On 11 December, four days after The Day Before launched to widespread criticism, Fntastic announced their closure, stating that as their game had “failed financially” they could not afford to continue operating. The Day Before was removed from sale on Steam later that day.
Day Before was basically a scam though, and they kept the servers up for a few weeks.
By all accounts this was a real game. It’s just that nobody wanted to play it.
In the last 2 years we’ve seen these live-service games fail at launch time and time and time again. The execs need to just accept that Fortnite already exists and you can’t force that kind of success.
I’m really happy that the one time I got to visit the UK was during Liz Truss’ time in office. It was wild seeing the protestors, and when I landed back at home I heard she was gone.
It was originally advertised as f2p, at some point they changed their minds and decided to charge for it, clearly it didn’t go well since people already associated it with free.
You know what f2p means to me? It means you can play the game for free but the experience is guaranteed to be miserable because you’re going to have relentless ads crammed down your throat for skins and other bullshit I couldn’t give a single fuck about, and no matter how much you pay it never stops.
So if it’s between that and just paying $30 for the game, I’ll take the $30 every time. I avoid f2p games like the plague.
That’s what killed it for me. I really enjoyed the Lawbreakers beta, but paying $30 for a game that would either die at a fixed price or quickly shift to F2P made no sense.
I didn’t know it existed until a popular streamer begrudgingly “reviewed” it at the last minute. Found it strange that there was zero marketing for such an expensive and long developed investment.
My guess is that they knew it was going to be a shit game, but realized too deep in the development phase. So they just released it as soon as possible and didn’t waste more money on it (marketing). My guess is that the released it instead of cancel just in case they were wrong and people actually liked it.
Every game executive and investor wants a Fortnight. That’s why no matter how many times gamers reject it live service games will continue to be developed. Because AAA games are made for investors not players.
You just made me realise I’m a gamer, not a Fortniter. But I probably should’ve realised that based on my Steam "years of service* and disgustingly large catalogue.
I’m a proven guaranteed money pot, publishers! Make me something good and I give the moneys!
Problem with trying to get a Fortnite was that Epic was wanting to get it’s own PUBG after realizing that trying to get their own Minecraft was a failed endeavor. They quickly pivoted the game formula from a Minecraft type tower defense to a battle royale game.
Concord should have seen the writing on the wall early on and pivoted it’s game into something else thats flavor of the month.
Wait wasn’t the original concept for fortnite actually a wave based tower defence game? I remember being excited for that and then battle royal happened and I lost all interest.
I was a sucker and my friend convinced me to get and pay for the orginal game. I think it was only like 3-4 weeks after the game was available when they shoehorned battle royal mode in. It wasn’t long after that before they switched to free to play and gave us I think in game currency that was worth the $60 or whatever the game costed at launch. I stopped playing altogether because I paid for a co-op PvE tower defense game, not a free to play PvP battle royal game.
Yea I recall it being like 20 something. That’s why I never pre-order. Without having poof I would assume they got refunded if it stopped development, it’s epic games. I do recall it did get released eventually but I had lost interest by them.
Yeah, the original trailer made it clear they were trying to go after the Minecraft style of gathering resources, building up a base and fortifying it, then defending from zombie mobs at night, like the Minecraft mobs.
Maybe not so much the pixel/block graphics, but the ideas behind Minecraft, with an actual objective, which Minecraft lacked.
It’s not like gamers are rejecting live services as a whole, because there are still quite a lot of successful live service games. And when a live service is successful, it’s really successful. So much so that it’s worth it to investors to keep gambling on them, one hit can compensate for a dozen flops.
Usually they don’t completely flop though, they just underwhelm expectations but if they can stay active long enough with the right amount of whales and fish they can usually break even or make a small profit. Concord is just a high profile legitimate flop that was turned off before it could do anything.
Its trajectory was that it was going to continue to burn money. Sega didn’t even launch Hyenas because they realized they’d only lose money by letting it rock. A lot of these games chasing the live service trend are spending so much money that they need to hit hard in order to turn that profit, like Avengers, Suicide Squad, Concord, the forthcoming Marathon and Fairgame$, etc. The Finals was huge at launch, lost most of its playerbase in the next couple of months (which, btw, happens for nearly every video game ever, live service or otherwise), and because it was so expensive, it’s not looking long for this world. Compared to something like Path of Exile or Warframe or The Hunt: Showdown, that launched a leaner game at the start and scaled up responsibly, they didn’t need to be the biggest thing in the world in order for it to make financial sense.
To be clear, I hate all of this shit, even when it’s a sound business strategy, but the risk involved in a project like Concord is visible from space, and the chances of it making up that cost are so clearly small when they’re not the first one of these to market.
This is the truth people don’t want to admit, but Final Fantasy XIV being successful carried square enix through their darkest days when everything wasn’t making a profit. Cygames using all the money they got from the granblue gacha to finance an action rpg and a fighting game, etc.
They serve as a safety net, we lost mimimi last year, I don’t think anyone would say they made bad games, but they just didn’t sell enough so they closed.
Anthem kept the servers going longer, it got some updates and EA even promised an entire rework akin to No Man’s Sky, but EA being EA they never delivered it and just cancelled everything lol.
Neither did Hello games when they continued to work on NMS, it didn’t have any monetization beyond buying the game, but they still did it in the end and it paid off.
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It’s a live service game. Any other game they’d say “Well most of the work is done already” but in this case it requires regular ongoing investment.
The Day Before only made it 4 days.
It remained online for six weeks, though.
And they didn’t have quite the same budget
Day Before was basically a scam though, and they kept the servers up for a few weeks.
By all accounts this was a real game. It’s just that nobody wanted to play it.
In the last 2 years we’ve seen these live-service games fail at launch time and time and time again. The execs need to just accept that Fortnite already exists and you can’t force that kind of success.
The Culling 2 shut down completely in just 2 days
360 noscope tool-assisted speedrun
it really lasted less time than liz truss
i think it’s exactly 1 scaramucci
I’m really happy that the one time I got to visit the UK was during Liz Truss’ time in office. It was wild seeing the protestors, and when I landed back at home I heard she was gone.
It’s like the UK decided to be welcoming by putting up a whole Chaotic Prime Minister just for the benefit of your visit.
Lawbreakers was an excellent game that was killed by executive stupidity.
I thought it was killed by having stupid design around game objectives and not letting you tweak those rules yourself.
Don’t forget the fact that is was a free-to-play game with a $30 price-tag.
How does a f2p game cost $30?
It was originally advertised as f2p, at some point they changed their minds and decided to charge for it, clearly it didn’t go well since people already associated it with free.
Executive said, “Fuck it, we’re charging $30”. He thought people would pay that even though its main competitors were f2p.
So it’s not f2p then?
Ultimately, no. It was going to be at first but prior to release, it changed models and ultimately stayed at $30 until it died.
You know what f2p means to me? It means you can play the game for free but the experience is guaranteed to be miserable because you’re going to have relentless ads crammed down your throat for skins and other bullshit I couldn’t give a single fuck about, and no matter how much you pay it never stops.
So if it’s between that and just paying $30 for the game, I’ll take the $30 every time. I avoid f2p games like the plague.
That’s what killed it for me. I really enjoyed the Lawbreakers beta, but paying $30 for a game that would either die at a fixed price or quickly shift to F2P made no sense.
All ten of them
It’s a shame. This was exactly the game my husband was looking for - Overwatch minus Blizzard
Oh don’t worry, there’s going to be more.
A lot of companies are working on live service games in hope of being the next overwatch/destiny.
Some even have multiple (like Sony) in the hope that even one of them takes off.
Have him try deadlock. Valve is a much better option.
Spawn killed
I didn’t know it existed until a popular streamer begrudgingly “reviewed” it at the last minute. Found it strange that there was zero marketing for such an expensive and long developed investment.
My guess is that they knew it was going to be a shit game, but realized too deep in the development phase. So they just released it as soon as possible and didn’t waste more money on it (marketing). My guess is that the released it instead of cancel just in case they were wrong and people actually liked it.
The only reason I can think to release it as it was, was for tax write odd purposes with how much money it was going to lose.
The Uwe Boll strat
Every game executive and investor wants a Fortnight. That’s why no matter how many times gamers reject it live service games will continue to be developed. Because AAA games are made for investors not players.
You just made me realise I’m a gamer, not a Fortniter. But I probably should’ve realised that based on my Steam "years of service* and disgustingly large catalogue.
I’m a proven guaranteed money pot, publishers! Make me something good and I give the moneys!
The challenge is that requires creativity. Creativity isn’t a stable investment.
Viva La indie game studio!
Problem with trying to get a Fortnite was that Epic was wanting to get it’s own PUBG after realizing that trying to get their own Minecraft was a failed endeavor. They quickly pivoted the game formula from a Minecraft type tower defense to a battle royale game.
Concord should have seen the writing on the wall early on and pivoted it’s game into something else thats flavor of the month.
Wait wasn’t the original concept for fortnite actually a wave based tower defence game? I remember being excited for that and then battle royal happened and I lost all interest.
People paid for that original game too, it wasn’t free. I don’t assume they got refunded. It was basically a massive bait and switch.
I was a sucker and my friend convinced me to get and pay for the orginal game. I think it was only like 3-4 weeks after the game was available when they shoehorned battle royal mode in. It wasn’t long after that before they switched to free to play and gave us I think in game currency that was worth the $60 or whatever the game costed at launch. I stopped playing altogether because I paid for a co-op PvE tower defense game, not a free to play PvP battle royal game.
Yea I recall it being like 20 something. That’s why I never pre-order. Without having poof I would assume they got refunded if it stopped development, it’s epic games. I do recall it did get released eventually but I had lost interest by them.
Yeah, the original trailer made it clear they were trying to go after the Minecraft style of gathering resources, building up a base and fortifying it, then defending from zombie mobs at night, like the Minecraft mobs.
Maybe not so much the pixel/block graphics, but the ideas behind Minecraft, with an actual objective, which Minecraft lacked.
https://youtu.be/hHTE5xg9E-g
That reminds me of hypixel.
Yeah the tower defense part of it was actually quite fun
It’s not like gamers are rejecting live services as a whole, because there are still quite a lot of successful live service games. And when a live service is successful, it’s really successful. So much so that it’s worth it to investors to keep gambling on them, one hit can compensate for a dozen flops.
Can they stay solvent through a dozen flops when each one costs them hundreds of millions of dollars?
Usually they don’t completely flop though, they just underwhelm expectations but if they can stay active long enough with the right amount of whales and fish they can usually break even or make a small profit. Concord is just a high profile legitimate flop that was turned off before it could do anything.
Its trajectory was that it was going to continue to burn money. Sega didn’t even launch Hyenas because they realized they’d only lose money by letting it rock. A lot of these games chasing the live service trend are spending so much money that they need to hit hard in order to turn that profit, like Avengers, Suicide Squad, Concord, the forthcoming Marathon and Fairgame$, etc. The Finals was huge at launch, lost most of its playerbase in the next couple of months (which, btw, happens for nearly every video game ever, live service or otherwise), and because it was so expensive, it’s not looking long for this world. Compared to something like Path of Exile or Warframe or The Hunt: Showdown, that launched a leaner game at the start and scaled up responsibly, they didn’t need to be the biggest thing in the world in order for it to make financial sense.
To be clear, I hate all of this shit, even when it’s a sound business strategy, but the risk involved in a project like Concord is visible from space, and the chances of it making up that cost are so clearly small when they’re not the first one of these to market.
This is the truth people don’t want to admit, but Final Fantasy XIV being successful carried square enix through their darkest days when everything wasn’t making a profit. Cygames using all the money they got from the granblue gacha to finance an action rpg and a fighting game, etc.
They serve as a safety net, we lost mimimi last year, I don’t think anyone would say they made bad games, but they just didn’t sell enough so they closed.
What about Anthem?
Anthem kept the servers going longer, it got some updates and EA even promised an entire rework akin to No Man’s Sky, but EA being EA they never delivered it and just cancelled everything lol.
TLDR; EA executives did not see the monetization return (microtransactions) of investing additional funds into Anthem via a free update.
Neither did Hello games when they continued to work on NMS, it didn’t have any monetization beyond buying the game, but they still did it in the end and it paid off.
Well…that’s the difference with literally anyone else and fuckin EA
All 15 of them
Being a little generous there, bud
Freegunners never die, hell yeah 😎 fucking cool tweet
Honestly. I kinda would have liked to try concord, but I sure as shit wasn’t going to pay to try it.
The game had an open beta and only 2 thousand people played it, no one cared.