Battle-stillborn
Alas, poor Battleborn. We hardly knew ya.
Gearbox has officially announced that
it’s pulling an Evolve and will be
ending all support for its ill-fated attempt at a multiplayer hero-based arena
shooter as of this week. In short, the game won’t be receiving any new
characters, maps, balance changes or tweaks, a.k.a things that the modern
multiplayer-exclusive game needs to survive in the most competitive market in
all of video games.
But I doubt that Battleborn’s active playerbase will mind about the lack of updates,
especially considering they don’t actually exist.
So how did the game end up in this
situation? Well, that answer is simple. It arrived in this situation and never
made much of an attempt to dig itself out.
The game launched in April of last
year, advertising itself as a “fusion of genres” to create what was, according
to the infamous CEO of Gearbox and lifelike robot piloted by rattlesnakes Randy
Pitchford (this is the part where you boo), the most ambitious game the
developer had ever created. With Borderlands
3 still but a twinkle in Pitchford’s eye and hot off the heels of two games
that blew it big-time (namely Duke Nukem
Forever and Aliens: Colonial Marines),
Gearbox needed a hit desperately.
And, to be fair, they had all the
right pieces in place here. MOBAs have quickly become one of the most popular
genres at least on the PC market thanks to games like League of Legends and Dota 2,
first-person shooters will never not be lucrative, and the colourful aesthetic
appealed to those who’d lost interest in modern military designed games like Call of Duty.
There was just one teensy-weensy
problem standing in the game’s way: it was released less than a month before a
small, relatively unknown new entrant to the competition known as…
Oops!
Yes, hype for Blizzard’s Overwatch was nearing its peak around
the same time as Battleborn’s
release, and all eyes were on it. Those who’d played the beta maintained that
it was among the best shooters they’d ever played, including major gaming
alumni such as TotalBiscuit. On the other hand, Battleborn launched to mixed reviews from gaming publications, and
never quite managed to make it past 70 on Metacritic. Which would you rather
buy?
Considering the average gamer only
buys a few games a year, the fact that Battleborn
launched in the same month as its greatest rival was an immediate death
sentence for the poor game. It was immediately targeted by Blizzard’s more
zealous fans as being a threat to their precious new baby and was lambasted by
them as a result. Adding in the extra kick in the balls in the form of
below-average review scores, and Battleborn
was dead in the water before it even got a chance to face Overwatch on store shelves.
The game quickly plummeted in sales
charts thanks to not only Overwatch but
also the equally recent releases of Uncharted
4 and Doom. Perhaps even more
embarrassing was the game’s performance on Steam, where even a graphics card
overclocking software had more active “players” at one point than Battleborn.
And keep in mind that this all
happened before the game finished its first month.
Gearbox then cooked up a new plan:
drop the price on the same day Overwatch released.
Dropping $20, the move failed to garner more than pity from gamers, as it
looked like the game was desperately trying to garner attention from those
eagerly awaiting their new copies of Blizzard’s latest.
And the death bell had rung before the
game even managed to survive its first month. Gamers only heard of Battleborn again when rumours were
abounding that the game was going to give up the ghost in trying to be a direct
competitor to Overwatch, and would
instead be going after Paladins, a
free-to-play alternative game with lots of similarities to Blizzard’s
presumably targeted at those strapped for cash. In doing this, Battleborn would be going free-to-play,
presumably pissing off those who paid $70 for it on launch day even further.
Pitchford quickly attempted to quash
the rumours, but they essentially came true in June of this year when the game
launched its “Free Trial” mode. The trial mode essentially turned the game into, you
guessed it, a free-to-play experience, where you played with a randomly
rotating selection of heroes in order to earn currency and buy your favourites
for permanent use.
And now we arrive at present day. Just
16 months after the game launched and it’s already being put on life support.
Even Evolve managed to last longer
than that. I think the biggest one to blame here is whoever decided to schedule
the game for launch. Much like EA’s misadventure last year when they
cannibalized the amazing Titanfall 2 by
releasing it in the same week as the latest installments in both Call of Duty and EA’s own Battlefield, Battleborn might’ve had a fighting chance if it had been released a
few months earlier or later. Plants vs.
Zombies Garden Warfare 2 had no Overwatch
issues thanks to a 3 month gap in between the two games releases, and the
shooters being released in the November Warfare season didn’t have to worry
about Overwatch thanks to an equal if
not bigger gap since release, as well as being able to grab players who’d lost
interest in the game.
Battleborn
sat squarely in the line of fire, refused to move, and as a result got shot
right in the head, and now we can finally declare it dead for good.
Song of the Week
Zombies on your Lawn – Plants vs. Zombies
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