game award it a positive score. That means a whopping 3,431 of them have given the red thumbs down, resulting in a scathing "Mostly Negative" rating for the beta.
You might expect this criticism to be targeting Mecha BREAK's Armored Core-style action gameplay or server issues, but its frenetic PvP and PvPvE actually seem to be widely enjoyed by the game's fans and kinks in its networking were largely ironed out hours after launch. What has drawn the ire of players, though, is the title's anti-cheat solution and what's been seen of its monetization structure.
The former is Anti-Cheat Expert, or ACE — a kernel-level anti-cheat software made by Tencent Cloud that runs at the core of your operating system. Many gamers are inherently distrustful of any kernel-level solution since they get access to the deepest level of your PC while scanning for cheating programs to flag, but ACE is notable for a few reasons.
First — and perhaps most significantly — ACE requires a manual uninstallation to remove it from your system that's separate from uninstalling Mecha BREAK itself, which is something that the game's Steam page doesn't explain. This has led to spyware accusations in the past with other games that use ACE like Delta Force, and they've come here as well.
ACE has also been known to prevent games with Easy Anti-Cheat (EAC) from launching if a program using it is running in the background, and Mecha BREAK's implementation of it is incompatible with the desktop version of the Linux operating system as well. That means Linux users can't play the open beta even though the game previously worked on Linux in closed playtests (it's working on the Linux-based Steam Deck, suggesting the software approves play with the handheld specifically).
Players are also concerned with Mecha BREAK's monetization. Notably, when asked about it during our Mecha BREAK preview, the developers told Windows Central that players can only purchase cosmetic unlocks for their Striker mechs and don't have to worry about a "pay-to-win" model.
However, many of the demo's negative reviews point out that things like new mechs and customization options — some of which were easier to access in previous private betas — are locked behind large amounts of premium currency that's earned very slowly through gameplay. This has sparked fears of a "pay-to-skip" model in which progression takes large amounts of time if you don't spend money.
"The 'no pay to win' statements back around the last beta are looking more and more suspect because of the current beta. I REALLY want to like this game more, but if it ends up going the way its looking, it might be hard to justify sticking with it," writes player Kinshorin in their review. "I seriously don't want another Gundam Evolution situation with this game, where the monetization strategy ends up ruining the game because it takes an age and a half to unlock even a single mech."
Amazing Seasun Games hasn't publicly responded to these two major criticisms yet, but with how quickly negative reviews are piling up on Steam, I wouldn't be surprised if it did so soon. I don't think much is going to change with the use of ACE anti-cheat — it's rare to see anti-cheat implementations changed regardless of how they're received — but the developer might make adjustments to Mecha BREAK's monetization structure to assuage concerns.
In spite of Mecha BREAK's harsh initial rating, it's poised to be one of 2025's biggest multiplayer games, and has the potential to be one of its best PC games and best Xbox games once it arrives on Xbox Series X|S and Windows PC in Spring 2025. The open beta (currently without a set end date) is free to install on Steam; it's coming to Xbox, too, though it was delayed at the eleventh hour "to make some final adjustments to the build."
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