For nylig bragte udvikleren Xaviant det originale The Culling tilbage, efter at have været i stærk modvind oven på lanceringen af The Culling II, men heller ikke her gik det særlig godt, for udvikleren benytter sig af en mildest talt kontroversiel forretningsmodel, hvor du både skal købe spillet, men potentielt også betale yderligere for at deltage i mere end én kamp hver dag.
Naturligvis har fans kritiseret spillet til skyerne, og i et interview med PC Gamer fortæller udvikleren da også, at de måske lige skulle have tænkt sig lidt om. Dog holder de fast i modellen:
"In retrospect, it was really obvious that one was not going to give us the flow of players. But you have to remember, we were kind of terrified of everybody coming back, overloading the servers, costing us a tonne of money and not spending anything. So we were afraid to turn that dial."
"I guess a lot of players were telling us that they consider themselves long-term players and they were not thrilled—especially if there's somebody who purchased the game previously before it was free-to-play—about the idea of having to spend what they feel like is a significant amount of money on an ongoing basis."
"We tried the model of getting huge and we couldn't afford to make it work. I think if we were backed by a big publisher and had deeper pockets, when we had all of those original free-to-play players, we probably could have done something with it, but we were not equipped to ride that storm out for six months and then grow it."