Board Game Arena

I'm curious, what happened? It used to be a free game and I would find a partner in under 1 minute. Today it suddenly became premium - no announcement, no explanation - and the wait for the game is more than 15 mins. I thought that is decided by publisher at the release, and wouldn't be randomly changed afterwards. Would love to know what was the process behind this shift.

https://boardgamearena.com/group?id=17230446

You should be able to see the message in the Newsfeed tab in your profile, and in the game's page. And this has happened with many other games before, so you shouldn't be surprised either.

i still don't get the idea behind that "decided to offer XXX as a free game during the promotional period, which has now come to an end".
Wouldn't it better to write on launch "are deciding to offer xxx as a free game during the promotional period"?

Or maybe the idea is to catch players off-guard, so that they don't play the game too much during the promo period?

a lot of the premium games here on BGA are free for a month or two after they launch. Not a new thing.

Thanks all for clarification. First time I experienced it but apparently not anything out of the ordinary. Agree that it would make more sense to announce it from the very start that the game is free for a limited time only. I perfectly understand that the publisher is in their rights to allow free access as promo only but it would be perceived so much better if it was announced at the launch instead of post-factum.