Update: players are now throwing themselves off cliffs to grind xp for the platinum trophy https://x.com/realradec/status/1831041419756388429
Update: players are now throwing themselves off cliffs to grind xp for the platinum trophy https://x.com/realradec/status/1831041419756388429
I never saw a launched game unlaunch this quick. We talked about failures that got shutdown 1 year after launch. But now the record is what, 2 weeks? Question is, will they go back to drawing board and make changes to the game for a relaunch, such as a free to play model? Nothing is stated here, so probably not.
I would consider playing this game, if it was playable on Linux (and without a PSN account requirement). But clearly Sony does not care about me.
I think the record still goes to Amazon’s Crucible, which was cancelled before release after a closed-beta that nobody played.
I actually liked that game. Sure, it was unpolished and unoptimized. But there were still some fun to be had. It feels like they gave up on that game within a week or two.
“Nobody” probably isn’t literal here, but I imagine some manager scheduling a meeting where they want a report on the game’s performance and feedback during the beta. Some higher up is going to sit in for the first few minutes for the KPI summary.
The sweating analyst jokes about the heat in the room, the higher up dryly remarks that the AC seems to be working just fine. The presentation starts, the analyst grasping for some more weasel words and void sentences to stall with before finally switching to the second slide, captioned “Player count”. It’s a big, fat 0.
They stammer their way through half a sentence of trying to describe this zero, then fall silent, staring at their shoes. The game dev lead has a thousand yard stare. The product owner is trying to maintain composure.
The uncomfortable silence is finally broken by the manager, getting up to leave: “I think we’re done here.” There is an odd sense of foreboding, that “here” might not just mean the meeting. The analyst silently proceeds to the next slide, showing the current player count over time in a line chart.