Servers shut off January 31.
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Tag: Battleborn
Battleborn Rendered Unplayable In January 2021
2K Games announced this week that the Battleborn servers will shut down as of January 2021, leading everyone to ask the same question; “Battleborn’s servers were still online?”
Battleborn famously launched in May 2016 and became known as the game killed in the crib by Overwatch which released just three weeks after. Following a steep decline in users once Overwatch actually launched, Battleborn languished for a year and a half until Gearbox finally pulled the plug and announced that the title would no longer be seeing any content updates. After that it was only a matter of time until the servers were taken down for good.
For what it’s worth, Battleborn was actually a decent game. Not great, but decent. It was less of the Overwatch that it was compared to and more of a first person shooter variant of a Dota-style game. GQ’s Joshua Rivera made an analogy in 2017 that still fits:
“Imagine you opened up a new, pretty good pizza shop in your neighborhood, a place where people like pizza but can’t really get any nearby. It’s a good idea; the demand is there, and you’ve got a pretty good supply. Not the best slice you’ve ever had, but you can reliably make a solid pie that should make your spot a hit. Now imagine that two weeks later, let’s say… Paul Rudd opens a pizza shop a block away. And not only is that pizza shop a place where you can go and hang out with Paul Rudd and all his famous friends, but it turns out that Paul Rudd is like, a pizza savant? Just freaking impossibly good at slingin’ pies, that Paul Rudd.”
As of right now, Battleborn has been removed from digital store shelves (although you can probably still find piles of unopened copies at Goodwill). Digital currency is being removed from sale in February 2020 and the game will no longer be playable once the servers go down in January 2021.
Source: Twitter
Battleborn Ceasing Development Support After Fall Update
As they say, all good things must come to an end, and they also say that development costs money and money doesn’t grow on trees. Gearbox Software has announced that this fall’s update to Battleborn will be the last. The fall update was announced at PAX and includes new skins, map and balance tweaks, as well as new boosts and taunts.
But never fear, those of you who actually bought this game and intend on continuing to play it. The servers for Battleborn will not be going anywhere for the foreseeable future.
Never fear! Battleborn is here to stay. Nothing is changing with Battleborn, and the servers will be up and active for the foreseeable future. We announced the Fall Update for the game at PAX including some new skins, themed around some of your favorite Borderlands characters! That update will also include some updated title art (more full bar titles!) for the more significant challenges in the game, as well as some additional Finisher Boosts and Taunts. Also, there are minor balance changes in that patch.
Creative director Randy Varnell has moved on to new projects, likely including Borderlands 3, which 90% of the Gearbox staff is currently working on. Battleborn launched in May 2016 and got lost in the midst of Overwatch’s massive overtaking of first person shooters. On Saturday night, the game peaked at 106 players on PC.
(Source: Battleborn)
[Community] PC Gaming May Not Be Dead, But Lawbreakers Is Starting Out Weak
Cliff Bleszinski has a long history with PC games, although you may not know it if you just started gaming within the last ten years. For a while, Bleszinski had a great relationship with the PC platform, until Unreal Tournament allegedly sold quite poorly on the system (according to Gamespy online stats from the time), leading up to 2008 where Bleszinski announced that Gears of War 2 would not be coming to PC, blaming piracy. In reality, Gears of War 2 didn’t come to PC because it was an Xbox platform exclusive.
“The person who is savvy enough to want to have a good PC to upgrade their video card, is a person who is savvy enough to know [BitTorrent] to know all the elements so they can pirate software. Therefore, high-end videogames are suffering very much on the PC.”
Certain developers have been exaggerating the effects of piracy on PC for years, going further back than 2011 with Ubisoft claiming that 95% of PC consumers would pirate their product, a factor that runs in direct contradiction to their investor reports which consistently show great sales on PC. As a result of his snubbing of the community, Bleszinski’s name has been somewhat dragged through the mud over the years.
Now Bleszinski apologized for his comment at the 2015 Game Awards, alongside showcasing his upcoming (now released) game Lawbreakers. Well Lawbreakers has launched and while it is receiving very positive reviews, from critics and gamers (87% positive on Steam), the population on PC has been slow to adopt the title. Steam Charts shows a launch day peak of 3,000 which has been steadily dropping over the past week. By comparison, Battleborn launched to a day one peak of 12,000 and is presently sitting at a peak of 280 over the last 30 days, including free trial players.
Bleszinski, for his part, has already responded to news comparing Lawbreakers to Battleborn, noting that the game is “a marathon not a sprint,” and that he would “rather be the underhyped game that slowly ramps up into something that people adore than something that comes out with way too much hype that there’s a backlash for, which is why I think the Steam reviews are so positive.” You can check out the entire interview at Eurogamer.
As for Lawbreakers, we will need to wait and see if the game is able to attract more publicity, and thus a more active population, and what plans are in store should traffic continue to dwindle.
One Month Later: Battleborn’s Free Trial Doesn’t Retain Numbers
It’s been one month since Battleborn started its free trial, and while the game received an early boost it looks like most of those customers aren’t sticking around. While the game peaked out on Steam at 1,561 concurrent users, the last week has seen those numbers fall to an average of 417.9. The number is still much higher than May’s average player count of 82.2, but complaints of long wait times for queues on the forums and the fact that this is just one month out of launch spells bad times ahead for Battleborn.
Overall, the free trial launch failed to bring the concurrency numbers to even 10% of Battleborn’s launch peak of 12,070 so while the number did increase over pre-trial numbers, it wasn’t by much and those numbers are falling quite steadily. Effects on population for the console versions is more difficult to determine.
(Source: Steam Charts)
Weekend Starter: A Collection of Free Weekend Games
What is free to play this weekend? Everything, apparently. Well maybe not everything, but there are a fair amount of free games to fill your weekend, especially if you’re willing to subject yourself to things like the Uplay launcher. Of the games listed below, Battleborn is permanently free to try and Payday 2 is the only one that you can snag now and keep forever. Regardless, if you’re looking to kill some time, you’ll find plenty of grinding to do in RuneScape and The Division.
- RuneScape is hosting a free weekend until June 12 where players can log in and access members-only content. You’ll also be able to snag a free mummy outfit from Solomon’s Store during this weekend.
- The Division is free to try on Uplay this weekend. The promotion includes the base game with progress saving for the full version if you do buy it.
- Trials Fusion is also part of the Uplay weekend.
- Steep is also part of the Uplay weekend.
- VR shooter Battledome is hosting a free weekend on Steam.
- Mirage: Arcane Warfare is also hosting a free weekend on Steam.
- Payday 2 is free for the first five million people who grab a copy.
- Deformers is hosting a free weekend on Steam.
- Battleborn has transitioned to a free trial game.
Randy Pitchford Denies “Reckless” Battleborn F2P Rumors
Gearbox head Randy Pitchford has denied “reckless” rumors that Battleborn is going free to play, following a report by Kotaku.
While there are no plans to make Battleborn free to play, Pitchford later confirmed that the game will have a limited free trial at some point in the coming months. Until that point, which is not until months from now, Gearbox has committed to continuing to release DLC and continue to support the game as it exists.
Battleborn has slipped hard on PC, with 657 people playing at peak concurrency over the past 30 days or so. The details of Battleborn’s free trial will no doubt be revealed in the months to come.
(Source: Twitter)
MMO Fallout 