Mojang drops price, doles out freebies for Scrolls tablet launch

Scrolls, Mojang's - or is it Microsoft's? - card battle game, will see a price drop of more than 75 percent when it launches this fall, the developer announced on its blog this week. This means that the normally $21 game will drop to $5, regardless of platform. If you've already dropped a Jackson and Washington on the game, that might sound like bad news - but there are several upsides.

First, those who have already purchased the game will receive the $20 shard package, which allows players to purchase new scrolls, pre-constructed decks and player avatars, free of charge. Also, not only will the price be the same across platforms, but so will gameplay; Scrolls players on tablets will be able to compete with those on PC and Mac, as well as have their collections and progress transfer from one version to the other.

"Our current price of $21 isn't feasible for tablets," Owen Hill of Mojang wrote. "As you probably already know, games are cheap on those things. Free-to-play would be an option, but we're not keen on the way that that form of monetisation can affect gameplay."