https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/13/23350704/babylons-fall-offline-date-2023-platinum-games

Damn, that was quick! Less than a year after Babylon's Fall came out it'll shut down its online servers. I only know the game from its terrible reviews and the fact that like ten people were playing it a few months after it came out, but still, this seems like an epic crash and burn.

(Also the Verge's redesign is pretty bad!)

The worst part is that it's online only, so even the few who enjoy it will no longer be able to play solo.

I’ll be honest, if not for Jeff’s perverse obsession with this one early in 2022, this game’s release would’ve passed me by entirely. Its release felt like it had no marketing push behind it, and literally no one other than Jeff talked about it in my sphere. No gaming friends, no gaming streamers, very few followup articles from any gaming news site.

It just seemed easy to quickly forget the game, especially up against the release of Stranger of Paradise: Final Fantasy Origin around the same time of the year.

Things that lasted longer than Babylon's Fall:

• Anthem
• The Steam Deck
• 30-series GPUs
• The bottle of mustard in your fridge
• Square Enix's NFT plans
• Halo Infinite's Split-Screen plans
• The current Destiny 2 expansion
• etc.

What a weird, sad little game

Was this not the game that they specifically said was not in jeopardy of shutting down because they had so much planned for it?

I'll admit, I totally forgot this existed. When I saw the news, I was like "Damn. That's not good for a PS5 launch game," before realizing I was thinking of Godfall.

I'm disappointed that I still haven't seen any headline make a joke about Babylon's Fall's fall.

Imagine spending five years working on this thing... Remember when they announced this thing and the trailer just looked like Platinum was making a Souls game?

Spoiler alert: they will never tell you the truth about this. At least not entirely.

Byebalon.

I have complicated feelings about Platinum Games; on the one hand, Nier: Automata might be my favorite game of the millennium so far. On the other, I’ve hated every other Platinum game I’ve played. So seeing BF’s failure combined with the middling reception of whatever their last game was (Astral Something?) gives me a little hope that maybe they’ll rethink their current course, and possibly even try another collaborative project in the future.

You’re right about that Verge redesign, holy smokes!

Is this the quickest a AAA online game that actually launched been shut down? It has to be up there, at least, getting shut down just over six months after.

(Also good god, with my ADHD and that Verge layout I can barely process a single thing happening on Verge's main page now.)

My theory: Platinum wanted to make a different game, one that wasn't live service, and was informed of the direction change late in development. They followed through, but made it so piss-poor that they knew it wouldn't last, all with the aim of making sure they didn't have to keep a whole team engaged in making content for a game they didn't want to make in the end.

@broshmosh: I think it’s unlikely Platinum deliberately made it bad to shorten their involvement in supporting the game. It just strikes me as bad business (and a serious breach of contract if Square Enix could prove anything), given that Platinum has to stay on good terms with publishers to stay afloat.

Nonetheless, sure, there could be aspects of the game like live service that were a publisher request, and Platinum genuinely tried to implement but the end result was bad because it’s not their area of expertise. The level of self-sabotage you suggested is probably exceedingly rare in the industry.

Sometimes Platinum just makes bad games. Especially when it's for other companies. They spread themselves out across multiple projects at a time and someone gets stuck with the bad Platinum game. I think the more likely thing is that this is just another bad Platinum game that someone got stuck with while everyone else was working on Astral Chain, Wonderful 101 remastered, Bayonetta 3, and whatever Project G.G. is.

Babylon's Fall is a tragedy. I almost feel bad for the team that worked on it. They had plans, and ideas, and even some tiny nuggets of potential, but it all got washed away in piss poor execution and a grim determination to force a GaaS on people.

I do think it's absolute bullshit that a full priced game that offered microtransactions is going to be rendered completely unplayable less than a year after release. I know this is probably an extreme case, but I am really not liking the looks of the online only future for gaming.

I'd say that transformers game was an example of them knowing how to make a game even with a string budget. I think the monetization idea of this and spreading out stuff messed it up. Even that korra game was decent. This game is about 4 hours longer than transformers and 6 hours longer than korra. They can make solid action gameplay which never gets old. Nier even with it's minimal adherence to that was good. Still have to go back and play B on nier I likely missed all the good stuff people talk about it. lol.

Time to buy a physical copy to preserve history…that I can’t play after february, but still!

@kyary said:

To be honest, the bottle of mustard in my fridge might have outlasted some US Presidents.