Archived article: https://archive.md/HONwC
They’ll release one more update (my guess is whatever release-ready content they’ve already got), then the servers will shut down next Thursday.
“We don’t need player counts to be super huge in order to be successful” is starting to ring hollow.
I genuinely wouldn‘t say so. The game shuts down because nobody played it anyway. The chances you pick up a game no one plays is pretty slim by nature. But even if you have been burned in the past you can just pick up one that is already popular.
Pre-ordering on the other hand is rarely a good idea and that goes for any game, not just live service.
Every live service shuts down because not enough people were playing, eventually. Even ones I loved. I’ve got multiplayer games from 25 years ago that I can still play, but I can’t still play the ones from 10 years ago.
On one hand developers should always give players a way to play their games indefinitely. That should be a basic consumer right and I hope Stop Killing Games can change something.
But on the other hand I would lie if I said I‘d actually use it. I never had the desire to hop into a dead online game out of curiosity and I think at least 99.9% of players feel the same way. Because what makes these games great is the active community.
These things came and went after popularity faded. They need people to stay invested to legitimize their own existence. Pure nostalgia is not enough to preserve games even if developers release the server code. It‘s simply not that easy. I think it‘s important to be aware that communities make online games great and when there is no community then there is no game.
Highguard could release their server code tomorrow, but more people would mock them for it than applaud them. Virtually nobody would play it still.
Virtually nobody is still not nobody. Being able to continue to play it is important not just as a failed piece of art that we can all learn from but also as something that gives it value in the first place. We had the ability to spend money in Highguard, but the value I might get out of that spend depends on the game’s continued existence. If that existence is guaranteed in some way, then I no longer have that barrier. Every live service game has this conundrum, which might explain why they either immediately die or become the next big thing, with very little in between.
Well they could release the server software before shutting down the service, they wouldn’t lose anything.
And have one more competing product if they ever decide to try again? How dare you! :D
disclaimer: I know nothing about the game, the studio, or their future plans, I’m just pulling stuff out of my ass
They’d still have to patch out their anti-cheat. And I’m guessing neither of those things are going to happen.