First seen by VGC News, SteamCharts exhibits that the worldwide concurrent player count on PC for Babylon’s Fall, the embattled reside service recreation by Sq. Enix and Platinum Video games, fell to only one participant on Tuesday night time, earlier than stabilizing to its extra typical however nonetheless anemic 20-50 concurrent gamers.
Participant counts usually are not the end-all be-all of a recreation’s well being. They ebb and stream, with inevitable peaks at launch or the discharge of an enlargement and contractions throughout dry spells of recent content material. That being mentioned, it is alarming to see a reside service recreation by a long-established writer and well-liked developer attain such a crucial stage simply two months after launch.
As VGC factors out, frequent “useless recreation” candidates Marvel’s Avengers and Outriders have managed to take care of audiences a number of occasions the dimensions of Babylon’s Fall. It is unclear how the sport is doing on PlayStation and Xbox, however I doubt it is significantly better given Babylon’s Fall’s frosty reception.
In PC Gamer’s review, Anne-Marie Coyle said that “Babylon’s Fall crumbles below the load of bland design, repetitive gameplay and prioritization of paywalls over gamers.” Babylon’s Fall’s poor reception, coupled with an absence of promoting or phrase of mouth helps put its present state of affairs in perspective.
On the finish of March, Platinum insisted that “there aren’t any plans to scale back the size of improvement on Babylon’s Fall. Content material as much as the top of Season 2 is now virtually full and we’ve began work on Season 3 and past.” Nonetheless, it is laborious to think about improvement being allowed to proceed for for much longer if the crew is not in a position to flip this case round.
Sq. Enix made headlines this previous week because it sloughed off its North American studios and properties, with the corporate claiming the shift “allows the launch of recent companies by shifting ahead with investments in fields together with blockchain, AI, and the cloud.”
For its half, Platinum’s CEO has publicly said that the studio will shift to live service games sooner or later, versus the only participant character motion video games that put it on the map. Babylon’s Fall’s disastrous launch might give the corporate pause earlier than committing to the hilt, nevertheless.
