Defiance goes free-to-play

We've known it was happening for a while, but now it's coming to fruition -- as of today's patch, Defiance is free-to-play. On the PC, anyhow. The PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game will be going free-to-play on July 15th, although they're still getting all of the updates associated with the free-to-play patch. And while the patch contains a lot of the requisite store upgrades and so forth, there's more stuff in there for everyone.

For example, players will now receive special lockboxes for each DLC that they own as part of the game's daily and weekly login rewards. Score mechanics have also been trimmed up, allowing players to more easily get credit for participating in events. And there's the usual array of bugfixes and the like to produce a more polished game for everyone, whether you're a long-term veteran of the game or just want to hop in now that you can play for free.