Encourages fans to "join the party," though "wake" might be more appropriate.
Realtime Worlds' freefall after the June release of its MMO APB has been terrible to observe, and it appears as if the skeleton crew left in the studio after the reported mass layoffs won't even be able to keep the root of the studio's woes afloat long enough to recoup its costs. This afternoon, Realtime's Ben Bateman has announced the apparent immediate closure of APB via the game's official forums.
"APB has been a fantastic journey," he wrote, "but unfortunately that journey has come to a premature end. Today we are sad to announce that despite everyone's best efforts to keep the service running; APB is coming to a close."
Bateman didn't get specific as to when the MMO's servers would be shut down, but his encouragement to "join the party and say goodbye" certainly suggests that the time to flick a switch is nigh.
As Joystiq points out, this sudden closure brings up a wee little issue for users who have money locked up in the MMO's zany Realtime Points system. Will they get refunds? Realtime didn't address this in the post that otherwise so graciously thanks its hardcore base for their devoted, but brief, support.
" What a tremendous failure that is. I feel bad for everyone that worked hard on the game. All those man hours wasted. What a shame. "
I was thinking the same thing, if i was on that dev team i would feel horrible, spending years on a huge project just to see it crash and burn in 3 months.
So glad I pre-ordered this from Steam. :-/ I still have about 50 hours of gametime credit available to play. I only played about 5 hours and decided to wait a while for them to work out the bugs, etc... should've spent that $50 elsewhere. Crime Craft anyone? Oh wait....
This blows, a lot. APB was one of those crazy projects that float on a wing an a prayer. It was supposed to be way huge and awesome but it was terrible. Just gunna result in more studios not taking chances on crazy wild projects. I predict another season of stupid safe sequels.
The weirdest thing is that I saw somewhere that they were going to roll out a new patch in a couple of days... 1.4.2 if I remember correctly. I NEVER would've expected this so soon.
" i wanted this game to succeed to badly. Then it came out and I knew it was going to wither and die, but I wouldn't have guessed so soon. Is this some record or something? Even the Matrix Online lasted longer than this didn't it? "
The Matrix Online lasted 4 years surprisingly. They should've just made Crackdown 2 instead, the first one was so good.
Ahahahahahahahahahahaha..... we'll kids this is what happens when you release a broken unfinished game and your company ends up in administration... yeah bet their kicking them selves having not just made crackdown 2..
"Together we were building an absolutely amazing game"
What were they thinking? Every MMO that comes out nowadays is always janky and bad from the start, and then they expect players to fund their bad game long enough for them to build it into something better. You can't do that.
Hopefully the developers and players have learned their lesson about MMOs. I learned my lesson after I got bored of WoW and started searching for the next big hit that would compete with WoW, but all I got was some bad games that charged me monthly.
No offense to anyone who actually liked this game, but after watching that video, I think I can see why it died. I have to admit that the trailers had me slightly interested, but I'm glad I didn't spend any money on what it actually ended up being.
I'm not going to pay a subscription unnecessarily and I'm sure alot of other people feel the same way. It's like childish thinking, where you attach a crazy price to something in order to get more money. E.g. have no money? Sell your PC for a million pounds.
Sad, but the game was bad; went out the door too soon. Well I hope all the R&D Realtime put in won't go to waste. I wonder if Rockstar was one of the interested party? If I was them I'd snap up that customisation shit pronto.
I will miss this. Havnt played much recently, got distracted and wanted to take a little break because i was playing nothing but apb. Dunno whats gonna happen with my 600rtw points, probably nothing.
I hear there is atleast 1 private server up and running out there somewhere, not sure if its legit or not, might give it a try, all my hardwork on the clothes ive already done though is just going to be lost :(
APB wasted a bunch of time and money making a bad game. Their development bubble kept them from seeing what almost everyone else could. APB wasn't a great idea, poorly designed, lifelessly executed and strangled by a masochistic revenue system. The means justify the ends.
I feel so bad for people that wasted money on this crap.
i was one of the bastards that bought into the hellgate london fiasco... well at the very least that game had a single player element to it, but still...
Wow. I shouldn't have been, but I am a bit surprised. It may have been broken as hell, but it cost about 100 million GBP to make, so I expected it to stay supported for a while longer.
I feel bad for everyone who now has this black mark on their CV, but thems the breaks, I'm afraid. The phrases about 'putting all your eggs in basket' & avoiding counting them until they've hatched come to mind.
" And they spent like 100 million making this game? What a f-ing waste of money. When I saw it for the first time I new it would suck but many people were excited about it. It was weird to me... "
@nick69: reading Luke Halliwell's blog (link I posted above, plus parts 2 and 3), it sounds like this game was in development hell for years, and the organization was padded out with lots of high level managers pulling in 6-figure salaries for all those years.
He doesn't come right out and say it, but it sounds like management, knowing they had $100M to blow, bled them dry. Just speculation on my part, but I've worked in corporate software companies long enough to see how this typically happens.
I feel bad for the people who have wasted a whole bunch of money on it. 3 months is a disgrace, they are practically stealing from the people who shelled out the money for it.
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