ReportWire

Tag: Browser games

  • Two More Online Shooters Are Winding Up, But In The Best Ways Possible

    Two More Online Shooters Are Winding Up, But In The Best Ways Possible

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    Image: Natural Selection 2

    So many online games have shut down so far in 2023 that we’ve already had to do a roundup, and it’s only February. Which means loads more are going to meet similar fates over the next 10 months, and the next two to meet their demise are Natural Selection 2 and Spellbreak.

    The developers of Natural Selection 2, which has been running for 10 years, announced earlier today they would be ceasing “active development” on the game, but not fully shutting down. Instead, while they move onto other projects they’ll be leaving the lights on (emphasis mine):

    10 years since its official release and over 117 updates later, active development of Natural Selection 2 has ended.

    Our team and this community have provided many years of passion and support for this game. Over the years we had the opportunity to meet and collaborate with so many of you whether at an expo, live tournament, Discord or playing on a server. We thank you for your support and commitment to NS2 and know that this game would not have been the same without you. Now it’s time to look to the future and continue on to other projects within the company.

    While we won’t be actively working on NS2, we will still continue to host matched play servers so that community members will be able to play games on-demand with other players or bots.

    Although this isn’t goodbye, we still would like to say a very heartfelt thank you to you, our community and to all of those that worked with us on Natural Selection 2 over the years.

    Much love and appreciation,

    The UWE NS2 Team

    While it’s always sad for fans when a game winds up like this, a lot of them just want to be able to still play the thing, so it’s nice to see developers Unknown Worlds leaving some servers up for people to enjoy.

    As for Spellbreak, we knew its end had been coming as far back as June 2022, but it finally came today, with the game being delisted on Steam. That’s the bad news, though; the good news is that the game will live on, as the developers have “created a standalone version where players can host their own servers, play with their friends, and explore the game-space at their own pace.”

    That’s great! That’s even better than leaving some servers up, because as John Carmack said last week, it’s the absolute best case scenario for when official support for an online game winds up. By releasing the game into the winds, and freeing it from the constraints of shopfronts and online platforms, fans can keep playing it for as long as there are fans, and even when there aren’t anymore, the game can still be preserved for future generations.

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    Luke Plunkett

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  • Guerrilla Confirms A Horizon Multiplayer Game Starring New Characters

    Guerrilla Confirms A Horizon Multiplayer Game Starring New Characters

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    Concept art for Horizon Forbidden West shows Aloy fighting robots on her way to San Francisco.

    Image: Guerrilla Games / Sony

    While a Horizon multiplayer game felt all but inevitable, Guerrilla Games finally made the news official on Friday by way of a new job advertisement. The Sony studio behind the open world RPG series wants to take the post-apocalyptic robot combat online with an upcoming project featuring new characters and a different art-style.

    “A new internal team is developing a separate Online Project set in Horizon’s universe,” Guerrilla Games wrote on Twitter. “Featuring a new cast of characters and unique stylized look, friends will be able to explore the majestic wilds of Horizon together.” So don’t expect to teaming up with Aloy and her other friends this time around.

    Job listings for the new game include character, quest, and combat designers, as well as “stylized” world artists and character animators. From the descriptions, it sounds like what you’d expect from the creators of Horizon Zero Dawn and Forbidden West, but with a multiplayer twist. The references to a new art direction, meanwhile, might hint at a different set of visual tradeoffs from a studio traditionally at the forefront of visual fidelity, in order to accommodate the new cooperative gameplay.

    Guerrilla also makes clear that it’s still working on a new single-player installment in the Horizon series, in addition to the PSVR2 spin-off, Horizon Call of the Mountain, and Forbidden West DLC, Burning Shores, the latter two both due out early in 2023. There are also job listings for an external project, though it’s not clear exactly what that is.

    Rumors of a Horizon multiplayer project have been swirling around for a while now, including a report of a Horizon MMO being licensed out to Guild Wars publisher NCsoft. The multiplayer push comes as other major Sony first-party franchises have made the jump to online, including Ghost of Tsushima’s co-op raid update, and an upcoming multiplayer-only Last of Us spin-off.

    Following its $3.6 billion acquisition of Bungie, whose successful MMO shooter Destiny 2 has become one of the gold standards in live-service gaming, Sony revealed plans to release over a dozen more live-service games by 2025. If the past few years have been any indication, not all of them will succeed, and few if any will reach the levels of Apex Legends, Genshin Impact, and other recent breakout hits. With a growing majority of all gaming companies’ revenue coming from microtransactions and other “recurrent player spending,” it’s easy to see why Sony would try.

                

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    Ethan Gach

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