Firefall is Dead, Once Again

As covered in this post by BigSocrates Firefall appeared to temporarily stop in 2016 but as of today, Friday 7th July 2017 the game is done for good. Well, that's not strictly true. In a statement issued on the Red 5 Studios website they claim that Firefall will be made in to a mobile game (which personally sounds like a desperate attempt to cash in on mobile gaming and doomed to fail). Several online only games closing forever in such a short space of time upsets me even though I didn't give a damn about Firefall. Here is the developers statement:

With heavy hearts, we regret to inform you that after much review and analysis, Red 5 Studios have decided to suspend the Firefall efforts on 7th, July 2017. Thank you for being an important part of the Firefall experience and for your loyalty and dedication to the online community.

Your efforts and loyalty will not go without recognition, however. Firefall is currently developing a mobile version of the game and all of Firefall’s founders and players will be rewarded greatly in the new game. We will be sure to provide everyone with more updates as we have them.

Thank you for your support and enthusiasm throughout the years; we will see you at the next battle.

Are you surprised?

I don't think I ever heard of this game.

*looks at the game's page*

Wait, there's a Quick Look of this? Huh.

I played a little bit of Firefall when it first came out. It was really boring, at least at early levels. I didn't make it very far into the game before putting it aside. I remember Defiance being a much better shooter mmo at the time.

What, is, Fire, Fall?!

Oh wait, wrong game... but wait... what IS Firefall?
Completely forgot about this game but hopefully no one's employment is in danger!

I played this for a week or so when it first came out. It was fine, but nothing really made it stand out to me. I think it had a player market where you could exchange in game resources for the premium currency. That was a cool idea, though I don't know how it worked out once everyone still playing had a ton of in game resources.

I remember seeing how much they spent on booths during PAX. Then I got into the beta/whatever and was thoroughly unimpressed by the actual game. I'm surprised it made it this long.

It's karma for using that Starcraft font.

I like to think I followed this game pretty closely from it's announcement to the latter stages of closed beta. I fell off pretty quick, but still checked back in on occasion.

Now, having said all that, the most surprising thing to me is that it took this long. Then again, at this point, I probably shouldn't be. MMOs almost always seem to have just enough people lingering around pumping money into them that they can keep operating for what feels like years despite little to no major support from the developers. And that especially goes for MMOs who have experienced major clusterfucks. Almost every SOE game, Warhammer Online, and numerous Chinese or Korean grindfests (these are perhaps even more fascinating a topic as they'll get sold off to another publisher and often get re-branded, sometimes even after they've been shut down at least once before).

But, I digress. I'd love to say Firefall will be missed, but that game essentially died years ago as far as I'm concerned.

Oh man I forgot this existed. I remember playing it near launch with some friends and while we had some fun, we fell off pretty quick.

Mobile version sounds...weird, but good luck I guess?

Turns out their booths just weren't big enough.

Ok, this was that game with the giant bus they were talking about a few years ago.

God, I loved the saga around that bus.

This is a good post from 2013 about it and the entire Kern debacle.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/1tuf3c/this_is_why_mark_kern_was_removed_as_ceo_by_red_5/

Probably a bad sign that I'm not the only one here who had literally never heard of the game until seeing this thread.

Also, I read through that Reddit thread until I linked to Kern's twitter. His feed makes him sound like a huge ass-weasel.

They're pulling the plug but it's been on life support for years. This was never actually on a path to be good but it was definitely interesting for a while. GB did their quick look (it's actually what brought me to this site in earnest I think) just a couple weeks after they gutted all the neat parts of the game for a shitty shooterlooter mmo.

When I was really deep in the game you had to smack the ground with a giant hammer, read weird squiggly lines on the ground to see where the good minerals were, drop a mining pod that swarmed the place with enemies, then take those minerals to craft yourself upgrades and actually MAKE the ability modules you used as a class, customizing how they worked and strengths and weaknesses. There were no quests, there was barely any content, and nobody knew what the game was supposed to be. The saga of "Now we're an esport, now we're a production company, now I'm fired" meant this thing was doomed from the beginning. Blowing a couple million on that dumbass bus probably didn't help anything either. When it released it was less of a game than Hellgate: London

Goodbye Firefall, while I still remember what was worth missing about you

PAX isn't going to be the same :(

RIP. This article is required reading in order to understand how Firefall got to where it is today. It expands on and includes the reddit thread @keddren posted and is a real trip.

The first year I went to PAX East was 2011 and this game's booth absolutely dominated what seemed like an entire corner of the show floor.

This whole thing always gave me the feeling that it was made by someone with way too much money and way too high ambitions and no real idea how to make what they saw in their head become a real thing.

It's still on the Steam store and its DLC ($140!!!!!!) is still for sale. Seems shady.

It all went to shit when they decided to go all in on Esports ! fucking esports

Not at all shady. All that stuff will transfer over into the hot mobile game that is definitely going to come out and be super popular and fun.

What would be shady would be to deny people the opportunity to buy all that hot FireFall DLC in anticipation of the definitely real mobile relaunch that is, once again, going to happen for real in this universe.

$140 for "all that" DLC... it's 3 packs.

And then it somehow got shittier when they realized "oh shit, no oneis playing this shitty mode" and decided to remove it entirely.

Not terribly surprised, there always seemed to be some sort of dumpster fire around that game when people actually noticed that it existed.

It's been dead for years., This was putting that mess out of its misery.

@madman356647: Except now it's going to be a mobile game. The suffering will never end.

This game was pretty much done from the outset. The pacing of progression was it's main issue with every, single, person I persuaded to try the game with me saying the same thing; This is getting boring.

This was honestly the first game that really went full in on verticality in their map design but had you running back and forth across a dead empty map doing glorified fetch quests for HOURS. Hell I don't even think I left the first zone of that game after playing for hours. I guess they just suffered from the mentality of the time that slowing down the players progress is how to keep players in your game.

I remember playing the beta once. It looked okay.

That article was an absolutely WILD ride. I find it utterly baffling that production for this game managed to go on for so long to begin with, let alone with the continual missteps and apparent man-child temper tantrums from the CEO that turned this project and its associated endeavors into a black hole of a money pit. I thought the horrendous bus was going to be the worst of it.

I absolutely urge the rest of the duders to give this a read.

I tried reinstalling it after I got home on Friday. It still pulled my character list (and even let me create a new character, weirdly enough) but wouldn't actually connect to a server. I guess that's that. It didn't seem like the worst game in the world, but it sure seemed like a boring one.

I remember the marketing for this was crazy. Not surprised that it fail. And itll also fail as a mobile game.

I noticed Firefall was in my Steam library a couple of days ago. I remembered playing it when it went FTP. It wasn't a bad game but it just was not doing it for me.

That Mark Kern guy sounds like a reeaaaal piece of work. His credentials went to his head HARD.

Between this and Evolve, there needs to be a PAX Memorial Flew-To-Close-To-The-Sun award for games that had a massive presence at PAX and then came out with all the energy of a wet fart.