[Column] Lawbreakers Free Weekend: Hook, Line, and Nobody Bought It


I didn’t play Lawbreakers this weekend. I did the last free weekend, and at some point on Friday had the intention of downloading it again to play for the weekend and, considering the $15 price tag, perhaps finally buy it. But something stopped me from even bothering to download the client for free, investing little more than the few hours of weekend time that I could give to this title: The player count.

I’d consider it a bad sign if the peak population of Lawbreakers topped out at one thousand on a free weekend, but it didn’t. No, Lawbreakers peaked out Friday night at 420 concurrent users, then Saturday night at 378 and Sunday night at 266. By this morning, the game is already back down to the low teens. Naturally the Saturday and Sunday population figures don’t come into count when talking about my decisions on Friday, but in consideration of the fact that the last free weekend for Lawbreakers drew in a peak of over one thousand and this weekend looked like it couldn’t hit half of that, I came to the conclusion that even putting in the time to download would be meaningless as there was no chance of me buying the game and supporting a dead community.

It is a pretty safe bet that I’m not the only person who either looked at the population figures and turned the other way or actually downloaded the game and ended up scoffing at just how few people are even willing to give the game a try for absolutely free. Boss Key Productions has called this game a “marathon, not a sprint,” but the game is constantly losing momentum and at this point will need a miracle in order to reverse the trend.

Perhaps Boss Key Studios should hire the No Man’s Sky developers on as consultants, there is a game that managed to patch up what seemed to be a sunken ship and turned it into a rather popular title in the course of a year.

[Community] The Sense of Accomplishment, or Buy Our Freakin Lockboxes


Electronic Arts may have won the award for most disliked and tone deaf comment on Reddit in the history of the platform. Those of you who follow Battlefront II are likely aware of the criticisms that the game has received in regards to its progression system, namely complaints that it shamelessly gates power behind random loot box drops that are also available for real money. The comment popped up in a thread titled “Seriously? I paid 80$ to have Vader locked?” The post took umbrage with the fact that Darth Vader, an iconic Battlefront character, is locked from use unless players do some extensive grinding to unlock him.

According to another Reddit thread using graphs and charts, it has been calculated that Battlefront 2 requires approximately 40 hours to unlock a single hero or villain, as the game doles out currency rewards based on time played rather than points earned. Alternately, of course, you can bypass this grind somewhat by plugging real money into the system and buying loot boxes.

In response to the complaint, a representative from EA’s customer support posted the following comment:

“The intent is to provide players with a sense of pride and accomplishment for unlocking different heroes.

As for cost, we selected initial values based upon data from the Open Beta and other adjustments made to milestone rewards before launch. Among other things, we’re looking at average per-player credit earn rates on a daily basis, and we’ll be making constant adjustments to ensure that players have challenges that are compelling, rewarding, and of course attainable via gameplay.

We appreciate the candid feedback, and the passion the community has put forth around the current topics here on Reddit, our forums and across numerous social media outlets.

Our team will continue to make changes and monitor community feedback and update everyone as soon and as often as we can.”

You heard it here first, Battlefront wants to provide you with a sense of pride and accomplishment, not frustrate you with an intentionally crippled progression system designed to deeply encourage loot box purchases. The comment currently stands deep in the red at negative 274 thousand votes in just 19 hours.

And now, please enjoy some of the better angry and snarky responses in said thread.

“If the unlock took maybe 2-4 hours that would be fine, but this is essentially saying “You don’t need to pay but if you don’t good luck””

“Locking iconic characters behind credit walls that will take dozens of hours to get one is just insane, especially when I am willing to bet you have tons of heroes planned which will be behind similar paywalls?”

“If I had a credit for every downvote you’ve gotten I could finally unlock Darth Vader!”

“More so how much do they expect the average gamer to play this game? To unlock 3 hero’s I would have to play 120 hours, there are few games I have played 100 hours and that goes for a majority of people, people will get bored long before that and move on to another game once the grind becomes too much.”

“And Vader costs 60k, it’s bizzare.”

“Isn’t that also 40 hours for 1 hero assuming you buy nothing else at all. The opportunity cost for missing out on everything while saving up for a single big ticket item is tremendous.”

“That’s fucking rich. Just be honest. The truth is you know very few people are going to sink a full work week into this game and you’re hoping that somebody is desperate enough to buy credits to unlock the character. It has nothing to do with providing a “sense of pride and accomplishment.” This is a flat-out lie and you know it. How naive do you think your player base is?”

2017’s Predictions Revisited: How Did We Do?


It’s that time of year, folks, where MMO Fallout looks back on our predictions for this year in order to hand ammunition to the very people who regularly remind me that I have no idea what I’m talking about. This year I did pretty well, out of 30 mostly serious predictions I would say that I only got about 6 wrong.

And when you’re done remembering the year, take a gander at this list of tips to keep your memory sharp into your 50s.

So let’s recap.

  1. Nostalrius getting a cease and desist and Blizzard announcing Pristine Servers: Nailed it on both counts, minus the part about Nostalrius allowing the cease and desist to escalate to a full on lawsuit.
  2. Laura K Dale would continue leaking Switch news: Also true, although we will never really know if Nintendo tracked down the person leaking the information.
  3. Steam overloaded with trash games: Yep, in the form of Steam Direct, Valve has never allowed so many shysters and con artists on their platform as they did in 2017.
  4. Firefall shut down: Called this one, although the folks at Red5 didn’t even bother to acknowledge the allegedly existing console version when announcing the PC sunsetting.
  5. Pathfinder Online will shut down: 100% wrong on this one.
  6. SAG strike ends: Called this one on all accounts, that there would be concessions on both sides and people would go back to not pretending to care about voice actors receiving residuals.
  7. Trions Worlds would bungle a launch: This is like predicting that the sun will rise, so I’m not exactly looking for kudos.
  8. Phantasy Star Online 2 still not coming to the west: And it still isn’t.
  9. MMOs launching in the East and dying before coming to the west: Kritika Online has already shut down in Southeast Asia before coming to Europe/Americas.
  10. Decent selling HD remakes with extras: Kingdom Hearts, Metroid, among other games.
  11. HD Remakes with microtransactions: As sure-fire as it seemed, I’m pretty sure that not a single game released an HD remake with microtransactions shoved in.
  12. Resident Evil 7 the first major VR game and streamers: Both happened, first being that Resident Evil 7 was a smashing success for VR and a streamer eventually did make a video that he crapped his pants.
  13. South Park: South Park released and it could indeed be summed up as “pretty good,” and the game was criticized for its poop jokes.
  14. Activision and Call of Duty: Well Activision didn’t hold development on Call of Duty, but WWII was a return to the series roots, and Activision has not explicitly addressed the falling sales from Infinite Warfare.
  15. No Man’s Sky gets updates, no players: Half correct on this, did not anticipate that people would flock back to No Man’s Sky in the numbers that they did.
  16. Bulletstorm Flops: It did, and odds are you’ll find Bulletstorm heavily discounted at your local game store. Currently Bulletstorm has less than 10 people playing, and peaked at launch at 1,200.
  17. Video game movies: Only one video game movie released stateside this year, the Resident Evil film. It didn’t underperform in box offices, but I’m guessing most of you already forgot about it.
  18. Daybreak becoming a home for wayward developers: Stay tuned.
  19. Valve being sued: Did not happen.
  20. Governments will pay attention to lockboxes: It’s starting to happen, although gamers are not seeing the inherent worthlessness of these boxes in many games.
  21. Troll games and Ukranian money laundering: Troll games have become more prevalent on Steam, and the platform is definitely still being used for money laundering by Ukranian developers.
  22. Yooka-Laylee Launch: Right on this one, the game launched and it was pretty well received.
  23. Game from ex-STALKER developers: I’m going to fit Escape from Tarkov into this list.
  24. Star Citizen misses its release dates: All of them.
  25. Camelot Unchained: The game didn’t launch, therefore the rest of the prediction is meaningless.
  26. Conan Exiles launches, Funcom realizes that developing MMOs is pointless: Yep, enough that they decided to reboot The Secret World as a non-MMO.
  27. Darkfall Reboots: They launched but have not yet cannibalized each other.
  28. H1Z1 will bring on new lead developers: 99% sure this happened.
  29. I get a lawsuit threat from an indie developer: More than once.
  30. John Smedley joins new startup: Of course he did.

Maplestory Blitz Launches In Southeast Asia, Europe, Middle East


Nexon this week announced the expansion of Maplestory Blitz into select regions in Southeast Asia, Europe, and Oceania on Google and Apple devices. Players are tasked with building decks using various heroes from Maplestory and dueling each other in real time battles. During the launch event, players can get their hands on boosters and card packs, collecting classic heroes such as:

  • Mercedes – A talented archer blessed by the Fairy King to rain deadly arrows upon the battlefield;
  • Phantom – The greatest thief who ever lived, and revived after years of imprisonment to avenge the death of his love, Empress Aria;
  • Kyrin – The infamous and charismatic pirate captain set on destroying everything that stands in her way;
  • Oz – Chief Knight of Fire who engulfs her enemies and allies in a blazing reign of flame;
  • Demon Slayer – Formerly the Black Mage’s most loyal commander, the skilled strategist joined the resistance following the Black Mage’s ultimate betrayal.

Maplestory Blitz launches today in Australia, Malaysia, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Poland, the Netherlands and the Philippines.

Mobile Drives Explosive Sales For NCSoft In Third Quarter


NCSoft’s third quarter results are in, and the results are incredible. Thanks to strong performances in the mobile sector, the Korean developer/publisher has posted record sales and profits, as can be seen in the chart above. Mobile gaming now makes up 82% of NCSoft’s sales figures, posting 551 billion won in sales ($491 million USD) in just one quarter.

The popularity of NCSoft’s mobile titles in Korea has driven its sales up over 260% over the last quarter while Guild Wars 2 saw revenue increase 50% from sales of the latest Guild Wars 2 expansion. Lineage II, Aion, and Blade & Soul all saw their revenues drop slightly while Lineage experienced a small increase in sales. Lineage II Revolution expansion overseas and strong performance of Blade & Soul in China also helped with royalty revenue.

(Source: NCSoft)

RaiderZ Is Coming Back: Masangsoft Takes Over Development


It’s been a long time since we talked about RaiderZ, the titular MMO that despite being shut down in Europe way back in 2013 managed to survive another two years until developer MAIET Entertainment also went bankrupt, forcing Perfect World Entertainment to stop publishing as certain critical bugs could not be fixed. Well, two years later and the game just refuses to stay dead. Over at the RaiderZ Facebook page, a new challenger has arisen to bring RaiderZ back to life.

Masangsoft’s announcement acknowledges that RaiderZ is a bit old by MMO standards and needs to be fixed up before it can relaunch. The developer doesn’t have much in the way of timetables, but has asked that we sit tight while they get to work and that more news should be coming soon.

We can’t say how much more time we need to reinvent this game. What’s certain is that we’ll try to provide better and better experiences for many people who look forward to this game. Sooner or later, you’ll hear another news about the beginning of our development.

For a good read, checkout MMO Fallout’s 2013 interview with Perfect World senior product manager Mark Hill.

Asta La Vista: Asta Online Servers To Shut Down


Following its re-launch in April this year, Asta Online developer Polygon Games has announced that the title will shut down next month. Players are asked to contact Steam in regards to any refund requests over in-game items. The termination notice has been pasted below for brevity.

[Service termination notice]
? Termination date : 8th Dec(Fri), 2017
? Detail : Service termination of ASTA Online
? Reference
– In-game purchase has been closed at 01:00 AM(ASTA server time), 9th Nov(Thur)
and players are no longer able to purchase cash items.

(Source: Steam)

[NM] Lawbreakers Population Before Free Weekend Is Fitting


Lawbreakers is currently 50% off in preparation for a free weekend which starts on Thursday and runs through Sunday, and while the sale is a nice jump on the pre-holiday mass discounts, the need for a free weekend can not be better shown than through the screenshot above. While bringing up the announcement, we seem to have hit the page at just the right time, either through statistical anomaly (servers down) or sheer luck, Lawbreakers was at 0 players. That was last night, this morning the game isn’t doing much better with a whole 14 people worldwide breaking the law.

Boss Key Studios has referred to its strategy as a marathon, not a sprint, but with the game failing to both attract new players and retain its existing customer base, it looks more like Lawbreakers is jogging in place as the competition leaves it in the dust. As a multiplayer-only game, Lawbreakers’ population issues are almost self-defeating, as people are reluctant to buy a game with a low population, thus causing more population issues. What Lawbreakers needs is a big push in players who keep coming back, say spurred by a free weekend.

(Source: Steam Charts)

PSA: Watch Dogs is Free Until November 13 (Uplay)


If for some reason you still haven’t picked up Watch Dogs during its multiple instances of free availability on various platforms, well you have the chance yet again. From now until November 13, you can get Watch Dogs on Uplay and keep it. Watch Dogs was previously part of Xbox Games with Gold back in May and has been pretty cheap on sale elsewhere on and off.

The rest of you can enjoy this homemade dog.

(Source: Twitter)

MU Legend Hits Open Beta, Soft Launches on PC


Webzen’s latest title MU Legend today launched into open beta, a soft launch of sorts where player data will be retained into the full launch later on. MU Legend is an ARPG and follow up to MU Online. Players are able to choose from four classes to fight the legion of Pandemonium.

Dennis Czybulka, COO at Webzen Dublin, acknowledged the occasion with these words: “Launching a game is always a high-stakes moment to live through, where hundreds of emotions collide. Here, in the ‘OBT backstage’, I am witnessing – let me put it like this – ‘an exotic diversity of exhilarated states of mind ‘: The chills of enthusiasm are making hairs stand on end, adding a frenetic edge to the usual finger-tapping rhythm – still not missing a beat – and hearts are hammering faster than usual. Now, the fun starts for the fans, and our attention is focused entirely on making their game experience the most unforgettable yet. We’re excited for players to experience first-hand the passion that we’ve put into MU Legend and look forward to seeing them all in-game.”

All game content for launch is available today with more content coming further down the line. Players who participated in the previous beta tests will receive a bonus to be distributed on November 14.

(Source: Webzen press release)